CHAPTER 17 - European Renaissance and Reformation (1300-1600) - World History: Patterns of Interaction (Atlas by Rand McNally 2009)

CHAPTER 17.1: Italy: Birthplace of the Renaissance

• The Renaissance - A term that means "rebirth", the movement that started in Italy which caused an explosion of creativity in art, writing, and thought. It approximately lasted from 1300-1600
• The educated men and women of Italy hoped to bring back to life the culture of classical Greece and Rome
• In attempts to revive the past, the Renaissance created something entirely new
• The contributions made during this period led to innovative styles of art, literature, new values (importance of the individual)
• The Renaissance eventually spread from northern Italy to the rest of Europe
• Italy had three advantages that made it the birthplace of the Renaissance:
  • thriving cities
  • a wealthy merchant class
  • the classical heritage of Greece and Rome  
• Overseas trade, spurred by the Crusades, had led to the growth of large city-states in northern Italy
• The region had many sizable towns, so northern Italy was urban while the rest of Europe was mostly rural
• Since cities are often places where people exchange ideas, they were an ideal breeding ground for an intellectual revolution
• 1300s: the bubonic plague struck the cities hard, killing up to 60% of the population
• The plague brought about economic changes:
  • Because there were fewer laborers, survivors could demand higher wages
  • With few opportunities to expand business, merchants began to pursue other interests, such as art
• A wealthy merchant class developed in each Italian city-state
• Because city-states like Milan/Florence were relatively small, a high percentage of citizens could be intensely involved in political life
•  Merchants dominated politics
  • Unlike nobles, merchants did not inherit social rank
  • They used their wits to succeed in business
• As a result, many successful merchants believed they deserved power/wealth because of their individual merit
  • The belief in individual achievement became important during the Renaissance
• Since the late 1200s, Florence had a republican form of government
  • During the Renaissance, Florence came under the rule of one powerful banking family, the Medici 
• The Medici family bank had branch offices throughout Italy and in the major cities of Europe
• Cosimo de Medici was the wealthiest European of his time
  • 1434:  he won control of Florence's government
  • He did not seek political office for himself, but influenced members of the ruling council by giving them loans
  • He was Florence's dictator for 30 years
• Cosimo de Medici died in 1464, but his family continued to control Florence
• His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, came to power in 1469, ruling as a dictator but keeping the appearance of having an elected government
• Renaissance scholars looked down on the art and literature of the Middle Ages 
  • They wanted to return to the learning of the Greeks/Romans
• They achieved this in several ways:
  • The artists/scholars of Italy drew inspiration from the ruins of Rome that surrounded them
  • Western scholars studied ancient Latin manuscripts that had been preserved in monasteries
  • Christian scholars in Constantinople fled to Rome w/ Greek manuscripts when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453
• The study of classical texts led to humanism, an intellectual movement that focused on human potential and achievements
  • Instead of trying to make classical texts agree with Christian teaching like medieval scholars, humanists studied them to understand ancient Greek values 
• Humanists influenced artists and architects to carry on classical traditions/popularized the study of subjects common to classical education (history, literature, philosophy), which resulted in these subjects being called the humanities
• In the Middle Ages, some people had demonstrated their piety by wearing rough clothing and eating plain foods
  • However, humanists suggested that a person might enjoy life without offending God
  • In Renaissance Italy, the wealthy enjoyed material luxuries, good music, and fine foods
• Most people remained devout Catholics
• The basic spirit of Renaissance society was secular, worldly rather than spiritual/concerned with the here and now
• Church leaders became more worldly with some living in beautiful mansions, throwing lavish banquets, and wearing expensive clothing
• Church leaders during the Renaissance beautified Rome and other cities by spending huge amounts of money for art 
  • They were patrons for the arts by financially supporting artists 
  • Renaissance merchants/wealthy families were also patrons of the arts
  • The wealthy demonstrated their own importance through having their portraits painted/donating art to the city in public squares
• Renaissance writers introduced the idea that all educated people were expected to create art
