History of the Reformation and Reformed Churches — Unit 4: The Reformed Faith Spreads: France, the Netherlands, Hungary and the Palatinate

Key Verse

"Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." (Revelation 2:10, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe the growth, suffering and survival of the Reformed churches of France, called Huguenots, from 1559 to 1685.

2. Explain how the Reformed faith took root in the Netherlands and why Guido de Brès and the Belgic Confession matter.

3. Describe the Reformed church in Hungary and name its confession and its Bible translation.

4. Explain how the Heidelberg Catechism came to be written in the Palatinate, and describe its plan.

5. State the objection that Reformed political resistance contradicted Romans 13, and give the Reformed answer.

The Voice of This Course

This unit is written from inside the Reformed tradition for Reformed students. In these four lands the Reformed faith was not carried by armies. It was carried by preachers, printers, catechisms, exiles and martyrs. We remember the believers who suffered, and we also admit that in some of these lands political and military struggles became mixed with the cause of the gospel. We state the questions historians ask about this, and we give the answer of our tradition.

How a Faith Spreads

By the 1550s the Reformed movement was no longer confined to Zurich and Geneva. It spread in three main ways. First, it spread by books. Calvin's Institutes, the Genevan Bibles and the Psalms in the languages of ordinary people crossed borders. Second, it spread by people. Pastors trained in Geneva and refugees who had been sheltered there returned home. Third, it spread by confessions and church order. Wherever a Reformed church grew strong, it wrote down what it believed and organized itself with elders and synods. Each of the four lands in this unit shows these patterns in a different setting.

France: The Church Under the Cross

The beginnings. In France the Reformation was met by royal persecution from early on. Even so, Reformed congregations grew in the 1550s, many of them led by pastors trained in Geneva. They met in secret, in houses and fields. In May 1559 their delegates met in Paris at the first national synod of the Reformed churches of France. The synod adopted a confession of faith, usually called the Gallic or French Confession, and a book of church order. Calvin had prepared a draft of a confession, and the synod's text drew on that work.

A pattern of government. The French church order was presbyterian. Each congregation was governed by a consistory of pastor and elders. Congregations in a region sent delegates to a colloquy and to provincial synods, and these in turn sent delegates to the national synod. In this way the French Reformed churches showed, before Scotland did, how a church with no protection from the state could govern itself through elders and synods. Course 4 will study this system.

The name. The believers were called Huguenots. The origin of the word is uncertain, and scholars have suggested several explanations, so we do not rely on any one. It was first used by their enemies.

The wars of religion. Many nobles joined the Reformed cause, and France entered a long series of civil wars beginning in 1562. The best known tragedy was the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, which began in Paris on 24 August 1572. Many Reformed leaders had come to the city for a royal wedding, and they were killed. The violence then spread to other cities and many more Huguenots were killed. The news shocked Protestants across Europe. In 1598 King Henry IV, who had himself been raised a Protestant and had become a Catholic, issued the Edict of Nantes. It gave the Huguenots the right to worship in many places and some protection under the law.

The revocation. That protection lasted until 1685, when King Louis XIV revoked the Edict. Reformed worship was forbidden, and many pastors were exiled. Huguenots fled in large numbers to Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, England, North America and South Africa. Some remained in France and held services in the open country, in what they called the "church of the desert." The Reformed faith survived in France because of their faithfulness. The call of the key verse, "Be faithful until death," describes their story.

The Netherlands: A Church Born in Persecution

The beginnings. The Low Countries were then under the rule of the king of Spain, who was a strong defender of the Catholic Church and ruled through governors. Early Protestant movements there met severe punishment. Reformed teaching came strongly from the French-speaking southern provinces, in contact with Geneva and France, and from the Dutch-speaking exiles in nearby Germany and England.

Guido de Brès and the Belgic Confession. Guido de Brès was a pastor in the southern Netherlands who had been trained in Geneva. In 1561 he wrote the confession which we call the Belgic Confession. It states the faith in thirty-seven articles. It was written in French and was meant partly as a defense of the persecuted believers: tradition says that copies were thrown over the wall of a nobleman's castle so that the authorities would know that the Reformed were not rebels. De Brès was arrested and hanged in 1567. The Belgic Confession became one of the three Forms of Unity of the Dutch Reformed churches, together with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort.

