AP European history chapter 13

A. The Christian Church in the Early Sixteenth Century 

​ ​1.  People of all social groups devoted an enormous amount of their time and income to religious causes and foundations. 

​ ​2.  Many people were also highly critical of the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy, whose prestige had been damaged by the papal conflict with the German emperor Frederick II, the Babylonian Captivity, the Great Schism, and the fifteenth-century popes’ concentration on artistic patronage and building up family power. 

​ ​3.  People’s anticlericalism was concentrated primarily on three problems: clerical immorality, clerical ignorance, and clerical pluralism. 

​B. Martin Luther

​ ​1.  Much of the church’s dramatic changes in the sixteenth century flowed out of the personal religious struggle of a German university professor and priest, Martin Luther (1483–1546). 

​ ​2.  Luther’s study of Saint Paul’s letters in the New Testament led him to the belief that salvation and justification come through faith, which is a free gift of God’s grace, not the result of human effort, and that God’s word is revealed only in Scripture, not in the traditions of the church. 

​ ​3.  At the same time that Luther was engaged in scholarly reflections and professorial lecturing, Pope Leo X authorized the sale of a special Saint Peter’s indulgence to finance his building plans in Rome.​ 

​ ​4.  In 1517, in a letter to Archbishop Albert stating his “Ninety-five Theses on the Power of Indulgences,” Luther argued that indulgences undermined the seriousness of penance, competed with the preaching of the Gospel, and downplayed the importance of charity in Christian life. 

​ ​5.  He published these ideas in pamphlets = public controversies about the church’s wealth, power, and basic structure.  Church’s response?? 

​ ​6.  1521, Charles V held the Diet of Worms, Luther refused to recant. – Luther’s ideas spread wildly. 

C. Protestant Thought

​ ​1.  The Swiss humanist, priest, and admirer of Erasmus, Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), was convinced that Christian life rested on the Scriptures. Also, criticized the Mass and monasticism.​ 

​ ​2.  In his gradual reform of the church in Zurich, Zwingli had the strong support of the city authorities, who resented the privileges of the clergy.

​ ​3.  The followers of Luther, Zwingli, and others who called for a break with Rome came to be called Protestants 

​​​a. faith alone.  Bible alone

​​​b.  2 sacraments -  why?​ ​

​ ​4.  Protestants held that the church is a spiritual priesthood of all believers, not a hierarchical institution headed by the pope in Rome, and argued that every person should serve God in his or her individual calling. 

​ ​5. Luther believed that Christ is really present in the consecrated bread and wine as a result of God’s mystery, whereas Zwingli understood Christ to be present in spirit among the faithful but not actually in the bread and wine. 

​D. The Appeal of Protestant Ideas 

​ ​1.  Educated people and many humanists = everyone should read and reflect 

​ ​2.  Why is printing press so important?

​ ​3.  Translated the New Testament into German in 1523. 

​ ​4.  Luther worked closely with political authorities in his territory, demanding that German rulers reform the papacy and its institutions and instructing all Christians to obey their secular rulers. 

​ E. The Radical Reformation and the German Peasants’ War 

​ ​1.  Crop failures in 1523 and 1524 aggravated the poor economic condition of many German peasants who, aggrieved by nobles’ burdensome rents, made demands they believed conformed to the Scriptures, citing Luther and other radical thinkers. 

​ ​2.  Although Luther initially sided with the peasants, his aim of freedom from Roman church authority did not include opposition to legally established secular powers. 

​ ​3.  Convinced that rebellion would hasten the end of civilized society, Luther wrote the tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the Peasants. 

​ ​4.  More than seventy-five thousand peasants were killed as the nobility ferociously crushed the revolt of the German Peasants’ War of 1525 and strengthened their own authority. 

​ 

F. Marriage and Sexuality

​ ​1.  Luther married a former nun, Katharina von Bora (1499–1532), and Zwingli married a Zurich widow, Anna Reinhart (1491–1538); they and the wives of other Protestant reformers created a new and respectable role for themselves, that of the pastor’s wife. 

​ ​2.  Protestant reformers believed that a proper marriage reflected both the spiritual equality of men and women as well as the social hierarchy of husbandly authority and wifely obedience. – Divorce is allowable 

​ ​3.  Protestants, who also believed marriage was the only proper remedy for lust, uniformly condemned prostitution, closing brothels and setting harsh punishments for prostitution. 

​ ​4.  The Reformation generally brought the closing of monasteries and convents, which eliminated many literary, artistic, medical, or administrative avenues for women who could not or would not marry. 

