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IMMACULATE HEART ACADEMY
World History
Honors
Unit 21
C HAPTER
Renaissance and
Reformation
The word “renaissance” means rebirth
and beginning in Italy in the 1300s, a recognizably different culture seemed to be
emerging in Western Europe. Historians
date the end of the medieval world and
the beginning of the modern era to the
Renaissance. A new spirit of the age can
be observed in the culture of the Renaissance. At the same time, religious reformers unleashed a religious revolution, challenging the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and dividing Western Christianity into multiple Christian sects.
Unit 2 Renaissance and Reformation Proficiencies: students will be able to
1. Explain the concept of humanism, and assess its importance in Renaissance culture, identify examples of the humanistic vision in Renaissance literature and art.
2. Explain the historical forces that made Italy the earliest Renaissance society in Europe.
3. Evaluate the impact of trade, banking, and maritime technology on the rise of Florence and Venice.
4. Evaluate factors that led to the decline of Italy after 1500.
5. Describe characteristics of Renaissance painting, contrasting Renaissance art with the art of the Middle Ages; identify Renaissance characteristics in representative works of early and High Renaissance artists.
6. Describe the background causes of the Protestant Reformation, evaluating the impact of religious, political, social,
and technological factors.
7. Explain the political issues that drove Henry VIII to separate the English Church from Rome.
8. Assess the Catholic Counter-Reformation: what were its successes; what were its failures?
9. Assess the social and political impacts of the Protestant Reformation on early modern Europe.
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S ECTION 1
Renaissance in Italy
Q UESTIONS :
1. What factors explain why the Renaissance
happened in Italy first?
2. What roles did Florence and Venice play in the
Italian Renaissance?
3. Note the political and economic factors that
brought Italy's dominance to an end.
The great intellectual, cultural, and artistic revival known as the Renaissance began in Italy in the 1300s and spread to include all of Western
Europe by the 1500s. The Renaissance was a “self aware” age, recognizing their era as a significant departure from the values and outlook of
the Middle Ages—at least the Middle Ages as the Renaissance defined
it. It was Renaissance thinkers who created the stereotype of the medieval period as “the Dark Ages”—a period of cultural decline—and as the
“Age of Faith”—a period when the values of religion and a focus on
heaven replaced the “classical” (Greek and Roman) values of individualism and engagement with the world.
Why Italy First?
During the Renaissance, Italy was not the unified country we know today. The boot-shaped peninsula was divided into many small independent states (This was yet another connection Italian humanists made
with the Greeks: Italian politics resembled the city states of Greece.)
The Kingdom of Naples in the south was ruled by a series of kings.
Popes of the Roman Catholic Church ruled the Papal States in the center. To the north, different families controlled the largest and wealthiest city-states of Florence and Venice.
Why did the Renaissance begin in Italy first? The Italian city-states had
some key advantages over the rising “Atlantic Powers” to the west. Although the situation would reverse itself by the 1500s, the city-states of
Italy survived the 1300 and 1400s better than the larger states of northwestern Europe. Italy did not experience the cooling of the climate that
shortened growing seasons of northern Europe.
Geography provides another explanation: Italy's strategic location in
the central Mediterranean Sea between East and West positioned Italy
as a crossroads for new ideas and influences. Italian merchants traveled regularly to Constantinople where Greek scholars preserved what
remained of the Greek classical heritage. Italy’s lucrative trade with
the East gave its city states enormous economic advantages.
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Map of Florence
Map of Renaissance Italy
Italian merchants quickly mastered the business skills of organization,
bookkeeping, and scouting new markets. Rich cities expanded to become powerful city-states, dominating the political and economic life
of the surrounding countryside. By the fifteenth century, the great Italian cities had become the bankers of much of Europe. Finally, the presence of Rome and the papacy in the heart of Italy meant that Italian
Renaissance culture benefited from the enormous wealth and patronage of the Roman Catholic Church.
By the 1400s, Florence was the most dazzling of Renaissance cities. As
a center of trade, of production (especially wool cloth), and banking it
was the commercial and financial center of Europe--and the earliest
center of Renaissance culture. Florence had one thing that a vigorous
cultural revival needed: great wealth. Merchant princes of the banking
Medici family became great patrons of the arts. The result of such patronage was a cultural Renaissance unmatched elsewhere in Europe.
