[steve8714]

...and so we mention both. These were political as well as religious as the ruling class in the middle ages always saw the Church as a way to subjugate the common folk. In the 15th century it was Moslems killing Catholics; in the 16th the German princes and Henry got into the act.

[Wallace T.]

Agreed. But the fact remains that many clergy and hierarchy members, both Catholic and Protestant, gave their blessing to the atrocities of the civil authorities in the 16th and 17th Century. It is no wonder that Germany, the nation most victimized by the religious wars (1/3 of the population died as a result of the Thirty Years War) became a hotbed of skepticism, neo-paganism, and atheism in the 18th and 19th Centuries.