Timeline of Christianity - 17th Century

17th Century

• 1604 Fausto Paolo Sozzini Socinianism
• 1606 Carlo Maderno redesigns St Peter's Basilica into a Latin cross
• 1607 Jamestown, Virginia founded
• 1608 Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain
• 1609 Baptist Church founded by John Smyth, due to objections to infant baptism and demands for church-state separation
• 1609-1610 Douay-Rheims Bible, 1st Catholic English translation, OT published in two volumes, based on an unofficial Louvain text corrected by Sistine Vulgate, NT is Rheims text of 1582
• 1611-1800 King James Version (Authorised Version) is released, based primarily on Wycliffe's work & Bishop's Bible of 1572, translators are accused of being "damnable corrupters of God's word", original included Apocrypha
• 1614 Fama Fraternitatis, the first Rosicrucian manifesto (may have been in circulation ca. 1610) presenting the "The Fraternity of the Rose Cross"
• 1615 Confessio Fraternitatis, the second Rosicrucian manifesto describing the "Most Honorable Order" as Christian ("What think you, loving people, and how seem you affected, seeing that you now understand and know, that we acknowledge ourselves truly and sincerely to profess Christ, condemn the Pope, addict ourselves to the true Philosophy, lead a Christian life (...)".)
• 1616 Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, the third Rosicrucian manifesto (an hermetic allegory presenting alchemical and Christian elements)
• 1618-1648 Thirty Years' War
• 1620 Plymouth Colony founded
• 1621 Robert Bellarmine
• 1622-1642 Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu
• 1630 City upon a Hill, sermon by John Winthrop
• 1634-37 Confessio catholica by Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard
• 1636 Founding of what was later known as Harvard University as a training school for ministers - the first of thousands of institutions of Christian higher education founded in the USA
• 1636-1638 Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, founder of Jansenism
• 1637-1638 Shimabara Rebellion
• 1638 Anne Hutchinson banished as a heretic from Massachusetts
• 1641 John Cotton, advocate of theonomy, helps to establish the social constitution of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• 1643 Acta Sanctorum
• 1643 John Campanius arrives in New Sweden
• 1644 Long Parliament directed that only Hebrew canon be read in the Church of England (effectively removed the Apocrypha)
• 1646 Westminster Standards produced by the Assembly, one of the first and undoubtedly the most important and lasting religious document drafted after the reconvention of the Parliament, also decreed Biblical canon
• 1648 George Fox founds the Quaker movement
• 1650 James Ussher, calculates date of creation as October 23, 4004 BC
• 1653-56 Raskol of the Russian Orthodox Church
• 1655-1677, Abraham Calovius publishes Systema Iocorum theologicorum, height of Lutheran scholasticism
• 1660-1685 King Charles II of England, restoration of monarchy, continuing through James II, reversed decision of Long Parliament of 1644, reinstating the Apocrypha, reversal not heeded by non-conformists
• 1666 Paul Gerhardt, Lutheran pastor and hymnwriter is removed from his position as a pastor in Nikolaikirche in Berlin, when he refuses to accept "syncretistic" edict of the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I of Brandenburg
• 1672 Greek Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem, decreed Biblical canon
• 1675 Philipp Jakob Spener publishes Pia Desideria, which becomes a manifesto for Pietism
• 1678 John Bunyan publishes Pilgrim's Progress
• 1682 Avvakum, leader of the Old Believers, burned at the stake in the Far North of Russia
• 1684 Roger Williams (theologian), advocate of Separation of church and state, founder of Providence, Rhode Island
• 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau outlaws Protestantism in France
• 1685 Orthodoxy introduced to Beijing by Russian Orthodox Church
• 1692 Salem witch trials in Colonial America
• 1692-1721 Chinese Rites controversy
• 1693 Jacob Amman founder of Amish