I've heard the case made before that both the allowance of (people outside The Church) translating the Bible along with increasing literacy (and publishing capability) did much to effectively line up the pins for Martin Luther and Church of England to contest interpretation of it on a wide scale.
this is something you don't see
at all in the East. Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian churches existed in full communion with the Orthodox, Greek see in Constantinople.* Discourse between the sees was the norm for centuries until boundaries were redrawn, and each church assumed autocephaly/autonomy/complete detachment depending on the new political climate (which kind of explains why they became important national/cultural symbols in the Modern Period).
I don't study the Catholic Church in the High Middle Ages/Early Modern Period (from what I've read it's fascinating though, from a power politics perspective), but a big theme I've gleaned from people who do know what they're talking about is that Rome's first interest is making sure that the laity's conversation with God happens through the Church. If you preach while claiming an authority that isn't mediated through the papacy you're an apostate. If the region you're preaching in also happens to be a political powder keg (Albigensian Crusade/Hussite Wars), that's a recipe for inquisition. Rome isn't necessarily interested in what you believe, but how you believe it and it follows that standardizing the vernacular of the Bible provides a huge advantage to the Church in interpretation.
It's really tempting to draw parallels between the Reformation and what we're seeing in the Middle East right now (burgeoning nation-states, technology providing access to a vocal and liberal lower/middle class), the issue is that, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1923, there is no formal head of (Sunni) Islam. The Salafi/Wahhabi factions who would be opposed to vernacular Qur'ans are just that, factions, who hold significant political capital, but not absolute appellancy. From what I've read, opposition to a nebulous western imperialism (which, in light of the past 100 years, is a little justified, if not well-articulated to say the least) is just about the only consensus opinion within the Middle East writ large; political thinking is incredibly fragmented, as well it should be because we're talking about 50+ countries spanning half the globe. I'm not fully informed about the Middle East's economic climate, but I can't imagine that in a global economy that forces you to organize and standardize your human capital in order to compete, there won't be increasing pressure from the bottom up for states to conform to Western educational and human rights standards,
especially provided the West's (ostensible) current economic hegemony.
tl;dr: something something, legacy of the Enlightenment, you imperialist kuffar have nothing to worry about
spoiler (click to show/hide)
iirc, the rhetoric coming from Westminster during the Henrician Reformation was way more about royal supremacy than interpretive theology/exegesis per se. The English people during the 16th century are considered to be way more conservative than the subjects in the HRE
*edit: and later on, Slavic churches as well, obv
