The Reformation in Europe began in 1517, and soon spread to Livonia despite opposition by the Livonian Order. Towns were the first to embrace Protestantism in the 1520s, and by the 1530s the majority of the gentry had adopted Lutheranism for themselves and their peasant serfs. Church services were now conducted in vernacular language, which initially meant German, but in the 1530s the first religious services in Estonian also took place.