1) The Reformation

Taking time back to England at the beginning of the 16th century, one first needs to understand the institutional background of that time. Around the year 1500, England belonged, in terms of religious institutions, to a part of the so-called "Latin Christendom." Latin Christendom refers to the Western European Christian civilizational community dominated by the Roman Church from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. This was not a simple community of faith, but a governance system in which religion, law, culture, and politics were highly overlapped. The "Latin" here does not refer to ethnicity or bloodline, but is an institutional language. The official religious language, Biblical texts, church documents, judicial instruments, and theological discussions were all conducted in Latin. The unity of language meant the unity of authority—whoever mastered the Latin system mastered the power of interpretation. It was precisely on this point that Latin Christendom formed a highly centralized power structure.

It needs to be pointed out that this system was not equivalent to the entire Christian world. The power core of Latin Christendom was in Rome, and its authority derived from the Pope, Latin, and Canon Law; whereas the core of the Greek Christian world was in Constantinople, which is today's Istanbul, and its authority structure was built upon Orthodoxy, the Greek language, and the Emperor. Rome dominated Western Europe, and Constantinople dominated the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. After the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western churches in 1054, countries such as England, France, Germany, and Spain all belonged to the Latin branch. Within Latin Christendom, the Pope was the supreme religious head, but his power went far beyond the religious level. He not only possessed the power of doctrinal adjudication and the power to identify heresy, but also held the final power of adjudication over the legitimacy of marriage. At that time, this was not a private matter, but a question directly related to inheritance, property, and political stability. In a sense, the Pope's power was equivalent to compressing today's judicial system, social management system, and political legitimacy certification mechanism into one religious authority. England, within this system, was merely a local church unit.

At the same time, Canon Law was a transnational system of law. Church courts existed independently of the royal courts, and clergy were prioritized for trial by the church. This meant that even within their respective territories, the sovereignty of the state was not complete, but was covered by a transnational religious power structure. In England, France, and Spain before the 16th century, two sets of judicial systems generally coexisted. Royal courts were responsible for handling secular affairs, while church courts handled so-called "matters related to the soul." This was not a simple functional division of labor, but an non-interferable parallel structure. Royal power had no right to overturn church judgments, nor could it summon clergy at will, while church courts could bypass state power and appeal directly to Rome. Abstractly viewed, this was an overlap of jurisdictional authority; specifically speaking, it was a substantive cutting of the state's judicial power by the church.

The church not only possessed an independent status at the judicial level but also constructed a network detached from royal control at the economic level. It owned vast amounts of land and real estate and collected tithes. Funds could flow across national borders and eventually converge in Rome, forming an economic system exempt from national auditing. The tithe was a mandatory system in the medieval Christian world, requiring individuals or families to hand over one-tenth of their income or output to the church. This system originated from the Old Testament tradition of offering one-tenth of the harvest to God, to be managed by the church on His behalf. By the Middle Ages, it had been thoroughly institutionalized; non-payment constituted an illegal act and could be punished by church courts. The targets of tithe collection covered almost all commoner families, including peasants, artisans, merchants, and some landowners; the contents of collection included agricultural products such as grain and grapes, as well as livestock products such as sheep, cattle, and milk, and in later periods even accepted currency. These revenues usually flowed to local parishes, dioceses, monasteries, and the higher-level papal system, completely bypassing the royal financial structure.

From the perspective of royal power, the problem was very direct. The people were already paying taxes to the King, yet they also had to bear religious taxes, and this portion of funds was neither auditable nor requisitionable, and might flow out to Rome. This directly weakened the state's financial foundation, military mobilization capability, and administrative efficiency. The psychology of ordinary people was equally contradictory: if they did not pay, they worried their souls would not be saved; if they did pay, they endured a heavier burden in real life. Especially in years of famine, war, or poor harvests, this pressure was often unbearable. Anti-clerical sentiment therefore existed for a long time, yet always lacked a legitimate outlet for venting. At the same time, the King's legitimacy did not come merely from bloodline; it also had to obtain the recognition of the church. The Pope could both confirm a monarch's legitimacy and negate it, or even paralyze their political power through "excommunication." Excommunication was the highest level of religious and political sanction that the medieval church could impose, issued by the Pope or high church courts according to Canon Law; its targets of application covered almost everyone, including commoners, nobles, bishops, and even Kings.

