His excommunication in 1521 led to the birth of a new church and the separation finally took place. Calvin, unlike Luther the monk, was a lawyer who came to Geneva to help in the reformation process. At first, his attempts failed, but after being forced to leave the city, he returned and his new philosophical views about the reformed church were accepted by Geneva that became the center of Protestantism in Europe.

Question 3: Was the religiously-framed warfare of the 16th and early 17th centuries avoidable, given the realities of that place and time?

After the first period of the separation between the Catholic and the Protestant Churches that took place peacefully, there came a period of ruthless fights between the two. The fight for supremacy between the two churches was translated into the fight for power between dynasties. France was the first to witness real civil wars between the subjects of the two churches, fighting to overthrow each other at the throne. The adherents of the new Protestant Church, the Huguenots in France, were a minority in number, but they held very important positions in matters of the state. The bloody night of St. Bartholomew is left in history as one of the most absurd and cruel mass slaughter started on religious grounds. In fact, religion was just a pretext beneath the real cause of the conflict between the most powerful dynasties in France, under the reign of Catherine de Medicis: the struggle for power. The fight became fierce and the combatants on both sides were regarding each other as deadly enemies. The conflict between the representatives of the two churches involved the other European countries as well. The Catholic Spain, under the rule of Philippe II intervened in favor of the Catholic side in the intention to destroy the Protestants. The political wars and the losses of thousands of lives would only end when Henry de Navarre would become king of France and officially renounce his Protestant faith in favor of the Catholic one, by the...

The fight for power all over Europe inclined the balance to one side or another, depending on the efficacy of the respective rulers, their alliances and on how fortunate their choices were. The separation of the Churches was destined to bring along those numerous conflicts that followed the next century in Europe as the times were of fierce fights over power.
Question 4: Given the pervasiveness of religious strife in Western and Central Europe, 1519-1648, what were the signposts of a rise of religious toleration emerging from that carnage? What allowed toleration to begin to challenge the earlier climate of intolerance?

First, the decision of giving up his Protestant faith of Henry de Navarre who became Henry the IV, kind of France, after years of bloody fights, in 1593 gave the first impulse the idea that the matter of stability and economic grow should prevail over matter of religious fighting. The proclamation of the Edict of Nantes, five years later put an end to the religious war in France.

Furthermore, the defeat of the Catholic Spain, in the war with England, under the rule of a Protestant monarch send a message through the entire Europe regarding the right Protestants had in freely affirming their religion. Finally, the Treaty of Westphalia ended by the middle of the seventeenth century the war between the states in the Holy Roman Empire.

References

Mantin, P. (1992)the Italian Renaissance: Student Book. The Italian Renaissance. Heinemann Humanism. Retrieved: Oct 28, 2008. Available at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REN/HUMANISM.htm

Discovery and Reformation. Retrieved: Oct 28, 2008. Available at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/REFORM.HTM