This is a simplified, big-picture map of the Protestant Reformation — not a complete history. A few things worth knowing:
- Dates are approximate. Movements formed gradually; a single year usually marks a turning point, not a clean beginning.
- Families overlap. The reformers borrowed from and argued with one another. The gold lines show the strongest line of descent or influence, not every connection.
- The Five Solas came later. The individual Latin watchwords arose in the Reformation, but the fixed set of “five solas” is a later summary (largely 20th-century) of Reformation convictions — not a single document the reformers drew up and signed.
- “TULIP” is later too. The Canons of Dort (1618–19) answered the Arminian Remonstrants; the five-point “TULIP” acronym is a much later English memory aid.
- Where wording is traditional, we say so. Luther’s “Here I stand” at Worms, for instance, is likely embellished; the earliest records are less certain.
- The hard parts are described, not defended. The Peasants’ War, the persecution of Anabaptists by fellow Protestants, Luther’s late antisemitic writings, the splits over the Lord’s Supper, and the wars of religion belong to this story. We name them honestly rather than explain them away.
The summaries draw on standard, widely accepted church history. Where history is genuinely contested, the aim is to describe fairly rather than to overstate certainty.