Being excommunicated meant being unable to participate in sacraments and religious rituals and being publicly declared as having a soul in a state of danger. At the legal level, oaths made to the excommunicated person automatically became invalid, subjects were no longer required to obey, and contracts and relations of allegiance were dissolved; at the social level, people could legally refuse contact with them, and commercial, marital, and judicial relations were suspended, forming a factual social blockade. For a monarch, this was a fatal blow. Historically, King John of England in the 13th century was excommunicated due to conflict with the Pope, subsequently, an interdict was imposed on all of England, churches were closed, weddings and funerals could not be held, society fell into panic, nobles turned against him one after another, and finally, the King was forced to submit to Rome. The supreme power of the state, in essence, depended on the adjudication of a foreign religious center. For a modern state in the process of formation, this situation was unacceptable. The state should not be declared illegal by an external authority, the King should not lose the qualification to rule due to religious law, and relations of law and allegiance must be rooted within domestic institutions. However, at the beginning of the 16th century, England was still in a state of religious submission to Rome, judicial parallelism between church law and royal law, the detachment of vast resources from royal control financially, and dependence on papal adjudication for key matters politically. Latin Christendom was built in the Middle Ages but had to face the rise of the modern state. When royal power began to attempt to unify law, taxation, and the military, the papal system inevitably became a structural obstacle. The Reformation was not an accidental event, but a systematic liquidation of the medieval supra-national order by the modern state. The essence of the English Reformation was precisely exiting the Latin Christendom.

It was precisely against such a background that 16th-century England broke away from Roman Catholicism and established the Church of England. The core position of the Puritans was extremely direct: the church must be thoroughly "purified." They opposed the episcopal system, opposed ornate rituals and religious icons, opposed the hierarchical clerical system, emphasized the supremacy of the Bible, emphasized the direct relationship between the individual and God, and promoted extreme moral self-discipline. However, the Puritans soon diverged. The moderates advocated staying within the Church of England to conduct reform, still recognizing the legitimacy of the national church; the radicals believed the Church of England was beyond cure and advocated complete separation from the national church. In 1620, these Separatists boarded the "Mayflower" and headed for North America.

2) Protestantism

Protestantism is a general term for a large category of Christian traditions formed during the European Reformation process in the 16th century. It is not a single church or a unified denomination, but a collection of a series of reform movements. The common feature of Protestantism does not lie in a set of completely consistent doctrines, but in the systematic negation of the authority structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestantism denies that the Pope possesses supreme religious authority, advocates that the "Bible" rather than church tradition is the final standard of faith, and believes that a person's salvation depends on faith itself, rather than being achieved through church mediation, sacraments, or good works. At the same time, Protestantism emphasizes that believers can face God directly, and personal conscience holds a position in faith judgment that cannot be completely replaced by the church. The recognized starting point of Protestantism is 1517. In this year, the German theologian Martin Luther published the "95 Theses" in Wittenberg, publicly questioning the legitimacy of the Roman Church selling indulgences. This act itself was not a political revolution, but a challenge at the theological and academic levels. However, its historical significance lies in the fact that it, for the first time, explicitly placed personal conscience and the authority of the "Bible" above church authority, fundamentally shaking the power structure of the medieval Latin Christendom.

The reason why 1517 became the starting point of Protestantism was not accidental. Prior to this, Europe had long accumulated dissatisfaction with the church's financial privileges, judicial privileges, and moral corruption. The popularization of printing weakened the church's monopoly over knowledge and texts, emerging state power was continuously strengthening, and individual religious consciousness also gradually awakened. The reason why Luther's action triggered a chain reaction was precisely because it made these long-existing structural contradictions public in the form of theology and spread them rapidly through communication technology. It should be noted that Protestantism was not a unified church system from the beginning. The Reformation took different paths in different regions. In Germany and Northern Europe, the Lutheran tradition centered on Luther was formed; in Switzerland and French-speaking areas, the Reformed tradition represented by Calvin was developed; in England, the Church of England was established under the leadership of the state. These traditions differed significantly in church systems, liturgical forms, and political relations, but were all collectively called Protestantism because they commonly rejected the Roman Pope as the supreme religious authority.

Fundamentally, the dividing line between Protestantism and Catholicism does not lie in whether one believes in God, but in the final source of authority. Catholicism insists on the core position of church tradition and papal authority in faith, while Protestantism returns ultimate authority to the "Bible" and understands and practices faith through personal conscience. This transfer of authority not only changed the religious structure of Europe but also profoundly influenced the formation of the modern state, legal systems, and the concept of individual responsibility. In summary, the starting point of Protestantism was the public challenge to church authority in 1517, and its essence was to take back the final power of adjudication over faith from the hands of the Roman Church and re-place it within the "Bible" and personal conscience.

