The Protestant Reformation can clearly be called one of the most significant movements in the intellectual, political, and religious history of Europe.
It was a schism in Western Christianity after which Christian Church was divided into two groups, one following the conventional authority of the Catholic Church and the other making its independent way.
The latter group of people was known as protestant and was inspired by the works of early Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
The definition of the Protestant Reformation would be a disagreement of theological beliefs that emerged between the Catholic Church and Martin Luther in the sixteenth century.
The result was a split in Western Christianity along religious, political, and intellectual grounds having far-reaching consequences for the future of Europe and beyond.
There were earlier reformations and schisms in the Christian Church before the Protestant Reformation but none of them was as potent and important as the Protestant Reformation.
The history began in 1517 because of the dissatisfaction of the Catholic population with the indulgent and luxurious lifestyle and corruption of the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther became the voice of this dissatisfaction. Subsequently he wrote various important works on the Reformation.
The timeline of the Protestant Reformation began with the protests in Germany against the corruption of the Church after 1517 and culminated on 31 October 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his famous Ninty-Five Thesis.
Between 1517 and 1521, he wrote various other works about Reformation.
Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, his works were widely read and his popularity grew rapidly.
The most important reason of the Protestant Reformation was that the ordinary Catholic people were not satisfied with the attitude of the Church.
The Church had amassed huge amounts of wealth while preaching piety and simplicity to everyone.
Thus Martin Luther criticises the nepotism, usury, simony, and other indulgences of the Church in his thesis. He sent the copies of this thesis to archbishop Albert of Mainz and others.
The outcome of the Protestant Reformation was a massive movement that soon engulfed all of Europe and split it between two factions. These two factions would be at war with each other over the subsequent centuries.
On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation broke the iron grip of Church on Europe and made the flow of enlightened ideas easier. Martin Luther himself stressed on the impotence of ancient sources of reason and personal judgement.
These ideas thus became the cornerstone of Enlightenment.
Protestant Reformation was the movement of political, intellectual, and religious significance that divided Western Christianity into two branches of Catholics and Protestants.
The Protestant Reformation emerged as a result of the dissatisfaction of the people with the Catholic Church. Martin Luther
was a figure of central importance in the Protestant Reformation and it was he who gave voice to this mass dissatisfaction through his famous thesis. The recent invention of the printing press made his ideas vastly popular in a very short time.