The Reformation: History in an Hour

By the late 1520s, Lutheranism had spread to England. The famous English scholar and friend of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More (pictured below), who himself later became a martyr to the Catholic cause, wrote tracts against Luther on behalf of (and under the name of) Henry VIII. He declared Luther an ‘infallible donkey’ and foresaw that the unity of all Christendom would soon break into many pieces because of the whims of ‘upstart heretics’. However one saw it, the Protestant Reformation had truly begun and had reached well beyond the borders of Germany.