II.The Reformation and German Politics

​A. The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty 

​ ​1.  The course of the Reformation was shaped by the election of the Habsburg prince Charles V (r. 1519–1556) as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (Catholic) 

​ ​2.  The Holy Roman emperor Frederick III married Princess Eleonore of Portugal in 1452.

​ ​3.  Frederick’s son Maximilian married Europe’s most prominent heiress, Mary of Burgundy, in 1477. 

​ ​4.  Further unions between Maximilian’s children and the children of Ferdinand and Isabella (Catholic)  meant that their grandson Charles V (1500–1558) fell heir to a vast and incredibly diverse collection of states and peoples, each governed in a different manner and held together only by the person of the emperor. 

​B. Religious Wars in Switzerland and Germany 

​ ​1.  Almost everyone believed that the presence of a faith different from that of the majority represented a political threat to the security of the state; few believed in religious liberty. 

​ ​2.  Luther’s appeal to national feeling influenced many rulers otherwise confused by or indifferent to the complexities of the religious matters. 

​ ​3.  Some German rulers were sincerely attracted to Lutheran ideas, but more important to many other rulers was that the rejection of Roman Catholicism and adoption of Protestantism would mean the legal confiscation of lush farmlands and rich monasteries, as well as greater independence from the emperor. 

​ ​4.  After Zwingli was killed on the battlefield in 1531between Catholcs and Protestants, both sides agreed to a treaty that allowed each canton to determine its own religion and ordered each side to give up its foreign alliances, a policy of neutrality that has been characteristic of modern Switzerland. 

​ ​5.  Catholic Charles vs. Protestant nobles. = At first the emperor could not respond militarily because he was in the midst of a series of wars with the French: the Habsburg-Valois wars (1521–1559). 

​ ​6.​When fighting did begin in 1546, Charles wassuccessful, which alarmed many. 

​ ​7.​Finally, in 1555 Charles agreed to the Peace of Augsburg, which permitted the political authority in each territory to decide whether the territory would be Catholic or Lutheran. 

​ ​8.​With no further hope of uniting his empire under a single church, Charles V abdicated in 1556 and moved to a monastery, transferring power over his holdings in Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip and his imperial power to his brother Ferdinand. 

III.  The Spread of Protestant Ideas

​A. Scandinavia 

​ ​1.  The first area outside the empire to officially accept the Reformation was the kingdom of Denmark-Norway under King Christian III (r. 1536–1559). 

​B. Henry VIII and the Reformation in England 

​ ​1.  England’s break with Rome arose out of King Henry VIII’s (r. 1509–1547) desire for a new wife, though ultimately his own motives also combined personal, political, social, and economic elements. 

​ ​2.  Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon had produced only one living heir, a daughter, Mary, so in 1527 Henry appealed to the pope to have the marriage annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, who he hoped would give him a son. 

​ ​3.  Pope Clement VII would not - under pressure from Charles V (family) 

​ ​4.  Henry used Parliament to remove the English church from papal jurisdiction and to make himself the supreme head of the church in England.  Act of Supremacy 1534. – Thomas More

​ ​. 

​ ​5.  When Anne Boleyn failed twice to produce a male child, Henry VIII charged her with adulterous incest and had her beheaded in 1536. 

​ ​6.  His third wife, Jane Seymour, gave Henry his son, Edward, but she died in childbirth. 

​ ​7.  Although the English church retained such traditional Catholic practices and doctrines as confession, clerical celibacy, and transubstantiation, Henry dissolved the English monasteries because he wanted their wealth. 

​ ​8.  The redistribution of these lands strengthened the upper classes and tied them to both the Tudor dynasty and the new Protestant Church. 

​ ​9.  Most clergy and officials accepted Henry’s moves, but in 1536 popular opposition in the north led to the Pilgrimage of Grace, a massive rebellion that proved the largest in English history. - Loyalty to the Catholic Church was particularly strong in Ireland. 

​C. Upholding Protestantism in England 

​ ​1.  During the reign of Edward VI (r. 1547–1553), Archbishop Thomas Cranmer simplified the liturgy, invited Protestant theologians to England, and prepared the first Book of Common Prayer (1549). 

​ ​2.  Mary Tudor (r. 1553–1558), the devoutly Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, rescinded the Reformation legislation of her father’s reign and restored Roman Catholicism. 

​ ​3.  Following Mary’s death, Elizabeth (r. 1558–1603), Henry’s daughter with Anne Boleyn, who had been raised a Protestant, inaugurated the beginnings of religious stability. 

