Crypto-Protestantism is a historical phenomenon that first arose on the territory of the
Habsburg Empire but also elsewhere in Europe and Latin America, at a time when Catholic rulers tried, after the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...
, to reestablish
Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
in parts of the Empire that had become
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
after the Reformation. The Protestants in these areas strove to retain their own confession inwardly while they outwardly pretended to accept Catholicism.
[Žalta, Anja. 2004. Protestantizem in bukovništvo med koroškimi Slovenci. ''Anthropos'' 36(1/4): 1–23, p. 7.] With the
Patent of Toleration in the Habsburg Empire in 1781, Protestantism was again permitted, and from that time on most Protestants could live their faith openly once more.
See also
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Nicodemite
A Nicodemite () is a person suspected of publicly misrepresenting their religious faith to conceal their true beliefs. The term is sometimes defined as referring to a Protestantism, Protestant Christian who lived in a Roman Catholic country and es ...
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Crypto-Papism
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Crypto-Christianity
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Crypto-Calvinism
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Hundskirke stone
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Cafeteria Catholicism
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Cum ex apostolatus officio''
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Molinism
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Jansenism (sometimes labeled as Crypto-Calvinism)
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Salzburg Protestants
The Salzburg Protestants () were Protestantism, Protestant refugees who had lived in the Catholic Archbishopric of Salzburg until the 18th century. In a series of persecutions ending in 1731, over 20,000 Protestants were expelled from their homel ...
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Transylvanian Landler
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Zillertal Valley expulsion
References
{{Intermediates between Catholicism and Protestantism
Protestant Reformation
Counter-Reformation
Crypto-Christianity