The formation of the territorial state in upper Franconia was connected to a broader transformation of society at the local level. That transformation, moreover, had significant religious overtones, so much so that we have been able to describe local changes as manifestations of the late-medieval reformatio. As suggested in that claim, however, the reforms we observed in towns and villages such as Marktschorgast and Gefrees did not occur in a vacuum. In this chapter and the next, we will sketch out the specific events that drove the reform movements, first in the Hochstift Bamberg and then, in the next chapter, in the Hohenzollern lands. In both territories, events on the imperial stage in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had a significant impact on both political consolidation and religious reform. Franconia figured prominently in the political system of the Luxemburg emperor Charles IV. Under Bishop Lamprecht von Brunn, Bamberg played a leading role in the imperial Landfriede. The various crises that followed Charles' death, however, fundamentally altered the nature of both imperial and regional politics. Before 1378 the emperors were primarily interested in restoring imperial authority and maintaining the peace. The Great Schism, the collapse of imperial authority under Wenceslas and Ruprecht, the outbreak of the Hussite War, and a range of local rebellions that accompanied these events were catalysts for a much more ambitious program of religious and political reform than would have been conceivable a century earlier.