107 Fun Facts About Reformation

Luther is said to have posted his theses on 31 October 1517, the eve of which feast?

All Saints' Day: whatever happened at the church door, that same day he mailed a copy, with a letter setting out his objections, to Archbishop Albert of Mainz.

In which town did Luther post his Ninety-five Theses?

Wittenberg: the defiant hammer blows are probably legend; if he posted them at all, it was likely a routine notice announcing an academic debate.

The Ninety-five Theses attacked the sale of what?

Indulgences: they were banned in Luther's town, so many townspeople travelled to nearby towns to buy them.

Luther's theses attacked a papal fundraising drive meant to pay for building what?

St. Peter's Basilica: under a secret deal, half the German takings went to repay the Fugger bank, which had lent Archbishop Albert the fees for his high office.

Which Dominican friar's fundraising campaign in nearby towns prompted Luther to act?

Johann Tetzel: as he lay dying in 1519, Luther wrote to comfort him, telling him not to be troubled because the uproar had not begun on his account.

In what language were the Ninety-five Theses written?

Latin: they were written for a scholars' debate, yet once others translated them into German they quickly spread across Germany.

Which invention allowed the Reformation's ideas to spread across Europe so quickly?

The printing press: presses turned Luther's short, punchy treatises into unexpected bestsellers, carrying his ideas far beyond the scholars he first wrote for.

Where was Martin Luther born in 1483?

Eisleben: his family moved away when he was a baby, yet he came back and died in the same town in 1546, aged 62.

What was Luther's father's line of work?

Copper mining: the trade made Hans Luder prosperous enough to send his eldest son to university, where he meant Martin to become a lawyer.

Which saint did Luther call on when, caught in a 1505 thunderstorm, he vowed to become a monk?

Saint Anne: he later said he cried out to her as lightning struck nearby, and he kept the vow, quitting his law studies and selling his books, to his father's fury.

Luther belonged to which religious order?

Augustinians: he threw himself into fasting, long prayers and pilgrimage, yet later called his years as a friar a time of deep spiritual despair.

Which papal bull of 1520 threatened Luther with excommunication, and which he publicly burned?

Exsurge Domine: Luther burned it along with books of church law, and in January Pope Leo X excommunicated him with a new bull.

Which Holy Roman Emperor presided over the Diet of Worms in 1521?

Charles V: though firmly on the pope's side, he honoured the promise of safe passage, so Luther left Worms without being arrested.

What did Luther refuse to do at the Diet of Worms?

Recant his writings: he said going against conscience was neither right nor safe, but the famous line 'Here I stand' appears only in later versions of his speech.

What did the Edict of Worms do?

Declared Luther an outlaw: anyone could now kill him without legal consequence, and his books were ordered destroyed.

After the Diet of Worms, Frederick the Wise had Luther taken to which castle for safety?

Wartburg: his 'kidnapping' on the road home was staged by Frederick's men, and he lived there as a knight called Junker Jörg, growing out his hair and beard.

While hiding after the Diet of Worms, Luther is said to have thrown what at the Devil?

An inkwell: the tale is only legend, though Luther and his friends did tell of his fights with Satan in those months, when he translated the New Testament into German.

Katharina von Bora, whom Luther married in 1525, had been what?

A nun: Luther found husbands or jobs for all the women who fled with her except Katharina, whose matches fell through before she married him.

How were Katharina von Bora and her companions smuggled to freedom in 1523?

Hidden among fish barrels: a merchant who regularly delivered herring to them drove the wagon out on Easter Eve, at Luther's request.

What did Katharina von Bora run to support the Luther household and its student boarders?

A brewery: she ran the family farm too, but after Luther died, war laid waste to their land and she had to live on a prince's generosity.

Luther's hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God paraphrases the opening of which biblical text?

Psalm 46: the psalm inspired its opening, and Bach later built his Cantata 80 on the hymn.

What was Luther's response to the German Peasants' War of 1524-25?

He urged the nobles to crush the rebels: his pamphlet told princes to kill rebels without mercy, and their armies went on to slaughter tens of thousands.

Which radical preacher led the peasant army to defeat at Frankenhausen in 1525?

Thomas Müntzer: after the rout he hid in a house in town, but the bag of letters he carried gave him away, and he was tortured and executed.

Where does the word 'Protestant' come from?

A protest at the Diet of Speyer in 1529: when the diet barred any further religious change, Lutheran princes and 14 free cities lodged a formal protest.

Which Swiss city was the base of reformer Huldrych Zwingli?

Zurich: arriving at its Grossmünster in 1519, he ignored the Church's set cycle of readings and preached straight through the Gospel of Matthew.

