Religions 1450 to 1750 - AP World History: Modern

The opening years of the Renaissance coincided with a period in which the Catholic Church progressively fell from the position of near-absolute dominance which it had long exercised over much of Western Europe. This trend first emerged as a result of several events that occurred in the late Middle Ages – as the memory of the Black Death’s devastation receded, and was replaced with the horrific ravages of Europe’s many wars (especially the destruction wrought by the Hundred Years’ War), many individuals began to see the Church as less of a mainstay. Rather, the growing influence of national armies and international and/or inter-regional conflict promoted the birth of nationalist sentiment among the population. Increasingly, citizens from all societal classes came to view national loyalty and pride as a quite natural and important expression of allegiance, which in turn caused loyalty to the Church to correspondingly decline. After all, the Church taken sides throughout many of these wars as well, which many individuals regarded as unnecessary clerical meddling at best or even unwarranted papal posturing at worst. The deep transformations wrought by the Renaissance furthered this trend, as humanist scholars guided their students away from Church teachings in favor of more secularized and widely varied courses of study. These humanist students and scholars helped engender an entirely new breed of intellectuals, who began to serve as government administrators and officials, increasingly replacing the members of the clergy who once had filled these posts.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 when the reformer Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. Luther was concerned with abuses of the clergy, namely the sale of indulgences; the practice of simony; and nepotism. Originally Luther intended to reform the church and contribute to a discussion within the framework of church authority, but eventually his movement evolved into a widespread reformation.

Matteo Ricci is famous for his missionary work in China, on behalf of the Catholic Church, in the late sixteenth century. Ricci is responsible for many of the early in-roads made by Christianity in east Asia and is also one of the first Europeans to be able to read, write, and speak traditional Chinese.

The Edict of Nantes was issued by King Henry IV of France in 1598. It was primarily concerned with religious tolerance in France. It extended freedom of worship to French Calvinists (known as Huguenots) in what was, at the time, an officially and exclusively Catholic nation.

The Aztec religion included elements of human sacrifice. The Aztecs waged many brutal wars of conquest in Central America before the arrival of the Europeans. The people they conquered would be assimilated into the empire and some of their citizens would be sacrificed to appease the Aztec gods.

Henry VIII of England famously separated from the Catholic Church in order to obtain a Divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He subsequently formed the Church of England with himself as the head. Mary I was staunchly Catholic, and is infamous for executing protestant sympathizers. Similarly, Isabella I of Spain held the title of Servant of God, and began the Spanish Inquisition (for religious purity). Louis XIV of France remained staunchly Catholic until being executed by the French Revolution, and Charlemagne was the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Luther himself created a vernacular translation of scripture. He was against sacerdotalism and encouraged all to communicate directly with God. The other practices listed are emblematic of the corruption he sought to purge from the Catholic Church. In order to answer this question, you could have either known of Luther's vernacular translation, or known about his points of contention with the church.

Historians have been able to pinpoint regions of the country known today as Germany as the starting location for the Protestant Reformation. Especially conducive to the Reformation’s outbreak were the imperial cities located throughout the Germanic region, such as Saxony. At the time, there existed sixty-five imperial cities in total, each operating as a free and independent body, answerable only to itself. As a result of such freedoms, the residents of these cities were already accustomed to governing their own political, economic, and social affairs, and so religious changes were received by many of the citizens as similarly natural – in other words, just another matter to assess and alter if required. Naturally (given their propensity for freedom), not all of these cities remained Protestant – many reverted back to versions of Catholicism, while others adopted a denominationally diverse lifestyle, with some residents living as Protestants and others as practicing Catholics. Most towns quickly came to adopt a culture of religious toleration, in which public preaching, argumentation, and attempts at conversion were deeply discouraged; this helped to keep the public peace in a great many cases.

Generally speaking, the Protestant Reformation, with its politically expansionist as well as its religiously transformative tones, appealed to segments of society who were either socially disadvantaged and/or desirous of greater social and economic mobility. Village residents and the peasantry, as the most impoverished group, were naturally drawn to the Reformation’s urgings, as were other individuals who had found themselves targeted by the state (such as political dissidents or residents who were under the control of an autocratic local ruler). The Reformation also received a great deal of support from guild members, particularly those who had experienced some financial gains and wanted this to ensure that this personal growth would continue. For the most part, these conditions meant that groups such as the aristocracy and the wealthy business class were largely immune to the Reformation’s charms, as they were already in an advantageous position, both financially and socially, and therefore regarded the notion of any sort of change as a potential threat to their prosperity.