​ ​4.  Referring to herself as the “supreme governor of the Church of England,” she required her subjects to attend services in the Church of England but did not interfere with their privately held beliefs. 

​ ​5.  The Anglican Church, as the Church of England was called, moved in a moderately Protestant direction—conducting services in English, allowing clergy to marry—but with a hierarchical structure and elaborate services. 

​ ​6.  In 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin and next in line to the throne, became implicated in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, a conspiracy that had the full backing of Spain’s Philip II. 

​ ​7.  When the English executed Mary, the Catholic pope urged Philip to retaliate. 

​ ​8.  On May 9, 1588, the Spanish Armada met an English fleet of ships that were smaller, faster, and more maneuverable and carried greater firing power. 

​ ​9.  The defeat of the Spanish Armada prevented Philip II from reimposing Catholicism on England by force, but the war between England and Spain dragged on for years. 

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D. Calvinism

​ ​1.  As a young man John Calvin (1509–1564) studied law, which had a decisive impact on his mind and later his thought. 

​ ​3.  Calvin believed that God had specifically selected him to reform the church, and beginning in 1541, he worked assiduously to establish a Christian society in Geneva ruled by God through civil magistrates and reformed ministers. 

​ ​4.  The cornerstone of Calvin’s theology, embodied in The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), was his belief in the absolute sovereignty and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of humanity. 

​ ​5.  Calvin ascribed to the theological principle called predestination: ​ ​ 

​ ​6.  In his reform of Geneva, Calvin understood the importance of institutions, and he established the Genevan Consistory, a body of laymen and pastors that was charged with regulating citizens’ conduct, which it did with severity.

​ ​7.  Between 1542 and 1546 alone, seventy-six persons were banished from Geneva by the Consistory, and fifty-eight were executed for heresy, adultery, blasphemy, and witchcraft. 

​ ​8.  John Knox (1505?–1572) dominated the reform movement in Scotland and was determined to establish a state church there and structure it after the model of Geneva, where he had studied and worked with Calvin. 

​ ​9.  Knox persuaded the Scottish parliament to end papal authority and instead establish governance by presbyters,or councils of ministers. 

​E. The Reformation in Eastern Europe 

​ ​1.  Most Czechs in Bohemia in the fifteenth century had adopted the ideas of Jan Hus, and the German emperor had been forced to recognize a separate Hussite church. 

​ ​3.  Luther’s ideas took root in Germanized towns in Poland-Lithuania but were opposed by King Sigismund I (r. 1506–1548) as well as by ordinary Poles, who held strong anti-German feeling. 

​ ​4.  Hungary’s experience with the Reformation was even more complex: Lutheranism was spread by Hungarian students who had studied at Wittenberg, but its status as “the German heresy” was an issue until the Ottoman sultan Suleiman crushed the Hungarians in 1526 and divided the Hungarian kingdom into three parts.

​ ​5.  In the face of Turkish indifference to the religious conflicts of Christians, many Magyar (Hungarian) nobles accepted Lutheranism. 

​ ​6.  The majority of people in Hungary were Protestant until the late seventeenth century, when Hungarian nobles recognized Habsburg (Catholic) rule and Ottoman Turkish withdrawal in 1699 led to Catholic restoration. 

IV.​The Catholic Reformation

​A. Papal Reform and the Council of Trent 

​ ​1.  The papal court of Pope Paul III (pontificate 1534–1549) became the center of the reform movement rather than its chief opponent, as he and his successors supported improvements in education for the clergy, the end of simony, and stricter control of clerical life. 

​ ​2.  In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Holy Office, with jurisdiction over the Roman Inquisition, which had the power to arrest, imprison, and execute suspected heretics. 

​ ​3.  In 1545 The decrees of the Council of Trentreaffirmed the seven sacraments, gave equal validity to the Scriptures and to tradition as sources of religious truth and authority, and tackled disciplinary matters such as pluralism, simony, and the sale of indulgences. 

​ ​4.  The doctrinal and disciplinary legislation of Trent strengthened Roman Catholic faith, organization, and practice. 

​ B. New Religious Orders 

​ ​1.  The Ursuline order of nuns, founded by Angela Merici (1474–1540), attained enormous prestige for the education of women. 

​ ​2.  The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) played a powerful role in strengthening Catholicism in Europe, eduation, and spreading the faith around the world. 

