19 April 1529 A.D. Diet of Speyer, Germany Convened. Reformers called “Protestants” for the first time.
The story is told at: http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/protestants-1st-called-protestants-11629946.html
When someone
asks what religion you are, what do you answer? There are a lot of different
labels to describe the varieties of Christian followers, and the word
"Protestant" is one. It was on this day, April 19,
1529, that the designation "Protestant" might be said to have
come into existence.
Martin Luther
had been declared a heretic by both the pope and the emperor, but his followers
continued to multiply rapidly. Emperor Charles V could not suppress the
reformers as he wished, because the Turks were threatening his empire from the
east, and the pope and he were quarreling with each other. In 1521, at Worms,
Germany, Charles signed a document which outlawed Luther. Five years later at
another imperial council, Charles agreed to postpone any settlement of
religious issues. He agreed that until an official policy could be established,
every State within his territories would be governed as the ruler thought most
pleasing to God. In practice, this meant that throughout Germany's many
independent cities, principalities and electorates, the religion of each prince
or local ruler became the religion of his subjects.
In 1529 a
Diet (Congress) met at Speyer, Germany to consider action against the Turks and
attempt again to come to terms with the Reformation. The Diet forbade any
extension of the Reformation until a German council could meet the following
year. Charles V declared he would wipe out the Lutheran "heresy."
Five reforming princes and fourteen cities drafted a protest, a formal legal
appeal, for themselves, their subjects and all who then or in the future should
believe in the Word of God. (It was not formally published until July.)
Eight years
before, Martin Luther was a lone monk standing for the Word of God and liberty
of conscience at the Diet of Worms. But by 1529, the world had changed: there
was an organized party of government leaders with consciences bound by the Word
of God against tyrannical authority. Not every protester was a Lutheran. The
whole party of the reformers needed a name. From the protest and appeal at the
Diet of Speyer, these breakaways from the Roman Church began to be called Protestants.
Today
Protestants are one of three major branches of Christianity. While all three hold the same fundamental creed, other differences are
many. Perhaps the key difference is that while the Eastern Orthodox and Roman
traditions combine the Scripture with the authority of church tradition or of a
pope, Protestants claim to find the sole authority for their faith in the
Bible, the Word of God. Many can also be identified because they accept the
priesthood of all believers and the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Bibliography:
2. Bezold, Friedrich von. Geschichte der Deutschen Reformation.
Berlin: Derlagsbuchhandlung, 1890. Source of the image.
3. "Protestantism" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited
by F. L Cross and E. A. Livingstone.
4. Schaff, Phillip. The History of the Christian Church, Volume VII.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1910.
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