“Well some think Luther’s zeal was a-Door-able.”
Well, he sure got a lot of people killed. I wonder how that number—that is, the total number of people who were killed as a result of the protestant heresy—stacks up against the number of people killed in the Crusades.
I have a vague impression that the Crusades killed more, but I never checked it out.
Killed by whom? There IS the old saw about being faithful unto death.
Well, he sure got a lot of people killed. I wonder how that number—that is, the total number of people who were killed as a result of the protestant heresy—stacks up against the number of people killed in the Crusades.
It is unfair to blame Luther's movement for the fights that broke out between factions -- both sides participated, to the death. Luther was an Augustinian Catholic monk who did not intend to split the Church, but rather to reform it. His attempts at overcoming the corruption of the day were met with excommunication; and due to political jousting between the HRE and the Prince of Saxony, violence broke out. The violence arose from both camps, sort of like what you are seeing today between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
A similar situation arose in a later phase of the Reformation when an Anglican priest, John Wesley, attempted to reform the Anglican Church. Instead, he and his followers were derisively called Methodists and were persecuted by the Anglicans. While the same level of violence did not occur, that fracture was one of the reasons many Methodists and other non-Anglican reformers left Europe for the New World, which led to the founding of America.