The heretics whom the Church successfully combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia were the precursors of Luther.

The scholars prepared the way in the fifteenth century.

Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type--Reuchlin in Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as a humanist--contribute each a definite momentum.

Luther, for his part, incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity, as distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for himself.

The veil which the Church had interposed between the human soul and God was broken down.