The Research paper will focus on the Protestant Reformation and the cultural pol

The Research paper will focus on the Protestant Reformation and the cultural politics of religious dissent. This paper must bring ethical reasoning and analysis to bear with this topic. As Renaissance scholar Theodore K. Rabb argues in The Last Days of the Renaissance & the March to Modernity- before the end of the 14th century, Rome “had been able to absorb the ideas of a dissenter such as St. Francis when he called for simpler forms of devotion.” By the dawn of the 15th century, however, the reaction to dissent “was a turn to persecution and violence.” (p.25). The two key figures are John Wycliffe in England, and Jan Hus in Bohemia, the latter of whom, for his dissent, was burned at stake in 1415. In this paper, students will focus on these two dissenters and why and the rift in religious belief that they helped open widened in the following century, culminating in the most radical dissenter of all, Martin Luther.