Period 1: The Renaissance to the Wars of Religion (1450–1648)

Check this flashcard reviewer of all the important dates in Period 1.

1.1: The Renaissance: An Overview

• Georgio Vasari
  • A 16th-century painter, architect, and writer.
  • He used the Italian word rinascita (rebirth) to describe the Renaissance era.
• In the mid-15th century, the printing press was invented which allowed these cultural trends to spread to other parts of Europe.
  • This led to the creation of the Northern Renaissance movement.
• Italian Renaissance writers — focused on secular concerns.
• Northern Europe Renaissance writers — focused on religious concerns.
  • This led to the creation of the Protestant Reformation Movement.

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1.2: The Italian City-States

• Renaissance Italy's City-states: Located at the heart of Europe's economic, political, and cultural life during the 14th to 15th century.
• Holy Roman Empire: They were in control of the town of northern Italy during the Middle Ages.
• Popolo (the people): An urban underclass who wanted their share of wealth and political power.
• Ciompi Revolt (1378): A revolt formed by the Popolo who expressed their dissatisfaction with the political and economic order by staging a violent struggle against the government in Florence.
• In Milan, the resulting social tensions that occurred led to the rise of a signor (tyrant), and the city became dominated by Sforza — a family of mercenaries.
  • Medici: This family used their banking wealth to establish themselves as the Florentine republic's behind-the-scenes rulers and later as hereditary dukes of the city.
• Central Italy in the Mediterranean was ideal for creating links between the Greek culture of the East and the Latin culture of the West.
• Southern Italy had been home to many Greek colonies and later served as the center of the Roman Empire.
• Classic Civilization has never disappeared to the Italian mainland.

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1.3: Humanism

• Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374)
  • Considered the founder of humanism.
  • Coined the phrase “Dark Ages” — to denote what he thought was the cultural decline that took place following the collapse of the Roman world in the 5th century.
  • Was engaged with the works of Cicero — a philosopher and a politician who provided accounts of the collapse of the Roman Republic.
  • His goal is to write in the Ciceronian style.
  • His works inspired the ‘civic humanists’ — a group of young wealthy Florentines.
• The revival of Greek is one of the most significant aspects of the Italian Renaissance.
  • Oration on the Dignity of Man — written by Pico Della Mirandola; expressed here is the positive Platonic view of human potential.
  • Florentine Platonic Academy — which is sponsored by Cosimo de Medici; merged platonic philosophy with Christianity to Neoplatonism.
  • The Courier (1528) — written by Castiglione.
  • Renaissance Man: A person who knew several languages, was familiar with classical literature, and was also skilled in arts
• Lorenzo Valla
  • He realized that languages can tell a history all their own.
  • He proved that the Donation of Constantine turned control of the western half of his empire over to the papacy, and could not have been written by Constantine.
  • He also took his critical techniques to the Vulgate Bible and showed that its author, Jerome, had mistranslated several critical passages from Greek sources.
  • Vulgate Bible: The standard Latin Bible of the Middle Ages.
• Leonardo Bruni
  • He was affected that women don’t have access to humanist teachings.
  • He established an educational program for women — tellingly left out of his curriculum the study of rhetoric — those critical parts of male education.
• Christine de Pisan
  • A daughter of the physician to the French King Charles V.
  • She wrote The City of Ladies (1405) to counter the popular notion that women were inferior to men and incapable of making moral choices.
  • She wrote that women have to go out of their comfort zones or move to a “City of Ladies” to flourish their abilities.

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1.4: Renaissance Art

• With the rise of individualism, Renaissance artists have significant individuals in their own right.
  • To become well-known and wealthy, these artists competed for the patronage of nonreligious people.
  • These wealthy people preferred art that showcased their accomplishments over medieval art's spiritual message.
  • These patrons demanded a more naturalistic style, and the invention of fresh artistic techniques helped to fulfill their demands.
• Filippo Brunelleschi’s Dome over the Cathedral of Florence — the first dome to be completed in western Europe since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
• Fresco: A method of art painting that is done on wet plaster or tempera on wood.
• Oil Painting: It was developed in northern Europe and became the dominant method in Italy.
• Chiaroscuro: The use of contrasts between light and dark, to create three-dimensional images.
• Single-point perspective: A painting style that enables painters to create more realistic environments for their work by having all of the features converge at one point in the distance.
• High–Renaissance movement started at the end of the 15th century.
  • During this movement, the center of the Renaissance moved from Florence to Rome.
  • This movement lasted until around the 1520s and is also called Late Renaissance or Mannerism.
  • The artworks featured twisted figures and muddled concepts, which may have represented the growing sense of crisis in the Italian world as a result of both political and religious issues.