Martin Luther was born in Germany in 1483. He was a Catholic monk trained in strict scholastic theology and also a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. He belonged to the Augustinian Order; in terms of identity, he was completely inside the Latin Christian system, rather than a marginal figure or a political rebel. Luther taught the "Bible" for a long time, especially studying texts such as "Romans" and "Galatians" deeply; his thoughts did not come from folk anti-clerical sentiment, but originated from systematic theological research. Luther's personal temperament is crucial to understanding him. He was not a light-hearted religious reformer, but a person long tormented by the question of "how a person is saved before God." He was extremely sensitive to his own sense of sin and could never obtain inner certainty regarding the path to salvation provided by the church. It was precisely within this intense and internalized religious anxiety that he gradually formed the theological judgments later regarded as subversive.

In 1517, Luther published the text later known as the "95 Theses." This was not a revolutionary manifesto, but a theological outline written in Latin for use in academic debate, originally intended for the academic community within the university and the church. Its direct topic was very specific, namely the system of indulgences widely promoted in the German region at that time. Indulgences allowed believers to reduce the amount of time they or deceased relatives needed to endure punishment in purgatory by paying money. This system was rapidly commercialized in practice, even being advertised as "as soon as the coin clinks, the soul leaps from purgatory." In the theses, Luther repeatedly emphasized that true repentance is an inner turning, not a transaction that can be completed through money. He believed the church had no right to institutionalize the forgiveness of sins as an economic act, much less the right to guarantee spiritual consequences to believers.

In the "95 Theses," Luther did not directly deny the existence of the Pope, but he clearly pointed out that even if the Pope possessed the power to declare remission, he could only declare the fact that God had already forgiven, and could not manufacture remission based on his own authority. This point seemed moderate, yet was extremely destructive in logic because it denied the church's active control over salvation. On the surface, this text was opposing the abuse of indulgences; but at a deeper level, it touched upon a fundamental question: whether the church monopolized the right of mediation between man and God. If salvation depended on faith itself rather than the church institution, then the church's authority would no longer be irreplaceable. If individuals could directly understand faith through the "Bible," then the hierarchical structure of the clerical system would lose its theological basis.

Luther's direct motive for publishing the "95 Theses" was not political resistance, but a conflict between conscience and theology. He believed the indulgence system not only misled believers but also created a false sense of security, making people mistakenly believe they could escape true repentance through money. The core conviction driving his actions was the judgment he gradually established during long-term research: a person is saved not because of deeds or merit, but because of faith itself. This thought was later summarized as "Justification by Faith." At the same time, the conditions of the era amplified the impact of Luther's behavior. The popularization of printing allowed the text to be spread rapidly, and the long-term dissatisfaction of German princes with the financial exactions of the Roman Curia also made political forces willing to provide asylum for religious dissent. The internal academic discussion Luther originally envisioned quickly evolved into an open, irreversible conflict.

In 1517, Luther did not believe he was founding a new religious tradition. He initially hoped for self-correction within the church and always considered himself someone loyal to the core beliefs of Christianity. It was precisely the process of the Roman Curia's trial, condemnation, and labeling him as a heretic that pushed him step by step outside the system. It was also during this process that Luther transformed from a reformer into the starting point of a historic rupture. Judging from the results, Martin Luther was not a person who intended to destroy religion, but a theologian who refused to accept "substituting faith with institutions and money." What he challenged was not just indulgences themselves, but whether the church possessed the final power of interpretation over salvation. When this question was publicly raised, the history of Protestantism had, in fact, already begun.

