Die Geburt der westlichen Moderne aus dem Geist der Religion

The question of which chain of circumstances led to the development of Western modernity
was once the central question in the social-historical work of Max Weber. In contrast
to Weber, the article does not go back to the Protestant ethic to identify an important
starting point for the emergence of Western modernity, but to the Gregorian reform in
the High Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church's claims to supremacy over all areas
of society have triggered defensive reactions in politics, law, economics, philosophy and
morality that continue to have an impact today, beyond the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
Western modernity emerged in demarcation and confrontation with the imperial
power of the Roman Church, by partially adopting its organizational forms and ideas, but
above all by rejecting its universal claim to validity and building non-religious, secular
structures and semantics.