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Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

• Labeled as a Renaissance man.
• He was a military engineer, an architect, a sculptor, a scientist, and an inventor whose sketchbooks reveal a remarkable mind that came up with workable designs for submarines and helicopters.
• Recent reconstructions of his designs reveal that he even created a handbag.
• Mona Lisa is one of his famous paintings.

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Raphael (1483–1520)

• He came from the beautiful Renaissance city of Urbino and died at the early age of 37.
• Aside from his wonderfully gentle images of Jesus and Mary, he connects his times to the classical past in “The School of Athens”, which depicts Plato and Aristotle standing together in a fanciful classical structure and employs the deep, single-point perspective.

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Michelangelo (1475–1564)

• David: One of his sculptural masterpieces was commissioned by Florence, as a propaganda work to inspire the citizens in their long struggle against the overwhelming might of Milan.
• He was tasked to create a tomb for Julius II himself.
• Julius II also employed him to work at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
• He exemplified in his final work in the Sistine Chapel, the brilliant yet disturbing Final Judgment.

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1.5: The Northern Renaissance

• By the late 15th century, Italian Renaissance humanism began to affect the rest of Europe.
• Northerners were still trying to deepen their Christian faith and show their humanism.
• Northern Renaissance: A more religious movement than the Italian Renaissance.
• Christian Humanists: These are northern writers who criticized their mother church.

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Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536)

• In Praise of Folly: He used satire as a means of criticizing what he thought were the problems of the Church.
• Handbook of Christian Knight: He emphasized in this work the idea of inner faith as opposed to the outer forms of worship.
• He also made a Latin Translation of the New Testament — it helped understand the life of the early Christians through its close textual analysis of the Acts of the Apostles.
• He wanted to reform the Church, not abandon it.

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Sir Thomas More (1478–1535)

• He is a friend of Erasmus.
• He wrote the classic work Utopia.
• He also coined the word utopia, which means ‘nowhere.’
• He was very critical of some church practices, but in the end, he gave his life to uphold his convictions.
• He was put to death because he refused to swear an oath recognizing Henry as Head of the Church of England.

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Northern Renaissance Culture

• Albrecht Dürer: A brilliant draftsman, whose woodcuts powerfully lent support to the doctrinal revolution brought about by his fellow German Martin Luther.
• The greatest achievements in the arts in Northern Europe in the 16th to 17th centuries — took place in England.
  • Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, which was based on The Decameron by Boccaccio.
• Elizabeth Renaissance: Explains the emergence of the sheer number of men possessing exceptional talent during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
• Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson — though they were both writers of significant repute, this age produced an unrivaled genius— Shakespeare.
• William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
  • He only had a basic education.
  • He was able to write plays like King Lear and Hamlet, which exhibit an unmatched comprehension of the human psyche and a genius for dramatic intensity.

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Printing Press

• The traditional method of producing books, which involved a monk working diligently in a monastic scriptorium, was incapable of meeting the increased demand.
• Johannes Gutenberg
  • He introduced a movable type of printing press to western Europe.
  • Between 1452 and 1453, he printed approximately 200 Bibles.
  • He spent a great deal of money making his Bibles as ornate as any handwritten version.
• Historians regard the printing press as one of the most culturally significant inventions of all time.
• The ability to disseminate printed material quickly almost certainly contributed to the spread of the Reformation.

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1.6: Protestant Reformation

• Protestant Reformation: This movement caused a great split in Western Christendom, displacing the pope as Europe's sole religious authority.
• Although it took decades, the Catholic Reformation movement took a response to the protestants’ challenge.
• The humanism in Renaissance led individuals to question certain parties, such as the efficacy of religious relics and the value to one’s salvation of living the life of a monk.
• The printing press made Bibles more widely available, making the Church's exclusive right to interpret Scripture particularly vexing to those who could read texts.