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The Venice Arsenal in the 1400s
The center of Italian maritime and military power was the city-state of
Venice, located on Italy’s east coast on the Adriatic Sea. The famous
Venice Arsenal--a ship building and weapons factory that began production in the 1300s--has been called “the largest industrial complex in
Europe” before the Industrial Revolution of the eighteen century. Protected by two miles of walls and fortifications, an army of laborers
working in assembly lines produced prefabricated parts of ships that
could then be assembled in a day--an early version of modern “mass
production” techniques.
The Entry Gate to the Arsenal, painted by Canaletto
Loss of Leadership
With the rise of the Atlantic Powers, economic opportunities began to
close for the Italian city-states. Economic problems were coupled with
political crisis as the city-states faced successive waves of invasion by
the armies of France and Spain between 1490 and 1530.
Notes:
By 1450, Venice controlled over 3,000 merchant ships, dominating
trade across the Mediterranean Sea. (It was this monopoly on trade the
the Atlantic Powers were trying to break by exploring across the Atlantic.)
Venice, like Florence, became a leading city of the Italian Renaissance,
its great merchant families, like the Medici’s of Florence, became patrons of the arts.
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S ECTION 2
Renaissance Writers
Q UESTIONS :
1. Define humanism and describe its influence on
Renaissance writers.
2. Why is Petrarch called the “father of the Italian
humanism?”
3. How did the works of Pico and Castiglione
reflect characteristics of Renaissance
humanism?
4. In what historical context did Machiavelli write
The Prince? What was his purpose in writing
The Prince?
Renaissance Humanism Renaissance people gave this outlook a
name: humanism. Renaissance humanists identified deeply with the
Greek playwright Sophocles who wrote: “Wonders are many but the
greatest of these is mankind.” Like the ancient Greeks, Renaissance
people believed that the individual was capable of extraordinary things,
that the aim of life was to realize one’s full potential, and that each individual had a responsibility to live fully in the world. A well rounded education was the key to producing the multi-talented individual who was
the Renaissance ideal.
The ideal of humanism also embraced the idea known as civic humanism, which valued a sense of civic responsibility and active engagement with the world. This outlook, too, had classical Greek roots:
they would identify deeply with this observation by the Greek leader of
the Golden Age of Athens, Pericles, who said in a famous speech: “We
Athenians, unlike any other nation, regard those who take no part in
public duties, not simply as unambitious, but as useless.” Civic humanism challenged the individual to be of use to his world.
A Renaissance education—broadly based, focused on the classics, including history, philosophy, “natural philosophy” (science), mathematics, and classical literature, was meant to produce well-rounded,
multi-talented people who took an active part in their world. That
well-rounded education was supposed to produce that “Renaissance
Man.” Not a specialist in one area, the Renaissance Man would cultivate a variety of talents and interests. Wealthy Renaissance business
men hired humanist scholars as tutors for their sons and for their
daughters, although the education of daughters was more limited.
5. The Discourses is a very different work: what
did Machiavelli say in this work?
6. According to Machiavelli, is it better for a
leader to be feared or loved? Why?
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admired from a distance, his famous Sonnets to Laura. Petrarch’s
contempt for the "useless" learning of medieval scholars, indeed his
contempt for most of the culture of the Middle Ages which he called
"gothic," meaning barbarous or uncivilized, were features that many
later humanists shared.
Petrarch with his laurel crown
Francesco Petrarch (d. 1374) is often called the father of Italian humanism. Wrote in the style of the great Latin writers of Rome. He celebrated ancient Romans in his Letters to the Ancient Dead, writing
imaginary letters to Cicero, Virgil, and Horace.
In his work, In Praise of Antiquity [ancient Greece and Rome]
Petrarch wrote; "O inglorious age that scorns the ancient world, its
mother, to whom it owes every noble art...what can be said in defense
of men of education who ought not to be ignorant of antiquity and yet
are plunged in this same darkness?... What shall be say about men
who scorn Cicero, the bright sun of eloquence?"
Petrarch’s fame as a scholar and writer was so great that the king of
Naples revived the ancient Greek custom of rewarding excellence with
a laurel crown, making Petrarch the first modern “poet laureate.”
(An honors bestowed today in Britain and the United States to an outstanding poet.)