• The ideal individual strove to master every area of study
• A man who excelled in many fields was praised as a “universal man.” Later ages called such people “Renaissance men”
•  According to The Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione (taught how to become a Renaissance man), upper-class women also should know the classics and be charming
  • They were not expected to seek fame, to inspire art but rarely to create it
  • Upper-class Renaissance women were better educated than medieval women, but most had little influence in politics
• A few women, such as Isabella d’Este, did exercise power
  • She married the ruler of another city-state, Mantua
  • She brought many Renaissance artists to her court and built a famous art collection
  • She was also skilled in politics
  • When her husband was taken captive in war, she defended Mantua and won his release 
• Dozens of artists worked in northern Italy. As the Renaissance advanced, artistic styles changed 
• Medieval artists had used religious subjects to convey a spiritual ideal, but Renaissance artists often portrayed religious subjects in a realistic style copied from classical models
• Greek/Roman subjects also became popular
• Renaissance painters used the technique of perspective, which shows three dimensions on a flat surface
• Painters began to paint prominent citizens
• Artists such as Michelangelo Buonarroti used a realistic style when depicting the human body
• Donatello also made sculptures more realistic by carving natural postures/expressions that reveal personality
  • He revived a classical form in his statue of David, a boy who, according to the Bible, became a great king (late-1460s)
• Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, inventor, and scientist
  • He studied how a muscle moves/how veins are arranged in a leaf
  • He filled his notebooks with observations/sketches and then incorporated his findings into art
• Raphael Sanzio was younger than Michelangelo and Leonardo
  • He learned by studying their works
  • One of Raphael’s favorite subjects was the Madonna and child
  • He was famous for his use of perspective
  • In his greatest achievement, Raphael filled the walls of Pope Julius II’s library with paintings 
    •  One of these, the School of Athens, conveys the classical influence on the Renaissance
    • Raphael painted famous Renaissance figures, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, and himself, as classical philosophers and their students 
• Renaissance society generally restricted women’s roles, but few Italian women became notable painters
  • Sofonisba Anguissola:
    • Was the first woman artist to gain an international reputation
    • She is known for her portraits of her sisters/prominent people such as King Philip II of Spain
  • Artemisia Gentileschi:
    • Trained with her painter father/helped with his work
    • Painted pictures of strong, heroic women
• Renaissance writers produced works that reflected their time, but they also used techniques that writers rely on today
• Some followed the example of the medieval writer Dante
  • He wrote in the vernacular, his native language (Italian), instead of Latin 
• Renaissance writers wrote either for self-expression or to portray the individuality of their subjects 
  • Writers of the Renaissance began trends that modern writers still follow
• Francesco Petrarch was one of the earliest/most influential humanists
  • Some have referred to him as the father of Renaissance humanism
  • He was also a poet that wrote both in Italian/Latin
• Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio is best known for the Decameron, a series of realistic, sometimes off-color stories
• The Prince (1513) by Niccolo Machiavelli examines the imperfect conduct of human beings
  • It does so by taking the form of a political guidebook 
  • Machiavelli examines how a ruler can gain power and keep it in spite of his enemies
  • In answering this question, he began with the idea that most people are selfish, fickle, and corrupt 
  • To succeed in a wicked world, a prince must be strong as a lion/shrewd as a fox
• Machiavelli argued that in the real world of power/politics a prince must sometimes mislead the people/lie to his opponents
• Women writers who gained fame during the Renaissance usually wrote about personal subjects, not politics
• Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547) was born of a noble family
  • 1509: She married the Marquis of Pescara
  • Colonna exchanged sonnets with Michelangelo/helped Castiglione publish The Courtier
  • Her own poems express personal emotions
• Toward the end of the 15th century, Renaissance ideas began to spread north from Italy

CHAPTER 17.2: The Northern Renaissance

• By 1450, the population of northern Europe that declined b/c of the bubonic plague was beginning to grow again When the Hundred Years' War ended in 1453, many cities grew rapidly
