Holiday: Why do Protestants celebrate Reformation?

What was the trigger for the Reformation?

According to tradition, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) struck his 95 theses on October 31, 1517, one day before All Saints' Day, at the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Although historians doubt that Luther personally took to hammer and nail. But the picture symbolizes the great importance of the theses publication: it accelerated the process in which many believers from the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church renounced. The Protestant churches formed.

Luther's theses were directed primarily against the abuse of the medieval indulgence trade: believers were able to reduce their sins by acquiring indulgence letters. The church was doing well with the proceeds, and the pope financed the construction of the new St. Peter's Basilica. Against this abuse of power and the secularization of the church Luther protested and published more writings. Only God's grace could save the faithful, according to the Reformer. And only the Bible is authoritative for the Christian doctrine, not the traditional doctrine of the church.

How did the Reformation develop?

Through the new technique of printing with movable type Luther's works quickly spread and triggered a reformatory movement. Since Luther did not want to revoke his theses, the Pope expelled him and his followers in 1520 from the church. Luther did not want to bow to the emperor. "Here I stand, I can not help it," he is said to have said at the Worms Reichstag. Thereupon the emperor imposed the imperial power over the reformer. Luther was thus outlawed, anyone could now kill him punishable.

With the help of his supporter, the Elector of Saxony, Luther was able to hide on the Wartburg. As Junker Jörg, he worked there undetected on his greatest work: He translated the New Testament into German. His style still shapes our language today.

DPA

Thesis door at the castle church in Wittenberg

In Switzerland, a separate Reformation movement developed, which was initiated by Huldrych Zwingli and Johannes Calvin. This resulted in the Reformed Church, which later became a Protestant denomination next to the Lutheran Church. The reformed branch of Protestantism spread among other things to Scotland and the United States, the Lutheran about to Scandinavia.

What were the political consequences?

The Reformation (Latin reformatio "transformation", "renewal") not only sealed the division of the church, also the political map of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation changed sustainably: More and more imperial princes turned away from the pope and emperor by the Enforced Reformation and transformed their countries into secular principalities. At the Diet of Speyer in 1529, the Protestant princes protested for their freedom of belief, the term "Protestantism" was born.

With the "Confessio Augustana" the princes laid a creed in 1530 at the Augsburg Reichstag, which was not recognized by Emperor Charles V, however. Then they joined together to form a protective alliance against the emperor, the Schmalkaldic League. In the Schmalkaldic War, the alliance was defeated in 1547 by imperial troops. In 1555 the different camps in the Augsburg Religious Peace agreed by law that every prince was allowed to determine the religion in his dominion.

The law gave the empire a long but not lasting peace. The confessional opposites ultimately led together with political causes to the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which plunged the whole of Europe into catastrophe. At the end of the Augsburg religious peace was finally confirmed.

Since when is Reformation Day celebrated?

In 1667, the Elector of Saxony designated October 31st as the commemoration day of the Reformation - 150 years after the publication of Luther's theses. Since then, German Protestants celebrate their faith on this day. For a long time in Germany, the Reformation Day was only a public holiday in the eastern federal states. The other federal states decided once in a while to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation with a holiday in 2017. In the meantime, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have also turned Reformation Day into a public holiday.