19 Apr 1529 AD: Diet (Congress) of Speyer, Germany. Reformers Called "Protestants" for 1st Time

19 April 1529 A.D.  Diet of Speyer, Germany Convened.  Reformers called “Protestants” for the first time.

The story is told at: http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/protestants-1st-called-protestants-11629946.html

When someone asks what religion you are, what do you answer? There are a lot of different labels to describe the varieties of Christian followers, and the word "Protestant" is one. It was on this day, April 19, 1529, that the designation "Protestant" might be said to have come into existence.

Martin Luther had been declared a heretic by both the pope and the emperor, but his followers continued to multiply rapidly. Emperor Charles V could not suppress the reformers as he wished, because the Turks were threatening his empire from the east, and the pope and he were quarreling with each other. In 1521, at Worms, Germany, Charles signed a document which outlawed Luther. Five years later at another imperial council, Charles agreed to postpone any settlement of religious issues. He agreed that until an official policy could be established, every State within his territories would be governed as the ruler thought most pleasing to God. In practice, this meant that throughout Germany's many independent cities, principalities and electorates, the religion of each prince or local ruler became the religion of his subjects.

In 1529 a Diet (Congress) met at Speyer, Germany to consider action against the Turks and attempt again to come to terms with the Reformation. The Diet forbade any extension of the Reformation until a German council could meet the following year. Charles V declared he would wipe out the Lutheran "heresy." Five reforming princes and fourteen cities drafted a protest, a formal legal appeal, for themselves, their subjects and all who then or in the future should believe in the Word of God. (It was not formally published until July.)

Eight years before, Martin Luther was a lone monk standing for the Word of God and liberty of conscience at the Diet of Worms. But by 1529, the world had changed: there was an organized party of government leaders with consciences bound by the Word of God against tyrannical authority. Not every protester was a Lutheran. The whole party of the reformers needed a name. From the protest and appeal at the Diet of Speyer, these breakaways from the Roman Church began to be called Protestants.

Today Protestants are one of three major branches of Christianity. While all three hold the same fundamental creed, other differences are many. Perhaps the key difference is that while the Eastern Orthodox and Roman traditions combine the Scripture with the authority of church tradition or of a pope, Protestants claim to find the sole authority for their faith in the Bible, the Word of God. Many can also be identified because they accept the priesthood of all believers and the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Bibliography:

1.      Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.

2.      Bezold, Friedrich von. Geschichte der Deutschen Reformation. Berlin: Derlagsbuchhandlung, 1890. Source of the image.

3.      "Protestantism" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L Cross and E. A. Livingstone.

4.      Schaff, Phillip. The History of the Christian Church, Volume VII. Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1910.

"Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" Between 2 English Reformers: Tyndale and Joye

William Tyndale and George Joye
"The Gunfight at the O.K Corral"

Bray, Gerald, ed. Documents of the English Reformation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.

A 2005 edition is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Documents-English-Reformation-Revd-Gerald/dp/0227172396/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374785087&sr=1-1&keywords=gerald+bray+english+reformation

We get a "shoot-out" between two Bible translators and early English Reformers: Mr. (Rev.) William Tyndale and Mr. (Rev.) George Joye.

The latter, Mr. Joye, is getting increased visibility in the inquiries.

Here's the "shoot-out" at the "Not-So-OK-Corrale."

Mr. William Tyndale has a conflict with Mr. George Joye. We’ll cover Mr. Tyndale’s remarks in his further notes “To a Christian Reader” (28). Below, we'll attach a Wiki-bio on Mr. Joye, an early English Reformer of the 1520s and early 1530s.

Mr. Tyndale notes of his translation: “...I had taken in hand…compared to the Greek,” but that Mr. Joye “took in hand to correct” Mr. Tydnale’s work without consultation. Off hand, it looks like a peeing contest, but we'll hold a conclusion in suspension.

This was not, according to Mr. Tyndale, “the office of an honest man.” He was publishing his own version of Tyndale “without his name,” that is, Tyndale’s or Joye’s. According to Tyndale, Mr. Joye was playing “boo peep” (28) along with mistranslations that Tyndale did not approve.

Mr. Tyndale objected to Mr. Joye’s translation of the word “resurrection” uniformly throughout the Gospels and Acts.

Ανάστασις, or “resurrection,” was being “translated and published” by Mr. Joye as “the life after this life.” We'll enlarge momentarily.