Petrarch's most famous contemporary work was a collection of highly
introspective love poems to a married woman whom he romantically
Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494) was a dazzling scholar, fluent in
Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, whose most famous work was Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486). In it he praises the unique capacity of humans, granted by God, to determine their own characters.
God dictated the nature of animals and angel, but not of humans.
Speaking directly to “man,” Pico wrote: “you may choose mortality or
immortality. You have the power to degenerate into lower, brutish
forms of life; you also have the power to be reborn with the
angels...Man is worthy of all admiration...Man is rightly believed to
be a great miracle..."
Baldassare Castiglione (d. 1529) was an Italian diplomat, soldier
and leading Renaissance writer whose most famous work was The
Book of the Courtier (1528) is a work in dialog format, discussing
the ideal Renaissance gentleman and came to define the Renaissance
ideal of the multi-talented “Renaissance man,” whose education began
with the classics. Castiglione said it was “necessary for the Courtier to
speak and write well and to be knowledgeable...I would have him
more than passably accomplished in letters...not only the Latin language but also the Greek...Let him be well versed in the poets, not less
in the orators and historians, and also proficient in writing verse and
prose [speaking] sensibly of everything, and with readiness and lucid
fullness..."
Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527), the Florentine diplomat and political
scientist, watched as armies of France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire invaded Italy. The more he saw, the more convinced he became
that Italian political unity and independence were ends that justified
any means. A humanist and a careful student of ancient Rome, Ma7
chiavelli was impressed by the way Roman rulers and citizens had defended their fatherland. They possessed, in his view, civic virtue, the
ability to act decisively and heroically for the good of their country.
Machiavelli wanted an end to the self-destructive feuding among Italian states so that a reunited Italy could drive all foreign armies out. In
The Prince (1513), Machiavelli advised rulers to discover the advantages of ruthlessness, at least as a temporary means to the higher end
of a unified Italy. If Italy was to unite and defend itself against the rising nation-states of Europe, it needed a leader who understood power—how to get it, how to use it, and how to keep it by whatever means
necessary.
Partly because Machiavelli's coldly practical view of the relationship between morality and politics, he has been widely misinterpreted. The adjective "Machiavellian" has become a synonym for ruthlessness and
deceitfulness in the pursuit of power. Yet, Machiavelli was also an idealist and believed that individuals could rule themselves. In The Discourses (1521), Machiavelli turned from the world of hard-headed realistic politics to the world as he felt it should be. Here he argued that
power should not be in the hands of a single prince, but in the hands of
the people. He reached this conclusion from his study of the histories
of Rome and Greece:
I say that the people are more prudent and stable, and have better
judgment than a prince. . . We furthermore see the cities where the
people are masters make the greatest progress in the least possible
time. . . and this can be attributed to no other cause than that the governments of the people are better than those of princes.
The Athenians and Romans had been capable of governing themselves,
he said, but the Italians of his own day were not. Thus, the ideal government of The Discourses was impossible, and the strong rule of the determined, unscrupulous prince was a necessity.
He apparently hoped to see a strong ruler emerge from the Medici family, which had captured the papacy in 1513 when Leo X (1513-1521) became pope. At the same time, the Medici family retained control over
the powerful territorial state of Florence. The Prince was dedicated to
Lorenzo de Medici.
Excerpt from The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513)
I intend to write something useful. I shall look at the facts of politics
rather than take my evidence from imaginary governments that have
never really existed…In politics a man should be guided by what is,
rather than by what ought to be. A man who did only what was right,
would soon fail among so many who are untrustworthy. Therefore, a
prince who wishes to remain in power must learn how not to be good
and must also learn to use this knowledge, or not use it, depending
upon the circumstances.
Is it better to be loved more than feared or feared more than loved?
Ideally, one ought to be both feared and loved, but it is difficult for the
two sentiments to go together. If one of the two must be sacrificed, it
is much safer to be feared than loved…Men are less afraid to offend a
prince they love than one they fear...Still, a prince should be careful to
make himself feared in such a way that if men do not love him, they at
least do not hate him...
A successful prince must imitate both the fox and the lion, for the lion
cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself
from wolves...
It is not at all necessary for a prince to have all the good qualities…
but it is necessary to seem to have them. I will even go so far as to say
that to actually have these qualities and to be guided by them always
is dangerous, but to appear to possess them is useful.
