History of the Modern World by Colton and Palmer

Chapter 2 Pg 46-91

• Upheaval in Christendom 1300-1560

• Disasters of the 14th Century
• Latin Christendom the first major civilization to become secularized
• The Black Death and its Consequences
○ Almost half of Europe’s population as wiped out by bubonic plague in 1348,
spreading general disorganization.
• Labor scarcity led to higher wages; other areas poor could not find work.
• Upper classes try wage control: English Statute of Laborers, 1351
• Wide-scale rebellions by workers – in England called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, 1381
• Hundred Years War – started in 1337 to 1443; England invaded France – used a
strategy called “chevauchée”
• France revitalized, stimulated by Joan of Arc, who helped bring the war to and
end in 1453
• War of the Roses 1455-1485, a dynastic struggle between eh Lancasters and
the Yorks. Finally settled by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII
• One result of the War of Roses: patriotism rose and Parliament widened their
powers

Troublesomes of the Medieval Church

• 1300: Church at its zenith; but it existed for those who conducted their faith
• Boniface VIII issues Papal bull of 1302
○ Unam Sanctum – no salvation outside the church – a response to Edward I of
England and Philip the Fair of France
• Philip moved the next pope to Avignon – “The Babylon Captivity” of the church.
With one pope in Rome and one in Avignon, the Great Schism of the West
continued for 40 years
• After the plague, two popes, symptoms of mass neurosis began to appear:
Dance of Death, Black Mass, flagellant.
• In England, William Langland’s “Piers Plowman, c. 1372-89
• John Wycliffe, an Oxford teacher and the “dawn star” of the Protestant
Reformation, said that church may not be necessary for salvation
• Protesters against the wealth and power of the clergy called Lollards believed in
a life based on the Bible. Maybe half of England were Lollards by 1395.
Influenced by Wycliffe

The Concillar Movement

• European wide church council met in Pisa, in 1409 to reform the church deposed
both popes, elected another.
• Concil at Constance met in 1414 – not much reform but they invited accused
heretic John Huss to give his side of the story.
• All three popes were persuaded to withdraw, replaced by Martin V.
• Majority wanted to make the councils, permanent, pope as constitutional
monarch.
 • Church increasingly corrupted by money
○ Simony
○ Nepotism
○ Indulgences
○ Annates
○ Sexually Active Churchmen
• Concillor movement hurt by founding of the Gallican church in 1438
• Last concil held at Basel in 1499

The Renaissance in Italy

• Renaissance means “rebirth” – centered in Italy in the 15th century.

• Quattrocento – a new era of thought and feeling
• Introduced a purely secular (worldly rather than spiritual) attitude.
• Epitome of the Renaissance was Florence.
• Craft became art, trade became high finance.
• Another Florentine, Nicolo Machiavelli’s (1469-1527) wrote The Prince and the
Discourses, attempts to establish rules for the conduct of political life based on
examples taken from history; from warfare among Italian city-states
• The greatest of the Renaissance families were the Medicis (also the Guelfs and
Ghibellines), began as a merchant banking family and developed later into the
greatest political leaders (Florence) of their time.
• What captivated the Italians was the sense of man’s tremendous powers, a life
of involvement, adventure, and enjoyment of wealth.
• Emphasis on the individual and civic duty influenced by the ancients (Cicero,
Plato, Aristotle)
○ Something new: the cult of the great individual – emphasis on great
attainments; individuals shaped their destinies – “Virtu” – fortune…as seen in
Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography.

• In sculpture, focus on human beings; not just saints; free standing

Renaissance Architecture

• Adapted Greco-Roman principles; public & private buildings; nonreligious.

