One of the most significant of all revolutions was the 16th-century religious revolt known as the German Reformation. The Reformation was responsible for the disunity of the Western Christendom under the Roman Catholic Church. The Reformation, which originated in Germany but spread quickly throughout Europe, was initiated in response to the growing sense of corruption and authoritative abuse in the church. This dispute led into a Modern Age as it expressed an alternative vision of Christian practice and led to the creation and rise of the Protestant Church. As a result of this disengagement the people's religious unity was destroyed, they began to think in terms of their own regional interests. From the diversity of those interests arose new political, social, and economic problems and beliefs.

Prior to the reformation and before the 16th century, Western Europe was dominantly Roman Catholics. The catholic church was extremely wealthy and powerful with authority and had been the preservation of Europe's culture and society. Many churchmen criticized the authority of the church and even the people of the church began to doubt some of their teachings, such as purgatory and indulgences. The church believed that it alone had the authority to interpret the meaning of the Bible and that the people were not to learn the words of the Bible themselves, which lead to many disputes as early at the 14th century when English priest and teacher at Oxford University declared that people had the right to read and interpret the Bible. This dispute lead to the translation of the Bible from Latin to English in 1382 which