Chapter II, The Shattering (Sections 35-45) Summary and Analysis

But humanism was not the only force that threatened to undermine the medieval world. What Manchester calls the "Great Apostasy" was the Protestant Reformation. There were other currents of thought that arose from the recent rediscovery that the arts flourished before Jesus and the grappling with the fact that Constantinople had fallen. Trade with the East had brought in new information and the clergy themselves were quite critical of abuses. Celibacy restrictions were increasing disobeyed and the pontiffs set poor examples.

Four years before the Reformation began, the Catholic Church began to sell indulgences to an unprecedented extent. Tickets to get loved ones out of purgatory, poor people would spend fortunes in an attempt to aid those they believed suffered beyond the grave. This turned the Church into a money machine...