Mr. Joye had been circulating “these things for a while” (29). He had been sending “secret letters on that side of the sea” that “caused great division among the brethren” (29).

The upshot was that Mr. Joye was, apparently, playing an ancient Docetic card (our word for it, not Tyndale’s or Bray’s), denying the "bodily resurrection of Christ" or the "future resurrection of believers and unbelievers."

Mr. John Frith, an early English Reformer, while in the Tower of London, wrote, according to Tyndale, a “letter before his death that we should warn him and desire him to cease.” Apparently, Mr. Joye was getting a following with his denials.

Mr. Tyndale offers this "textus classicus." For example, John 5.28-29:

28 Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

For those who read Greek, we append the following (as an aside, a recent conversation with a TEC cleric of one of their serious seminaries embarrassingly noted that he'd never studied Hebrew, Greek or Latin, but to preserve peace, I held mine and now returning to the point):

28μὴ θαυμάζετε τοῦτο, ὅτι ἔρχεται ὥρα ἐν ἧ πάντες οἱ ἐν τοῖς μνημείοις ἀκούσουσιν τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ 29καὶ ἐκπορεύσονται, οἱ τὰ ἀγαθὰ ποιήσαντες εἰς ἀνάστασιν ζωῆς, οἱ δὲ τὰ φαῦλα πράξαντες εἰς ἀνάστασιν κρίσεως.

Mr. Tyndale states that Mr. Joye is “thrusting clean out this word `resurrection’” (29). He “mocks out the text” (29). Mr. Joye has translated it "life after this life," implying a spiritual departure but no bodily resurrection.

Mr. Tyndale then asserts his public view of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection to come. It's a vintage and classical statement.

"Wherefore, concerning the resurrection, I protest before God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, and before the universal congregation that believeth in Him, that I believe according to the open and manifest Scriptures and Catholic faith, that Christ is risen again in the flesh which he received of his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and body wherein He died. And we all shall, both good and bad, rise both flesh and body, and appear together before the judgment seat of Christ, to receive every man according to his deeds. And that the bodies of all that believe and continue in the true faith of Christ shall be endued with like immortality and glory as the body of Christ” (29).

That is a good statement by Mr. Tyndale. This is what he alleges Mr. Joye is denying.

Mr. Tyndale importunes 1000s (his word) to examine his [Tyndale's] translation. He has not, he avers, sought “to draw disciples after me” nor sought to “author a sect” (30). Remember, both of these men are fugitives from England for the faith.

Rather, Tyndale states that he has desired “to weed out all that is not planted of the Heavenly Father and to bring down all that lifteth itself up against the knowledge of the salvation that is in the blood of Jesus Christ” (30).

Mr. Tyndale writes “openly,” puts his name to his work and opinions [unlike Mr. Joye], and asks for all to examine his translation. If he has errors, “I will confess my ignorance openly” (31).

While we will look at Mr. George Joye later, we append a Wiki-bio on him.

Apparently, Mr. Joye--after the brouhaha--apologized for the misunderstanding.

William's Clebsch's "Prologue" to "England's Earliest Protestants"

Clebsch, William. England’s Earliest Protestants: 1520-1535.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964.

It is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Englands-earliest-Protestants-1520-1535-publications/dp/B0007DK7XA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377565405&sr=8-1&keywords=william+clebsch+england%27s+earliest+protestants

1-10, the Prologue. We bring you a few notes and our interpolated musings.

Revolutions come in history. Augustine of Canterbury in the 7th century brought Roman ecclesiastical governance to the (presumably benighted) Celtic Christians. William the Conqueror ordered up the Norman invasion in the 11th century. The 16th century English Reformation was no minor matter either. It came. (We might now add that it is now gone for England and American Anglicans. Bye, bye.)

Mr. Clebsch tells us that the Reformation proceeds quickly in Switzerland and German but came “rather gently with the English” (1). We would add that Princely support was more available than what Mr. (Henry VIII) Tudor offered.

If 1500 is assumed as the starting point, 8 decades later four things were established:

• Vernacular Bible and worship services throughout the nation
• Monasteries dissolved and disempowered
• Doctrinal revision
• Secure establishment of authority in the Crown and Church
(under the Crown)

A lot of water under that bridge.

1535 marks “the transition point to an era in which royal headship functioned as the mechanism for making changes in the church” (10). If we accept, as we ought, Mr. Jaspar Ridley's point about Mr. Cranmer, Cranmer was unwilling to push Reform if there was no Royal support. Or, put another way, he was not a Luther really.

