For one thing, there were about 100 religious feast days a year, and they provided the only real relief from work most peasants got. This is in contrast to the urban merchants, who viewed holy days as a loss of opportunity to buy and sell and make money. Protestantism was much more popular among the mercantile class. In the cities, the artisans have also been affected by economic change. Their guilds, traditionally the most powerful corporations in most towns, have been losing ground to the emerging urban oligarchy of the wealthy neo-capitalists.
Urban poverty is also a big social problem.
However, new trades like printing have opened up new opportunities. Merchants and tradesmen in the new industries are more likely to be literate, and for a while, were more likely to be Protestant as well. The major cities have been strongholds for the Catholic League, Paris being the foremost. Because the League advocated deposing a legitimate monarch, they ended up attracting political extremists that proclaimed that all power came from the people. The chaos of civil war has meant that for the first time in centuries, commoners may find themselves in careers as soldiers.