Although Charles V had banned Luther’s writings throughout
the Holy Roman Empire, Lutheranism was still gaining followers, and German
princes were not enforcing the bans. At the Diet of Speyer in 1526, the princes
officially professed their Lutheran faith. With Turkish invasion threatening,
the empire could not risk alienating the heretical princes. It was decided that
the matter of religion would be settled at a later time, and that in the
interim, the princes should “rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to
answer before God and his imperial Majesty.” While Charles V had no intention
of granting religious freedom to Lutherans, (Charles V did not attend the diet,
nor did he sign or oppose the edict from it), the princes took this vague
instruction to “follow their conscience” and continue their Lutheran reforms,
now with a claim of political credibility.
In 1529, there was another Diet of Speyer, again to deal
with the issues of Turkish invasion and rising religious rebellion. The
Catholic representatives sought to clarify that the princes could not choose
what religious reforms took place. Ferdinand (later Ferdinand I), representing
Charles V, condemned the princes’ interpretation and reiterated that the Holy Roman
Empire was Catholic. This diet forbade any reforms on the threat of imperial
ban and upheld the Edict of Worms. It also clarified that fringe reform
movements, like Zwinglianism and Anabaptism, could be punished by death.
The Lutheran representatives, seeing their movement
delegitimized, entered a legal protest on April 25, 1529. Six princes and 14
representatives of Imperial Free Cities protested the measures of the Diet of
Speyer which they saw as contrary to their beliefs and to the decisions made at
the first Diet of Speyer. They asked for a judgment overturning the majority
decision of the diet. From this protest came the word “Protestant.”
Protestantism
now commonly refers to all Western Christian branches that are not Catholic or
Orthodox. The branches of Protestantism are so varied, it seemed pointless at
times to put them under a single term. Yet they all still branch from splitting
from the Catholic Church. They may not formally protest the Diet of Speyer, but
they are still sects that arose from protest.
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