PROTESTANTISM. The Diet of Worms (1521) placed Martin Luther, the friar of Wit tenberg who had presumed to criticise the Pope and to condemn certain ecclesiastical practices of his day, under the ban of the empire. He had already been placed under the ban of the Church by Pope Leo X, and thus stood con demned by Church and State alike. But he had powerful supporters in Saxony and else where and their influence was sufficient to pro test him from personal harm and to promote his cause until, at the Diet of Speyer (1526), it was voted that each state of the empire should decide for itself whether the Edict of Worms should be enforced. This was the first step toward the legal toleration of the Lutheran faith. At the second Diet of Speyer (1529) this limited degree of toleration was withdrawn. Nineteen of the states of the empire protested against the reactionary measures of this Diet, and their formal protest caused them to be known as `Protestants." This is the historical origin of the name which is now commonly ap plied to all who in the 16th century broke away from papal Rome, and to their ecclesiastical successors down to modern times. The organ ized Christian world of the West has ever since been divided into two great groups, namely, Roman Catholics and Protestants. The countries where Greek Catholicism held sway took no part in the Reformation movement, and until recent times have remained for the most part uninfluenced by Protestantism.
The Protestant movement looks to Martin Luther (1483-1546) as its founder and chief leader, and to the University of Wittenberg as its original home. Luther's most notable early associate was Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), a theologian and humanist, the author of the first Lutheran work on dogmatic theology, and the framer of the Augsburg Confession (1530). A well-known contemporary, Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531),— also a very able and influential preacher against ecclesiastical abuses,— led an anti-papal movement of almost equal import ance in German Switzerland, and there laid the foundations of the Reformed faith. The chief scene of his activities was the town of Zurich.
The movement which Zwingli inaugurated was, however, overshadowed and absorbed the more constructive work of John Calvin 1509 64), a Frenchman by birth, who ma e of Geneva a Protestant stronghold,— 'Tittle as his opponents called it. From Geneva the principles of the Calvinistic Ref ormation went forth to many other European lands. They were carried into Scotland by John Knox (1505-72), and that country became an important factor in promoting the growth of the Reformed faith in the Anglo-Saxon world. The Protestant forces of Europe, called into life by these leaders and others hardly less im portant, fall into two main groups, commonly called by European historians the Lutheran and Reformed churches. The Lutherans were not only originally Teutonic, but for the most part have remained so. The Reformed, known in America more commonly as Calvinists, proved to be much more international in character. Among the Lutherans are included chiefly Ger mans, Danes and Scandinavians; among the Re formed, or Calvinists, are included Swiss, French, Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish and various minor nationalities found in America. Historians have sometimes attempted to ac count for the wider extension of the Calvinistic type of Protestantism by Pointing out that it sanctioned the employment of force in main taining the faith, which Luther never did ex cept reluctantly, that it emphasized popular education, offered greater freedom tionalism (for instance in the interpretation of the Lord's Supper), and that it tended to separate Church and State. The Lutherans for the most part were organized throughout Ger many into a series of state churches,— a natural outgrowth of the German political principle, tutus regio ejus religio. The Protestant princes exercised control over the churches within their respective jurisdictions, and although this power was usually delegated to an officer known as the superintendent (the Lutheran analogue to a bishop), yet in each case the prince him self was to a large degree the governor of the church.