AP European History

REA Essentials

The Reformation

Introduction

The Reformation destroyed Western Europe's religious unity, involved new ideas about the relationships among God, the individual, and society, had its course greatly influenced by politics, and led, in most areas, to the subjection of the church to the political rulers.

Earlier threats to the unity of the church had been made by the works of John Wycliffe and John Huss. The abuses of church practices and positions upset many people. Likewise, Christian humanists had been criticizing the abuses.

Personal piety and mysticism, alternative approaches to Christianity, which did not require the apparatus of the institutional church and the clergy, had been appearing in the late Middle Ages.