UNIT 10 - The Renaissance, Reformation, & Scientific Revolution

The Italian Renaissance

• Europeans experienced a golden age of art, literature, and education

• The Renaissance was a rebirth of the heritage of Greece and Rome

• The Renaissance began in urban Italy because urban areas breed innovation

  • Urban definition: City-like

• Italy was the center of the Commercial Revolution and had many merchants and bankers who had gained great wealth

• They used this wealth to promote art and became known as patrons

• Italians were able to draw inspiration from the ruins of Rome and Latin texts

• They also benefited from the influx of Byzantine scholars to Rome, with Greek manuscripts in hand, following the fall of Constantinople

• Europeans also developed a new way of thinking known as Humanism

• During the Middle Ages, many believed that human beings were sinful and thus deserved to suffer in this world. Human beings could only achieve happiness in the next world

• The Medieval worldview is best associated with Saint Augustine’s work, City of God

• In contrast, Humanists believed that happiness could and should be attained in this world. Happiness can be achieved through human thought and action

• Thus, Humanism revived the Greco-Roman belief that human beings could learn about themselves and their environment and use that knowledge to make this world a better place

• A premium on a system of education that did not emphasize occupation occurred

Art of the Italian Renaissance

• Medieval art often lacked proportion and perspective. The subjects were religious and fully clothed

• Renaissance art, by contrast, had proportion and perspective. The use of a vanishing point created an illusion of three dimensions

• Renaissance art also involved secular, as well as religious, subjects. Subjects were also often portrayed in the nude

• Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael were the four most famous Renaissance artists

• Donatello created the first nude bronze sculpture since the Classical Period. He chose David as the subject. (KNOW DAVID)

• Michelangelo was an exceptional painter, sculptor, and architect. He is best known for painting the Sistine Chapel. (KNOW CHAPEL, ITS ROOF & HIS DAVID IN MARBLE)

• Michelangelo was an exceptional architect and he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica

• Leonardo da Vinci was known for painting the Mona Lisa & The Last Supper (KNOW BOTH)

• Raphael’s best work was the School of Athens. This work arranges a meeting of the greatest minds in history (KNOW)

• By the late 1400s, the Renaissance had spread to Northern Europe. Many of the patrons were kings

• German engraver and woodcutter, Albrecht Durer was also one of the best. (KNOW THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE)

Writers of the Renaissance

• Nicola Machiavelli is famous for writing a political guidebook called The Prince. In The Prince, Machiavelli examines how a ruler can gain and keep power

  • His quote: “Look to results. If a prince succeeds in establishing and maintaining his authority the means will always be approved”

  • Interpretation: “The ends justify the means”. He said that as long as you achieve your goal, the way you achieve it doesn’t matter. Even if it meant you lied, cheated, and stole your way through

• Christine Pizan’s classic work, The Book of the City of Ladies, relayed positive stories of women in history and argued that it was imperative to educate women

• William Shakespeare was the most famous writer of the Elizabethan Age. His most controversial work is named The Merchant of Venice

  • See passage highlighted in pg. 18. The play was controversial because some thought Shakespeare was encouraging anti-semitism while others thought he was trying to humanize the Jews and reduce discrimination against them

• Desiderius Erasmus was a Christian Humanist from Holland. Erasmus’ most famous work was The Praise of Folly, a text that criticized the corruption in the Christian Church. A well-known example of this is the meeting between Pope Julius ll and Peter at Heaven’s gates

  • See Passage in pg. 20

  • Examples of un-Christian papal behavior described by Erasmus are simony, Incest, Patricide, Murder, Children out of wedlock, Invading territories with armies, and Obsession with political power/wealth

Causes of the Reformation

• Johann Gutenberg “invented” the printing press. He took the original technology from the Chinese

• The spread of new ideas would engender the Reformation, a movement for religious reform

• The Reformation would result in the founding of new Christian churches that did not accept the authority of the Pope

• These ideas of the Reformation were nothing new. People had been criticizing the Church’s ways for centuries

• However, these ideas spread with great rapidity due to the printing press

• A political cause for the Reformation was the fact that kings and princes resented the authority of the pope and thus came to support any movement that served to weaken the papacy

• Economic causes included people resented paying taxes to popes. They wanted their nation to break from the pope, so they would no longer have to send money to Rome

• The central causes of the Reformation, however, were of a religious nature

• Many popes were more concerned with secular, rather than spiritual, matters

• Many Bishops received their position due to simony rather than spiritual insight. They focused on political and economic, as opposed to spiritual, concerns

• Furthermore, many priests were drunkards and gamblers. Many also married and had illegitimate children. They were also illiterate. Thus, many were unable to read the bible and would make up prayers

• How could they teach others about the Bible if they could not read it? Were the prayers ineffectual if they were said by a sinner or, in fact, not prayers at all? More importantly, could the sacraments be administered by an individual who was so sinful? These were all questions that arose during the time

• The Sacrament of Penance = Express Contrition

  • Contrition definition: the state of feeling remorseful and penitent

The Reformation

• Martin Luther never believed that he could do enough good works to please god and earn salvation

• Luther found peace, however, when he reasoned that human beings are so sinful that they could never do enough good work to earn salvation. God is so merciful that he will provide salvation for all those who believe in him

