The revolution in spirit and customs brought about the Reformation led to the total destruction of Renaissance ideals. The Renaissance conceived of the natural and social world as a spiritual organism in which perpetual exchanges of phantasmic messages occurred. That was the principle of magic and of Eros, Eros itself being a form of magic.
The Reformation destroys this structure of phantasms in motion; it forbids the use of imagination and proclaims the necessity for total suppression of sinful nature. It even attempts artificially to make the sexes one and the same sop that natural temptations might disappear.
-I. Couliano. Eros et magie a la Renaissance.