In the years from the thirteenth into the fifteenth centuries, Western Europe saw the localized and/or regional rise of many lay religious movements. These developments were entirely conceived, implemented, and managed by secular individuals and were especially common in urban areas, where access to multiple sources of information (helped along by the printing press and expanding trade routes) encouraged free-thinking and experimentation. Several of these groups amassed rather substantially-sized followings – the Hussites, Waldensians, Beguines, and Lollards, for example. While of course these groups were all quite different, it is true that a definite majority shared a common central goal – they desired to return to what they saw as the simple religious practices put in place by Jesus and his original apostles. These individuals regarded the Catholic Church as a far too doctrinally and practically complex realm, one in which ritual outweighed belief. To solve this problem, many believed that the only true solution was a return to a more individualized, ascetic religious experience, one devoid of all the material trappings of Catholicism. Especially enshrined by such movements was the notion of equal and reciprocal exchange amongst religious leaders and the lay population, so that each church member, regardless of their official clerical or social status, was able to have their say and direct their own religious practices.

As perhaps the most important – and certainly one of the most outspoken - figures in the entirety of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther differed quite sharply from established Catholic Church teachings in a great many areas. A man of deep passions, Luther boldly criticized Church policies and doctrine at every turn, both verbally and in print. He attacked the Church most frequently over the issue of salvation, a doctrinal matter which both he and the Church viewed as being of the utmost importance. Luther was sharply critical over the Church’s definition of salvation as a two-part concept – one half bestowed by God and the other earned through good works (such as charity work) during a person’s time on Earth. According to Luther, this was a pernicious misinterpretation on the Church’s part, one that encouraged Catholics to engage in good works as a rote obligation, done out of duty rather than care and compassion for their fellow man. Such an attitude, Luther argued was not conducive to salvation, or indeed true Christianity, at all. Rather, Luther described salvation as an entirely God-given gift, which couldn’t be “bought” through contractual acts of good deeds.

As is true with most transformative movements (both political and social), the biggest threat to the Reformation actually came from within the group itself. After all, during the early days of the Reformation, the most powerful imperial forces (such as Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire) were far too busy quarreling and jockeying for power amongst themselves to muster up any serious opposition to the Protestant reformers. Consequently, the Reformation instead nearly tore itself apart from the inside, as various internal conflicts erupted. These disagreements had their roots in many concerns, including class differences, doctrinal disputes, and leadership concerns, and the many regional divisions that existed throughout the German area only exacerbated the dilemma. Further challenges to the Reformation were posed by several peasant uprisings that arose throughout Germany, as desperate peasants took up arms against their government. Many of these peasant groups claimed Luther as their inspiration, citing his teachings and support of individualism as ample justification for what they termed as their rebellion against the tyranny of the local German administrators. Yet Luther and many of his fellow Lutherans had no interest in involving themselves in any sort of political revolution – their mission, as they saw it, was religious and moral, rather than some sort of sociopolitical conflict. Luther therefore publically disavowed any support for the peasants, in what many historians regard as a savvy move, at least as it related to Luther's own survival.

Soon after breaking out in Germany, the Protestant Reformation began to spill over into Switzerland. With its independent and fiercely individualistic cantons (aka states), a track record of small-scale religious reform movements, and a growing tide of national sentiment, Switzerland enjoyed some of the same key conditions which had helped the Reformation take hold in Germany. Just as Germanic Protestantism operated largely under the leadership of Martin Luther, many Swiss Protestants found their ideal teacher in Ulrich Zwingli, a highly educated devotee of the humanist theologian Erasmus. Zwingli was just as intense, uncompromising, and outspoken as his Germanic counterpart and his devotees followed his example. Before too long, many of the Swiss cantons declared their Protestant allegiance, but the region unfortunately was not able to institute lasting compromises between its new Protestant and established Catholic populations. Before too long, these tensions would boil over into two bloody civil wars – first in 1529 and again in 1531. It was during this last conflict that Zwingli was killed in battle.

Over the course of the late sixteenth century, a new Protestant sect began to displace Lutheranism as the dominant religious movement across Western Europe. Known as Calvinism, this Protestant sect took its name from its vastly influential leader, John Calvin. Unlike Martin Luther, John Calvin was openly political in his aims – he spoke out quite often of his desire to marry religious change with sociopolitical reform. Calvin put his philosophy to the ultimate test in the city of Geneva, when the city’s leaders personally offered to appoint Calvin as one of the city’s top administrators. Before long, Calvin had won nearly the entire populace of Geneva, high and low ranking alike, to his side and together they shaped the social patterns and political policies of the city after Calvinist doctrine.

