"Lutherans" and "Calvinists" in the Early Seventeenth Century: From Controversial Labels to Confessional Terms

Abstract: At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel (1572–1632) introduced Calvinism into his territory under the heading "Points of Improvement." The points of improvement concerned 1) the prohibition of discussion of the person of Christ, 2) "supplementing" the Ten Commandments with the explicit mention of the prohibition of images, 3) the abolition of images in church buildings, 4) the breaking of the bread in the Lord's Supper. This was followed by a long-lasting dispute by means of publication between the theologians at the universities in Marburg and Giessen. In these publications, the now common terminology of denominations, "Lutheran," "Calvinist," and "Reformed," were used in polemical distinction as controversial terms.