otion the improvement of the education of priests and reasserted the power and authority of the Pope across Europe. It also, to assure the pope's power and to prevent future harm by rebels such as Luther, established the Inquisition whose duty it was to hunt out any threat to the church and remove it. So while the Reformation led to political dissension and increased rebellion, the Counter- Reformation resulted in "intolerance, moralizing and a taste for exaggerated religiosity (Adams, 281)." The final battle of the Protestant Reformation was fought nearly fifty years later: the Thirty Years' War. An actual military war between the German princes which had banded together to form the Protestant Union and the Catholic League in the south and west. The war began with revolt in Bohemia, homeland of John Huss, and soon encompasses Denmark, Sweden and France as well. The war finally ended in Germany in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, but Europe would never again be the same. France and Spain continued to fight, and the Protestants and the Catholics continued to glare at each other from their respective sidelines. The explosion that had split the Catholic church had died away, but the fire it left behind continued to burn. Seen in perspective with the history of the times, the Reformation was inevitable. It not only spoke out against the atrocities, selfishness and hypocrisy that the people of northern Europe protested against, but it also provided a form of religious expression that let men and women worship God in their own fashion. The lifestyles of northern and southern Europe were and still are vastly different. Italy at the time was far more crowded and urban than Germany and its neighbors. The people of the south were also of a different heritage. The Catholic church centered itself around the ruins of the Roman Empire and was made up of the descends of the Romans and Jews. The people of the north came from the Germanic tribes like ...
