I'm currently reading about the Reformation in the book, Trail of Blood, by J.M. Carroll.
The first man to go against Catholic dogma was John Wycliffe.
Others followed suit, but John Wycliffe and the others wanted to reform the Catholic church from within.
Finally a man, Martin Luther, realized that it would be impossible to reform it from within, and he founded a breakaway religion of his own that was later called the Lutheran church.
Again, others followed suit, namely John Calvin, whose breakaway religion was called Presbyterianism.
The Anabaptists, in the meantime, were in hiding from the oppression of the two Catholic branches: Eastern & Western; and it is said that more Christians died under the shadow of the Roman Catholic church than all of history's wars combined, up to and including WW1.
Anyway, the Anabaptists, who were in hiding, came out of hiding to lend their support to the Lutherans and the Presbyterians; only to find, to their horror, that these two breakaway religions carried some of the excess baggage out of the Catholic church with them, namely the idea of a state church.
The Lutherans and the Presbyterians then joined in with the persecution of the Anabaptists, who were, at the time, being referred to as Paulicians, Montanists, Waldensenses, and other names; because it was against the laws of the Catholic church to refer to them as "Christians."
