The Schmalkaldic League was a military alliance of Lutheran princes within the Holy Roman Empire during the mid-16th century. It received its name from the town of Schmalkalden, which is located in modern Thuringia.
Schmalkaldic League military treaty, extended in 1536
Portrait of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse
John Frederick I of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Younger
Charles V, enthroned over his defeated enemies (from left): Suleiman the Magnificent, Pope Clement VII, Francis I, the Duke of Cleves, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Saxony. Giulio Clovio, mid-16th century.
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther, a 1529 portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The title page of the Swedish Gustav Vasa Bible, translated by brothers Olaus Petri and Laurentius Petri and Laurentius Andreae
A Hundskirche replica
The University of Jena in Germany, the center of Gnesio-Lutheran activity leading up to the Formula of Concord, and a center of Lutheran orthodoxy
