Martin Luther

     It seems that many people do not know that Martin Luther was a famous person in history. I don't mean Martin Luther King--whose parents must have named him after Martin Luther. I mean Martin Luther, the monk who was working on a translation of the Bible into German, when he had an epiphany of sorts, and nailed his 95 Theses (ideas--these were about what was wrong with the church) to the cathedral door. This started what was later known as the "Reformation"--some people eventually wanted a new church, and not a reformed one, so the term "reformation" may be misleading. After Martin Luther, there were Protestants and Catholics in Western Europe, who sometimes fought with one another.
     Religion and politics were much more intertwined or "of a piece" than they are now. To refuse the religion of a country might be to refuse its king or queen--and with it its government--so the people fighting wars over religion were not simply fighting to promote a particular theological view. They were sure that all of the people in each country needed to be of the same religion, and were willing to fight over that.  In present-day England, the queen is still the head of a state church. To refuse to belong to that church was tolerated for a long time (it wasn't a crime, as it had once been)--but it was considered disloyal. A person who did not belong to the Church of England could not expect to get a government job, or a job in a business that dealt with the government.