Other Reformation History - SAT Subject Test in World History

Huguenots were French Protestants during the Reformation in France and in some places still are today. They have been heavily persecuted throughout French history by various groups and often by the state, and their numbers have never been as high as they were before the French Wars of Religion.

Predestination is the belief that the fate of all people, and their access to the afterlife, is predetermined by God before they are born. This was a core tenet of Calvinism.

The Peace of Augsburg was signed in 1555 between the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and an alliance of Lutheran rulers within his empire. It declared that the various princes of the Holy Roman Empire were free to choose whichever denomination of Christianity they wanted for their dominion, but then the entire population of that territory had to follow the chosen religion.

Following the reign of Henry VIII, English monarchs were expected to follow Anglicanism and be the head of the Church of England. Henry broke from the Catholic Church in 1535 and began the English Reformation. Mary, one of his daughters, reigned in between his son Edward and another of his daughters, Elizabeth I. She undid all the Reformation changes undertaken by her predecessors and declared England a Catholic kingdom. This would prove a costly mistake for her in terms of maintaining her power. For the rest of English history, English monarchs have rarely been Catholic and certainly have rarely been openly Catholic.

The Peace of Westphalia was a peace treaty signed in 1648 that ended the brutal Thirty Years' War that had ravaged much of Central Europe. The Thirty Years' War was primarily a conflict between Protestants and Catholics fought in the lands of modern-day Germany, but at one time or another it involved almost every major power in Europe.

The Thirty Years' War began as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants in the weakening Holy Roman Empire. It quickly spread, however, to engulf almost all the major powers in Europe. The Thirty Years' War is often remembered as one of the most brutal wars in European history. It devestated Central Europe and decimated the populations of modern-day Germany and the Low Countries.

The Council of Trent convened in the middle of the sixteenth century. Its purpose was to provide an official Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. In particular, the Council ruled on the various doctrines of faith that were being criticized by the Protestant Reformation and widely reaffirmed them. It also ruled that Bishops had to be present in the territory that they governed and that the sale of indulgences was an illegal church practice.

The Peace of Augsburg was signed in 1555 between Charles V, the head of the Holy Roman Empire, and an alliance of Lutheran Princes. The Peace formally ended hostilities between the two groups and permanently established the division of Christianity between Catholicism and Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire. Although it provided some measure of "religious tolerance," to use that phrase suggests far more tolerance than was present at the time. Yes, the rulers of a princely state could determine which form of Christianity they wanted, but all their subjects had to obey on pain of death, and executions and genocides remained common throughout Europe.

The Defenestration of Prague occurred in 1618. It refers to an incident where a group of Catholic Lords were thrown out of a window following a rather heated disagreement with a group of Protestants. This incident is one of the most famous in the build-up to the Thirty Years' War, which would rage from 1618 until 1648 across much of Central Europe.

In Anglicanism, the English monarch is head of the Church of England. In Anabaptism, adults are baptized rather than babies. Predestination, the belief that people's eternal fate is predetermined by God before they are born, is a core concept of Calvinism. Justification through Faith alone is the crucial difference between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Luther said that good works and following the rules of the Church were not the way through which eternal salvation was achieved. Instead, Luther argued that salvation was already promised, all one had to do was believe in it and have faith in Christ's saving grace.

The Pope, and the Catholic Church, has the right to "excommunicate" individuals or entire nations from the church. This essentially means that the individual or the people of the nation are blocked off from salvation. The Pope might excommunicate a nation in order to put political pressure on a European monarch. If the common people follow the Catholic faith and suddenly believe that their path to eternal salvation has been blocked by the intransigence of their King, they would be likely to break out in open rebellion rather than suffer eternal damnation.