Reformation. Like many of the Christian humanists, including Erasmus, Luther despaired of the immorality, extravagance and venality of the Roman Church, and longed for a return to a purer faith rooted in the teaching of the Scriptures. But the ninety-five theses he nailed to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517 were the product of his own inner spiritual turmoil rather than radical revolutionary fervour. The cosmopolitan, liberal, colourful character of the Renaissance began to founder amid the increasingly nationalistic, authoritarian and austere atmosphere generated by the religious divide. The complex, brooding figures of Luther and his unrelenting enemy, the Emperor Charles V, dominates the period Elton describes with so much energy and panache. Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance The final volume in the set takes us in the steps of the great explorers and navigators - Columbus, Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and Amerigo Vespucci among them. These men were to define the parameters of the known world, and once again it was the discovery of a classical Geography, written in the 2nd century by Ptolemy, that provided the spur. Their ventures into a brave new world are the subject of Boies Penrose's Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance . In the wake of conquerors like Columbus went others - some for gain, more in search of religious tolerance and personal liberty. Some were scholars, carrying with them the fruits of the new learning.