3) Horizontal Comparison of the Same Period

Before Protestantism formally appeared, important "Pre-Reformation" movements had already appeared in Europe, the most critical branch of which was the Hussites. The Hussites rose in Bohemia at the beginning of the 15th century; their ideological core came from the theologian Jan Hus. Hus advocated that the "Bible" was higher than church authority, opposed church corruption, demanded preaching in the local language, and criticized indulgences and clerical privileges. He did not attempt to establish a new denomination but directly challenged the power structure of the Roman Church. After Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, the long Hussite Wars broke out in Bohemia, causing this theological disagreement to quickly evolve into a political conflict in which religion and nationality were highly intertwined. The Hussites did not systematically develop a complete Protestant theology, but they proved one point in both time and thought: the authority of the Roman Church was not unchallengeable, therefore they are often regarded as "Protestantism before Protestantism." The earliest Protestant tradition to take shape was Lutheranism, directly originating from Martin Luther's reforms in the German region. The theological core of Lutheranism is "Justification by Faith," meaning that a person's salvation depends entirely on faith, rather than good works or church institutions. It resolutely denied the supreme authority of the Pope, yet remained relatively conservative in church structure and liturgical forms, retaining a large amount of the outward forms of the medieval church. In terms of political attitude, Lutheranism compromised highly with secular regimes, believing that the state has the responsibility to maintain church order, thus it often became a state-supported church in Germany and Northern Europe. This choice made Lutheranism relatively stable at the social level and less likely to move toward radicalization in morals and politics.

Compared with Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition (Calvinism) was more thorough in both theology and discipline. It was formed in Switzerland and French-speaking areas, and its ideological system was systematically completed by John Calvin. The Reformed tradition emphasized the absolute sovereignty of God and the doctrine of predestination, believing that whether a person is saved is not decided by themselves, but is the will of God. Precisely because of this, the Reformed tradition attached extreme importance to church discipline and moral order, opposing all rituals and decorations that lacked an explicit basis in the "Bible." In Geneva, Calvin promoted the establishment of a highly standardized religious community; the church not only managed faith but also deeply intervened in daily life. Later, the Puritans, the Scottish Presbyterians, the Dutch Reformed, and the North American New England tradition almost all directly inherited this ideological lineage. The Protestant Reformation in England took a completely different path, eventually forming the Church of England (Anglicanism). This system was not promoted by theologians but was directly established under the leadership of the state. It recognized the authority of the "Bible" and denied papal supremacy in theology, therefore belonging to the Protestant camp; however, in organizational structure and liturgical forms, it retained a large amount of Catholic tradition, such as the episcopal system, the sacramental system, and religious vestments. This compromise arrangement was extremely stable politically, yet created long-term dissatisfaction at the religious level; it was precisely within this tension that the Puritans emerged from within the Church of England, continuously accusing its reform of being incomplete.

The most radical and also the least tolerated branch of the Reformation was the Anabaptists. Anabaptists denied infant baptism, advocating that only people who consciously believe as adults can be baptized, therefore they believed all infant baptisms were invalid and one must be baptized again. This position not only challenged church tradition but also directly struck the institutional foundation of the state managing the population through the church. Many Anabaptist groups refused to swear oaths, refused military service, and even denied the sanctity of secular regimes, therefore they were regarded as dangerous elements in both Catholic and Protestant countries and were brutally suppressed. Despite this, their concepts regarding the voluntary nature of faith, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state became common sense in modern society centuries later. If the Anabaptists challenged the way the state and church combined, then Unitarianism directly challenged the core doctrines of Christianity itself. Unitarianism formed in the mid-to-late 16th century, mainly active in Poland, Hungary (Transylvania), and among circles of exiled Italian intellectuals. Their most controversial position was the denial of the Trinity, insisting on the Oneness of God, and believing that Jesus was a moral role model chosen by God rather than a divine existence of the same substance as God. This claim made them simultaneously regarded as heretics by both Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism. One of the representative figures, Michael Servetus, was executed for denying the Trinity, clearly exposing that even within the Protestant camp, the boundaries of theological tolerance were still extremely narrow.

The Puritans were not an independent Protestant denomination, but a continuous reform movement within Protestantism in the English context. They were deeply influenced by Reformed thought but were primarily active within the Church of England. The Puritans believed that although England had already broken away from Rome, the church and society were still full of "unclean things" left over from Catholicism. They opposed the episcopal system, opposed ornate rituals and the hierarchical clerical system, and emphasized a strict moral life and communal discipline. It was precisely because this ideal was always difficult to realize in England that a portion of the Puritans eventually chose to leave their homeland, head for North America, and launch a new social experiment in New England. Placing these schools within the same historical vision shows that: the Hussites challenged the legitimacy of church authority, acting as the precursor of Protestantism; Lutheranism and the Reformed tradition solved the questions of "how to be saved" and "who possesses the right of interpretation"; the Church of England solved the conflict between national sovereignty and religious order; the Anabaptists challenged the premise of the state and church jointly ruling society; and Unitarianism touched the limits of what Christian theology could tolerate. It was precisely these breakthroughs, failures, and diversifications in different directions that collectively constituted the untidy, yet historically tense formation process of Protestantism.