Question

Although there had been heretics and reformers in the catholic church before martin luther, none had threatened the unity of the church. what were the social, economic, and political conditions in germany that contributed to the enormous success of lutheranism

Answer 1

Germany was extremely divided in the period since it was not yet a unified country. This lack of centralism led to rampant corruption that always ended with church as a unified body having huge power over the separated individual regions. This allowed extreme corruption to prosper and the church was basically exploiting people. Martin Luther was sick of this and he used the newly developed idea of a printing press to spread his message in order to fight the Catholic church's corruption.