Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 1
Oberwesel on the Middle Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Lutheran state. Louis, however, died in 1583, and since his son was only nine years old, Louis’ brother John Casimir ruled in his name; and John Casimir
were expected to conform. Public dissent would lead to fi nes or banish- ment at best, and at worst to capital punishment. The sometimes farcical situation that could develop is illus- trated in the religious history of the German Palatinate, one of the seven electoral princedoms of the Holy Ro- man Empire, situated in the German south-west. In 1559, the Palatinate acquired a new prince, Frederick III. After hesitating between Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism, Fred- erick committed himself to the Reformed faith, and used his princely power to make the Palatinate into a Reformed territory. For the fi rst time, a German state had a Reformed Church.
This experiment in German Re- formed Christianity, however, came to a halt in 1576 with Frederick’s death. His son Prince Louis VI was a staunch Lutheran, and Louis ex- pelled no fewer than 600 Reformed theologians and pastors from the Pa- latinate, forcibly converting it into a
was Reformed. John expelled the Lutherans, and made the Palatinate a Reformed land once more. This bouncing back and forth between Lutheran and Reformed, with each side expelling the adherents of the other whenever it had its hands on the levers of power, reveals the state of religious intolerance among Protes- tants even towards each other. Yet there were seeds of religious
liberty scattered by the Reformers, which ultimately sprouted when the political consequences of intolerance became themselves intolerable in a blood-soaked Europe.
Martin Luther among all the Mag- isterial Reformers held the most progressive views on religious liberty, at least in the earlier part of his ca- reer. It should be noted that when Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther in 1520 in the papal bull Exsurge Domine, the bull listed 41 of Luther’s alleged heresies. Interestingly, no mention is made of justifi cation by faith, but heresy number 33 for
Great Advances Sown by the Reformation page 23
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