By the year 1500, the Church was at its zenith around the world, with its power concentrated in the Pope. Then a lowly friar, Martin Luther, in a small German town ignited a revolution that shattered the Church, tore Christendom apart and reinvented it from within. The Protestant Reformation heralded the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern age. Protestant efforts led to the rise of science, industry and the modern nation. For the first time in the history of the West, church and state had been separated. Again, Christianity reinvented its role in the modern world.
