> de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after the middle ages. This doesn't really agree with my understanding of things. The late medieval and

> de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after the middle ages. This doesn't really agree with my understanding of things. The late medieval and early modern period was a time of increasing religious control due to the reformation and counter-reformation. This was a new kind of problem, since during most of the medieval period the biggest threat was external in the form of Islam during the crusades and reconquista, but you could send armies to deal with that problem. Heretics from within, like Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, and eventually Luther and Calvin and later the protestants were much harder to defeat with armies, since they'd crop up anywhere and erode the power of the church from within. To hold against the protestants, you needed to control what people thought, paying lip service to the church wasn't enough anymore. This is when you get the inquisition and so on. A mirror image of things were happening along the protestants since it was very important that everyone held the line when the jesuits came a'knocking. There was also a fairly strong impetus to enforce protestantism from the temporal powers-that-be, since it was basically what allowed them to cut free from the pope. Closet papists among the population was as bad thing for a protestant king as closet protestants were for a catholic pope (or catholic king).