I’ve been reading that, while the reformation of the Christian Church in 16th century Europe, the establishment of Protestantism in reaction to a corrupt Catholic Church, would, on the face of it, appear to be a time of enlightened reform, quite the opposite was true.

Luther’s translation of the Bible into German made it available to a laity that was then able to form churches based on their understanding of Biblical truth, which tended to vary, sometimes considerably, from one congregation to the next. This precipitated accusations of heresy and totalitarian mindsets closed to sectarian differences, leading to an intolerance greater even than that of the Catholic hierarchy.

These issues were all pretty important back then, people believing, as they did, that Hell was in store for most of the population.

I’ve been reading about the intellectual world in Western Europe as it existed in the early centuries of the second millennium.

With the fall of Roman Civilization 600 years earlier, scholarship had declined, knowledge of the past had been reduced to monastic reproductions of Latin texts providing the church the opportunity to re-imagine the historical narrative to its own advantage, limiting it to a closed Christian perspective and its reliance on the ‘Word of God’ to explain the complexities of the natural world.

This constrictive culture led the few scholars of the time, whose concern for self-preservation amid accusations of heresy, to temper any announcements of research findings setting back intellectual development for centuries.

The eventual breaking free of such a restrictive situation can only be attributed to the indomitable human spirit, even though it did take a long time.