OK, The History of the Church in a nutshell.
The Church started on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover in 33AD. Jesus, following His resurrection taught the Apostles and disciples off and on for some 40 days following His resurrection. When He ascended into heaven bodily from Mt Olivet He instructed the Apostles and other followers to remain in Jerusalem until they received the Promise of the Holy Spirit in a few days time. That happened on the Day of Pentecost as related in the Bible, Acts 2.
Over a period of a short time the Apostles and disciples began to disperse out from Jerusalem taking the Message of the Gospel with them. Almost immediately there arose problems because the Christians were different from non-Christians, they held to devotion to Jesus Christ and did not do honor the Greek and Romans gods(idols). Because of the rumors and distortions about their practices they came to be persecuted, and blamed for troubles that arose throughout the Roman Empire.
For a period of time there was official persecution of the Christians in which they were jailed, tortured, fed to wild animals in the arenas and even used as living torches in the Gardens of Nero. Around the time of Constantine, Emperor of Rome, Rome was at war within and without from pagans and slave revolts. Constantine reportedly had a dream of a flaming cross and heard a voice telling him that by this sign he could conquer. Almost overnight Constantine and his armies became "christians" as did everyone he conquered. He combined his State with the church and formed the Holy Roman Empire. "Converting" pagan peoples that he conquered. this was the begining of the Roman Catholic (universal) Church. There were many other Christians that didn't believe that the chuch should be structured with a hierarchy and control the way Constantine foresaw so they opposed the Catholic Church. These groups were known by many names, Donatists, Paulicans, anabaptists what they had in common was a belief in the Scriptures, independance of the local church and freedom from outside interference.
During the Dark Ages there was a split in the Roman Catholic Church, and it resulted in there being two separate capitals of the Roman Catholic Church Rome in the West and Constantinople(named for Constantine) in the east. As the problems with the warring hoards trashing Europe grew the split in the empire resulted in the Eastern Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople, and the Roman Catholic Church centered in Rome.
When the Reformation began different groups began splitting off of the Catholics church for various reasons. Differences in doctrine, differences in how they thought things should be done within the church, political reasons. Many of these different groups that split from the Roman Catholic Church began to be referred to as Protestants as they were seen to be "Protesting" against various problems that they saw in the Catholic church.
Many of these different groups came to be called by the name of the leader of the movements that left the Catholic Church. The Lutherans followed the teachings of Martin Luthor a Catholic Priest who is seen by many as one of the first protestors. If you go to this web site:
http://pastorshelper.faithweb.com/denom.html you can bring up information about a lot of the different denominations and what they believe.
Both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches still use the books known as the Apocrypha as part of their Bibles. This consists of several books which were not accepted by all Christians as being part of God's Word, so they are not in all Bibles today.
As I mentioned earlier, while the Roman Catholic Church was forming there were Christians who did not believe that what the Catholic church was doing was correct. These groups are still around and don't fall under the umbrella of being called "Protestants" because they never were a part of the Roman Catholic Church some of the better known of these groups are the Baptists (but not all Baptists) and the Mennonites and Brethren groups.
I hope this answers your questions satisfactorily.