• But there was still great interest in the life of the spirit – Savonarola, a monk
who gained control of Florence and burned worldly belongings in his “bonfire of
the vanities”.
Humanism

• Literary movement called humanism because of the rising interest in human

letters, litterae humaniores; primary audience = urban elites.
• Humanists wrote about general questions; their own states of mind; used words
for artistic effects; amusement; no interest in national movements.
• Curriculum based on the study of the study of the classics, rhetoric, and history,
they wrote in Latin, but not medieval or “Scholastic” Latin
• Humanism drew its main inspiration from classical languages and literature –
Cicero, Livy, Plato, and Aristotle.
• Most humanists wrote in Italian
• Dante’s Divine Comedy was written in Tuscan Italian

• Petrarch (1304-1374) a poet, made literature a kind of calling; also a

consideration of moral philosophy – still related, but no longer subordinate to
religion.
• Best remembered for his sonnets with an emphasis on life, love, beauty, writing
as a tool to commune with yourself.
• “Humanism” when applied to Renaissance Italy, refers primarily to non-Christian
themes that became prominent in art and literature
• Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) Decameron was a collection of stories that portrayed
the lives of city people with little reference to the conventions of chivalry.
• Also new critical attitudes: Lorenzo Valla, one of the founders of textual
criticism; he proved the Donation of Constantine was a forgery.
• Humanism’s most lasting impression; introduced ability groupings; rhetoric –
the art of influencing others
• For manners: Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier
○ A guide to refined behavior and etiquette

Politics and the Italian Renaissance

• Renaissance produced no institution or great idea by which society could be

held together.
• No Nationalism – masses would not fight for their city or state. Politics became a
tangled web of subterfuge and conspiracy. Condottieri hired as mercenary
soldiers
• Machiavelli concluded that rulers only did what was in their best interests –
anticipated the New Monarchies.
• Italian city-states proved vulnerable to rising national monarchies. Italy first
invaded by France in 1494.
• Renaissance Italy faded away when a horde of Spaniards, Germans, and Italians
sacked Rome in 1527 (Italian Wars)
• Meanwhile: Italian culture spread to the rest of Europe

The Renaissance Outside Italy

 • Northern Renaissance made a blend of old and new – greater interest in
religious piety, a fusion of Christian and classical ideas

Religious Scholarship and Science

Italy N. Europe
Pagan Humanism Christian Humanism
None in Italy in 15th Century “Scholastic” and monkish but
many new universities in the North

Germany

• Center of European life before the shift of commercial artery from Central
Europe to the Atlantic
• Politically, the German-speaking world was ill-defined and ill-organized but
great independence, prosperity
• Busy Trade, Hanseatic League, created necessary order and protection that
would later be taken over by the modern state.
• Great technical inventiveness in mining and printing. With printing, learning
became easier, stimulating literacy. Ideas spread more rapidly, but censorship
increased.
• Germany also had the richest banking families in Europe, Jacob Fugger.
• In science: Johann Muller (Regiomontanus) who revived trigonometry.
• Nicholas of Cusa – applied math to the study of the universe
• Copernicus – Heliocentric Theory (Sun in the middle of solar system)
• Also the finest cartographers (map makers) came from Germany
• In painting: Durer, Holbein, Van Eyck, Bruegal, and others.

North of the Alps

• The idea of man’s power to understand and control physical nature

South of the Alps

• The infinite richness of man’s personality

Mysticism and Lay Religion

• South: aesthetic
• North: Mystical somber
• Meister Eckart (d 1327) – God can only be known outside of ordinary human
experience – divine revelation to the inner soul.
• Thomas A. Kempis (1380-1471) – Imitation of Christ – the individual soul could
commune directly w/ God; church, sacraments not needed.
• Lay Religion – Religion led by those outside the church.
• Gerard Groote founded the Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, a
modern Devotion commune run w/o clergy (1374)
○ No binding religious vows
 ○ Received papal approval
○ Wore ordinary clothing
○ Students organized by grade/ability
○ Instill tolerance, reverence, brotherhood.