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Problems Facing the Church on the Eve of Reformation

• Black Death: A ferocious outbreak of plague, struck the population of Europe.
• Anticlericalism: A measure of contempt for the clergy, arising in part from what many saw as individual clergymen's poor performance during the plague's crisis years.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s The Decameron reveal some of the satirical edges with which literate society now greeted clergymen.
• Pietism: The notion of a direct relationship between the individual and God — thereby reducing the importance of the hierarchical Church based in Rome.
• The 14th century was a disaster for the Church — with the papacy under French dominance in the city of Avignon for almost 70 years.
• During the Great Schism of the early 15th century, there were three popes at the same time — all trying to excommunicate one another.
• One of the problems included a poorly educated lower clergy.
  • Peasant priests proved to be unable to put forward a learned response to Luther’s challenge to their church.
• Simony: The selling of church offices.
• In facing some of these problems, some movements arose in the late Middle Ages that were declared heretical by the church.
• In England, John Wycliffe questioned the Church's material wealth, the miracle of sacramental, and penance doctrines, and, in a foretaste of Luther's ideas, the sale of indulgences.
  • He urged followers (the Lollards) to read the Bible and interpret it themselves — which led him to translate the Bible into English.
• In Bohemia, Jan Hus led a revolt that combined religious and nationalistic elements.
  • He believed the Bible, not the church, was most authoritative.
  • He was horrified by what he saw as the clergy's immoral behavior.
  • Jan Hus was called before the Council of Constance in 1415 by Pope Martin V, though he was promised a safe passage, he was condemned as a heretic and burnt at the stake.

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Martin Luther (1483–1546)

• The first issue that brought attention to Luther was the debate over indulgences.
• The selling of indulgences was a practice that began during the time of the Crusades.
  • The papacy sold indulgences that exempted knights from purgatory to recruit them for the crusades and raise money.
  • After the crusade movement ended, the Church began to grant indulgences as a means of filing its treasury.
  • In 1517, Albert of Hohenzollern, who had already held two bishoprics, was offered the Archbishopric of Mainz.
  • He had to raise 10,000 ducats so he borrowed from the Fuggers — the great banking family of the age.
  • To repay his debt, the papacy allowed him to preach an indulgence, with half of the proceeds going to Rome to finish St. Peter's Basilica.
  • Johann Tetzel — was sent to preach indulgence throughout Germany with the famous phrase “As soon as the gold in the basin rings, right then the soul to heaven springs.”
• Luther was outraged by Tetzel's actions and posted his 95 Theses on Wittenberg's Castle Church to start a debate.
• In 1505, he was caught in a thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning struck near him.
  • He cried, “St. Anne help me; I will become a monk. ”
  • He kept his promise, joined the Augustinian Order, and got dissatisfied with leading his life as a monk.
• Following the publication of 95 Theses, Luther was then involved in a public challenge.
  • John Eck: A prominent theologian challenged Luther.
  • He called Luther a Hussite.
• In 1520, Luther wrote three of his most important political tracts.
  • In his Address to the Christian Nobility, he urged that a secular government had the right to reform the Church.
  • In his On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, he attacked other teachings of the Church, such as the sacraments.
  • In his Liberty of a Christian Man, he hit on what would become the basic elements of Lutheran belief: grace is the sole gift of God; therefore, one is saved by faith alone, and the Bible is the sole source of this faith.
• In response to Luther’s works, Pope Leo X decided to act.
  • The Pope issued a papal bull (an official decree) that demanded that Luther recant the ideas found in his writings or be burnt as a heretic.
  • Luther publicly burned the bull to show that he no longer accepted papal authority. In turn, the pope excommunicated Luther.
  • Frederick, the Elector of Saxony was sympathetic to Luther’s ideas or at least wanted him to be given a public hearing.
• In 1521, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms — a meeting of the German nobility.
• He got into a conversation with Charles V, the Holy Roman Empire.
  • “Do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors they contain?” Charles V asked him.
  • Luther answered: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”
• Luther was then banned from the Empire but was safely hidden over the next year in Wartburg Castle by the Elector of Saxony.
• Luther and his friend Philip Melanchthon decided to establish a new church free of papal control based on his revolutionary ideas.
  • Instead of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church. He reduced them into two — baptism and communion.
  • He rejected transubstantiation — the priest-only process of turning bread and wine into Christ's flesh and blood.
  • He claimed that Christ was already present in the Sacrament.
  • Luther also abolished the practice of monasticism and the requirement of clergy celibacy.
  • He had a happy marriage with a former nun, with whom he had several children.

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Why did the Reformation Succeed?