• “People are saved not by good works, but by faith alone”

• This belief would put Martin Luther in direct conflict with Friar Johan Tetzel. He was sent to Germany to raise money through the sale of indulgences

• During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church began to sell indulgences. The purchase of an indulgence served as penance for a sin

• John Tetzel also began to sell indulgences with the promise that they would reduce the time your deceased relatives would have to spend in purgatory

• Luther was outraged. Allowing a person to buy indulgences for another severed the connection between confession and contrition

• He posted his 95 Theses that criticized the practices of the Catholic Church with which he disagreed, including the sale of indulgences

• Luther maintained that the Bible, not the Pope or other members of the clergy, was the source of authority for a Christian life

• The Holy Roman Emperor declared Luther a heretic (he was living in the empire)

• As a result, the Empire was torn apart by a civil war in which princes/kings loyal to the pope went to war with princes/kings loyal to Martin Luther and his subjects Protestants/Lutherans

The Reformation in England

• Within the Holy Roman Empire Protestants were known as Lutherans

• Yet, Protestantism would quickly spread to England where it would lead to the rise of another Protestant sect, Anglicanism

• However, Henry VIII would break with the pope and the Catholic Church because of politics

• Fearful that he would not have a male heir, Henry VIII sought an annulment from the pope, but he refused

• The king decided to take matters into his own hands. Henry VIII divorced his wife

• He then called on Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy, The act required that all subjects take an oath recognizing the divorce and accept that the king, not the pope, was the official head of England’s church

• Upon the death of Henry VIII, Edward became king of England and his advisors were devout Protestants

• King Edward died and power was passed to Henry VIII’s oldest daughter, Mary

• Mary became the first queen of England and she restored the rule of the Catholic Church in England and executed many Protestants thus earning the name Bloody Mary

• Mary died and was replaced on the throne by her half-sister Elizabeth and she returned England to Protestantism

• However, in an attempt to appeal to all of her subjects, Elizabeth established the Anglican Church

• The Anglican Church included elements of both the Protestant and Catholic faiths. To appeal to Catholics, Church buildings and vestments (clothing) would remain

• For Protestants, priests would be allowed to marry and mass would be conducted in English

• Conflict with Catholic Spain arose and when Elizabeth rejected Philip II’s marriage proposal things escalated

Calvinism and the Counter-Reformation

• Protestantism also spread to France. John Calvin gave Luther’s theology a new twist

• Calvin believed, however, that a select few, known as the elect, would be saved

• Calvin taught that membership in the elect was predetermined, or chosen by god at the beginning of time. This choice was unconditional and not based on any characteristic or action of the person selected. This is known as the doctrine of predestination

• Calvin resolved this dilemma by reintroducing the Catholic doctrine of good works and faith, but flipping it on its head

• Calvin established a theocracy at Geneva in which gambling, dancing, theater, and wearing bright clothing were outlawed

• Those who disobeyed the rules were ignored, then banished from the city, and finally burned at the stake

• The Anabaptists argued that baptism should only be performed on consenting adults. They based this belief on the fact that infant baptism is not mentioned in the Bible. Anabaptist means “baptize again”

• Protestant teaching led to the development of many different Protestant groups because they could read the Bible and had different interpretations. The printing press and the rise in literacy also aided in this

• The Council of Trent held by Catholics maintained:

  • The Catholic Church is responsible for interpreting the Bible. Individual interpretations are heretical

  • The Bible and the Church are equal authorities

  • All 7 sacraments are important

  • Faith and good works achieve salvation

  • Indulgences are valid only as a means of earthly penance

• This division of Christians would shatter the religious unity of Western Europe

The Scientific Revolution

• Western Europe experienced a revolution in thought concerning the operation of the natural world during the scientific revolution

• The Scientific Revolution had several causes:

  • The Renaissance and the Reformation encouraged education and the questioning of tradition, respectively

  • Exploration of better-navigated instruments of new worlds and ways of life

  • The printing press spread new ideas

• The Revolution shifted the geocentric view of the solar system to a heliocentric view

• The geocentric view maintained that the Earth was an immovable object at the center of the solar system

• The moon, sun, and the planets all moved in perfectly circular paths around the earth

• The geocentric view espoused authoritative classic thinkers and the Catholic Church also endorsed it

• But knowledge based upon observation, belief, and authority can be wrong

• The Revolution maintained that knowledge should come from experimentation

• Copernicus studied the movement of the planets and determined that they couldn’t be explained by a geocentric model (deduction)

• Copernicus revived Aristarchus’ heliocentric model which maintained that the sun was at the center of the solar system (induction)

• The Heliocentric model was more accurate but not perfect

• Johannes Kepler found that the planets revolve around the sun in an elliptical path

• Galileo Galilei expressed support for the heliocentric model

• The Catholic Church was outraged. They feared that people would begin to question their teaching and authority

• He was called in before the Inquisition and under the threat of torture he recanted his support for the new model and lived under house arrest until his death

• Issac Newton came to realize that the motion of all physical objects, from those on Earth to those in space, was governed by the same principles

• Newton also developed the universal law of gravitation. This law maintains that every object in the universe attracts every other object

• The degree of attraction, however, is dependent on the mass of both objects and the distance between them