Reformation
Terminology

In the 16th-century context, the term mainly covers four major movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Radical Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation. Historian John Bossy criticized the term Reformation for "wrongly implying that bad religion was giving way to good," but also because it has "little application to actual social behaviour and little or no sensitivity to thought, feeling or culture." Some historians have also suggested a persisting Erasmian Reformation. Anglican theologian Alister McGrath explains the term "Reformation" as "an interpretative category—a way of mapping out a slice of history in which certain ideas, attitudes, and values were developed, explored, and applied".

Those who write of the "Protestant Reformation" exclude the early modern Catholic reform movements. Magisterial Reformation has a narrower sense, as it refers only to mainstream Protestantism, primarily Lutheranism and Calvinism, contrasting it with more radical ideas. Catholic Reformation is distinguished by the historian Massimo Firpo from Counter-Reformation. In his view, Catholic Reformation was "centered on the care of souls..., episcopal residence, the renewal of the clergy, together with the charitable and educational roles of the new religious orders", whereas Counter-Reformation was "founded upon the defence of orthodoxy, the repression of dissent, the reassertion of ecclesiastical authority". From the late 20th century, historians often use the plural of the term, writing of "Reformations" to emphasize that the Reformation was not a uniform and coherent historical phenomenon but the result of parallel movements. Several aspects of the Reformation, such as the reformation of arts, music, rituals, and communities are frequently presented in specialised studies.

The historian Peter Marshall emphasizes that the "call for 'reform' within Christianity is about as old as the religion itself, and in every age there have been urgent attempts to bring it about". Charlemagne employed a "rhetoric of reform". Medieval examples include the Cluniac Reform in the 10th–11th centuries, and the 11th-century Gregorian Reform, both striving against lay influence over church affairs. When demanding a church reform, medieval authors mainly adopted a conservative and utopian approach, expressing their admiration for a previous "golden age" or "apostolic age" when the Church had allegedly been perfect and free of abuses.

Both the starting and ending date of the Reformation have always been debated. The most commonly used starting date is 31 October 1517—the day when the German theologian Martin Luther (d. 1546) allegedly nailed up a copy of his disputation paper on indulgences and papal power known as the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. Calvinist historians often propose that the Reformation started when the Swiss priest Huldrych Zwingli (d. 1531) first preached against abuses in the Church in 1516. The end date of the Reformation is even more disputed, with 25 September 1555 (when the Peace of Augsburg was accepted), 23 May 1618, and 24 October 1648 (when the Thirty Years' War began and ended, respectively) being the most commonly mentioned terminuses. The Reformation has always been presented as one of the most crucial episodes of the early modern period, or even regarded as the event separating the modern era from the Middle Ages.

The term Protestant, though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church that subscribed to the main Reformation (or anti-Catholic) principles. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier.
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