ABSTRACT
In assessing the church of the late Middle Ages, we have an advantage that no one then alive had: perfect hindsight. We know that after a generation of religious strife (1517-55), medieval Christendom was permanently divided into several major parts (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican) and numerous smaller groups such as the Anabaptists. We also know that all those groups drew on the religious heritage of the Middle Ages, though none of them, not even the Catholics, maintained that heritage intact. We know that by 1600 the forces of religious change had remade Christianity everywhere in Europe, though it was not the same remaking among Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and Anabaptists. But in 1500, no contemporary could have predicted what was to happen in the succeeding century.
