who were the main leaders of the reformation
Reformation The Reformation, specifically referred to as the Protestant Reformation, was a schism in Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther and continued by John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other early Protestant Reformers in 16th-century Europe. It is usually considered to have started with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther in 1517 and lasted until the end of the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin was a student of law and then classics at the University of Paris. Around 1533 he became involved in religious controversies and converted to Protestantism, a new Christian reform movement which was persecuted by the Catholic Church in France, forcing him to go into hiding.[2] He moved to Basel, Switzerland, for safety in 1535, and around this time he must have begun writing a summary of theology which would become the Institutes.[3] His Catholic opponents sought to associate him and his associates (known as Huguenots in France) with radical Anabaptists, some of whom had been defeated after a long siege in the Münster Rebellion in June 1535. He decided to adapt the work he had been writing to the purpose of defending Protestants suffering from persecution from false accusations that they were espousing radical and heretical doctrines. The work, written in Latin, was published in Basel in March 1536 with a preface addressed to King Francis I of France, entreating him to give the Protestants a hearing rather than continue to persecute them.[4] It is six chapters long, covering the basics of Christian faith using the familiar catechetical structure of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments, as well as a chapter on Christian liberty and political theology. Soon after publishing it, Calvin began his ministry in Geneva, Switzerland.[5]