AP World 18.1

The Italian writer Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) once climbed Ventoux, a mountain in southern France. He wrote of his ascent, proud of his own skill and using the climb as a symbol of what he could achieve. There was a new spirit of individual pride expressed in this work, intended to be published, compared to the more humble and religious sentiments of the Middle Ages when individual artisans did not even put their names on the magnificent cathedrals they built. But Petrarch did not abandon religion, and in later life he talked about how he had given up poetry in favor of reading Christian texts, finding "hidden sweetness which I had once esteemed but lightly.” 

The Italian Renaissance 

The move away from earlier European patterns began with the Renaissance, which first developed in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries. Largely an artistic movement, the Renaissance challenged medieval intellectual values and styles. It also sketched a new, brasher spirit that may have encouraged a new Western interest in exploring strange waters or urging that old truths be re-examined.

Italy was already well launched in the development of Renaissance culture by the 15th century, based on its unusually extensive urban, commercial economy and its competitive city-state politics. Writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio had promoted classical literary canons against medieval logic and theology, writing in Italian as well as the traditional Latin and emphasizing secular subjects such as love and pride. Painting turned to new realism and classical and human-centered themes. Religion declined as a central focus. The Italian Renaissance blossomed further in the 15th and early 16th centuries. This was a great age of Western art, as Leonardo da Vinci advanced the realistic portrayal of the human body and Michelangelo applied classical styles in painting and sculpture. In political theory, Niccolo Machiavelli emphasized realistic discussions of how to seize and maintain power. Like the artists, Machiavelli bolstered his realism with Greek and Roman examples. 

Overall, Italian Renaissance culture stressed themes of humanism: a focus on humankind as the center of intellectual and artistic endeavor, as Francesco Petrarch's interests suggested. Religion was not attacked, but its principles were no longer predominant. Historians have debated the reasons for this change. Italy's more urban, commercial environment was one factor, but so was the new imitation of classical Greek and Roman literature and art. 

These Renaissance themes had some bearing on politics and commerce. Renaissance merchants improved their banking techniques and became more openly profit-seeking than their medieval counterparts had been. City-state leaders experimented with new political forms and functions. They justified their rule not on the basis of heredity or divine guidance but more on the basis of what they could do to advance general well-being and their city's glory. Thus, they sponsored cultural activities, as states began to use art to gain greater popular support. They also tried to improve the administra- tion of the economy. Resistance leaders developed more professional armies, for wars among the city-states were common, and gave new attention to military tactics and training. They also rethought the practice of diplomacy, introducing the regular exchange of ambassadors for the first time in the West. Clearly, the Renaissance encouraged innovation, although it also produced some dependence on classical models. 

The Renaissance Moves Northward 

Italy began to decline as a Renaissance center by about 1500. French and Spanish monarchs invaded the peninsula, reducing political independence. At the same time, new Atlantic trade routes reduced the importance of Mediterranean ports, a huge blow to the Italian economy. 

As Renaissance creativity faded in its Italian birthplace, it passed northward. The Northern Renaissance-focused in France, the Low Countries, Germany, and England-began after 1450. Renaissance styles also affected Hungary and Poland in east central Europe. Classical styles in art and architecture became the rage. Knowledge of Greek and Latin literature gained ground, although many northern humanists wrote in their own languages (English, French, and so on). Northern humanists were more religious than their Italian counterparts, trying to blend secular interests with continued Christian devotion. Renaissance writers such as Shakespeare in England and Rabelais in France mixed classical themes with an earthiness-a joy in bodily functions and human passions-that maintained elements of medieval popular culture. Renaissance literature established a new set of classics for literary traditions in the major Western languages, such as the writings of Shakespeare in England and Cervantes in Spain. The Northern Renaissance produced some political change, providing another move toward greater state powers. As their revenues and operations expanded, Renaissance kings increased their pomp 

and ceremony. Kings such as Francis I in France became patrons of the arts, importing Italian sculptors and architects to create their classical-style palaces. By the late 16th century, many monarchs were sponsoring trading companies and colonial enterprises. Interest in military conquest was greater than in the Middle Ages. Francis I was even willing to ally with the Ottoman sultan, the key Muslim leader. His goal was to distract his main enemy, the Habsburg ruler of Austria and Spain. In fact, it was an alliance in name only, but it illustrated how power politics was beginning to abandon the feudal or religious justifications that had previously clothed it in the West. 

Yet the impact of the Renaissance should not be overstated, particularly outside Italy. Renaissance kings were still confined by the political powers of feudal landlords. Ordinary people were little touched by Renaissance values; the life of most peasants and artisans went on much as before. Economic life also changed little, particularly outside the Italian commercial centers. Even in the upper classes, women sometimes encountered new limits as Renaissance leaders touted men's public bravado over women's domestic roles. 

