The most traumatic era in the entire history of Roman Catholicism, some have argued, was the period from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 16th. This was the time when Protestantism, through its definitive break with Roman Catholicism, arose to take its place on the Christian map. It was also the period during which the Roman Catholic Church, as an entity distinct from other “branches” of Christendom, even of Western Christendom, came into being.
