The Catholic Church was the center of society in the 15th and 16th centuries. People believed that it was the only way to God. Unfortunatley the church was not exactly a shining example of all that was good and right. There were many things that were wrong with the Catholic Church. Clerical immorality, simony, pluralism, absenteeism, nepotism, and corrupt monasteries, were just a few things that corrupted the church. This caused an cry of outrage in the population. People started to doubt the morality and beliefs of the church. .
By the 16th century the idea of humanism (the literary culture one needed to be civilized and educated) was being applied more to the church. This was a quest for reform not just philology. Many members of society began to speak out against the church by writing books. The most famous was Erasmus Rotterdam. He produced his own Greek version of the Bible, and wrote In Praise of Folly, which criticized the church. Yet even though there was this new breed of Christian Humanist looking for reform, there was no one who stepped in to lead. That is until Martin Luther.
Martin Luther was an East German religion professor, although he had trained to be a lawyer. In 1512 he received his doctorate in religion from Wittenberg University where he became a part of the faculty. Luther was always in a state of emotional distress. Although he did much penance, fasted, and flogged himself, he never felt cleansed or forgiven. Luther once said "How can a man save his soul from hell when his sense of sinfulness is not removed by either sacraments or the sternest religious discipline" (Class notes). Luther believed he could cleanse his soul by way of the New Testament from Saint Paul. This was called the justification of faith. This meant that a person's salvation came from that persons faith in God's goodness and not from penance and indulgences. All of this threatened the authority of the Catholic church.