We would add that a national reformation was a larger challenge than the one Mr. Calvin had at Geneva, a city. Further, Mr. Calvin did not have to deal with Mr. (Henry VIII) Tudor. There were 10,000 churches in England. Mr. Calvin had St. Peter's in Geneva.

1520-1535 is the period of “ideas and deeds” that brought matters to the fore “during this difficult time”—a banned Bible and, in time, a “Gospel rediscovered by Luther” that would rally “Englishmen to martyrdom” (10). Where's Mr. Cranmer. He's at Cambridge and won't appear in biographies until the happenstance (tongue in cheek) meeting at Waltham Abbey in 1529.

We would add: Mr. Cranmer was aged 31 to 46 in this period…still young for theologians. Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) Roger Nicole, two earned doctorates, wisely observed that theologians should write little if anything until the age 50. Never mind the Americans. They routinely dismiss the sage, Dr. Nicole. But, we wish to keep our eyes on Mr. Cranmer in 1520-1535, a formative period.

Mr. Clebsch tells us, humorously in one sense but soberingly in another, that apart from the vernacular New Testament, there “was no theological classic in English” (2). We ask, “not a single one?” Slam dunk on the Brits by Mr. Clebsch.

Even in this challenging period of 1520-1535, men went to the Continent. They were exiles, handicapped by hiding and the heretic hunters like Mr. More. These men wanted to “burn the dross out of the Catholic Church of England” (3). Mr. Tudor, of course, was always “defending whatever faith he authorized in order to strengthen the royal power he exercised.” This might be a bit much, that is, Henry was still a good Romanist or Papist—he just tossed the Pope out of England. In this period, England became the 2.0 Anglican version--Non-Papal Roman Anglicanism, like our Tractarian friends.

As for 1520, Mr. Clebish tells us that the “available evidence” reveals that the early reformers “perceived no great differences between renaissance advocacy of church reform and the new Wittenberg theology” (4). That's quite a claim. We shall see.

These Cambridge dons and a “secret group” at Oxford were discussing Wittenberg’s monastic Reformer. He notes that Luther's "exegetical works" were discussed. What about the 95 Theses?

These Oxbridgensian dons were spreading “an awareness” through the universities.

Another force. “Late Lollardy persuaded the early English Protestants” (4).

Did this awareness/these awarenesses include knowledge of the Imperial ban of 1520 or the Pope’s excommunication of Luther?

In addition to the famous Lollard center at Norwich, other early English Protestants came from “monasteries.” Some were:

• The Prior of the Augustianian Observants at Cambridge who publicly “voiced Protestant principles in Cambridge”
• The Franciscans at Greenwich
• The Prior at Reading
• The monks at Bury St. Edmunds

Other agents of "Early English Protestantism" included some in the professional classes, e.g. lawyers, as well as merchants with their “brisk trade with Hanseatic and other European ports in London…”(5). Although Mr. Clebsch does not say so, in time, Luther’s and Tyndale’s materials would be smuggled into these ports. By 1525, the Bishop of London will hold a public event in front of St. Paul's...to burn Mr. Luther's volumes that entered through English ports. In time, the Papal Roman Anglicans (1.0ers) will burn more than books.

Robert Barnes and George Joy were early Cambridge voices for reform. Where was Cranmer?

Robert Barners “openly demanded church reform at Cambridge” (7). He was demanding “authorization of vernacular Scriptures” (7). However, Barnes would soon fall athwart Henry’s “reactionary policies guided by Stephen Gardiner” (7). Where was Cranmer?

George Joye was captured at Cambridge and “docketed for trial” along with Thomas Bilney (8). Where was Cranmer? Or, was he ignorant of these matters? We infer, gratuitously, a negative.

John Frith was an early Oxford voice. Again, where was Cranmer?

William Tyndale was working on the Continent. Tyndale appears to have been a voice in both schools—"Oxbridge" we call it. What was Cranmer’s doing or saying?

By 1525-1526, the vernacular Bible was opposed, a “posture taken by England’s officialdom.” They were also “rejecting Luther’s teaching” (8). As an aside, a review of Mr. (Bp) John Fisher is ordered up as a counterpoint to this period.

Simon Fish, a London lawyer, was an early voice for reforms. His racy "Supplication for Beggars" got an audience with Mr. Tudor.

