Barnabite Origins 1. Historical-Religious Context: Catholic Reform 1. Protestant Reformation

St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria [by Cristina Bellazzi]

On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed his 95 theses on the door of All Saints castle church in Wittenberg. This gesture is usually viewed as the starting-point of the Reformation. Actually, it was like setting fire to a fuse: in a short while the revolt spread throughout a large part of Europe. Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489-1525), a radical Anabaptist, helped incite the Peasants’ War, which was then crushed by the German princes in the Battle of Frankenhausen in 1525. Afterwards, from Germany, the Lutheran reformation spread to the Scandinavian countries. In 1519 Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) introduced the Reformation in Switzerland with his lectures on the New Testament. However, his work suffered a serious setback when he was killed in the Battle of Kappel in 1531. John Calvin (1509-1564) met with much greater success. His Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) is one of the most influential theological works of all time. In 1541 he settled in Geneva. From there his teaching eventually spread to France (Huguenots), to the Netherlands, to England (Puritans), to Scotland (Presbyterians) and to Hungary. In 1534 the Act of Supremacy broke the union of the English Church with Rome and in 1549 the Book of Common Prayer was made compulsory by the Act of Uniformity. The rapid spread of the Reformation in Europe clearly demonstrates that Luther’s gesture was no quirk of one solitary eccentric. Rather, it was the symptom of a widespread malaise which caused many people to feel the need of Church reform in capite et in membris (in the hierarchy and in the faithful at large). This need was felt throughout the centuries and was never satisfactorily attended to.

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