Spoken as if during the times before brother Martin went out on his rampage, the Roman Catholic was “unified”.
Sure it was.
They were for those who did not choose heresy or who were not Eastern Orthodox.
Oops for some reason I misread your post. You might not be well versed in history but before the Reformation Christianity in the West ,with the exception of sects that even modern day Protestants would call heretical, was Catholic under the See of Rome. It was indeed unified.
Unless you are confusing different schools of theology and their disagreements with dogma that has been settled and is binding on all Catholic faithful. Or do you mean the numerous religious orders found in Catholicism?
Actually, I’ve been re-reading the life of Martin Luther for the past few months and have re-evaluated him (personally) — I see also that the Lutherans share many of our orthodox beliefs like apostolic succession, the True Presence, etc., and also in the times of Martin Luther, he lived in a broken Germania in which unfortunately many prince-bishoprics were created and where the clergy were horribly corrupt. The presence of the Borgia pope didn’t help things either. Martin’s initial aim to cleanse the Church from within speaks positive for him. Even Martin Luther was horrified by the madness let loose after his initial reformation attempts and he despised people like Zwingli and I believe was wary of Calvin and would have been horrified by the radical reformists.