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The Renaissance was a cultural flourishing that promoted secular values over religious values. However, in Northern Europe, the ideas of the Renaissance were to take on a religious character. The ideas of the Italian humanists, such as textual analysis, the use of critical thinking, and rejecting authority that was not sourced on reliable evidence were taken up by Northern Humanists who applied them to the Church.<ref>Chipps, p. 67</ref>
The Northern Humanists sought to reform the Church and were generally pious men. However, the humanists perhaps unintentionally weakened the Papacy and its theoretical underpinnings. In their examination of key texts and especially the Bible, they exposed many key assumptions as false. This was to lead to a widespread challenge to the idea of Papal Infallibility and the Church's power structure.<ref> Chipps, p. 17</ref> The Renaissance also encouraged people to question received wisdom and offered the possibility of change, which was unthinkable in the middle ages. This encouraged the reformers to tackle abuses in the Church, which ultimately led to the schism and the end of Christendom's old idea. {{MediaWiki:AmNative}}
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