• Protestantism spread to many northern German, Scandinavian, English, Scottish, Dutch, French, and Swiss states within three decades of Luther's 95 Theses.
  • Protestantism: The term today is used very broadly and means any non-Catholic or non-Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.
  • In 1529, a group of Lutherans attended the Diet of Speyer to negotiate with the Catholic Church but "protested" the final document.
• German Peasants’ Revolt (1525)
  • German peasants' worsening economic situation and their belief, expressed in the Twelve Articles, that Luther's call for a "priesthood of all believers" was social egalitarianism led to the revolt.
  • The revolt and the distortion of his ideas horrified Luther.
  • He published a violently angry tract entitled “Against the Robbing and Murderous Hordes of Peasants,” in which he urged that no mercy be shown to the revolutionaries.
• When Emperor Maximilian died in 1519, his grandson and heir Charles V was caught in a struggle with French King Francis I to see who would sit on the imperial throne.
  • Charles V was unable to deal with the revolt in Germany because he was involved in extended wars with France and with the Ottoman Empire.
• In the 1540s, Schmalkaldic War was fought between Charles and some of the Protestant princes.
  • For a time Charles has the upper hand, he was forced to sign the Peace of Augsburg by 1555.
  • This treaty legalized Lutheranism in Lutheran-ruled territories and kept Catholic territories Catholic.

Radical Reformation

• Radical Reformation: Describes a variety of religious sects that developed during the 16th century, inspired in part by Luther’s challenge to the established Church.
• Anabaptists: A group who denied the idea of infant baptism.
  • They believed that baptism works only when it is practiced by adults who are fully aware of the decision they are making.
  • Rebaptism: It as declared a capital offense throughout the Holy Roman Empire, something on which both the pope and Luther heartily agreed.
  • Anabaptists were persecuted even more when they tried to establish an Old Testament theocracy that allowed men to have multiple wives.
• Antitrinitarians: A group who denied the scriptural validity of the Trinity, were part of the Radical Reformation.

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Zwingli and Calvin

• Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531)
  • His teachings began to make an impact on the residents of the Swiss city of Zurich.
  • He accused monks of indolence and high living.
  • In 1519, he specifically rejected the veneration of saints and called for the need to distinguish between factual and fictional accounts of their lives.
  • He announced that unbaptized children were not damned to eternal life.
  • He also questioned the power of ex-communication.
  • His most powerful statement was his attack on the claim that tithing was a divine institution.
  • He was a strict sacramentarian in that he denied all the sacraments.
  • To him, the Holy Communion was simply a memorial of Christ’s death.
  • He died leading the troops of Zurich against the Swiss Catholic cantons in battle.
• John Calvin (1509–1564)
  • His main ideas are found in his Institutes of the Christian Religion — he argued that grace was bestowed on relatively few individuals, and the rest were consigned to hell.
  • This philosophy of predestination was the cornerstone of his thought and one that does not make any room for free will.
  • Calvinism began to spread rapidly in the 1540s and 1550s, becoming the established church in Scotland.
  • In France, the Calvinists were known as Huguenots.
  • It was said that Calvinism saved the Protestant Reformation.
  • In the mid-16th century, it was the dynamic Calvinism that stood in opposition to a newly aggressive Catholic Church during the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
  • In Europe's shipbuilding capital, they saved enough money to build two ships and sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Massachusetts, where they founded the pilgrims.

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1.7: English Reformation

• Henry VIII (r. 1509–1546)
  • A powerful English Monarch was supportive of the Catholic Church.
  • He criticized Luther by writing a pamphlet — The Defence of the Seven Sacraments.
  • He was never comfortable with Protestant Theology.
• The "King's Great Matter," King Henry VIII's attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragon, began the English Reformation.
  • He had grown concerned that Catherine had failed in producing sons, leaving him without a male heir.
  • He then fell in love with a young woman at his court, Anne Boleyn, who refused to sleep with him unless he made her his queen.
  • But then the papacy showed no signs of granting Henry’s annulment to Catherine since she was the aunt of the powerful Charles V.
• In November 1529, he began the Reformation Parliament. He used a tool to give him ultimate authority on religious matters.
  • This led him to bribe Anne Boleyn to sleep with him and have a secret marriage — which led to Anne’s pregnancy.
• In April 1533, Parliament enacted a statute, “Act in Restraint of Appeals” — which declared that all spiritual cases within the kingdom were within the king’s jurisdiction and authority and not the pope’s.
• In September 1533, Anne Boleyn’s child was born, but it was a baby girl, Elizabeth Tudor.
• Since Henry was desperate to have a male heir, he was married a total of six times — until his third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to Edward.
• The Act of Supremacy of 1534 limited the English Reformation by declaring the King of England the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
• The brief reign of his son Edward V (r. 1574–1553) saw an attempt to institute genuine Protestant theology into the church that Henry had created.
• During the short reign of Mary Tudor (r. 1553–1558) — the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, there was an attempt to bring England back into the orbit of the Catholic Church.
  • She discovered that many Protestants remained after restoring formal links between England and the papacy.
  • To end this, she allowed hundreds of Englishmen to be burnt at the stake, earning her the sobriquet — Bloody Mary.
• In the long successful reign of Elizabeth Tudor (r. 1558–1603), a final religious settlement was worked out, one in which the Church of England followed a middle-of-the-road Protestant course.