What food was defiantly eaten during Lent in 1522 in an incident that launched Zwingli's reformation?

Sausages: Zwingli was there but ate none, yet he preached that the Gospel gives no Lenten command, and the city's break with Rome followed.

Luther and Zwingli met at Marburg in 1529 but could not agree on what?

Christ's presence in the Eucharist: Luther insisted Christ was truly present, Zwingli saw a remembrance, and the rift kept their movements apart.

How did Zwingli die in 1531?

Killed in battle: his push to force the Reformation on the Catholic cantons led to war, and he fell at Kappel.

What does the name Anabaptist mean?

One who baptizes again: members held infant baptism invalid, so they baptized believers who professed their faith, even if christened as babies.

Which three groups are direct descendants of the early Anabaptists?

Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites: the Amish began as a breakaway from the Mennonites, led by the Swiss preacher Jakob Ammann, whose name they took.

Which document, presented to the emperor in 1530, remains the primary statement of Lutheran belief?

The Augsburg Confession: Melanchthon drafted it to be acceptable to Catholics, but the emperor's side answered with a formal rebuttal, the Confutation.

John Calvin led Geneva's Reformation, but in which country was he born?

France: born in Noyon and trained in law at Orléans, he fled to Switzerland to escape the persecution of Protestants.

What is the title of Calvin's great work of theology, first published in 1536?

Institutes of the Christian Religion: the first edition had just six chapters, but he kept revising and expanding it throughout his life.

Which fellow reformer persuaded Calvin to stay and work in Geneva?

William Farel: the city's leaders threw both men out of Geneva in 1538, but Calvin returned in 1541 and stayed for the rest of his life.

Which Spanish physician and anti-Trinitarian was burned in Calvin's Geneva in 1553?

Michael Servetus: he had just escaped Catholic authorities, who burned him in effigy instead, yet he turned up in Geneva, was recognized and arrested.

How was Calvin buried after his death in 1564?

In an unmarked grave: today no one knows exactly where in Geneva's Cimetière des Rois his body lies.

Why did Henry VIII break with Rome?

The pope refused to annul his marriage: ironically, only a few years earlier a pope had honoured Henry with the title Defender of the Faith.

Which 1534 law made Henry VIII head of the Church of England?

The Act of Supremacy: Thomas More, Henry's former Lord Chancellor, refused to swear to the king's new supremacy and was beheaded for treason in 1535.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury wrote and compiled the first Book of Common Prayer?

Thomas Cranmer: on the day he was burned, he took back the statements he had signed under pressure and thrust his signing hand into the flames first.

Who produced the first printed English New Testament translated from Greek, in Worms in 1526?

William Tyndale: strangled and burned for heresy in 1536, his last words are said to have been a prayer that God would open the King of England's eyes.

Which reformer of the Church of Scotland spent time rowing as a prisoner in the galleys?

John Knox: taken when St Andrews Castle fell in 1547, he rowed for 19 months, and he later carried Calvin's Geneva model home to Scotland.

The 1558 pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet was aimed against what?

Female rulers: aimed at Catholic queens, it was published anonymously just months before the Protestant Elizabeth I took England's throne.

The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 let each prince choose between which two faiths for his territory?

Lutheranism and Catholicism: subjects who didn't share their prince's faith were allowed to sell their property and move to a territory of their own church.

Which pope convened the Council of Trent in 1545?

Paul III: he called it to answer the Protestants, but two long suspensions meant it finished only in 1563, under Pius IV.

What did the Council of Trent require every Catholic diocese to set up?

Seminaries: too many priests were poorly educated, so future clergy were now to be trained in them from their youth.

Which soldier, wounded by a cannonball in 1521, founded the Jesuits?

Ignatius of Loyola: raised on tales of chivalry, he read about the life of Jesus while he healed and resolved to serve God instead.

The St Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 targeted which group?

Huguenots: many of their leaders had come to Paris for the wedding of the king's sister to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, and the killing began days later.

How did Pope Gregory XIII greet the St Bartholomew's Day massacre?

He ordered a Te Deum and struck a medal: he also had Vasari paint the massacre on a Vatican wall, beside a victory over the Turks.

The Thirty Years' War began after Protestant lords threw imperial officials out of a castle window in which city?

Prague: the men survived the fall, which Catholics credited to angels, while Protestants claimed, probably later, that they landed on a dung heap.

The Peace of Westphalia was negotiated in which two cities?

Münster and Osnabrück: the treaties agreed there are often called the birth of the idea that every state rules itself, though some historians dispute that.

Which Czech reformer was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415?