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Notes:
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S ECTION 3
Renaissance Art
Q UESTIONS :
1. What are some key general characteristics of
Renaissance Art?
Jacob Burckhardt, the great 19th-century scholar of Renaissance Italy,
said that the Renaissance was all about "the discovery of the world and
of man." Within this phrase one can find key features of the Renaissance: its human focus and its emphasis on life in this world. The Renaissance did not so much "discover" as "rediscover" the world, long after the Greeks and the Romans. The Renaissance embrace of the world
included a desire to paint and sculpt it accurately and naturalistically,
to a degree not seen since Greek and Roman times, and the emphasis
on human individuality recalls the humanistic focus of Greek and Roman cultures, the cultures that inspired the Renaissance “rebirth.”
2. What makes Giotto, in the opinion of many art
historians the earliest Renaissance painter?
3. How did Masaccio advance the techniques of
modern painting?
4. Who were the three great masters of the High
Renaissance? Note their most iconic works.
5. Why does the Renaissance shift from Rome to
Venice in the 1500s? What change in style is
noticeable?
Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Giotto
The Early Renaissance
The city of Florence emerged in the 1300s as the earliest center of Renaissance art. The painter Giotto, showed a clear break with the past.
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As his Renaissance biographer noted, Giotto "freed himself from the
rude manner of Gothic art (medieval art) and brought back to life the
true art of painting." Giotto represented a clear departure from the
stiff, unnatural, "saintly" style of medieval religious art. He was as
much interested in his subjects as living human beings as he was with
religious symbolism. His use of color and shadow, and his placement of
figures introduced a new realism in to painting. All these characteristics are clear in his great work, Lamentation Over the Dead
Christ.
tive, artists painting this early still have a few things so learn. (Note the
relationship of the figures to the ceiling is not quite right.)
The use of shading and the painting of the coffered ceiling are attempts, however, to give a sense of dimension to the figures and depth
to the painting.
The High Renaissance
The end of the 1400s and the first half of the 1500s represents the
High Renaissance. Under the leadership of the Renaissance Popes,
Rome competed with Florence as the capital of the Italian Renaissance.
Florence, however, continued to produce extraordinary figures in the
history of art. Towering above his contemporaries was Leonardo da
Vinci (d. 1519). His universal genius embraced not only the arts but
also the sciences and engineering. Above all, he is remembered for two
great paintings, the mysterious Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, a
study in the art and science of perspective.
The Holy Trinity
A century later, in the early 1400s, Masaccio improved on these early
techniques and brought a mathematical precision to his use of perspective and through the use of light and shadow (chiaroscuro) gave depth
and dimension to his figures. His work, The Holy Trinity, shows
that, while Masaccio made great strides forward in the use of perspec-
The Last Supper
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Contemporary with Leonardo was Sandro Botticelli (d. 1510). Figures from classical mythology and literature often were his subjects.
His two most famous works were La Primavera and the Birth of Venus. In addition to his interest in classical subjects, his works showed a
fascination with the accurate observation of nature.
Pieta
The Birth of Venus buy Botticelli
Michelangelo (d. 1564) created a sensation as a young sculptor with
his statue of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus, the Pieta. It was
this work that brought him to Florence, where he sculpted the great
statue of David) but Pope Julius II brought him to Rome to work on
his tomb. (The magnificent statue of Moses formed part of this unfinished project.) Julius then persuaded Michelangelo to take on the project of painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It took him nearly four
years to cover the vaulted ceiling with frescoes depicting the creation of
the world, the fall of man, the expulsion from Eden, the Flood, among
other scenes from the Old Testament. Perhaps the most famous image
from this great work was the Creation of Adam.
Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel ceiling
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Thirty-five years later, in 1541, he would complete another great fresco,
The Last Judgment, on the wall of the chapel. Other great works include the Pieta, the sculpture of Mary holding the dead body of Christ,
and Michelangelo's design for the great dome of St. Peters Basilica.
of Athens uses Renaissance people as models for the great scientists
and philosophers of the past. Raphael used Leonardo da Vinci, for example, for his portrait of Plato and Michelangelo is the slightly brooding figured seated on the steps in the foreground of the composition.
