Persecutions of Catholics by Protestants, Reformation Era

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Persecutions of Catholics by Protestants, Reformation Era · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Questions on the Reformation

Q

How did Protestants presecute Catholics in the Reformation?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Protestants-presecute-Catholics-in-the-Reformation/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested by

Day0216

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms

2 years ago

[Originally Answered: Did Protestants presecute Catholics in the Reformation? How? Remove Banner]

This is actually two questions.

Did Protestants presecute Catholics in the Reformation?

Yes, Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists, to some degree Zwinglians too, did so. Not always and everywhere, but it was crucial to get a following in large principalities like national kingdoms.

How?

For instance by killing of priests who would not become Reformed (Cardinal Beaton in Scotland, St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen) or who catered to diehard Catholics (martyrs in England, among whom the forty martyrs) or by persecuting converts with death (Gustavus Adolphus saw two executions) or exile (Queen Christina abdicated and exiled herself and in Charles XII’s time he met a Swedish wannabe Jesuit in Poland, he wished him the best and helped him economically, but didn’t allow him a safe return to Sweden).

Monasteries were dissolved, and people who tried to refuse were killed - like the Franciscan Prior in Ystad, who had his head cleft in two for saying “we won’t” to the Danish king’s men.

People who defended monasteries, priests, holy things, and were peasants were also treated as traitors, both in the time of Gustav Wasa in Sweden and in the wannabe reformation during French Wars of religion : Coligny was a war criminal, who had hanged peasants as “war criminals” for trying to defend their priest and Church.

In Calvin’s Geneva, nuns of a monastery were harrassed into either marrying (against their vows) or exiling themselves from Geneva. Harrassed in ways that would land the perps in prison, now.