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1.8: Counter-Reformation

• Historians refer Protestant Reformation as Counter-Reformation — which in fact, it was commonly known as Catholic Reformation.
  • It was a Counter-Reformation in the sense that the Catholic Church was taking steps to counteract some of the successes of the Protestant side.
• Among these steps was the creation of the Index of Prohibited Books — including the works of Erasmus and Galileo.
• The Papal Inquisition was also revived, and people who were deemed to be heretics were put to death for their religious beliefs.
• Council of Trent: It was the centerpiece of the Catholic Reformation.
  • It was dominated by the papacy and enhanced its power.
  • It took steps to address some of the issues that sparked the Reformation, including placing limits on simony.
  • They mandated that a seminary for the education of clergy should be established in every diocese.
  • The council refused to concede any point of theology to the Protestants.
  • They created the idea of the Baroque style and it urged that a more intensely religious art be created.
• Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
  • Organized by Ignatius Loyola — a Spanish noble who was wounded in battle and presented his recuperation time reading various Catholic tracts.
  • Loyola believed that even if the Bible did not exist, there was still the spirit.
  • The Jesuits established themselves as a teaching order while also serving as Catholic missionaries in areas where Lutheranism had made significant inroads.
  • Poland was a prime example of the re-proselytization of Catholicism.

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1.9: Portuguese and Spanish Empires

• Portugal built an empire mostly by sea, while Spain built empires on land.
• Portugal kept looser control over its properties, while Spain maintained a tighter grip over its tributary empire.
• Portugal lost their holdings quickly, while the Spanish maintained its overseas properties until the 19th century.
• While Portugues is having a head start on the African Route to the Indian Ocean, the Spanish decided to try an Atlantic route to the east.
• In 1415, Prince Henry the Navigator participated in the capture of the North African port of Ceuta by the Muslims.
  • This conquest spurred his interest in Africa.
  • He was inspired to sponsor a navigational school in Lisbon and a series of navigation.
  • His goal is not only to develop trade with Africa but also to find a route to India and the Far East around Africa and cut out the Italian middlemen.
• In 1487, Bartholomew Dias, a Portuguese captain, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa.
  • In 1489, Vasco de Gama reached the coast of India.
  • The Portuguese first mounted cannons on their ships and developed squadrons, giving them an advantage over the Arab fleets patrolling the Indian Ocean.
  • They controlled the lucrative spice trade on the western coast of India.
• On August 2, 1492, Christopher Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, set sail certain that he would find the eastern route.
  • He believed that he would fulfill medieval religious prophecies that spoke of converting the whole world to Christianity.
  • After 33 days of voyage from the Canary Islands, he landed in the eastern Bahamas — which he insisted was an undeveloped part of Asia.
  • He called the territory “Indies” and the indigenous people “Indians”.
• In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe and he never saw the end of his voyage because he died in the Philippines.
  • He proved where Columbus landed was not the Far East — but an unknown territory.
• In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico with a small force of 600 men.
  • He arrived at the heart of the Aztec Empire — a militaristic state, which through conquest had carved out a large state with a large capital: Tenochtitlán.
  • The Aztecs viewed the Spaniards, who were riding on horses wearing armor, and carrying guns, as gods.
  • Montezuma: The Aztec ruler tried to appease the Spaniards with gifts of gold — but the Spanish just seized the city and held him hostage — which led to his unknown death.
  • The Aztecs' ability to fight was stopped by smallpox brought by the conquerors to the Indigenous people.
  • By 1521, Cortés declared the former Aztec Empire to be New Spain.
• In 1531, Francisco Pizarro set out to Peru with a tiny force of 200 men.
  • Inca Empire of Peru: The Incas had carved out a large empire by conquering and instigating harsh rule over many other tribes.
  • He treacherously captured Atahualpa (Inca Emperor), who then had his subjects raise vast amounts of gold for ransom.
  • By 1533, Pizarro had grown tired of ruling through Atahualpa and had to kill him.
• The Spanish set out to create haciendas, to exploit both the agricultural and mineral riches of the land.
• Due to a forced labor system, and encomienda, the indigenous population continued to die at an incredible pace from both disease and overwork.
• The Spanish and Portuguese began transporting captured Africans to the New World to work on farms and mines for their estates.
• The European powers relied upon the Catholic Church to justify their atrocious overseas behavior. Their mission is:
  • To use thousands of missionary priests to convert indigenous people to Christianity.
  • To acquire massive amounts of land in the New World and sell them to the European landowning classes.
• Columbian Exchange
  • The transatlantic transfer of animals, plants, diseases, people, technology, and ideas among Europe, the Americas, and Africa.
• Mercantilism had a strong effect on European governance.
  • The practitioners believe that the government needs to actively regulate the economy of its population.
  • By doing so, the rulers maintained a favorable trade balance, monitored the import and export of raw materials and finished goods, and funded the search for precious metals, the country's main source of wealth.