• Urban merchants became wealthy enough to sponsor artists
• As wealth increased in other parts of Northern Europe, patronage of arts increased
• England and France were unified under strong monarchs
  • These rulers often sponsored the arts by purchasing paintings/by supporting artists/writers 
• As Renaissance ideas spread out of Italy, they mingled with northern traditions
• As a result, the northern Renaissance developed its own character 
  • Artists were especially interested in realism
  • The Renaissance ideal of human dignity inspired some northern humanists to develop plans for social reform based on Judeo-Christian values 
• 1494: a French king claimed the throne of Naples in southern Italy and launched an invasion through northern Italy 
• Many Italian artists/writers left for a safer life in Northern Europe/brought their style & techniques of the Italian Renaissance
• Northern European artists who studied in Italy carried Renaissance ideas back to their homelands
• German artist Albrecht Dürer traveled to Italy to study in 1494
  • After returning to Germany, Dürer produced woodcuts and engravings
  • Many of his prints portray religious subjects, others portray classical myths or realistic landscapes
  • The popularity of Dürer’s work helped to spread Renaissance styles
• Dürer’s emphasis upon realism influenced the work of Hans Holbein the Younger
  • Holbein specialized in painting portraits that are almost photographic in detail
  • He emigrated to England where he painted portraits of King Henry VIII/other members of the English royal family 
• The support of wealthy merchant families in Flanders helped to make Flanders the artistic center of northern Europe
• The first great Flemish Renaissance painter was Jan van Eyck
  • Van Eyck used recently developed oil-based paints to develop techniques that painters still use
  • He was able to create a variety of subtle colors in clothing/jewels by applying layer upon layer
  • Oil painting became popular and spread to Italy
• van Eyck's paintings display unusually realistic details and reveal the personality of his subjects, which later influenced artists in Northern Europe
• Flemish painting reached its peak after 1550 with the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
  • Bruegel was also interested in realistic details and individual people
  • He captured scenes from everyday peasant life such as weddings, dances, and harvests
• Italian humanists were very interested in reviving classical languages/classical texts
•  When the Italian humanist ideas reached the north, people used them to examine the traditional teachings of the Church
• The northern humanists were critical of the failure of the Christian Church to inspire people to live a Christian life
•  This criticism produced a new movement known as Christian humanism
  • The focus of Christian humanism was the reform of society 
• Education was of particular importance to humanists
  • The humanists promoted the education of women and founded schools attended by both boys/girls 
• The best known of the Christian humanists were Desiderius Erasmus of Holland/Thomas More of England, who were close friends
• 1509: Erasmus wrote his most famous work: The Praise of Folly
  • It poked fun at greedy merchants, heartsick lovers, quarrelsome scholars, and pompous priests
  • Erasmus believed in a Christianity of the heart, not one of ceremonies or rules
  • He thought that in order to improve society, all people should study the Bible
• 1516: Thomas More wrote Utopia
  • Utopia in Greek means "no place"
  • In English it has come to mean an ideal place as depicted in More’s book
  • The book is about an imaginary land where greed, corruption, and war have been weeded out
• More wrote in Latin and as he became more popular, they were translated in a variety of languages
• During this period the vast majority of Europeans were unable to read or write
• Those families who could afford formal schooling usually sent only their sons
• Christine de Pizan spoke out against this practice:
  • She was highly educated for the time and was one of the 1st women to earn a living as a writer
  • She wrote in French and produced many books, including short stories, biographies, novels, and manuals on military techniques
  • She frequently wrote about the objections men had to educate women
  • de Pizan was one of the first European writers to question the different treatment of boys/girls
• The mid-1500s is referred to as the Elizabethan Age, after Queen Elizabeth I
• Elizabeth reigned from 1558-1603
  • She was well educated and spoke French, Italian, Latin, and Greek
  • She also wrote poetry and music
  • Elizabeth did much to support the development of English art/literature
• The most famous writer of the Elizabethan Age was William Shakespeare
  • Most people regard him as the greatest playwright of all time
  •  Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small town about 90 miles northwest of London