Revolt and church order. In 1566 a wave of image-breaking swept through many Netherlandish churches. The Spanish authorities answered with force, and the situation turned into a long revolt against Spanish rule, led by the noble William of Orange. During the revolt Reformed refugees in Emden, Germany, held a synod in 1571 that set the pattern of church order for the Dutch Reformed churches: congregations governed by consistories, with classes (regional meetings) and synods above them. Eight years later, in 1579, the northern provinces joined in the Union of Utrecht. The Reformed Church became the public church of the new Dutch Republic, whose independence Spain recognized in 1648. People of other beliefs were not forced to join it, though public privileges belonged to the Reformed Church.

The next chapter. Within a generation, a dispute within the Dutch church over predestination led to the Synod of Dort. That is the subject of Unit 6.

Hungary: Reformed Faith on the Frontier

Hungary was a divided land in the sixteenth century. After a great Ottoman victory at Mohács in 1526, the kingdom was split. The Ottomans ruled the central part, the Habsburg kings held the west and north, and Transylvania in the east developed its own government. Evangelical ideas had entered Hungary early through students who studied in Germany and returned home. At first the movement was mostly Lutheran, but by the middle of the century many Hungarian preachers had adopted Reformed views on the Lord's Supper and church life. The city of Debrecen became the leading center.

In 1567 a synod meeting at Debrecen adopted the Second Helvetic Confession, written by Bullinger, for the Reformed Church of Hungary. This shows how a confession written in Zurich could serve a church in a land far to the east. The Reformed Church in Hungary also received the Scriptures in the language of the people. In 1590 the Hungarian Bible translated by Gáspár Károli was printed at Vizsoly. It became the best-loved Bible of Hungarian Protestants for centuries.

Hungary also shows that the Reformed Church often lived under foreign or hostile rulers. In 1568 the diet of Transylvania at Torda issued a famous decree allowing preachers to teach the gospel as they understood it, and protecting several confessions, an early example of religious toleration in Europe. In the royal Hungarian lands that were under the Habsburgs, Reformed believers faced pressure and sometimes severe persecution. The Reformed Church in Hungary survived, and it remains one of the largest Protestant churches there today.

The Palatinate: The Heidelberg Catechism

The Palatinate was a German territory ruled by an elector, a prince who had a vote in choosing the emperor. Its capital was Heidelberg, which had a famous university. In 1559 the elector Frederick III came to the throne. At first he followed Lutheran teaching, but through study of the Scriptures and the persuasion of teachers he moved toward the Reformed position on the Lord's Supper and church life. Under his rule the Palatinate became the most important Reformed state in Germany.

The catechism. Frederick wanted a catechism to teach the faith to children and to guide pastors and teachers. He asked the theologians of Heidelberg to prepare one. The Heidelberg Catechism appeared in 1563. Tradition names the young theologian Zacharias Ursinus and the preacher Caspar Olevianus as its authors, working with Frederick and others. Historians still debate exactly how much each man wrote. This does not trouble us, because the catechism was the work of a church and was received by the church.

Its plan. The catechism has 129 questions, divided into fifty-two sections called Lord's Days so that it can be taught through a year. It is arranged around three themes, usually called guilt, grace and gratitude: the misery of our sin, our deliverance in Christ, and the thankful life of obedience that follows. It is the most warm and personal of the Reformed confessions. The first question asks, "What is your only comfort in life and in death?" and the answer is that we belong, body and soul, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. It does not begin with decrees. It begins with comfort.

Its reach. The catechism was translated into many languages. In the Netherlands and in the churches that came from them it became a foundation for preaching and teaching. Many Reformed churches still divide a part of their preaching according to its fifty-two Lord's Days. Frederick defended his church before the Diet of Augsburg in 1566, where the Palatinate's Reformed faith was challenged by other German princes. Later, in the early years of the Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618, the Palatinate was devastated and its Reformed leadership was driven out. But the catechism was already in the hands of the people.