1.10: The Development of Monarchical States

• Large, unified nation-states began to develop in northern Europe during the early modern period.
  • They came to dominate the Italian peninsula and contributed to the transition away from the medieval notion of feudal kingship.
• In the age of the new monarchical state, it was believed that monarchical power was divinely granted and so by definition absolute.
• In the Middle Ages, Parliamentary institutions arose throughout Europe as a means of limiting kings.
• French Monarchy
  • An example of how the power shift came about.
  • It was not an easy victory for them, which had to deal with assorted aristocratic and religious conflicts that threatened to destroy the state.
• Under Louis XIV, France created a centralized monarchy in which the power of the King was absolute.
  • However, it came at a high price as it helped pave the way for the late-century French Revolution.
• In England, the Stuart Monarchs, who reigned for most of the 17th century, were interested in adapting French-style royal absolutism but the English parliament stood in their way.
  • England became embroiled in what one historian has labeled as a “century of revolution,” which eventually resulted in the supremacy of Parliament over the monarchy.

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Important Characteristics of New Nation-States

• Growing Bureaucratization
  • The monarchy in France created a new independent office, which hired individuals to collect taxes on the monarch's behalf.
  • The previous arrangement in England, where the crown and its powerful subjects worked together, was kept.
• Existence of a Permanent Mercenary Army
  • In the 14th century, Swiss mercenary infantrymen formed a phalanx of 6,000 men and used their pikes to slaughter aristocratic horsemen.
  • England is an exception once more because it did not establish a permanent army until the end of the 17th century when it was firmly under parliamentary control.
• Growing Need to Tax
  • In France, taxes are required to fund their permanent armies.
  • Medieval monarchs were traditionally expected to live off their incomes; however, the Price Revolution increased the costs of running a centralized state, making this impossible.

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1.11: Italy

• Treaty of Lodi (1454)
  • It provided a balance of power among the major Italian city-states.
  • It created an alliance between long-term enemies Milan and Naples and also included the support of Florence.
• Ludovico il Moro
  • He invaded Naples and invited the French into Italy four years later to settle their claims to Naples.
  • Charles VIII, the King of France, immediately ordered his troops across the Italian Alps.
• Charles and his forces crossed into Florence, Savonarola, led the Florentine population in expelling the Medici rulers, and then established a puritanical state.
  • This complete religious and political transformation ended Florence's Renaissance scholarship and art.
• By 1498, Ludovico il Moro realized his mistake and joined an anti-French Italian alliance that expelled the French from Florence and restored the Medici.
  • The Medici promptly burnt Savonarola at the stake with the support of the papacy.
• Throughout the 16th century, Italy became the battlefield in which Spain and France fought for dominance.
• Niccolò Machiavelli
  • He wrote what is generally seen as the first work of modern political thought, The Prince.
  • The Prince is a resume of sorts in which Machiavelli tried to convince the Medici to partake of his services.
  • When the Republic was overthrown by the Medici, Machiavelli was forced into exile to his country's estate.

