Protestant Reformation
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The Reformation began when Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor of scripture at Wittenberg, published ninety-five theses against the sale of indulgences in 1517, and it ended by dividing western Christianity. Luther denied that the pope had authority over purgatory, argued that salvation came by faith alone, and when his writings were burned he appealed to the councils of the church at Worms in 1521, where he refused to recant. Protected by Frederick the Wise, he translated the New Testament into German and preached a doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The movement spread with the printing press: Zwingli began in Zurich in 1519, and in England Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1534 produced a national church for political reasons of his own. The Peasants' War of 1524 to 1525, which Luther denounced, was crushed, and the Schmalkaldic league of Protestant princes faced the emperor until the peace of Augsburg in 1555 allowed each ruler to choose his territory's religion. The Catholic church answered with the council of Trent and new orders. The thirty years war, begun as a quarrel in Bohemia, became the last great religious war and was ended by the peace of Westphalia in 1648.