Jan Hus: he had come to the council under an imperial promise of safe conduct, yet he was arrested there and burned when he would not abandon his views.

John Wycliffe's 14th-century English followers were mockingly called what?

Lollards: Wycliffe was buried in church ground in 1384, but decades later remains taken to be his were dug up, burned and the ashes thrown into a river.

Which Dutch humanist produced a pioneering Greek New Testament yet stayed Catholic and broke with Luther?

Erasmus: when Basel turned Protestant in 1529, he left the city for Catholic Freiburg rather than stay.

Which 1598 decree by King Henry IV granted his Protestant subjects a large measure of religious liberty?

The Edict of Nantes: when Louis XIV revoked it in 1685, persecution drove a mass exodus of Protestants from the kingdom.

Which German sociologist argued that a Protestant, especially Calvinist, work ethic helped give rise to modern capitalism?

Max Weber: he argued that Calvinists, unsure whether they were predestined for salvation, looked for signs of it in hard work and reinvested their wealth.

In 1667, which German territory fixed a single yearly date for its Protestants to commemorate the Reformation?

Electoral Saxony: Elector John George II picked 31 October, the date of Luther's legendary posting of the Ninety-five Theses.

Which Swedish king died at the Battle of Lützen in 1632 while leading Protestant forces in the Thirty Years' War?

Gustavus Adolphus: his reforms and victories laid the foundations of the modern Swedish state and turned Sweden into a major European power.

What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s first name at birth, before his father renamed them both after the German reformer?

Michael was his name until he was five. His father came home from a 1934 Baptist congress in Berlin and changed both their names to Martin Luther King.

According to a popular legend, Martin Luther was the first person to add lighted candles to which festive decoration?

A Christmas tree with candles is credited to Luther only by legend. Trees were going up in his lifetime, though: one is recorded in Strasbourg Cathedral in 1539.

Which toy company's Martin Luther figure, made for the Reformation's 500th anniversary, sold out 34,000 in three days?

Playmobil had never seen a figure sell so fast. The little reformer was released to mark 500 years since the Ninety-five Theses, the document that set the Reformation going.

Whose Last Judgment fresco had its nude figures painted over after the Council of Trent tightened rules on sacred art?

Michelangelo's nudes in the Sistine Chapel were covered up by his friend Daniele da Volterra, mostly after the master died in 1564. The job earned Daniele the nickname 'the breeches-maker'.

Which astronomer did Martin Luther reportedly mock at his dinner table for wanting to turn astronomy upside down?

Copernicus had not yet published when Luther reportedly objected that Joshua told the sun, not the earth, to stand still. A Lutheran theologian, Andreas Osiander, later saw the astronomer's book into print.

Which title did the pope grant Henry VIII in 1521 for writing a book that attacked Martin Luther?

Defender of the Faith was his reward for the Defence of the Seven Sacraments. The papacy took it back after his break with the Church, but Parliament restored it, and British coins have carried it as 'F D' since 1714.

Which Catholic cardinal took his kingdom into the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side to weaken the Habsburgs?

Cardinal Richelieu had put down Protestant risings at home in the 1620s, yet he bankrolled Swedish and Dutch armies abroad. For him the Habsburg threat outweighed any shared creed.

Which composer's Fifth Symphony, nicknamed the Reformation, ends with Luther's hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?

Felix Mendelssohn composed it in 1830 as only his second full symphony. It was not published until 21 years after his death, which is why it carries the number five.

Which biblical villain did Martin Luther come to see in the papacy itself, a charge later written into Lutheran creeds?

The Antichrist, Luther argued, was not one wicked pope now and then but the papacy as an institution. Most Protestants went on teaching the same thing well into the 18th century.

Which pope, a son of Lorenzo de' Medici, excommunicated Martin Luther in January 1521?

Leo X died less than a year after casting Luther out of the Church. He is also remembered for Hanno, the white elephant the King of Portugal sent him as a gift.

Which doctrine about who will be saved became the hallmark of John Calvin's followers?

Predestination holds that God decided in advance who would be saved. Augustine of Hippo taught it more than a thousand years before Calvin, whose heirs sorted humanity into the elect and the reprobate.

Which flower's name is the usual memory aid for the five points of Calvinism affirmed at the Synod of Dort?

Tulip stands for total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance. Nobody is sure who first arranged the Dutch synod's rulings into the acronym.

Which dramatic artistic style did the Catholic Church promote after the Council of Trent to stir worshippers' emotions?

Baroque art answered Protestant plainness with drama, gold and movement. The bishops at Trent had ruled that the arts should present sacred themes with direct, emotional force.

