Proto-Protestantism in the context of "Protestant Reformation"

The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.

The Reformation is usually dated from Martin Luther's publication of the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, which gave birth to Lutheranism. Prior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars.

Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia (/ˈpiːkoʊ ˌdɛlə mɪˈrændələ, -ˈrɑːn-/ PEE-koh DEL-ə mirr-A(H)N-də-lə; Italian: [dʒoˈvanni ˈpiːko della miˈrandola]; Latin: Johannes Picus de Mirandula; 24 February 1463 – 17 November 1494), known as Pico della Mirandola, was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the "Hermetic Reformation". He was the founder of the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key tenet of early modern Western esotericism. The 900 Theses was the first printed book to be universally banned by the Church. Pico is sometimes seen as a proto-Protestant, because his 900 theses anticipated many Protestant views.

The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences is a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, then a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The Theses are retrospectively considered to have launched the Protestant Reformation and the birth of Protestantism, despite various quasi- or proto-Protestant groups having existed previously.

The Theses are framed as propositions to be argued in an academic debate rather than necessarily representing Luther's opinions. They aired contemporary theological misgivings about the theory and practice of indulgences and their relation to repentance, penance and papal authority: this was triggered by the scandal of certain Catholic clergy, who were supposedly selling plenary indulgences in Germany, which were certificates supposed to reduce the temporal punishment in purgatory for sins committed by the saved purchasers or their loved ones.

The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci, "Chalice People"; Latin: Hussitae) were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement influenced by both the Byzantine Rite and John Wycliffe that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (fl. 1401–1415), a part of the Bohemian Reformation.

The Czech lands had originally been Christianized by Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who introduced the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language and the Byzantine tradition of Communion in both kinds administered by the holy spoon. Over the centuries that followed, however, the Roman Rite in Ecclesiastical Latin, which is less easily understood than Slavonic by native speakers of Old Czech, was imposed upon the Czech people despite considerable public resistance, by German-speaking bishops, beginning with Wiching, from the Holy Roman Empire. (See also Sázava Monastery). As a cultural memory of both communion in both kinds and the Divine Liturgy in a language closer to the vernacular is believed to have survived well into the Renaissance, the ideas of Jan Hus and others like him swiftly gained a wide public following. After the trial and execution of Hus at the Council of Constance, a series of crusades, civil wars, victories and compromises between various factions with different theological agendas broke out. At the end of the Hussite Wars (1420–1434), the now Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from protracted conflict against Jan Žižka and the Taborites, who embraced the more radical theological teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards, and became the dominant Hussite group in Bohemia.

John Foxe (1516/1517 – 18 April 1587) was an English clergyman, theologian, and historian, notable for his martyrology Foxe's Book of Martyrs, telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and "proto-Protestants" from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries.

Lollardy was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that was active in England from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic theologian who was later dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for heresy. The Lollards' demands were primarily for reform of Western Christianity. They formulated their beliefs in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards. Early it became associated with regime change uprisings and assassinations of high government officials, and was suppressed.