ABSTRACT
The pre-Reformation church was universal, but it took special forms in the urban setting. Certainly the breakup of the Roman church as it had existed throughout the middle ages and the emergence of Protestant and Catholic forms of Christianity had a profound impact on countless aspects of political, social and cultural life - and cities in particular were caught up in these changes. There were also some cities in Europe in which members of different religious groups could worship openly in separate churches. Though relations between the two confessions in such cities always remained troubled, both Catholics and Protestants maintained churches and worshipped freely in public. The great collegiate church of Wetzlar was also used as the city's main parish church; according to arrangements carefully negotiated in the course of the middle ages, the canons worshipped in the choir while the parishioners worshipped, at different hours, in the nave.
