Reformation
In the narrower and probably most common sense, "Reformation" is the name given to the spiritual crisis of the sixteenth century that resulted in the permanent division of the Western church. The birthdate of the Reformation is traditionally given as 1517, the year in which Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg; the termination of the period may be assigned to the 1550s, by which time an ecclesiastical stalemate between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics appeared unavoidable. Sometimes the Reformation is extended backward to include such early reform movements as Lollardy or forward to include the religious conflicts, lasting into the seventeenth century, that sought to resolve the Catholic-Protestant stalemate forcibly or to readjust the divisions between the various Protestant groups. Reformation describes the aspirations of the age rather than its achievements. The Protestants did not succeed in reforming the church but only in splitting it into rival groups, each of which claimed for itself the fulfillment of the old dream of reformation in head and members.
The Age of Reformation
The Protestant movement was not the only attempt to bring the dream into reality. It can, indeed, be correctly interpreted only in relation to other reform movements even if we determine not to include these under the same general descriptive label.
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