  • By 1592 he was living in London and writing poems and plays, and soon he would be performing at the Globe Theater
  • Shakespeare also revered the classics and drew on them for inspiration/plots
• The Chinese invented block printing, in which a printer carved words or letters on a wooden block, inked the block, and then used it to print on paper
• 1045: Bi Sheng invented movable type, or a separate piece of type for each character in the language
  • The Chinese writing system contains thousands of different characters, so most Chinese printers found movable type impractical
  • Even though it was impractical in China, it was the opposite for Europeans because their languages have a small number of letters in their alphabets
• 13th century: block-printed items reached Europe from China
• European printers began to use block printing to create whole pages to bind into books 
  • This process was too slow to satisfy Renaissance demand for knowledge/books
• Around 1440, Johann Gutenberg, a craftsman from Mainz, Germany, developed a printing press that incorporated a number of technologies in a new way
  • This made it possibly to quickly/cheaply produce books
  • Gutenberg printed a complete Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, in about 1455: the first full-sized book printed with movable type
• The printing press enabled a printer to produce hundreds of copies of a single work
• For the first time, books were cheap enough that many people could buy them
• At first printers produced mainly religious work and later began to provide books on other subjects such as travel guides/medical manuals
•  The European Renaissance was a period of great artistic and social change
• It marked a break with the medieval-period ideals focused around the Church
• The Renaissance belief in the dignity of the individual played a key role in the gradual rise of democratic ideas
• Summary of the changes in arts:
  • Art drew on techniques and styles of classical Greece and Rome
  • Paintings/sculptures portrayed individuals and nature in more realistic/lifelike ways
  •  Artists created works that were secular as well as those that were religious
  • Writers began to use vernacular languages to express their ideas
  • The arts praised individual achievement  
• Summary of the changes in society:
  • Printing changed society by making more information available/inexpensive enough for society at large
  • Greater availability of books prompted an increased desire for learning/a rise in literacy throughout Europe
  • Published accounts of new discoveries, maps, and charts led to further discoveries in a variety of fields
  • Published legal proceedings made the laws clear so that people were more likely to understand their rights
  • Christian humanists’ attempts to reform society changed views about how life should be lived
  • People began to question political structures/religious practices 

CHAPTER 17.3: Luther Leads the Reformation

• By 1500, additional forces weakened the Church
• Renaissance emphasis on the secular/individual challenged Church authority
• The printing press spread these secular ideas
• Some rulers also began to challenge the Church's political power 
• Germany was divided into many competing states, so it was difficult for the pope/the emperor to impose central authority
• Northern merchants resented paying church taxes to Rome
• A new movement for religious reform began in Germany then spread rapidly to Europe
• Critics of the Church claimed that its leaders were corrupt
  • The popes who ruled during the Renaissance patronized the arts, spent extravagantly on personal pleasure, and fought wars
• Pope Alexander VI admitted that he fathered several children/many popes were too busy pursuing worldly affairs to have time for spiritual duties
• The lower clergy also had problems; many priests/monks were so poorly educated that they could barely read/teach people
  • Others broke their priestly vows by marrying/some drank to excess/gambled
• People came to expect higher standards of conduct from priests/church leaders
• Late 1300s to early 1400s: John Wycliffe of England/Jan Hus of Bohemia advocated for Church reform 
  • They denied that the pope had the right to worldly power
  • They also taught that the Bible had more authority than Church leaders did
• 1500s: Christian humanists like Desiderius Erasmus/Thomas More also voiced their criticisms
• Many Europeans were reading religious works/forming their own opinions about the Church
• 1517: Martin Luther decided to take a public stand against friar Johann Tetzel
  • Tetzel was raising money to rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome and was funding it through indulgences
  • Indulgences: A pardon; it released a sinner from performing the penalty that a priest imposed for sins. They were not supposed to affect God's right to judge
  • Tetzel gave people the impressed that by buying indulgences, they could buy their way into heaven