St. Peter’s Basilica
The third great figure of the high Roman Renaissance was the "divine"
Raphael, most noted for his harmoniously beautiful paintings, particularly his portraits of the Virgin. In paintings such as the Madonna of
the Chair and the Madonna of the Meadow, Raphael created his Virgin
as a very human mother.
aphael also celebrated Greek and Roman themes in his art. His most
famous depiction of the classical past was his fresco the School of Athens, which is a pictorial explanation of the contrasting philosophical
viewpoints of Plato and Aristotle. (A fresco is a work painted into wet
plaster which then dries attaching the painting to the wall.) The School
Madonna of the Chair
Invasion and Decline
In the year 1527, Rome was invaded by Emperor Charles V of Spain, its
libraries, palaces, and churches looted. Rome never fully recovered,
and the leadership of the Renaissance passed to Venice. Venice reached
its artistic golden age as Rome declined.
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R
Feast in the House of Levi, Veronese
The School of Athens by Raphael
To a greater extent, Venetian artists used bright colors, complex designs, and exotic settings and subjects. The pure classicism of Renaissance art began to change. The great figures of the Venetian Renaissance included Titian, Georgione, and Veronese, whose great work,
the Feast in the House of Levi (originally titled, "The Last Supper")
ran into trouble with Church authorities and was subject to censorship.
Except in Venice, the Italian Renaissance did not long survive the invasions of Italy. Most of Italy fell into a decline that lasted several centuries, and the leadership and the energy of the Renaissance crossed the
Alps to influence the civilization of Northern Europe for the rest of the
sixteenth century.
The Tempest by Giogione
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Notes:
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S ECTION 4
Religious Revolution:
The Protestant Reformation
Q UESTIONS :
1. What issues motivated Martin Luther and
John Calvin to break away from the Catholic
Church?
2. What role did the “Renaissance Popes” play in
the Reformation?
3. What are areas of agreement and areas of
contrast between Lutheranism and Calvinism?
4. How did corruption and weak leadership play a
role in the Protestant Reformation?
5. What political, economic, and technological
factors played a role in the Reformation?
The Protestant Reformation represents one of history's more dramatic
transformations. In 1517, when the German priest Martin Luther
challenged the authority and teachings of the Catholic Church, he set in
motion a religious revolution. For over a thousand years --since the
time of Rome--nearly every person living Western Europe was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther sparked a revolt by which
much of the northern half of Western Europe broke away from the
Catholic Church to join new Christian Churches. The firewood for a
great religious conflagration had been piling up for two centuries before Luther came along. In 1517, Luther lit the match and the blaze
roared.
Religious Causes of the Protestant Reformation
For years, a range of questionable or corrupt practices had caused comment and scandal within the Church. Some examples:
• Sales of Indulgences: The practice of selling indulgences for the forgiveness of sins was the issue that first captured the attention of Martin Luther.
• Simony: Selling high Church offices, such as bishops and archbish
• Nepotism: The papal practice of granting high offices to family members.
The individuals elected to the papacy in the late 1400s to early 1500s
(popes known collectively as the "Renaissance Popes") were a problem for the Church. The Catholic Encyclopedia summaries the problem clearly: "the popes of the Renaissance had become Italian princes
among other princes, who warred and intrigued for worldly interests. Excessive pomp, luxury, and immorality set the tone for the papal court."
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many, especially in northern Europe, had already left the Catholic
Church for good.
Other Causes of the Protestant Reformation
While religious disagreements were at the epicenter of the Protestant
Reformation, the political, social, and economic context of the time provide additional insights into why the Reformation took off and took
root.
St Peter’s Basilica in Rome
Three popes who sat in the chair of St. Peter between 1490 and 1521 illustrate the point. Pope Alexander VI spent a fortune bribing the College of Cardinals to win his election. He had a series of mistresses and
openly acknowledged a number of illegitimate children, receiving them
at the papal palace. Pope Julius II, known as the “warrior pope” focused most of his energies on waging wars to enlarge the Pope’s small
kingdom, the Papal States. Pope Leo X coveted the papacy for different reasons. He used the resources of the Church to become one of the
greatest patrons of Renaissance artists, spending lavishly on grand, artistic projects. It was Leo’s need for funds to finish building St. Peter’s Basilica that led to the sale of indulgences that led to the clash
with Martin Luther.
