During the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church had been losing power throughout Europe.

Humanism, individualism, and virtue were evident in Renaissance works such as In Praise of Folly (which was one of the first signs of religious discontent) by Desiderius Erasmus. After years of the church consistently losing power because of corruption within through the sale of indulgences and members of the clergy caring more for personal gain than the betterment of Christianity and worship, the situation finally culminated into the inevitable; reform, which led to a struggle that was not only political because of the conflict between states it ignited, but also social in that it affected the way the citizens of Europe thought about each other. Political change was rampant throughout Europe. An entire city was converted to Calvinism, the city of Geneva in Switzerland, and this city practiced a theocratic government where they were governed and lead religiously by the state. This was a new way of government that affected society and politics in that it brought society closer together with the state politically through religious similarities. Anabaptism was another sect in Switzerland. Anabaptists believed that the scripture was the authority, so they followed canon law and not civil law. This was a huge political change because they were basically defying the state, and so they were prosecuted. Anabaptists are pacifists, so they would not fight back physically and they did not have the death sentence for severe crimes. This led to the slaughter of the Anabaptists. The Reformation actually divided more people in European society than it brought together. With the invention of the printing press, there were more books in circulation, and they were also in vernacular, so those who had access to books could obtain information on these new beliefs fairly quickly. The common peasant was seeking equality to the upper and middle classes, but those who believed differently from the vast majority were beginning to be discriminated against by those classes because of their beliefs. The witch hunts were a result of that discrimination, in which people (usually senile old ladies) were killed because of religious differences and as a scapegoat for problems occurring in society.

At the end of the first half of the 16th century, the Peace of Augsburg was brought into effect in Germany to appease the Scmalkaldic League, an alliance of Lutheran princes that agreed to protect each other if the Holy Roman Empire decided to prosecute Lutherans, but it only recognized Lutheranism and Catholicism, leaving out all religious minorities, and it gave the ruler of each German realm the right to pick his own realms religion. This Peace gave the rulers of Germany more political power because they could now choose the religion of their realm, and their peasants had to follow that religion, but it divided all of the German princes because they were all basically picking sides for later conflict within the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace of Augsburg was the first major attempt made by any European state to fix some of the religious unrest within Europe. After the Peace of Augsburg, the Holy Roman Empires Reformation was about to get ugly with the War of the Three Henrys coming up. At the end of the first half of the 16th century, religious unrest had infected the majority of Europe and it was only a matter of time before that tension would explode with the Thirty Years War and other bloody conflicts fought because of religious differences.