Changes in Technology and Family 

More fundamental changes were brewing in Western society by 1500, beneath the glittering surface of the Renaissance. Spurred by trading contacts with Asia, workers in the West improved the quality of pulleys and pumps in mines and learned how to forge stronger iron products. Printing was introduced in the 15th century when the German Johannes Gutenberg and other inventors introduced movable type, building on Chinese printing technology. Soon books were distributed in greater quantities in the West, which helped expand the audience for Renaissance writers and disseminated religious ideas. Literacy began to gain ground and became a fertile source of new kinds of thinking. 

Family structure was also changing. A European-style family pattern came into being by the 15th century in the western part of the continent. This pattern involved a late marriage age and a primary emphasis on nuclear families of parents and children rather than the extended families characteristic of most agricultural civilizations. The goal was to limit family birth rates. By the 16th century, ordinary people usually did not marry until their late 20s—a marked contrast to most agricultural societies. These changes emphasized the importance of husband-wife relations. They also closely linked the family to individual property holdings, for most people could not marry until they had access to property. 

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations 

In the 16th century, religious upheaval and a new commercial surge began to define the directions of change more fully. In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther issued a document containing 95 theses, or propositions. He was publicly protesting claims made by a papal representative in selling indulgences, or grants of salvation, for money, but in fact his protest went deeper. Luther's reading of the Bible convinced him that only faith could gain salvation. Church sacraments were not the path, for God could not be manipulated. Luther's protest, which was rebuffed by the papacy, soon led him to challenge many Catholic beliefs, including the authority of the pope. Luther would soon argue that monasticism was wrong, that priests should marry (as he did), and that the Bible should be translated from Latin so ordinary people could have direct access to its teachings. Luther did not want to break Christian unity, but the church he wanted should be on his terms (or, as he would have argued, the terms of the true faith). 

Luther picked up wide support for his views during the mid-16th century and beyond. Many Germans, in a somewhat nationalist reaction, resented the authority and taxes of the Roman pope. German princes saw an opportunity to gain more power. Their nominal leader, the Holy Roman emperor, remained Catholic. Thus, princes who turned Protestant could increase their independence and seize church lands. The Lutheran version of Protestantism (as the general wave of religious dis- sent was called) urged state control of the church as an alternative to papal authority, and this had obvious political appeal. 

There were reasons for ordinary people to shift their allegiance as well. Some German peasants saw Luther's attack on authority as a sanction for their own social rebellion against landlords, although Luther specifically renounced this reading. Some townspeople were drawn to Luther's approval of work in the world. Because faith alone gained salvation, Lutheranism could sanction moneymaking and other earthly pursuits more wholeheartedly than did traditional Catholicism. Unlike Catholicism, Lutherans did not see special vocations as particularly holy; monasteries were abolished, along with some of the Christian bias against moneymaking. 

Once Christian unity was breached, other Protestant groups sprang forward (see Map 18.1). In England, Henry VIII began to set up an Anglican church, initially to challenge papal attempts to enforce his first marriage, which had failed to produce a male heir. (Henry ultimately had six wives in sequence, executing two of them, a particularly graphic example of the treatment of women in power politics.) Henry was also attracted to some of the new doctrines, and his most durable successor, his daughter Elizabeth I, was Protestant outright. 

Still more important were the churches inspired by Jean Calvin, a French theologian who established his base in the Swiss city of Geneva. Calvinism insisted on God's predestination, or prior determination, of those who would be saved. Calvinist ministers became moral guardians and preachers of God's word. Calvinists sought the participation of all believers in local church administration, which promoted the idea of a wider access to government. They also promoted broader popular education so that more people could read the Bible. Calvinism was accepted not only in part of Switzerland but also in portions of Germany, in France (where it produced strong minority groups), in the Netherlands, in Hungary, and in England and Scotland. By the early 17th century, Puritan exiles brought it to North America. 

The Catholic church did not sit still under Protestant attack. It could not restore religious unity, but it defended southern Europe, Austria, Poland, much of Hungary, and key parts of Germany for the Catholic faith. Under a Catholic Reformation, a major church council revived Catholic doctrine and refuted key Protestant tenets such as the idea that priests had no special sacramental power and could marry. They also attacked popular superstitions and remnants of magical belief, which meant that Catholics and Protestants alike were trying to find new ways to shape the outlook of ordinary folk. A new religious order, the Jesuits, became active in politics, education, and missionary work, regaining some parts of Europe for the church. Jesuit fervor also sponsored Catholic missionary activity in Asia and the Americas. 