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1.12: England

• Henry Tudor (Henry VII)
  • He won the central authority in Egland and established the Tudor Dynasty — following his defeat of Richard III in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth Field.
• Henry VIII
  • He ascended to the throne and continued his father's policies to strengthen the crown.
  • While England was under papacy rule, he believed his sovereignty would not be apparent.
  • In 1534, he made a political decision when he broke up with Rome and created the Church of England.
• Queen Elizabeth (r. 1558–1603)
  • The greatest of all Tudors — Henry VIII’s daughter with Anne Boleyn.
  • She was smart and studied classical Italian humanism. She worked hard and was political like her father.
  • She chose ministers who would serve the crown well, but she always made the final decisions.
  • She did seem to regard marriage as incompatible with her sovereignty.
  • Since she remained unmarried — Mary Stuart, the ruler of Scotland, was her legal heir.
  • In the Treaty of Berwick (1586), Elizabeth entered into a defensive alliance with Scotland.
  • She recognized James, Mary’s son who was being raised as a Protestant, as the lawful king, gave him an English pension and would be known as the heir to her throne.
  • In 1587, Elizabeth ordered the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
  • In 1588 came the greatest moment in Elizabeth’s reign—the defeat of Philip II’s Spanish Armada, ensuring that England would remain Protestant and free from foreign reign.
• Mary Stuart
  • Her paternal grandmother is Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII.
  • She lived as Elizabeth’s prisoner for years.
  • Elizabeth believed Mary was plotting against her, so she kept her under house arrest.
  • Only after Mary conspired with Philip II of Spain did Elizabeth decide to settle relations with the Scots and distance herself from Mary.

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1.13: Spain

• Before the 15th century, Spain was divided into:

  • Christian kingdoms in the north; and
  • Islamic control in the south.

• The marriage of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile, laid the groundwork for the eventual consolidation of the peninsula.

  • The final stage of the Reconquista took place in 1492 when their armies conquered the last independent Islamic outpost in Grenada, Spain.

• Spanish Inquisition: An effective method that the Spanish monarchy would later use to root out suspected Protestants.

• Charles V

  • Ferdinand and Isabella’s grandson.
  • He eventually controlled a vast empire that dominated Europe in the first half of the 16th century.
  • His Spanish possessions were the primary source of his wealth.
  • He gave his brother Ferdinand the troublesome eastern Habsburg lands of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary and his title of Holy Roman Emperor when he was exhausted from fighting Protestantism.

• Philip (1556–1598)

  • Charles V’s son
  • He received the more valuable part of the empire: Spain and its vast holdings in the New World, along with southern Italy and the Netherlands.
  • He spent most of his reign in debt as he used his riches to maintain Spanish influence.

• In the Mediterranean, the Spanish fought for supremacy against the Ottoman Empire and won against that eastern power at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

• Inquisition-based efforts such as the Duke of Alva’s Council of Troubles failed, as did the effort of Don Juan.

  • This is the reason why Philip launched the Spanish Armada in an attempt to conquer England during Queen Elizabeth’s rule.

• By 1609, the Spanish conceded for independence and in 1648, they formally acknowledged their independence.

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Golden Age in Spain

• This age featured the writings of Cervantes, Spain’s greatest writer.
  • He wrote Don Quixote which bemoans the passing of the traditional values of chivalry in Spain.
• This is the period of the Spanish’s remarkable painter, El Greco.
• By the 17th century, Spain's power had declined due to wars, the Price Revolution, and the Castilian economy's collapse.

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1.14: The Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire

• A large state that straddled central Europe when the Saxon King Otto I was crowned emperor in Rome by the pope.
• In the late 10th and 11th centuries, the Empire was the most powerful state in Europe, but it was eventually weakened as a result of a series of conflicts with the papacy.
• By 1356, the practice of electing the emperor was formally defined in the Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV.
  • This document showed that the emperor was elected rather than hereditary and gave seven German princes the power to choose one.
  • The electors typically opted for weak leaders who wouldn't obstruct their political objectives.
• Peace of Augsburg (1555)
  • It ended Charles V's religious disputes by upholding the prince's right to choose the territory's religion.
  • The treaty did not grant recognition to Calvinists, creating problems when Frederick III converted to Calvinism in 1559.
  • As Palatinate ruler, Frederick's status as one of the Holy Roman Emperor's seven electors complicated matters.

