the church ranked one man more "legitimate" than another man rather than created them as equal. The Church always recognized (in general) the legitimacy of secular authority, but insisted that this had no relation to the spiritual worth of anyone, whereas at least some strands of Protestantism (especially Calvinism) maintained that worldly and financial success proved evidence of Election.
Please, the entire feudal structure was sanctified and legitimated by the church. The Protestant Reformation was the necessary intellectual predicate for overturning that structure. All of this nonsense we are reading on this thread about when does the medieval age begin, that the divine right of kings which was around in concept long before the Reformation was fashioned by Protestants and much more is an elaborate and contorted reinvention of the sweep of history.
Luther was never capable intellectually or theologically of pursuing his insights fully into the political realm, for example, he could not side with the peasants and their revolt against the nobility but it was his initial contribution that has set us on the road to 1776.
My remarks are not by way of criticism of Catholicism but mere historical observation of the contribution of Martin Luther, which might have been limited in its political application by the man himself but which was absolutely essential.
