Printing works supporting the diffusion of the principal writings of its moderators, the Reform, born in German-speaking space, does not stop at the linguistic borders.  

At the beginning of second half of XVIe century, the unit of Western Christendom is durably broken: the peace of Augsburg (1555) marks the acceptance of the denominational division of the Germanic Empire. The Anglicanism triumphs on the other side of the channel as from 1558, and the presbyterianism in Scotland in 1560. In France, the presence of a minority activates Protestants led to the wars of religion (1562-1598). This conflict pluralism of the religions will constitute a crucial factor of Western modernity.  

As of the first centuries of Christianity, a dividing line is formed between a doctrinal orthodoxy, affirming to be only ready to define the truths scripturaires, and various heresies.

The dispute with the Middle Ages
Thousand years later, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the problem re-appears in a new way. The Church, from now on triumphing, is seen marked to be distant in its form, its structures and, more basically, in its doctrines and its life, of the primitive Church. Several movements then attack it in the name of the Writing: some of them remain within the ecclesiastical institution, like the Franciscan ones, which criticize its richness and its power, while others, like John Wyclif and the lollards in England, Jean Hus and his partisans in Bohemia, cause the rupture by a more radical calling into question. The action of the latter is repressed (Jean Hus is burned in 1415), but their ideas are not eradicated: far from being perceived like the property of the Church, the Holy Scripture tends to becoming the critical standard according to which one judges if the Roman institution remained the community of the disciples of Jesus-Christ. The ecclesiastical tradition, which wanted to be alive transmission of the Writings enriched by the reading by the Church, often continues to appear as an autonomous authority which betrays the essential lesson of the Bible.  

A new reading of the Holy Scriptures
At the beginning of the XVI E century, under the influence of Christian humanism, the intellectual elite of Western Europe becomes aware of the distance which separates the Church from then from the Eglise primitive. Opening in favor of a return to the sources, an erudite biblism is propagated, strong critic with regard to traditional university theology, resulting from the Middle Ages. Vis-a-vis the Vulgate - the Bible translated into Latin by Jerome (331-420) -, from the scholars return to the Greek text of New Testament and the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. As the work of the hébraïsants, which proves as the authors of New Testament employed again topics resulting from Old, makes it the theologists more attentive with the unit of the Bible. This erudite approach is combined with the will to center Christianity on the person of Jesus-Christ, to the detriment of the worship of the saints and other aspects of piety and faith.  
 
Currents of reforms within the Church

The first reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546), adopts without concession this new optics: for him, “Christ is the center of the circle from which all the circle is traced”. The unit of the biblical texts is based on the person and the work of Jesus-Christ. The Bible has a clean authority, and neither the pope nor even a council could give an infallible interpretation of it (thesis directed against an important conciliar current within the Church to the XV E century). But certain humanistic Christians, while being close to the positions of the reformer, do not dare to break with the Roman Catholic Church. It was the case of Lefèvre d' Etaples - first French translator of the whole of the Bible -, which takes refuge at the end of its life in silence. Another reformer, Jean Calvin (1509-1564), will be opposed with force to these “average” (or “nicodémites”, of the name of Nicodème, which found Jesus the night not to compromise itself), treating them of inconsistent Christians.  

At the end of the Middle Ages and the XVI E century, many movements of reform considered, in fact, the Bible like a kind of authority of call vis-a-vis the “inaccuracies” or to the “deviances” of the Church. But one of them - indicated classically as the Reform - constitutes a particular case, because of two specific aspects: on the one hand, this movement assumes the rupture within the Church of Occident and transforms a dispute carried out inside the Roman Catholic Church in protest acting apart from it; in addition, contrary to the medieval “heresies”, the Reform was not overcome and the rupture which it introduced was not reabsorbed. Admittedly, in spite of their hopes, the reformers did not succeed in involving with their continuation the whole of Western Christianity. However, if they did not completely gain, they however triumphed in several areas or country. The scission proved to be durable, obliging the Occident to make the experiment of religious pluralism gradually.