THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
and soon spread all over Germany, which was in various ways prepared for a breach with the pope. At first Luther shrank in horror from the idea of a separation from the traditions of the past, and he attacked a few abuses, taking it for granted that the pope himself would condemn them if properly informed. But the irresistible logic of events brought him into irreconcilable conflict with the central authority of the Church. Leo X., in June, 1520, pronounced the sentence of excommunication against Luther, who, in turn, burned the bull. The Diet of Worms in 1521 added to the pope's excommunication the ban of the emperor. The bold stand of the poor monk, in the face of the combined civil and ecclesiastical powers of the age, is one of the sublimest scenes in history, and marks an epoch in the progress of freedom. The dissatisfaction with the various abuses of Rome and the desire for the free preaching of the Gospel were so extensive, that the Reformation, both in its negative and positive features, spread, in spite of the pope's bull and the emperor's ban, and gained a foothold before 1530 in the greater part of northern Germany, especially in Saxony, Brandenburg, Hesse, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Liineburg, Friesland, and in nearly all the free cities, as Hamburg, Liibeck, Bremen, Magdeburg, Frankfort, and Nuremberg; while in Austria, Bavaria, and along the Rhine, it was persecuted and suppressed. Among the principal causes of this rapid progress were the writings of the Reformers, Luther's German version of the Scriptures (see Bible Versions, B, VII., § 3) and Evangelical hymns, which introduced the new ideas into public worship and the hearts of the people. The Diet of Speyer in 1526 (see Speyer, Diets of) left each state to its own discretion concerning the question of reform until a general council should settle it for all, and thus sanctioned the principle of territorial independence in matters of religion which prevails in Germany to this day; each sovereignty having its own separate ecclesiastical establishment in close union with the State. The next diet of Speyer (in 1529) prohibited the further progress of the Reformation. Against this decree of the Roman Catholic majority, the Evangelical princes entered, on the ground of the Word of God, the inalienable rights of conscience, and the decree of the previous diet, the celebrated protest, dated Apr. 19, 1529, which gave rise to the name, " Protestants." The Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, where the Lutherans offered their principal confession of faith, drawn up by Melanchthon, and named after that city, threatened the Protestants with violent measures if they did not return to the old Church. Here closes the first, the heroic, and the most eventful period of the German Reformation.
The second period embraces the formation of the Protestant League of Schmalkald (see Schmalkald, Articles of) for the armed defense of Lutheranism, the various theological confer- 1530 to th ences °^ tne two Parfcies for an adjust- Thirty- ment of the controversy, the death of Years' War. Luther (1546), the imperial "Interims " or compromises (see Interim), and the Schmalkald War, and ends with the success of the Protestant army, under Maurice of
Saxony, and the treaty of Passau, 1552, giving legal recognition to Protestants. This was confirmed at the diet of Augsburg (see Augsburg, Religious Peace of). The third period, from 1555 to 1580 is characterized by the violent internal controversies within the Lutheran Church — the Osiandrian controversy, concerning justification and sanctification (see Osiander, Andreas) ; the adiaphoristic, arising originally from the Interims (see Adiaphora and the Adiaphoristic Controversies, §§ 6-8); the synergistic, concerning faith and good works (see Synergism); and the crypto-Calvinistic, or sacramentarian controversy, about the real presence in the Eucharist (see Philippists) . These theological disputes led to the full development and completion of the doctrinal system of Lutheranism as laid down in the Book of Concord (first published in 1580), which embraces all the symbolical books of that church, namely, the three ecumenical creeds; the Augsburg Confession and its Apology (q.v.), both by Melanchthon; the two Catechisms of Luther (see Luther's Two Catechisms), and the Schmalkald Articles (q.v.) drawn up by hirn in 1537; and the Formula of Concord (q.v.). On the other hand, the fanatical intolerance of the strict Lutheran party against the Calvinists and the moderate Lutherans (called, after their leader, Melanchthonians or Philippists) drove a large number of the latter over to the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church, especially in the Palatinate (1560), in Bremen (1561), Nassau (1582), Anhalt (1596), Hesse-Cassel (1605), and Brandenburg (1614). The German Reformed communion adopted the Heidelberg Catechism (q.v.) as their confession of faith. The sixteenth century closes the theological history of the German Reformation; but its political history was not brought to a termination until after the terrible Thirty Years' War (q.v.), by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (see Westphalia, Peace of), which secured to the Lutherans and the German Reformed churches (but to no others) equal rights with the Roman Catholics within the limits of the German Empire. These two denominations, either in their separate existence, or united in one organization under the name of the Evangelical Church (as in Prussia, Baden, Wiirttemberg, and other states, since 1817), continue the only forms of Protestantism recognized and supported by the German governments; all others being small, self-support ing " sects," nourished mostly by foreign aid (the Baptists and Methodists of England and America). 2. Switzerland-. The Reformation here was contemporaneous with, but independent of, the German Reformation, and resulted in the Reformed communion as distinct from the Lutheran. In all the essential principles and doctrines, except the mode of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, the Helvetic Reformation agreed with the German; but it departed farther from the received traditions in matters of government, discipline, and worship, and aimed at a more radical moral and practical reformation of the people. It naturally divides itself into three periods: the Zwinglian, from 1516 to 1531 ; the Calvinistic, to the death of Calvin in 1564; and the period of Bullinger and Beza, to the close of the sixteenth century. The first belongs mainly