​ ​3.  With flexibility and the willingness to respond to the needs of time and circumstance, the Jesuits achieved phenomenal success, carrying Christianity to India and Japan before 1550 and to Brazil, North America, and the Congo in the seventeenth century. 

V.​Religious Violence

​A. French Religious Wars 

​ ​1.  In 1559, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which ended the long conflict known as the Habsburg-Valois wars. 

​ ​2.  In a treaty with the papacy known as the Concordat of Bologna, King Francis I (r. 1515–1547) secured for the French crown the right to appoint all French bishops and abbots, ensuring a rich supplement of money and offices. 

​ ​3.  Calvinism drew converts from among reform-minded members of the Catholic clergy, industrious city dwellers, and artisan groups. 

​ ​4.  The number of French Calvinists (called Huguenots) grew to perhaps one-tenth of the French population after the death of Henry II (r. 1547–1559). 

​ ​5.  Some of the French nobility took advantage of the monarchical weakness of Henry’s sons and adopted Protestantism as a religious cloak for their independence. 

​ ​6.  The marriage ceremony of the king’s sister Margaret of Valois to the Protestant Henry of Navarre was intended to help reconcile Catholics and Huguenots, but it actually sparked the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 24, 1572, in which Huguenot wedding guests and other Protestants were killed. 15 yr civil war ensued. 

​ ​7.  Agriculture in many areas was destroyed; commercial life declined severely; and starvation and death haunted the land. 

​ ​8.  A major politique, Henry of Navarre, became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610) and converted to Catholicism. 

​ ​9.  In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted liberty of public worship to Huguenots in 150 fortified towns and helped restore internal peace in France. 

​B. The Netherlands Under Charles V 

​ ​1.  In the Netherlands, what began as a movement for the reformation of the church developed into a struggle for Dutch independence. 

​ ​2.  The provinces that compose present-day Belgium and the Netherlands were each self-governing, and each enjoyed the right to make its own laws and collect its own taxes. 

​ ​3.  In the Low Countries as elsewhere, corruption in the Roman church and the critical spirit of the Renaissance provoked pressure for reform. 

​ ​4.  Calvinism’s intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and emphasis on any form of labor well done appealed to urban merchants, financiers, and artisans, but Calvinism also tended to encourage opposition to political authorities that were judged to be ungodly. 

​ ​5.  Spanish authorities attempted to suppress Calvinist worship and raised taxes in the 1560s, which caused rioting and the destruction of thirty Catholic churches in Antwerp. 

​ ​6.  Philip II sent twenty thousand Spanish troops under the duke of Alva, who opened his own tribunal, the “Council of Blood,” and executed fifteen hundred men in 1568. 

​ ​7.  Between 1568 and 1578 civil war raged in the Netherlands between Catholics and Protestants and between the seventeen provinces and Spain. 

​ ​8.  Eventually the ten southern provinces, the Spanish Netherlands (the future Belgium), came under the control of the Spanish Habsburg forces. 

​ ​9.  The seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the Union of Utrecht and in 1581 declared their independence from Spain. 

​C. The Great European Witch-Hunt 

​ ​1.  Increasing persecution for witchcraft actually began before the Reformation in the 1480s, but it became especially common about 1560, and the mania continued until roughly 1660. 

​ ​2.  Both Protestants and Catholics tried and executed witches, with church officials and secular authorities acting together. 

​ ​4.  In the later Middle Ages, witches were no longer understood simply as people who used magical power to get what they wanted, but rather as people used by the Devil to do what he wanted. 

​ ​5. Scholars estimate that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were officially tried for witchcraft, and between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed; 75 to 85 percent of those executed were women.

​ ​6.​Most witch trials began with a single accusation in a village or town.

​ ​7.​Larger witch-hunts, or witch panics, often occurred after some type of climatic disaster and were most common in the part of Europe that saw the most witch accusations in general: the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, and parts of France. 

​ ​8.​As new ideas about science and reason in the seventeenth century brought doubts about whether witches could make a pact with the Devil and about whether torture would ever yield truthful confessions, prosecutions for witchcraft became less common and were gradually outlawed. 

Learning Objectives:

After reading and studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Identify the central ideas of the church reformers and the reasons they appealed to different social groups.

2. Analyze how the political situation in Germany shaped the course of the Reformation.

3. Trace the spread of Protestant ideas and institutions beyond German-speaking lands.

4. Discuss the Catholic Church’s response to the new religious situation.

5. Analyze the causes and consequences of religious violence, including riots, wars, and witch-hunts.