William Roy and Jerome Barlowe “versified” Protestant principles also.

By 1530, discussions included the “Real Presence of Christ” in the Holy Communion as well as justification by faith alone and by Christ alone. Where was Mr. Cranmer?

By 1535, the “entire English Bible was circulating openly if still illegally” (9). Also, by 1535, the “unalterably secure element of church reformation was the principle of royal headship.”

We repeat the point earlier: If 1500 is assumed as the starting point, 8 decades later four things were established:

• Vernacular Bible and worship services throughout the nation
• Monasteries dissolved and disempowered
• Doctrinal revision
• Secure establishment of authority in the Crown and Church
(under the Crown)

A lot of water passes under the 8-decades old bridge. And we got an English Bible, English worship services, some doctrinal changes, and an Erastian Church.

Whatever we make of Mr. (Canterbury) Cranmer, he died on March 21, 1556.

The cause? The English Reformation, version 3.0, the Edwardian version.  But, never mind, toss the Bible and turn the volume up for the Praise Band.

Mr. (Dr. Prof.) William A. Clebsch's "England's Earliest Protestants: 1520-1535"

       Clebsch, William. England’s Earliest Protestants: 1520-1535.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964. It is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Englands-earliest-Protestants-1520-1535-publications/dp/B0007DK7XA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377565405&sr=8-1&keywords=william+clebsch+england%27s+earliest+protestants

An obituary from New York Times on Mr. (Dr. Prof.) William A. Clebsch, Professor of Church History at Stanford University, amongst other duties.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/15/obituaries/prof-william-a-clebsch-60-leader-in-religious-studies.html

A post from the History Society at Stanford University on Mr. Clebsch.

http://histsoc.stanford.edu/pdfST/ST19no3.pdf \

A list of publications by Mr. Clebsch.

http://www.amazon.com/William-A.-Clebsch/e/B001HP9S2S

Outline:

Preface

Abbreviations

1.  Prologue

2.  England’s Initial Repudiation of Luther, 11-23

A.  John Fisher versus Luther

B.  Henry VIII’s Assertion

3.  New Aggressions and Defenses, 24-41

A.  Fisher’s Second Sermon

B.  More’s Latin Libelli

C.  The Royal Correspondence

4.  The Career of Robert Barnes, 42-57

A.  Sermon and Trial

B.  Barnes and Exile

C.  Barnes’ Later Career

5.  Barnes’ Theology, 58-77

A.  Bishops and the King

B.  Works and Faith

C.  Sacraments and the Church

D. Scissors and Paste

6.  John Frith in Exile, 78-98

A.  Patrick’s “Places”

B.  Luther’s “Antichrist”

C.  The Abolition of Purgatory

D. Tyndale’s “Answer”

7.  Frith’s Theology, 99-116

A.  The End of Exile

B.  Trial

C.  Later Writings

D. Theocentric Theology

8.  Frith’s Sacramental Thought, 117-136

A.  Baptism

B.  Lord’s Supper

C.  Influence

D. Frith’s Originality

9.  Tydale as Luther’s Protégé (1524-1529), 137-153

A.  The Translator

B.  The New Testament

C.  Protestant Polemics

10.    Tyndale’s Rediscovery of the Law (1530-1532), 154-180

A.  The Pentateuch

B.  Politics and Prelates

C.  Law in the Old Testament

D. Source of Tyndale’s Legalism

E.  The Silent Years

11.  Tyndale’s Theology of Contract, 181-204

A.  Law and Contract

B.  New Testament and Contract

C.  Tyndale’s Originality

12.    The Practical Piety of George Joye, 205-228

A.  Primers and Translations

B.  Theology

C.  Joye and Tyndale

13.    Protestant Translators and Propagandists, 229-251

A.  William Joye and Jerome Barlowe

B.  Roy as Translator

C.  Roy as Editor

D. Simon Fish, Propagandist

E.  Fish’s Translation of “Sum of Scripture”

14.    Progress at Home: Books and Men, 252-276

A.  Translators and Printers

B.  Humanistic Advocates of Reform

C.  The Battle Against Books

D. Emergence of English Reformers

15.    Thomas More, Defensor Fidei

A.  Hunter of Heretics

B.  Chancellor

C.  Polemicist

D. Religious Thought

E.  Retreat from Humanism

16.    Epilogue

A.  The English Bible

B.  Strategic Success

C.  Sources

D. Impact

Bibliography

Index