However, the early 15th century saw the election of Pope Leo X. His corrupt practices and hedonistic excess led the church into the chaos of the Protestant Reformation. Until that time, scripture, laboriously inscribed by hand on parchment, and only in Latin, was accessible exclusively to the educated ruling elite. Armed with the newest technology of the day--William Caxton's printing press--Martin Luther published a translation of the bible in German. Soon, a flood of translated Bibles spread across Europe. The Bible was no longer inaccessible to a public illiterate in Latin, and splinter denominations of Catholic Church began generating a wide spectrum of biblical interpretations, some of which diverged quite far from traditional doctrine.

     These historical threads of change converged in the late 16th century and culminated in a new era known as the Enlightenment. Fed by new trends in intellectual freedom and no longer constrained by parochial politics, philosophers and thinkers across Europe began to freely explore ideas and topics without fear of censure by the church, embracing the fruits of post-renaissance scholarship. It is within this intellectual upheaval that John Locke published his watershed work, "Essay Concerning Human Understanding".