The Reformation in Europe resulted in a movement that divided European
             Christianity into Catholicism and Protestantism. It shattered Europe's religious
             unity, it connected with new ideals which were relationships among God, the
             individual, and lastly society. This religious fragmentation instigated various
             religions within numerous cities or city-states during the 1500s-1700s. The
             reformation was a protest against the corrupted Roman papacy. These protesters
             consisted mainly of Christian humanists, who sought to reform the Catholic
             church through inspiration. The Protestant Reformation comprised of religious
             modifications that spread all across Europe.
             During the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation split away from the
             Roman Catholic Church which thus destroyed the unison of Christendom within
             Europe. Prior to the Protestant Reformation the Roman Catholic Church was corrupted. Within the church there was clerical immorality, clerical ignorance, and clerical pluralism. Protestantism itself revitalized Catholicism. There was a quest for individual spiritual fulfillment that dominated Roman Catholicism. This led to a Catholic spiritual movement known as the New Piety. The New Piety emphasized on a simple personal form of religious practice, was a central influence upon Christian humanism.
             The religious practice of Protestantism differed from Catholicism in many ways. Protestants believed that authority in the church was within the believer while in Catholicism, the authority was vested in the hierarchy of the church. On the same note, the structure of the church in Protestantism was a democracy while in the Catholic Church it was a hierarchy. The belief of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic church is highly regarded in Catholicism while in Protestantism, the Virgin Mary plays a minor role; along with that Protestants consider statues as idolatry, while Catholics believe that statues are a frequent re...