The Council of Trent took its name from the city where it met, which lies in which modern country?

Italy is where Trent, or Trento, lies, but in 1545 a prince-bishop ruled it under the Holy Roman Empire. The pope had wanted Mantua, and the emperor pressed for a city inside his own lands.

Which profession did Hans Luther intend for his son Martin, who instead entered a monastery in 1505?

Lawyer was the plan, and Martin did enrol in law, but he dropped out almost at once, calling it an uncertain profession. Hans was furious at what he saw as a wasted education.

Which flower surrounds the heart and black cross on the seal Martin Luther explained as a symbol of his theology?

A rose, and a white one, Luther insisted, because white is the colour of spirits and angels. The seal was designed for him in 1530 and became the emblem of Lutheran churches worldwide.

Which colour do Lutheran clergy and altars wear on Reformation Day, as they also do at Pentecost?

Red is the colour of the festival, which many churches move to the Sunday on or before 31 October. That service is known as Reformation Sunday.

Which Tudor queen had more than 280 Protestants burned at the stake during a five-year reign?

Mary I was branded 'Bloody Mary' only by later generations, and the nickname had stuck by the 17th century. Her drive to bring England back under the papacy died with her in 1558.

Which city did the emperor's unpaid troops, many of them Lutheran, capture and loot in May 1527?

Rome fell on 6 May 1527, and Pope Clement VII fled along a raised passage to Castel Sant'Angelo while his Swiss Guard died covering him. Recruits to the Guard are sworn in on 6 May each year.

Which professor of Greek, appointed at 21, became Martin Luther's ally and the first systematic Protestant theologian?

Philip Melanchthon was born Philipp Schwartzerdt, meaning 'black earth'. A humanist great-uncle persuaded him to turn the surname into its Greek equivalent, as scholars of the day liked to do.

Which court painter, a close friend of Martin Luther, made the best-known portraits of the reformer?

Lucas Cranach the Elder also ran an apothecary shop, served as his town's burgomaster and supplied the woodcut illustrations for Luther's German Bible.

Which Counter-Reformation mystic reformed the Carmelites and in 1970 became the first woman named Doctor of the Church?

Teresa of Ávila founded the Discalced Carmelites with the younger friar John of the Cross. The papal title came 388 years after her death, days before Catherine of Siena received it too.

Which Bible translation, largely the work of Jerome, did the Council of Trent declare authentic for the Catholic Church?

The Vulgate was upheld at Trent even though no single authoritative edition of it existed. The first official text, the Sixtine, did not appear until 1590 and was replaced two years later.

Which co-founder of the Jesuits led the first Christian mission to Japan and died on an island off China?

Francis Xavier was one of the first seven Jesuits, who took their vows at Montmartre in Paris in 1534. Sailing for the King of Portugal, he landed at Kagoshima in 1549.

Which leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain was assassinated in Delft in 1584 by a Catholic supporter of Philip II?

William the Silent had been placed under a royal ban, with 25,000 crowns promised to anyone who could end his life. The Dutch royal house descends from him.

In which German city did Martin Luther attend university from 1501 and then enter a monastery?

Erfurt was where he took his master's degree in 1505. He remembered being woken at 4 am there for days of rote learning and wearying spiritual exercises.

Which Dominican friar, hanged and burned in Florence in 1498, did Martin Luther praise as a martyr and forerunner?

Girolamo Savonarola policed Florence's morals for four years, staging bonfires of the vanities and preaching on under a papal ban. He sits with the forerunners on the Luther Monument at Worms.

Which stringed instrument did Martin Luther often play to accompany the singing of his hymns?

The lute was his instrument. Luther ranked music next to theology and wrote hymns so that whole congregations, not just choirs, could sing.

Which French king ended the legal toleration of his Protestant subjects in 1685, driving hundreds of thousands abroad?

Louis XIV had Protestant churches destroyed and schools closed, and lodged dragoons in Protestant homes. Estimates of those who left over the next two decades start at 210,000.

Which insult stuck to the English Protestants who wanted every Catholic practice removed from the Church of England?

Puritans never used the word for themselves, since it began as a term of abuse for Protestants seen as extremists. They preferred names such as 'the godly' or 'God's children'.

Which rule for Catholic priests did Martin Luther's followers abandon, following his own example?

Celibacy had bound Western priests for centuries. Luther, an ordained priest and former monk, took a wife in 1525, and Protestant churches have let their clergy wed ever since.

Which part of communion, long kept for the clergy, did Luther, Calvin and Zwingli want given to ordinary worshippers?

