Members of the idealistic Reformation Generation, which include some of our ancestors, were born between 1483 and 1511; the youngest of that generation left the world's stage about 1592.1 Their parents, members of either the last wave of the heroic, civic-minded Arthurian Generation or the first wave of the adaptive Humanist Generation, typically nurtured them in a relaxing way, at least relative to the standards of that time, and so they were indulged as youths, during the great Age of Discovery.
The Reformation Generation (of the Prophet archtype in the Reformation Saeculum, or Cycle) began life surrounded by the advantages of order and affluence. They rebelled as youth, prompting first the colleges (in the 1520s) and then an egocentric young King and his Parliament (in the 1530s) to join in a religious upheaval. By the time passions cooled, the Catholic Church was liquidated, the clergy was shattered, the masses were armed with Bibles, and the Anglican faith was unshackled from Rome. In midlife, their insolence hardened into severe principle. With women figuring prominently, they became commonwealth moralists, family of love mystics, Calvinist (or Romist) proselytizers, and unrepentant martyrs burned or hanged for their heresies. Deep in elderhood, many lived to see the nation gravitate to the Puritan Settlement they had worked so long to inspire.2
At their coming of age, members of this generation were typically attracted to spiritual self-discovery, and they attacked the rigid clerical institutions of their elders, which they regarded as hopelessly corrupt and profane. Full of zeal, they launched the Protestant Reformation on the continent and in England and Scotland.
Characteristic of this generation is, of course, Martin Luther, who at age 38, said at the 1521 Diet of Worms in front of his Kaiser (who wanted him to stop his troublemaking): "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen." ("Here stand I. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.") Or John Knox, who proclaimed: "Un homme avec Dieu est toujours dans la majorité" ("A man with God is always in the majority.")
King Henry VIII of England took advantage of the enthusiastic turbulence to break ties with the Roman Papacy and direct his "Reformation Parliament" to confiscate vast Catholic estates during the 1530s. Later on, after 1539, the King tried to stem the raging furor of anarchic heresies his policies had encouraged, and in the 1540s he--and later, in the 1550s, his daughter Queen Mary--had several of the uncompromising self-proclaimed prophets executed.
This generation had an unyielding moral conviction, with implacable opinions about everything. Typically they were disappointed in the younger Picaresque Generation, whom they regarded as waffling and unprincipled.
Quite late in life, during the Armada Crisis conflict between England and Spain (1580-1588), those who had survived the CounterReformation reaction were visionaries, providing resolute moral purpose to the struggle being waged by their Elizabethan Generation children and grandchildren.
Birthyears for the Reformation Generation
(Linked names are ancestors of ours;
linked "G-" numbers refer to the family generations of those ancestors.)
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Notes:
1. The information on this page has been adapted with permission from William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991). [Back to your place on this page.]
2. William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (New York: Broadway Books [Bantam-Doubleday-Dell], 1997), p. 129. [Back to your place on this page.]
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