Calvinism, much like Lutheranism and the other sectors of Protestantism which developed alongside them, attracted its fair share of controversy. Yet one of John Calvin’s doctrines drew far more protest than any other – namely, his notion of predestination. According to Calvin, predestination is the idea that the ultimate fate (heaven or hell) of each person has already been pre-determined by God, regardless of any earthly events or influences. Naturally, Calvinists all considered themselves to have been chosen from before birth as God’s saved people, while all other outsiders, as non-Calvinists, they believed to be necessarily beyond salvation. Of course, this idea outraged many people, Protestants, Catholics, and others besides, who were none too pleased to be told that John Calvin considered their lives as nothing more than an eternally doomed prospect.

Like the rest of Europe at the time, England had also been experiencing the stirring influences of the rising Protestant Reformation. But concrete action had yet to be taken, until King Henry VIII’s personal desires fatally clashed with Catholic dogma. Unhappy with his current wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and desperate to finally have a male heir, King Henry VIII was determined to divorce Queen Catherine and wed her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. However, divorce was a tricky matter during this era and could only be granted through Papal permission. King Henry personally appealed to Pope Clement VII, asking that he be allowed to divorce Catherine in favor of Anne, but the Pope, who was currently being held prisoner by Catherine’s nephew (aka the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) was not at all inclined to grant this request. Incensed, King Henry decided that he didn’t need to listen to the Vatican and he married Anne Boleyn anyway, declaring his divorce from Catherine to be legal under his authority as supreme sovereign of England. Then, in defiance of the Pope’s orders, in 1534 King Henry passed the Act of Supremacy, which declared that the entire nation of England was no longer a Catholic country, had no allegiance to the Vatican or to the Pope, and was no longer going to render either monetary or military support to the Papal State. Furthermore, King Henry declared that he himself, as England’s ruler, was the dominant religious leader in the land and so he created the Church of England (aka Anglicanism), the new official state religion.

The Catholic Church was greatly worried by the success of the Protestant Reformation, especially as the doctrines of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli gained strong footholds across Western Europe. King Henry VIII’s secession from Catholicism with his Act of Supremacy, as well as his son, King Edward I’s legalization of Protestant practice in England, finally convinced the Catholic Church that something had to be done. Accordingly, the Council of Trent was convened in 1545 – this was an assembly of top Catholic figures, expressly assembled by Pope Paul III, to come up with various reforms that could be made to Church practices. The Council hoped that any reforms which they would devise and then implement would hopefully convince many Europeans to abandon Protestantism and return to Catholicism, while also stopping any further abandonment. The Council met, off and on, until 1563, when it finally announced a sweeping program of reforms. These included prohibiting the sale of Church positions, the granting of increased powers to local bishops, and the creation of more seminaries to educate young men. These reforms were limited however – they were purely administrative and practical in nature; no doctrinal changes were made.

While it is indeed true that the Protestant Reformation made a great many changes to Western European society, the overall status quo remained the same. Although the top power players switched – the Catholic Church lost dominance to Protestantism – little else of the power structure was altered; the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the rich still indomitably reigned. Still, this is not to say that many important alterations to the underlying social order did not take place. As Protestantism gained more and more converts, the number of Catholic churches, monasteries, and nunneries in operation declined sharply. As more secular individuals gained administrative positions, the new members of the Protestant clergy weren’t permitted the same exceptions to the rules that Catholic clergy members once enjoyed. This meant that Protestant clergy were made subject to the same laws and taxes as everyone else; they were no longer immune from prosecution or from taxation. The rate of conversion, however, didn’t hold – by the end of the sixteenth century, more than half of the overall number of people who had converted to Protestantism left their new faith and returned to Catholicism.

As Calvinists began to openly criticize and otherwise verbally (and sometimes physically) assail Catholics towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church knew that something had to be done. Accordingly, the Catholic Church’s top levels of leadership — namely, the Pope and bishops — collaborated to institute a new program, called the Counter-Reformation. The Counter-Reformation was intended to push back against Calvinist attacks on the Church, while also shoring up popular support for Church doctrine and deeds across the region. As part of this new policy, the Catholic Church increased its support for the institution of monarchy, the more authoritative and absolute the better. This is because Church leaders found it easiest to work alongside and negotiate with powerful kings and queens, who could command and enforce their subjects’ strict obedience. Additionally, the Church and monarchy shared very similar structural systems — both were constructed on the principle of one sovereign leader (a King and a Pope) who dictated his laws down a rigidly hierarchical chain of command.