The stories of the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism can be so presented that they will serve not only to accentuate the great change which was taking place in Western Europe in the formation of powerful States like England, France and Spain, but in such a manner as to make clearer the Renaissance in Italy, and the wave of religious reform which swept over Europe before this earlier movement had entirely spent its force. The student can easily appreciate the contrast presented by the condition of the papacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and its might in the days of Gregory VII and Innocent III. It is more difficult just here to show how these events were connected with the Renaissance. A number of circumstances combined together in Italy to accentuate city development, not the least of which was the failure of the popes and emperors to realize their dreams of universal dominion. The final overthrow of the Hohenstaufen has already been discussed. Probably no set of circumstances contributed more to bring the papacy into disrepute and reduce them to the position of Italian princes forced to look after their own private affairs than the conditions which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The effects, then, of the residence at Avignon and the circumstances attending the return to Rome, call for special emphasis. Although the schism was healed by the Council of Constance, so little was done by this assembly and the other councils which followed it to reform the abuses which had crept into the Church, that it is not strange that the demand for a reform voiced by such men as Erasmus and Luther in the sixteenth century met with a warm reception in so many quarters. This great movement, which has been called the Protestant revolt, becomes clearer if the attention has been drawn to the teachings and work of Wycliffe and Huss, who even at this early date uttered words which were by no means lost. With these facts in mind, not forgetful of the decided tendencies toward the formation of strong states, each sufficient unto itself, to which reference has already been made, the establishment of national churches in the sixteenth century does not impress the student as a strange phenomenon incapable of explanation. Europe at Opening of Sixteenth Century.