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536)

• The father of Northern Humanism

○ Greatest of all the Northern humanists
○ Father if biblical criticism: wanted to restore the experiences of Christ to the
center of Christianity; apply Renaissance scholarship to the questions of
ecclesiastical moral reform.
○ Many of his popular writings were how-to books such as the “Handbook of a
Christian Knight”
○ Also wrote In Praise of Folly (1500) a witty satire on the abuses of the church
and other assorted areas of excess
• Erasmian Virtues are defined as mildness, reasonableness, tolerance, scholarly
understanding, love of peace, critical and reforming zeal, hating no one, imitate
Christ.

9/15/08

New Monarchies in France

Began with Louis XI (r. 1461-1483)

• Gained more power than English Kings

• Raised taxes without parliament
• Only one meeting of the Estates General

Francis I (r. 1515-1547)

• Passed Concordant of Bologna (1516) to control French Clergy

New Monarchies in Spain

• Various kingdoms joined into two

○ Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469
• Little or no Spanish national feeling
• One common institution: the Inquisition.
• Church rid of abuses and inertia by 1500
• Established conformity and loyalty to the monarchy through the church
• Reconquista completed by 1492 (pregnant year) with the inclusion of Granada
taken back from the Moors.
• Expelled the Jews in 1492, England had expelled the Jews in 1290; France in
1306
○ Moriscos: Christians of Moorish background
 ○ Marranos: Christians of Jewish background
 Both groups underwent suspicion as “crypto” Jews and Muslims.

Holy Roman Empire

• Four kinds of states in the Empire

1. Princely States – Little hereditary monarchies (used primogeniture – land is
passed onto son)
2. Ecclesiastical States – non-hereditary church states
3. Imperial Free States – 50 dominated commercial, financial life.
4. Thousands of imperial knights
• Electing the Emperor vested in 7 electors:
○ 4 primary lords
○ 3 ecclesiastical lords (after 1356)
• Electors chose the Archduke of Austria (Habsburg) to be emperor after 1452 –
Habsburgs rule consistently until 1806
• Principles of New Monarchy did not work well in large states – worked best in
hereditary states of reasonable size.

Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519)

• Tried to centralize the Holy Roman Empire as a New Monarchy

• Maximilian’s grandson becomes Charles V (1519-1555)
○ Beyond all comparison, the most powerful ruler of his day – failed as new
monarch
• They were leading characters and two main political opponents in first half of
16th Century.

9/16/08

In 1526 the Turks defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohacs, and Hungary
lost their king; elected Charles’ brother Ferdinand as their new king.

The Religious Revolution and the Emergence of Protestantism

Christendom

/ \

Catholic Protestant

• Protestantism grew out of the following factors:

1. Decline of the church
2. Growth of secular humanism
3. Spread of lay religion
4. Rise of monarchs who wished to control entire kingdom
5. Lassitude (carelessness) of the popes and their fear of councils
6. Atomistic (little parts) devision of Germany
 7. Turkish peril
8. Zeal of Spain
9. Preeminence of Charles V
10.Fear of the rise of Habsburg power…

The Protestant Reformation

• Three factors that led to the emergence of Protestantism

1. Laboring poor
2. Middle classes
3. Kings and ruling princes
• By 1600, the second and third groups had won
• The original Protestants were loosely formed, unorganized revolutionaries.

Louise Labé: The Education of Women

• Distaffs and spindles.

Luther & Lutheranism

• Luther was a monk driven by spiritual conviction that he was damned; inspired
by St. Paul
• Martin Luther: (1483-1546) was the first to successfully defy the church
• In 1517, John Tetzel was sent to Wittenburg by Pope Leo X to sell indulgences.

(95 Theses) (9/17)

• It was Tetzel’s preaching that spurred Luther to publish his 95 Theses.

