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On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back 500 years to the moment Martin Luther challenged the power and authority of the Catholic Church.

Peter Stanford brings to light the character of this lowly born German monk in a new biography.

Prior to Luther, for a thousand years the Catholic Church had been one of the greatest powers on earth, but in her study of the Italian Renaissance the writer Sarah Dunant reveals how bloated, corrupt and complacent it had become. Dunant also explores the role of the Church in the home, in a new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Madonnas and Miracles, before the Reformation swept away such iconography.

The historian Alec Ryrie charts the rise of the Protestant faith from its rebellious beginnings to the present day, while the sociologist Linda Woodhead asks whether the defining characteristics of Protestant Britain, such as the freedom of the individual, national pride and a strong work ethic are still relevant today.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Boy falling from a window, 1592 (c) Museo degli ex voto del santuario di Madonna dell'Arco.