ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a different way of thinking about the relationship between what usually call the magisterial and the radical Reformations. Although it is primarily concerned with the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland in the 1520s and 30s, its compass is much broader both chronologically and geographically. It spans from the beginning of the evangelical movement in German-speaking central Europe around 1520 through the English Revolution in the 1640s and 50s. The reformers who, beginning in the early 1520s, denied that the established church remained the church established by Jesus jettisoned many traditional teachings of medieval Christianity. According to anti-Roman reformers, the Roman church had self-servingly distorted and ignored the Word of God to suit its own pecuniary self-promotion and pursuit of power, from the faked Donation of Constantine to the currency streams that flowed into papal coffers from the sale of church offices.