• So, Luther, initially attacked the Catholic Church on the grounds that it used
indulgences as a fundraising device.
• Luther posted his 95 Theses – a few of the most interesting follow:
○ 6: The pop has power to remit any guilt, except by declaring and warranting
it to have been remitted by God.
○ 32: Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of
their own salvation, will eternally be damned along with their teachers.
○ 45. Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, passes him
by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the
pope, but the indignation of God
○ 50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the
pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes,
than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep
○ 90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and
not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope
to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy
• Luther said make your own interpretation of the Bible – a trulyt revolutionary
statement – faith is key to salvation; a minstry of all believers.
• Luther won many supporters because of the resentment in Germany against
Rome
 • Luther also denounced fasts, pilgramages, saints, masses, purgatory, rich
priests, and monasticism.
• He was also anti-Semitic, believed in witches; believed the clergy should marry
and that women should be deferential to their husbands.
• Charles V intived Luther in 1521 to the Diet of Worms – he had already been
excommunicated by the pope.
• Melanchthon spent much time on educational reform and attempted to
compromise with the Catholics; the “left wing” of the reformation.

• A League of Imperial (Holy Roman Empire) knights, adopting Luthernaism,

attacked their neighbors hoping to enlarge their territory.
• Peasant Rebellion of 1524-25 a combination of new religious ideas and peasant
demands – led by Thomas Muntzer
○ Condemned by Luther who supported the prevailing social/political order.
• Diet of Augsburg = “Confession of Augsburg.”
• Luther was horrified the way the religious revolution had become confused with
social revolution – he believed good Christians were obedient.

9/18

• Major protestant and Roman Catholic leaders of the 16th Century condemned
the Anabaptists because they advocated a complete seperation of church/state
• Most successful revolutionaries – higher orders of the empire against the
emperor, occurred mostly in imperial free cities, dynastic states in the North of
Germany – confiscating church land gave them a strong material interest in the
success of Luthernaism.
• Schmalkaldic League formed by Lutheran princes against the emperor
• League supported by Francis I of France – became policy of France to keep a
balance of power by keeping Germany divided.

• Peace of Augsburg (1555) – Ended the war between Catholic/Protestant princes

– allowed “cuius regio eius religio” (The ruler of the territory chooses its
religion)
• It was a victory for Lutheranism and states’ rights.
• The Peace of Augsburg was a step in the disintegration of Germany into
increasingly separate states.
• Lutheranism also adopted by Denmark/Sweden

Calvin and Calvinism

• John Calvin (1509-1564) trained as a priest/lawyer; had a religious awakening at

the age of 24 and joined the Lutheran Revolutionaries.
• At 27, he published Institutes of the Christian Religion – a more universal appeal
that Luther – agreed on most ideas except:
1. Predestination
2. Attitude to society and state:
 a. Chrstianize the state
b. Lay control of the church
c. Broke the monopoly of priestly power
d. Promoted secularization
• Calvin was “called” to Geneva where he established the center of his reformed
church.
○ Calvin was far from Democratic
○ But he did help develop democracy
○ Developed a type of self government
○ Did not believe authority passed from god to kings
○ Hard work was pleasing in the eyes of “God” – Calvinism
○ Believed in burning heretics

9/19

The Reformation in England

Reformation in England was peculiar because its government broke with the Roman
Church before adopting Protestant Principles

• Henry VIII (r 1509-1547) – orthodox Catholic; disliked Lutheranism

• 1534 Henry passes the Act of Supremacy he becomes the head of the Church of
England – everyone required to take an oath of loyalty.
• Thomas Moore – (1478-1535) The English Statesman and author of Utopia;
refused to recognize the king’s sovereignty over the English Church and
beheaded by Henry VIII for his refusal.
• But Henry still embraced the doctrines of Rome, passed the Six Articles
requiring priests to remain celibate: kept transubstantiation, etc…

• Next under Elizabeth (r. 1558-1602) England became more Protestant in its own
way.

• Church of England, Anglicans, obliged everyone to belong; retained most of the

possessions and internal organization of medieval church.
• No Cult of the saints; clergy allowed to marry; church dogmas broad,
ambiguous; replaced Latin with English in the Liturgy.
• Church of Ireland was Established