• In response, Luther wrote 95 Theses, or formal statements, attacking the "pardon merchants"
• October 31, 1517, he posted these statements on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg and invited other scholars to debate him
• Someone copied Luther’s words and took them to a printer, which resulted in his name being known all over Germany
• Luther's actions began the Reformation, a movement for religious reform that led to the founding of Christian churches that did not accept the pope's authority 
• Luther soon went beyond criticizing indulgences but wanted a full reform of the Church
• Luther's teachings rested on 3 main ideas:
  • People could win salvation only by faith in God’s gift of forgiveness. The Church taught that faith and “good works” were needed for salvation
  • All Church teachings should be clearly based on the words of the Bible. Both the pope and Church traditions were false authorities
  • All people with faith were equal. Therefore, people did not need priests to interpret the Bible for them
• Church officials in Rome initially saw Luther as a rebellion monk in need of punishment by superiors, but later recognized him as a legitimate threat
• 1520: Pope Leo X issued a decree threatening Luther with ex-communication unless he took back his statements
  • Luther didn't take his words back and instead, his students at Wittenberg gathered around a bonfire and cheered as he threw the pope's decree into flames
    • Leo excommunicated Luther
• Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, a devout Catholic, opposed Luther's teachings
  • Charles controlled a vast empire, including the German states
  • 1521: He summoned Luther to the town of Worms to stand trial so he can take back his statements
    • Luther refused
• A month after Luther made that speech, Charles issued an imperial order, the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther an outlaw/heretic
  • No one in the empire was to give Luther food/shelter/all of his books were to be burned
  • Prince Frederick the Wise of Saxony disobeyed the edict and sheltered Luther in one of his castles, where Luther translated the New Testament into German 
• 1522: Luther returned to Wittenberg 
  • He discovered that many of his ideas were being put into practice
  • Instead of continuing to seek reforms in the Catholic Church, Luther and his followers became a separate religious group (Lutherans)
• 1524: German peasants demanded an end to serfdom, inspired by reformers' talk of Christian freedom
  • They went about the countryside raiding monasteries, pillaging, and burning
  • Luther did not agree with the revolt and urged the German princes to show the peasants no mercy
  • The princes' army crushed the revolt, killing as many as 100,000 people, and peasants rejected Luther's religious leadership, feeling betrayed
• Many northern German princes supported Lutheranism
  • While some princes genuinely shared Luther’s beliefs, others liked Luther’s ideas for selfish reasons
  • They saw his teachings as a good excuse to seize Church property/assert their independence from Charles V 
• 1529: German princes who remained  loyal to the pope agreed to join forces against Luther's ideas
  • Those princes who supported Luther signed a protest against that agreement 
• The protesting princes came to be known as Protestants
• Eventually, the term Protestant was applied to Christians who belonged to non-Catholic churches
• Charles V went to war against the Protestant princes
• He defeated them in 1547, but failed to force them back to the Catholic church
• 1555: He ordered all German princes, both Protestant/Catholic, to assemble in Augsburg
• Peace of Augsburg: The German princes agreed that each ruler would decide the religion of his state
• When Henry VIII became king of England in 1509, he was a devout Catholic and was against Luther's ideas
• Political needs, however, soon tested his religious loyalty as he needed a male heir
• Henry's father became king after a long civil war and he feared that a similar war would start if he died w/o a son as heir
• He and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, had one living child (daughter, Mary), but no woman ever successfully claimed the English throne
• By 1527, Henry was convinced that Catherine would have no more children, so he wanted to divorce her/take a younger queen
• Church law didn't allow divorce, but the pope could annul, or set aside, Henry's marriage if proof could be found that it had never been legal in the first place
• Henry asked the pope to annul his marriage, but was turned down as the pope didn't want to offend Catherine's nephew (Charles V)
• 1529: Henry called Parliament into session/asked to pass a set of laws that ended the pope's power in England (The Reformation Parliament)
• 1533: Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn, who was in her 20s
• Shortly after, Parliament legalized Henry's divorce
