Protestantize

There had been nothing strange about the [Christmas] tree before, but now, with some one kneeling before it,—images, candles, … Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to his brow and bowed his venerable head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere.

Before the Reformation, whatever wars took place, there remained throughout Europe the underlying concept of an essential unity of Christendom, an idea that all states still formed part of a common body. Even after it, when Charles V came to an agreement with the Protestantizing princes of the empire in 1555, that idea and ideal remained.