The Reformation brought a time of religious upheaval and confusion. The perplexity of the reform consists of many wars between peasants, townsfolk, and the Roman Catholic Church.
According to the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church, it was believed that all human beings are born into a state of sin. Due to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the result is inevitable that humans cannot avoid sin. Even infants were believed to have sin because of their strong and continuous desire for their mother's breast milk. Due to their desire, the infants were also not pure individuals.
The Church's resolution for this was to have the child baptized to redeem their sins. After baptism, once they were purified, there were other alternatives to forgive sins whether through confession, contrition, or penance. What happens if you die before you are able to perform your penance? For example, if an individual performed a minor sin and confessed, the individual could be told to say twenty-five "Hail Mary's" as a penance for their sin. If that individual was only able to say twenty of the twenty-five "Hail Mary's" and then died for whatever reason, the Church stated that individual would go to Purgatory where they will encounter bodily torture until the penance is redeemed.
For questions in life, there were also alternatives the people could turn to in answer of their uncertainties. They turned to the Four Fathers: Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and Jerome for these answers. If, however, a question had been brought to the attention of the Four Fathers and they disagreed upon it, there was a prescribed method the inquisitor must go through. The Scholastic Method first began with asking the question and then lining up the authorities (the Four Fathers) with what was told. Once the scholars answer the questions in their different responses, it was the inquisitors" responsibility to reconcile these authorities.