• 1534: Parliament voted to approve the Act of Supremacy
  • This called on people to take an oath recognizing divorce and accepting Henry, not the pope, as the official head of England's church
• The Act of Supremacy met some opposition
  • Thomas More remained a devout Catholic despite criticizing the Church
  • He refused to accept the act/take oath
  • In response, Henry had him arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London
  • 1553: More was found guilty of treason/executed
• After Anne Boleyn gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, she fell out of Henry’s favor/was charged with treason
  • She was found guilty/beheaded in 1536
• Henry took in a third wife, Jane Seymour
  • 1537: She gave birth to a son named Edward and dies from complications
• Henry married three more times, but these marriages did not produce children
• After Henry’s death in 1547, each of his three children ruled England in turn, which created religious turmoil
• Edward became king at 9 years old
  • He was guided by adult advisers since he was too young to rule alone 
  • These men were devout Protestants, and they introduced Protestant reforms to the English Church
  • Almost constantly in ill health, Edward reigned for just six years
• 1553: Mary (daughter of Catherine) took throne
  • She was a Catholic who returned the English Church to the rule of the pope
  • Her efforts met with considerable resistance, and she had many Protestants executed
• Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth (Boleyn's daughter) inherited the throne
• Elizabeth I wanted her kingdom to return to Protestantism
• 1559: Parliament followed Elizabeth’s wishes and set up the Church of England, or Anglican Church, with Elizabeth as its head 
  • This church was to be the only legal one in England
• Elizabeth decided to establish a state church that moderate Catholics/moderate Protestants might both accept
•  To please Protestants, priests in the Church of England were allowed to marry
  • They can deliver sermons in English, not Latin
• To please Catholics, the Church of England kept some of the trappings of the Catholic service such as rich robes
• Church services were revised to be somewhat more acceptable to Catholics
• Some Protestants pushed for Elizabeth to make more far-reaching church reforms 
  • Some Catholics tried to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her w/ her cousin (Catholic Mary Queen of Scots)
  • Elizabeth also faced threats from Philip II, Catholic king of Spain
• Elizabeth also faced money problems
• In the late 1500s, the English began to think about building an American empire as a new source of income 
  • Colonies strengthened England economically but didn't directly enrich the queen

CHAPTER 17.4: The Reformation Continues

• Religious reform in Switzerland was begun by Huldrych Zwingli
  • He was influenced by the Christian humanism of Erasmus/the reforms of Luther 
• 1520: Zwingli openly attacked abuses in the Catholic Church/called for a return to the more personal faith of early Christianity/wanted believers to have more control over the Church
• 1531: A war b/t Swiss Protestants/Catholics broke out, Zwingli dies during the fighting
• John Calvin was beginning to clarify his religious beliefs as a young law student
• Calvin grew up to have as much influence in the spread of Protestantism as Luther did/would begin to order to the faith Luther began
• 1536: Calvin published Institutes of the Christian Religion
  • This book expressed ideas about God, salvation, and human nature/was a summary of Protestant theology
  • He wrote that men/women are sinful by nature/argued that God chooses few people to save (the "elect")
    • The doctrine that God chooses few people to save, the elect, is called predestination
• The religion based on Calvin's teachings is called Calvinism
• Calvin believed that the ideal government was a theocracy, a government-controlled by religious leaders 
• 1541: Protestants in Geneva asked Calvin to lead their city
• When Calvin arrived in the 1540s, Geneva was a self-governing city of about 20,000 people
  • He/his followers ran the city according to strict rules:
    • Everyone attended religion class
    • No one wore bright clothing/played card games 
  • Authorities would imprison, excommunicate, or banish those who broke such rules/those who preached different doctrines might be burned at stake
  • To many Protestants, Geneva was a model city
• John Knox visited Geneva/returned to Scotland in 1559/put Calvin's ideas to work
• Each community church was governed by a group of laymen called elders or presbyters
  • Followers of Knox became known as Presbyterians  
• 1560s: Protestant nobles led by Knox made Calvinism Scotland’s official religion/deposed their Catholic ruler (Mary Queen of Scots) in favor of her infant son James
• Swiss, Dutch, and French reformers adopted the Calvinist form of church organization
