Catholic Opponents of the Reformation
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Albrecht of Brandenburg
The young Archbishop of Mainz whose debt for his offices was paid with the St. Peter’s indulgence, and to whom Luther sent the Ninety-Five Theses.
Bartolomé Carranza
The Dominican archbishop who helped restore Catholicism in Mary’s England and was then himself imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for seventeen years.
Charles Borromeo
The nephew of Pius IV who drove Trent to its finish and made Milan the model of a Counter-Reformation diocese.
Charles de Guise
The Cardinal of Lorraine, head with his brother of the Guise party that led Catholic France against the Huguenots.
Cuthbert Tunstall
The scholarly Bishop of London who turned Tyndale away, then bought up and burned his New Testaments.
David Beaton
The cardinal who had George Wishart burned at St. Andrews in 1546 and was murdered there in revenge.
Desiderius Erasmus
The prince of the humanists, whose Greek New Testament of 1516 served the Reformation, but who sought the moral reform of Rome rather than the recovery of the gospel and wrote against Luther on the freedom of the will.
Edmund Bonner
Mary’s Bishop of London, who examined, degraded, and condemned more Protestant martyrs than any other English bishop.
Gasparo Contarini
The Venetian cardinal who came nearest to agreement with the Protestants at Regensburg in 1541, and failed.
Giovanni Morone
The diplomat-cardinal who was imprisoned by Paul IV on suspicion of heresy and then steered the Council of Trent to its close.
Girolamo Aleandro
The scholar-nuncio who burned Luther’s books in the Netherlands and the Rhineland and drafted the Edict of Worms.
Hans Brask
The last great Catholic bishop of Sweden, who fought Olaus Petri and the Reformation until he went into exile in 1527.
Henry Phillips
The young Englishman who befriended William Tyndale in Antwerp and betrayed him to the emperor’s officers in 1535.
Hieronymus Emser
Duke George’s secretary, who waged a pamphlet war with Luther and issued a rival German New Testament built on Luther’s own.
Hieronymus Schulz
Luther’s own bishop, who first counseled silence and then vowed to see the monk in the fire.
Hugo von Hohenlandenberg
The Bishop of Constance, in whose diocese Zurich lay, whose mandates against Zwingli’s preaching only hastened Zurich’s break with him.
Jacopo Sadoleto
The eloquent cardinal whose letter urging Geneva back to Rome drew Calvin’s classic Reply in 1539.
James Beaton
The Archbishop of St. Andrews who had Patrick Hamilton burned in 1528, Scotland’s first martyr of the Reformation.
Johann Eck
Luther’s ablest debater, who forced him at Leipzig to side with Hus and carried the bull of excommunication into Germany.
Johann Fabri
Zwingli’s friend turned foe, who represented the Bishop of Constance at Zurich and earned the name “hammer of heretics.”
Johann Tetzel
The Dominican indulgence preacher whose sales just beyond Wittenberg’s border provoked Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.
Johannes Cochlaeus
The tireless polemicist who betrayed Tyndale’s first English New Testament at Cologne and wrote the hostile life of Luther that shaped Catholic memory for centuries.
John Fisher
The scholarly Bishop of Rochester who led the English theological attack on Luther and died for refusing Henry VIII’s supremacy.
John Hamilton
The last Catholic Archbishop of St. Andrews, who burned the aged Walter Myln in 1558 and opposed the Reformation Parliament of 1560.
John Longland
The king’s confessor and Bishop of Lincoln who led the great persecution of the Buckinghamshire Lollards in 1521.
Julius Pflug
The humanist bishop of Naumburg who sought reunion on Rome’s terms and helped write the Augsburg Interim of 1548.
Lorenzo Campeggio
The canon lawyer and legate who organized the first Catholic league in Germany and urged Charles V to use fire and sword at Augsburg.
Noël Béda
The Sorbonne’s formidable syndic, who hounded Lefèvre, Erasmus, and Berquin and demanded torture for the “false doctors.”
Pierre de la Baume
Geneva’s worldly last prince-bishop, whose flight from the city in 1533 opened the way for Farel and Calvin.
Reginald Pole
Henry VIII’s royal cousin turned cardinal, who returned as papal legate to reconcile England to Rome under Mary.
Stanislaus Hosius
The Polish cardinal who led the Counter-Reformation in Poland, presided at Trent, and worked to bring Sweden back to Rome.
Stephen Gardiner
The able Bishop of Winchester who led the Catholic reaction against Cranmer and, as Mary’s chancellor, revived the burning of heretics.
Sylvester Prierias
The papal theologian whose reply to Luther made the pope, not Scripture, the infallible rule of faith.
The Spirituali Timeline
Table RCC20: a timeline of the Spirituali, the Catholic reformers around Gasparo Contarini and Giovanni Morone, from Contarini's crisis in 1511 to the close of the Council of Trent in 1563.
Thomas Cajetan
The learned cardinal-legate who examined Luther at Augsburg in 1518 and demanded that he recant.
Thomas More
The brilliant humanist and Lord Chancellor who wrote thousands of pages against Tyndale and Luther and prosecuted English evangelicals.
Thomas Wolsey
Henry VIII’s all-powerful cardinal, who burned Luther’s books in London and on his deathbed urged the king to destroy “this new pernicious sect.”
William Warham
The aged Archbishop of Canterbury who sought to destroy Tyndale’s New Testaments, tried Latimer, and yielded the royal supremacy “so far as the law of Christ permits.”
