Protestant Reformers were those theologians, churchmen, and statesmen whose careers, works, and actions brought about the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Historically speaking, "Protestant" was the name given to those theologians, magnates, and delegations present at the Holy Roman Imperial Diet of Speyer in 1529 who protested the revocation of the suspension, granted at a prior Diet of Speyer in 1526, of Edict of Worms of 1521, which had outlawed Martin Luther and his followers.
The meaning of the label "Protestant" widened over time to embrace all Western Christians as distinguished from the Roman Catholic Church, except for the Anabaptists and other Radical Reformers. This reflected the widening spread of the Protestant Reformation over Europe into diversifying movements like Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, and Arminianism. Today, all Western Christian denominations other than the Roman Catholic Church are loosely known as Protestant churches.
Read more about Protestant Reformers: Precursors, Radical Reformers, Counter-reformers, Second Front Reformers
Famous quotes containing the words protestant and/or reformers:
“blow as he would, though it made a great noise,
The flute would play only ‘The Protestant Boys’.”
—Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 23–24)
“It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that I know.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)