• One reason Calvin is considered so influential is that many Protestant churches today trace their roots to Calvin 
  • Over the years, many softened Calvin's strict teachings
• In France, Calvin’s followers were called Huguenots
• Hatred b/t Catholics/Huguenots frequently led to violence
• The most violent clash occurred in Paris on August 24, 1572 (Catholic feast of St. Bartholomew’s Day)
  • At dawn, Catholic mobs began hunting for Protestants and murdering them, spreading to other cities/lasting 6 months
• Protestants taught that the Bible is the source of all religious truth and that people should read it to discover those truths
• Christians interpreted the Bible for themselves, so new Protestant groups formed over differences in belief
• Anabaptists: Believers in Christianity that only baptized those who were old enough to decide that they were Christians
  • They also taught that church/state should be separate/refused to fight in wars/shared their possessions
• Anabaptists were viewed as radicals who threatened society/were persecuted by Catholics/Protestants
  • They survived/became the forerunners of the Mennonites/Amish, which influenced later Quakers/Baptists, who split from the Anglican Church
• Many women played prominent roles in the Reformation
  • Marguerite of Navarre protected John Calvin from being executed for his beliefs while he lived in France
  • Other noblewomen also protected reformers
  • The wives of some reformers also had influence
    •  Katherina Zell, married to Matthew Zell of Strasbourg, scolded a minister for speaking harshly of another reformer 
    • Katherine von Bora played a role as Luther's wife
      • She also managed the family finances, fed all who visited their house, and supported her husband’s work
      • She respected Luther’s position but argued with him about woman’s equal role in marriage
• As Protestant religions became more firmly established, their organization became more formal
  • Male religious leaders limited women’s activities to the home/discouraged them from being leaders in the church 
• Millions still were faithful to Catholicism 
• Helping Catholics to remain loyal was a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself: the Catholic Reformation (once referred to as the Counter Reformation)
• Important leaders were reformers such as Ignatius of Loyola, who founded new religious orders and Paul III and Paul IV, who took actions to reform/renew the Church internally
• 1522: Ignatius began writing a book called Spiritual Exercises that laid out a day-by-day plan of meditation, prayer, and study
•  1540, the pope created a religious order for Ignatius' followers called the Society of Jesus, members were called Jesuits
• Jesuits focused on 3 activities:
  • They founded schools throughout Europe
    • Jesuit teachers were well-trained in both classical studies/theology
  • Convert non-Christians to Catholicism
    • They sent out missionaries around the world
  • Stop the spread of Protestantism
• Paul III/Paul IV took the lead in reforming the Catholic Church
  • Paul III:
    • Directed a council of cardinals to investigate indulgence selling/other abuses 
    • Approved the Jesuit order
    • Used the Inquisition to seek out heresy in papal territory
    • Called a council of Church leaders to meet in Trent (northern Italy)
• 1545-1563: at the Council of Trent, Catholic bishops/cardinals agreed on several doctrines:
  • The Church’s interpretation of the Bible was final/any Christian who substituted his/her own interpretation was a heretic
  • Christians needed faith and good works for salvation/were not saved by faith alone, as Luther argued
  • The Bible and Church tradition were equally powerful authorities for guiding Christian life  
  • Indulgences were valid expressions of faith but the false selling of indulgences was banned
• Paul IV vigorously carried out the council's decrees:
  • 1559: he had officials draw up a list of books considered dangerous to the Catholic faith (Index of Forbidden Books)
    • These books were burned in bonfires
• Protestant churches flourished and new denominations developed despite religious wars/persecutions
• The Roman Catholic Church itself became more unified as a result of the reforms started at the Council of Trent
• Both Catholics/Protestants gave more emphasis to the role of education in promoting their beliefs
  •  This led to the founding of parish schools and new colleges and universities throughout Europe
• Some women reformers had hoped to see the status of women in the church and society improve as a result of the Reformation, but it remained much of the same under Protestantism/Roman Catholicism
• As the Catholic Church’s moral and political authority declined, individual monarchs and states gained power
  • This led to the development of modern nation-states
• 1600s: rulers of nation-states would seek more power for themselves/their countries through warfare, exploration, and expansion