The wine had been withheld from lay people in the West since the Middle Ages, partly to guard the chalice against any disrespect. Bohemia's reformers had won the cup back as early as 1433.

Which Lutheran composer, born in Eisenach, wrote a cantata on A Mighty Fortress Is Our God for Reformation Day?

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata in Leipzig for 31 October, setting all four stanzas of Luther's hymn. He was born in the town where Luther had gone to school nearly two centuries earlier.

Which calendar, issued by a pope in 1582, did Protestant Britain refuse to adopt until 1752?

The Gregorian calendar looked to some Protestants like a plot to draw them back into the Catholic fold. By the time Britain gave way it had to drop 11 days, jumping from 2 to 14 September.

Which New Testament letter did Martin Luther deride as an 'epistle of straw' and deny was written by an apostle?

James insists that belief without works is dead, which sat badly beside Luther's teaching on grace. He moved the letter towards the back of his New Testament but never cut it out.

Which South American country made Reformation Day, 31 October, a national public holiday in 2008?

Chile passed the law on 11 October 2008, less than three weeks before the first holiday. It reflects the growing influence of Evangelical and Pentecostal churches across the continent.

Which system of church government, run by elders rather than bishops, is the Church of Scotland known for?

Presbyterianism works through a ladder of church courts, from a local session of elected elders up to regional presbyteries and a national gathering. The Scottish church traces its origins to the Reformation of 1560.

What do Protestants call the books Martin Luther gathered into a separate section after the Old Testament?

The Apocrypha stayed in Luther's Bible, and it is a common misconception that he removed it. He collected the books at the end of the Old Testament instead of leaving them scattered through it.

Which alias did Martin Luther live under while in hiding from May 1521 to March 1522, posing as a knight?

Junker Jörg means Knight George. Under that name Luther spent ten months out of sight and translated the New Testament from Greek into German, producing his first version in eleven weeks.

Which Protestant prince took a second wife in 1540 without divorcing his first, with Martin Luther's secret approval?

Philip of Hesse won the advice as a confessor's secret in December 1539, without telling Luther that the bride was already chosen. His first wife had given her consent.

Which Dutch tailor's apprentice proclaimed himself King of New Jerusalem in 1534 in a German city seized by Anabaptists?

John of Leiden reigned for less than a year before the besieged city fell in June 1535. Some accounts say he took sixteen wives besides his queen and beheaded one of them in public.

Which theologian opposed Martin Luther at the 1519 Leipzig debate, then brought the papal bull against him to Germany?

Johann Eck was hailed as the victor by Leipzig's theologians, but when he came back with the bull the city's students mocked him so fiercely that he fled by night.

Which admiral's murder, carried out by the Duke of Guise's men, began the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572?

Gaspard de Coligny had been a marked man since 1563, when the Guise family accused him of arranging the assassination of the duke's father. A court case against him had failed.

Which pope excommunicated Elizabeth I of England in 1570 and released her subjects from their allegiance?

Pius V called the queen a heretic in the bull Regnans in Excelsis. He is also often credited with the white papal robes, said to come from the Dominican habit he went on wearing.

Which scholar succeeded John Calvin as Geneva's church leader and later gave an ancient Bible manuscript to Cambridge?

Theodore Beza took over as Geneva's spiritual leader when Calvin died. The manuscript he presented, the Codex Bezae, is kept under his name in Cambridge University Library.

Which alliance of Lutheran princes, named after the town where it was founded in 1531, was routed at Mühlberg in 1547?

The Schmalkaldic League was founded by the two most powerful Protestant princes in the empire. The rout at Mühlberg left one of them, John Frederick, a prisoner of the emperor.

Which name did the Dutch Calvinist raiders who captured Brielle in 1572 adopt from a courtier's reported sneer?

Sea Beggars owed their name to a councillor's reported jibe in 1566 that the petitioning Dutch noblemen were only beggars. Their seizure of Brielle gave the revolt its first foothold on land.

Which mainly Catholic country makes Reformation Day a holiday because Protestants wrote the first books in its language?

Slovenia honours Primož Trubar, a Lutheran preacher who wrote the first two books in Slovene in 1550. He wrote them in exile, and they were printed in a German town.

Which word, absent from the Greek, did Martin Luther add to Romans 3:28 in his German translation of the Bible?

Alone, or allein, made the verse say that people are justified through belief alone. Luther argued that idiomatic German demanded the adverb and that it captured the apostle's meaning.

Which familiar part of worship did Huldrych Zwingli strip from his church services, leaving the sermon as the focus?

Music went completely, organ and singing alike, although Zwingli himself could play the violin, harp, flute, dulcimer and hunting horn.