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The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)

• It began when Ferdinand of Styria was crowned king of Bohemia.
• Protestant Bohemians were outraged by Ferdinand's intolerance.
• In May of 1618, a large group of Bohemian Protestant nobles surrounded two of Ferdinand’s Catholic advisors and threw them out of a window.
• In 1619, Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor died and Ferdinand, the King of Bohemia was elected Emperor.
• Frederick — the Calvinist Elector of the Palatinate, was elected as the King of Bohemia, a few hours after Ferdinand was elected emperor.
• Since Ferdinand doesn’t have an army, he turned to the Duke of Bavaria to ask for help against Frederick.
• At the Battle of White Mountain, the Bavarian forces won a major victory, and Frederick became known as the Winter King.
  • By 1622, he lost not only Bohemia but also Palatinate.
• Ferdinand confiscated the defeated Protestant prince's lands in the North and forged a unified state under Habsburg control.
  • He needed to find a new army since he won’t be able to rely on the Duke of Bavaria.
  • He then found a Bohemian noble — Albrecht von Wallenstein — who promised to create a vast army, here then started the war’s second phase.
• By 1628, Wallenstein controlled an army of 125,000 and had won a series of major victories in the North.
• The high-water mark for Habsburg's success in the Thirty Years’ War came with the Edict of Restitution (1629)
  • It outlawed Calvinism in the empire and required Lutherans to turn over all property seized since 1552.
• This resulted in Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden to enter the war, triggering the third phase.
  • Though he claimed that he became involved to defend Protestant rights in Germany, he was also interested in German territory along the Baltic.
• Cardinal Richelieu: France’s chief minister, was concerned about the increase of Habsburg strength in Germany.
• In 1632, Adolphus died, which made the Swedes roll back the Habsburgs.
• In 1633, Wallenstein was murdered.
• The last phase of the war consisted of the French and Swedes fighting against the Austrian Habsburgs and their Spanish allies.
  • The most destructive phase of the war.
  • German towns were completely destroyed, and famine and general agricultural collapse followed.
• By the end of the war in 1648, the Empire had eight million fewer inhabitants than it had in 1618.
• Peace of Westphalia (1648)
  • It marked the end of the struggle.
  • The treaty made sure that the Emperor would continue to be a weak force in German politics while the Holy Roman Empire maintained its numerous political divisions.

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1.15: France

• After Francis I’s reign, it seemed as though the newly strong centralized monarchy had won the conflict between the feudal aristocracy and the monarchy.
• The French Wars of Religion revealed that struggles were not quite over.
• Religious conflicts rose to the surface following the French monarch Henry II’s 1559 death — when his eye got pierced with a lance while celebrating the end of wars.
  • On his death, Francis II, his 15-year-old son, came to the throne.
  • Francis was then replaced by his brother Charles IX after months.
  • 14 years later, Henry III replaced Charles — the last of the Valois kings.
  • All three boys were influenced by their mother, Catherine de’ Medici.
• Behind the scenes of the French monarchy, a power struggle began to emerge among three prominent families.
  • Guises: The most powerful family, turned toward a militant, reactionary form of Catholicism.
  • Admiral Coligny: The leader of the Montmorency family — converted to Calvinism.
  • The Prince of Conde, the leading Bourbon converted to Calvinism as well.
• The Wars of Religion first began in 1562 when the Duke of Guise ordered the execution of several Huguenot worshippers after becoming enraged at their presence in a barn.
  • The Huguenots had the upper hand after 10 years of combat — both the Duke and the Prince were killed.
• Henry of Navarre: A young Bourbon prince married King Charles IX’s sister.
• Catherine de' Medici worried about the Valois family's political decline and sought to balance aristocratic power to protect her sons.
• In 1572, Catherine encouraged her son, the King, to set in motion the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which killed around 3000 people in Paris.
  • Possibly 20,000 Huguenots were killed in simultaneous attacks across France.
  • Admiral Coligny was murdered, but Henry of Navarre was spared because he promised to return to Catholicism.
• In 1574, Henry III, the last of the Valois kings, turned to the Huguenots to defeat the powerful Catholic League.
  • He then made Henry of Navarre his heir and became King Henry IV in 1598 — following his assassination led to the start of the Bourbon Dynasty.
• Henry IV struggled with Spain and was pressured because most Parisians remained Catholic — he then permanently converted to Catholicism.
  • His action instigated a new way of thinking in France and the idea of Politique, putting the interests of France before the goal of religious unity.
• Although Henry's Calvinist allies and Anglican Queen Elizabeth were horrified by his final religious conversion, he never forgot them.
• In 1598, Henry issued the Edict of Nantes, granting the Huguenots freedom of worship and assembly as well as the right to maintain fortified towns for their protection.

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Period 2: Monarchial States to Napoleon (1648-1815)