Lord’s Day, Vol. 13 No. 22

Reformation Study Tour 2025

Martin Luther (1483-1546) – Monk ~ Preacher ~ Reformer

The Reformed Faith in Germany

Although Lutheranism was the prevailing form of Protestantism in Germany, the second half of the 16^th century saw the growth of the Reformed faith in the land of Luther. The great French city of Strasbourg, of course, had been more Reformed than Lutheran since the 1520s. However, it had swung over into the Lutheran camp after Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s victory over the Schmalkaldic League in 1547, which had resulted in the exile of Strasbourg’s Reformed leaders, Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, who fled to England.

The new heartland of the Reformed faith in Germany was an important south-western state called the Rhenish Palatinate whose prince was one of the seven electors of Germany (responsible for electing the Emperor). Its territory included the great university of Heidelberg. Initially the Palatinate had tolerated both Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism, but this led to increasing quarrels between the two parties, especially when the local Lutheran leader, Tilemann Hesshus, an uncompromising foe of all things Reformed, established forms of ritual for Lutheran worship which seemed indistinguishable from Roman Catholic superstition to the Reformed. Things came to a head in 1559 with the accession of a new prince, Frederick III (1559-76). Frederick, one of the most sincere and godly Protestant rulers of the 16^th century, made an intense study of the issues dividing Lutherans from Reformed, and was inclined to the Reformed side of the argument. To settle the matter he held a five-day disputation in June 1560, which finally convinced Frederick that the Reformed were in the right. So began the new Reformed history of the Palatinate.

Frederick invited Peter Martyr to become Heidelberg’s professor of theology, but Martyr declined on grounds of old age, recommending instead one of his German students, Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83). Ursinus, a disciple of Melanchthon as well as Martyr, took up the position in 1561. His closest colleague was Caspar Olevianun (1536-97), pastor of Saint Peter’s Church in Heidelberg. Ursinus and Olevianus achieved a kind of immortality in the Reformed Churches as the joint authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, first published in 1563. Marked by a moderate but lucid expression of Reformed theology and a warm evangelical spirit, the Heidelberg Catechism became arguably the most important of all Reformed confessions, gaining acceptance across the entire Reformed world, especially in Germany and the Dutch Republic. Meanwhile, Ursinus, Olevianus and other Reformed theologians, helped Prince Frederick to organise the Reformed Church in the Palatinate as a Presbyterian body, with the Church (not the state) having control of its own internal discipline.

This grand experiment of a German Reformed Church came to a temporary halt in 1576 with Frederick’s death. His son Louis VI, who was a staunch Lutheran, succeeded him and expelled no fewer than 600 Reformed theologians and pastors from the Palatinate, reconverting it unto a Lutheran state. Louis, however, died in 1583, and since his son was only nine years old, Louis’s brother John Casimir ruled in his name, and John was Reformed. He expelled the Lutherans and made the Palatinate a Reformed land once more. The effect of John Casimir’s action was enduring, in that from then onwards there would always be a German Reformed Church in Palatinate, despite the varying religious policies and loyalties of its princes.

Perhaps inspired by what Frederick had done in the Palatinate, in the closing decades of the 16^th century and on into the 17^th other German territories embraced the Reformed faith, either totally or by extending toleration to Reformed believers – Nassau, Bremen, Wesel, Julich, Cleves, Berg, Anhair, Hesse, and Brandenburg, among others. Protestant Germany would henceforth have a strong Reformed presence alongside its original Lutheranism. The fact that the Reformed faith was not recognised by the Peace of Augsburg did not check its spread, but did stoke up political problems which in 1618 would finally explode that peace. [2000 Years of Christ Power Volume 3, Renaissance and Reformation]

The life of the Czech priest and ecclesiastical reformer Jan Hus culminated on July 16^th, 1415 at Constance on the Bodensee where he was condemned by the Counsel, which began in Papal Curia, for heresy and executed. Sometime at the turn of 1390s, Hus joined Prague’s academic community. The medieval university of Prague was a church institution that concentrated primarily on theology and ecclesiastical law. Two years after graduating with a master’s degree, Hus became a ‘regular professor’ (a master regent) of the Faculty of Arts. Primacy had been firmly established by the supporters of reform and the followers of the teachings of John Wycliffe, chief among them Jan Hus. The publication of the Decree of Kutna Hora was the biggest political event Hus was involved in, and as used against him in Constance. Around 1400 Jan Hus experienced a period of success and professional development. Not only was he working successfully as a teacher at the Arts Faculty of Prague University, but he was also ordained as a priest and began to serve as a preacher. His sermonising took various forms – his addresses were directed in Latin at the learned university public and members of the clergy and above all, at the laity in their native tongue, first in Prague and later in the countryside. In 1402, he was installed as the preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel. This had been founded in the Prague Old Town in 1391 to offer Czech-speaking Praguers the chance to hear Czech sermons. While Hu’s predecessors were not marked by their conspicuous activity, his arrival brought a change. Hu’s took on the role enthusiastically as a calling, mostly preaching every day, even though this was not his duty, his sermonising making was heard through Prague, the Royal Court and indeed all of Bohemia. By 1412, when he was forced by papal bull to leave the Bethlehem Chapel and even flee Prague, he had given three and half thousand sermons, which he conceived in Latin but delivered in improvised translations in comprehensible Czech to his audience of both educated and illiterate listeners.

In 1412, a hundred years before Luther, he criticized the use of indulgences by the period Church and he was expelled from Prague. In the country he fully showed his inspiration by Wycliffe and by his essay “On the Church” he signed his death sentence. He could not refuse the invitation of the German King Sigismund to the Constance Council (1414-1418); after half a year he spent in prison there he was burned at stake as a convicted heretic on 6^th July 1415. [Swan, Goose and the Church, Jan His – The House of Jan Hus in Constance]

Hus wrote from prison that he would be baked like a goose, however, a swan would rise up. A hundred years later came the reformation in Germany through Luther. The Lutheran church has the swan for its symbol. The Lutheran church built near the site where Hus was burned at the stake fulfilled the prayer of Hus that his sacrifice will not be in vain for God because the fire of the Reformation that he lit will burn through Luther. The symbols of the goose and the swan were also used by Johann Bugenhagen in his speech at Luther’s funeral. Amen.

Yours lovingly,

Pastor Lek Aik Wee