The Protestant Reformation

When Columbus’s patrons Ferdinand and Isabella expelled all Jews from Spain in 1492 and chased the last Muslims from Granada in 1502, it appeared as if the triumph of the Catholic church had been assured. Only fifteen years later, however, Martin Luther started a movement for religious reform that would fracture the unity of Western Christianity. Instead of one Catholic church, there would be many different kinds of Christians. The invention of printing with movable type helped spread the Protestant message, which grew in part out of waves of popular piety that washed over Europe in the closing decades of the 1400s. Reformers had also been influenced by Christian humanists who focused attention on clerical abuses.