In most areas where Protestantism took hold, the historically dominant religion was Catholicism. At the time, the Catholic Church maintained careful control over the Bible, and Catholics typically absorbed its teachings orally at church. Martin Luther changed that: he wrote the first influential German translation of the Bible and preached that every school in every town should teach children to read scripture. That meant people had to learn to read. And once they could read, a whole world of information was at their fingertips.