The End of Christian Unity in the West 

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations had several results in Europe during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Most obvious was an important series of bloody religious wars. France was a scene of bitter battles between Calvinist and Catholic forces. These disputes ended only with the grant- ing of tolerance to Protestants through the Edict of Nantes in 1598, although in the next century French kings progressively cut back on Protestant rights. In Germany, the Thirty Years War broke out in 1618, pitting German Protestants and allies such as Lutheran Sweden against the Holy Roman emperor, backed by Spain. The war was so devastating that it reduced German power and prosperity for a full century, cutting population by as much as 60 percent in some regions. It was ended only by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which agreed to the territorial tolerance concept: Some princely states and cities chose one religion, some another. This treaty also finally settled a rebellion of the Protestant Netherlands against Spain, giving the former its full independence. 

Religious fighting punctuated British history, first before the reign of Elizabeth in the 16th century, then in the English Civil War in the 1640s. Calvinists, Anglicans, and some remaining Catholics locked in combat. There was also growing tension between the claims of parliament and some strong assertions of authority by a new line of English kings. The civil war ended in 1660 (well after King Charles I had been beheaded; Figure 18.2), but full resolution came only in 1688–1689, when limited religious toleration was granted to most Protestants, although not to Catholics. 

Religious issues thus dominated European politics for almost a century. The religious wars led to a grudging and limited acceptance of the idea of religious pluralism. Christian unity could not be restored, although in most individual countries the idea of full religious liberty was still in the future. The religious wars persuaded some people that religion itself was suspect; if there was no dominant single truth, why all the cruelty and carnage? Finally, the wars affected the political balance of Europe, as Map 18.2 shows. After a period of weakness during its internal strife, France was on the upswing. The Netherlands and Britain were galvanized toward a growing international role. Spain, briefly ascendant, fell back. Internally, some kings and princes benefited from the decline of papal authority by taking a stronger role in reli- gious affairs. This was true in many Catholic and Protestant domains. In some cases, however, Protestant dissent encouraged popular political movements and enhanced parliamentary power. 

The impact of religious change went well beyond politics. Popular beliefs changed most in Protestant areas, but Catholic reform produced new impulses as well. Western people gradually became less likely to see an intimate connection between God and nature. Protestants resisted the idea of miracles or other interventions in nature's course. Religious change also promoted greater concentration on family life. Religious writers encouraged love between husband and wife. As one English Protestant put it, "When love is absent between husband and wife, it is like a bone out of joint: there is no ease, no order?" This promotion of the family had ambiguous implications for women. Protestantism, abolishing religious convents, made marriage more necessary for women than before; there were fewer alternatives for women who could not marry. Fathers were also responsible for the religious training of the children. On the other hand, women's emotional role in the family improved with the new emphasis on affection. 

Religious change accompanied and promoted growing literacy along with the spread of the printing press. In the town of Durham, England, around 1570, only 20 percent of all people were literate, but by 1630 the figure had climbed to 47 percent. Growing literacy opened people to additional new ideas and ways of thinking. 

Overall, the European Reformation was a fascinating case where long-run consequences did not coincide entirely with the intentions of early leaders, or with initial, short-term change. This was a very different development from the Renaissance, but ultimately, by the 17th century, the two movements could combine to an extent in their effects on politics or culture. 

This chapter explores the profound shifts in European culture, politics, and religion during the Renaissance and Reformation period. It begins with Francesco Petrarch, who symbolizes the new individual pride of the era as he climbs Ventoux, contrasting with the modesty of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance, emerging first in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries, is characterized as a cultural and artistic movement that emphasized humanism, secularism, and a revival of classical antiquity.

Key figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo advanced Western art, while political theorists like Machiavelli challenged traditional governance by advocating for pragmatic approaches to power. As Renaissance creativity began to wane in Italy by 1500 due to invasions and new trade routes, it spread northward to France, the Low Countries, Germany, and England.

The chapter also delves into technological advancements, such as the introduction of printing by Johannes Gutenberg, which democratized access to literature and ideas, while family structures transitioned toward a focus on nuclear families and delayed marriages.

The Protestant Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther's 95 theses in 1517, catalyzed a significant religious upheaval, leading to the emergence of various Protestant sects and a challenge to Catholic authority. The chapter details how these changes led to bloody religious wars, political shifts, and a gradual but limited acceptance of religious pluralism. Furthermore, it illustrates how the intertwined effects of the Reformation and Renaissance significantly reshaped social structures, understandings of individual rights, and community life in Europe.

The Renaissance, emerging in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries, fostered a cultural revival of classical antiquity and emphasized humanism and individualism, while the Protestant Reformation, sparked by Martin Luther's 95 theses in 1517, challenged Catholic authority and led to the emergence of various Protestant sects, resulting in significant religious wars and a shift toward religious pluralism in Europe.

The Renaissance and Reformation were periods marked by profound cultural, political, and religious transformations in Europe, characterized by individualism, humanism, new artistic expressions, and significant challenges to traditional authority.