Even in western Europe, the Catholic Church had had to encounter spasmodic opposition from "heretics," as those persons were called who, although baptized as Christians, refused to accept all the dogmas of Catholic Christianity. Such were the Arian Christians, who in early times had been condemned for rejecting the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and who had eventually been won back to Catholicism only with the greatest efforts. Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Albigensian heretics in southern France had assailed the sacramental system and the organization of the Church and had been suppressed only by armed force. In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe appeared in England and John Hus in Bohemia, both preaching that the individual Christian needs no priestly mediation between himself and God and that the very sacraments of the Church, however desirable, are not essentially necessary to salvation. The Lollards, as Wycliffe's English followers were called, were speedily extirpated by fire and sword, through the stern orthodoxy of an English king, but the Hussites long defied the pope and survivals of their heresy were to be found in 1500. [Sidenote: Skeptics] In addition to these heretics and the Jews, [Footnote: For detailed accounts of the Jews during the middle ages as well as in modern times, see the _Jewish Encyclopædia_, ed. by Isidore Singer, 12 vols. (1901-1906).] many so-called skeptics no doubt existed. These were people who outwardly conformed to Catholicism but inwardly doubted and even scoffed at the very foundations of Christianity. They were essentially irreligious, but they seem to have suffered less from persecution than the heretics. Many of the Italian humanists, concerning whom we shall later say a word, [Footnote: See below] were in the fifteenth century more or less avowed skeptics. THE PROTESTANT REVOLT [Sidenote: A Religious and Political Movement] We have seen in the preceding pages that prior to 1500 there had been many conflicts between kings and popes concerning their respective temporal rights and likewise there had been serious doubts in the minds of various people as to the authority and teachings of the Catholic Church. But these two facts--political and religious--had never been united in a general revolt against the Church until the sixteenth century. Then it was that Christians of Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, and England, even of the Low Countries and France, successfully revolted against the papal monarchy and set up establishments of their own, usually under the protection of their lay rulers, which became known as the Protestant churches. The movement is called, therefore, the Protestant Revolt. It was begun and practically completed between 1520 and 1570. [Sidenote: Political Causes of Protestant Revolt]