Objections and Our Answers

Objection: The Huguenots and the Dutch rebelled against their rulers, and Romans 13 forbids it.

Paul writes in Romans 13:1-2 that every person should be subject to the governing authorities, since authorities are appointed by God. Some historians and many Christians say that the Reformed wars and revolts contradicted this teaching, and that Reformed resistance harmed the gospel. Peter also commands us to honor the king (1 Peter 2:17).

Our answer. Romans 13 teaches that rulers are God's servants for the good of the people, and that Christians should ordinarily obey. But the same Bible shows that obedience has limits. When the authorities command what God forbids, the apostles answered, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). The early Huguenots mostly suffered without fighting. Later, after the St. Bartholomew massacre, Theodore Beza's book On the Right of Magistrates (1574) argued that lower officials, such as nobles and city magistrates, have a duty to defend the people against a ruler who commits tyranny, and that private persons should not take up arms. This teaching placed resistance in the hands of lawful officers, not individuals. In the Dutch case, William of Orange and the Estates acted as lawful officials. We also admit that not every act of war on the Protestant side was just, and that the church's main weapon is the Word (2 Corinthians 10:4). The key verse reminds us that faithfulness unto death, not military victory, is the church's calling.

Objection: The Reformed cause in these lands was really about politics, not faith.

Some historians argue that nobles in France and merchants in the Netherlands used religion to advance their own power or wealth, and that the wars were mainly political.

Our answer. Politics and religion were joined in the sixteenth century, and some people had mixed motives. Historians are right to say so. But ordinary believers, pastors and martyrs like Guido de Brès died for what they believed, and they refused to deny their faith when they could have saved themselves. The confessions they wrote are statements of faith, not political programs. They were also persecuted for the faith. It would be a mistake to say that conviction played no part.

Pastoral Application

A pastor serves a small Presbyterian congregation in a town where evangelicals are a minority and often face pressure from neighbors and relatives. A young woman in the congregation tells him that her family has asked her to stop attending, and that she is tempted to keep her faith hidden to keep peace.

The pastor does not scold her. First, he listens carefully and asks what exactly her family fears. Second, he reads with her Revelation 2:10, and tells her briefly how Huguenot families in France worshiped in secret and held on to their faith under pressure, and how the Heidelberg Catechism spoke to them of comfort. Third, he asks her to read the first question of the catechism and to learn the answer by heart. Fourth, he does not tell her to be proud or defiant. He encourages her to be respectful and honest at home, to pray for her family, and to bring her questions to the elders, who will stand with her. He assures her that the congregation will pray for her by name.

Summary

The Reformed faith spread by books, by people and by confessions. In France the Huguenots held a national synod in 1559, adopted the Gallic Confession, governed themselves by consistories and synods, endured the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, gained the Edict of Nantes in 1598, and lost it in 1685. In the Netherlands, Guido de Brès wrote the Belgic Confession in 1561 and was hanged in 1567; the revolt against Spain, the Synod of Emden in 1571 and the Union of Utrecht in 1579 shaped the Dutch Reformed Church. In Hungary, the Synod of Debrecen adopted the Second Helvetic Confession in 1567, and Károli's Bible was printed at Vizsoly in 1590. In the Palatinate, Elector Frederick III commissioned the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, with its 129 questions on guilt, grace and gratitude. We answer the objection about Romans 13 by noting the limit set by Acts 5:29 and Beza's teaching on lawful magistrates. We remember that faithfulness unto death is the church's calling.

Further Reading

• The Gallic (French) Confession (1559).

• The Belgic Confession (1561).

• The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), a primary source and the best entrance to this unit.

• The Second Helvetic Confession (1566).

• Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, a classic Reformed exposition.

• Theodore Beza, On the Right of Magistrates (1574), a primary source on resistance.

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, chapter 20, on civil government (Beveridge translation, 1845).

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