A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe by Gordon Kerr

follow his orthodoxy were persecuted and punished. Pastors were taught Calvinism at the University of Geneva and they spread it across Europe. It was followed in England, France, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and the Low Countries. John Knox founded the Presbyterian Church in Scotland in 1561, based on Calvinist principles.
    In England, church reform grew out of the personal proclivitiesof King Henry VIII (ruled 1509–47). He wished to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Ann Boleyn. Pope Clement VII (Pope 1523–34) denied him the divorce but the king pronounced himself divorced anyway in 1533 and married Ann. The Pope excommunicated him, declaring the divorce illegal and the marriage to Ann null and void. The crisis mounted as the papal nuncio was withdrawn from Englandand diplomatic relations were broken off between England and Rome. In 1534, the Ecclesiastical Appointments Act ensured that bishops could only be appointed that had been nominated by the King. That same year, the Act of Supremacy made the sovereign the head of the Church of England and it became punishable by death to oppose this view. Henry dissolved the monasteries, confiscating all theirpossessions and opposition was ruthlessly suppressed, as his former Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, discovered when he was beheaded for refusing to sign the Act of Supremacy.
    Henry’s son, Edward VI (ruled 1547–53) introduced Calvinism, but when Queen Mary (ruled 1553–58), daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, assumed the throne on Edward’s death, she bloodily restored Catholicismas the religion of England. The Reformation returned under Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603). Five years after she ascended the throne, the defining statements of Anglican doctrine were laid out in the 39 Articles . Opposition to the Anglican Church included the English Calvinists who would become known as Puritans. Animosity between them and the crown would eventually erupt in the English Civil War.

The Counter-Reformation
    The Catholic response to Protestantism, known as the Counter-Reformation, lasted from the reign of Pope Pius IV, around 1560, until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. The surge of Protestantism through Europe was undoubtedly the greatest threat the Catholic Church had ever encountered and, after a period of paralysis when little was done actively to reform the Church,it finally reacted during the pontificate of Pope Paul III (1534–49). Paul was a flagrant nepotist but he also distinguished himself by providing the artists Michelangelo and Titian with some of their most lavish commissions. He recognised the extent of the problems facing the Church and took action, convening one of the most important councils in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, atTrent, in northern Italy.
    Reformist Catholics and humanists such as Erasmus had been calling for such a council since Luther’s 95 Theses and Charles V had called for one in 1524. Successive popes had refused to countenance such a meeting, however, fearful perhaps of the erosion of papal authority that it might bring. Meanwhile, to suppress heresy, the Inquisition was reorganised and the Congregationof the Index was set up to censor written works and to maintain a list of banned books. Meeting in 25 sessions in three periods between 1545 and 1563, the Council of Trent, the last ecumenical council for 300 years, introduced major reforms, condemned heresies and defined the Catholic position on many contentious areas such as Scripture, Original Sin, Justification, Sacraments, the Eucharistin Holy Mass and the veneration of saints. It defined modern Catholicism and delivered a direct response to Protestant issues, leaving the implementation of its decisions to the Pope. Consequently, in 1566, he published a Roman Catechism , designed to expound Catholic doctrine and to improve the priests’ theological understanding. 1568 saw the release of a revised Roman Breviary , a book of prayersto be