The Reformation was a religious, cultural and political movement that started in the 16th century and sought to renew the Roman Catholic Church and led to the division of Western Christianity into different branches: Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed. The initiator of the Reformation in Germany was the Catholic priest and Augustinian monk Martin Luther. It began in 1517, when Luther allegedly nailed 95 theses "against the abuse of indulgences" to the door of a church in the German town of Wittenberg.