The tragedy for the Church was a leadership that ignored problems and
refused to listen to voices calling for reform. By the time the Church began a significant effort to reform itself in the middle of the 1500s,
Political Issues The developing force of nationalism in the early
modern era was a significant background cause of the Protestant Reformation. Anger about what many perceived as exploitation of the “German people” by foreign, Italian popes was a factor in the German revolt
against the Catholic Church. Martin Luther himself encouraged this
feeling in the pamphlet To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in which he urged the local German princes to support local religious reform and to resist the authority of foreign popes and Catholic
emperors.
The Protestant Reformation in Germany played out in a context of
struggles over power between German princes and the Holy Roman
Emperor. An examination of the map of the Holy Roman Empire on
the next page illustrates the problem. The Empire was not a unified nation but a collection of small states knit loosely together under the limited authority of an emperor. The different colors on the map indicate
the areas were local princes or dukes were the powerful figures in their
regions. You will also note how the Holy Roman Empire crosses over
what today are the boundaries of different nations, with different languages and cultures. These cultural differences kept the empire weak.
Since the Middle Ages, the local leaders in the north, the German
princes, had been trying to assert their independence from the Holy Roman Emperor. Many saw religion as a way to drive a wedge between
the Catholic Emperor and his northern German territories. By rallying
around religion, some German princes hoped to strengthen their con17
trol over their lands and weaken the emperor.
Divisions with the Holy Roman Empire
Economic and Social Factors German merchants and middle class
townsmen resented payments to the Church that seemed to enrich
Rome at the expense of local parishes and German dioceses. These
more literate people read the works of church critics that were widely
disseminated by the printing presses of Europe and were shocked. Stories of lavish Church spending in Rome financed by hardworking Germans offended the literate, hardworking middle class. The waste of resources deeply offended middle class merchants whose identities were
tied up with their economic status.
Technology and the Print Revolution The Protestant Reformation took advantage of a revolutionary new technology: printing. The
German city of Mainz was the first center of printing but by 1500,
within 50 years of Johann Gutenberg's invention, over 200 European cities had operating printing presses. Religious issues became
questions discussed by a much wider audience. Printing presses turned
out thousands of sermons, essays, and Lutheran editions of the Bible.
Print by the Lutheran artist Lucas Cranach: Passion of Christ and the
Anti-Christ
Dynamic Leaders
In 1517, Martin Luther was a monk and professor of theology at the
University of Wittenberg living in the Holy Roman Empire (now Germany). Disturbed by corrupt practices in the Church, Luther prepared
a list of propositions that came to be called the Ninety-five Theses
and nailed it to the door of the university church. Luther's protest began over the question of the sale of indulgences. In Catholic Church
teaching, an indulgence was a remission of punishment for sin. It was
a widespread abuse of the sale of indulgences that led to the crisis. The
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Pope, bishops, abbots, and princes divided the income from the sale of
indulgences, and many people came to believe, erroneously, that forgiveness for sins could be bought.
impact on the expansion of literacy in northern Europe, where the
Protestant movement was strongest, and resulted in the growth of a
more educated middle class in Protestant regions of Europe.
Luther went on to question other teachings of the Church including the
nature of the Eucharist, the number of sacraments, the role of the
priesthood, and especially the rule that the Bible could not be translated from Latin into local languages. Aspects of Lutheranism that remained similar to Roman Catholicism, however, included a church hierarchy of bishops and a liturgy similar to the Catholic Mass. Ordered by
Pope Leo X to recant (take back) his teachings, Luther refused and
was excommunicated.
Luther translated the Bible from Latin into German in defiance of
Church teaching making it possible for more people to read it. The Lutheran Bible quickly found its way into print and became an instant
best-seller. Luther placed great emphasis on people’s reading and interpreting the Bible for themselves. He challenged the authority of
popes and priests to interpret the Bible for believers.
By the end of the 1520s, a separate, “Protestant” Lutheran Church had
taken root in Northern Europe, but Luther was not the only religious
rebel.
John Calvin, born in France, settled in Geneva, Switzerland, Calvin
became the founder of a second Protestant tradition: Calvinism. A distinctive theme of Calvin’s theology was the doctrine of “predestination” God has chosen in advance all those who will be saved. Both
Catholics and Lutherans view the belief in “free will” and a belief in a
fundamentally loving God as at odds with the doctrine of predestination.
Calvin like Luther placed great emphasis on the Bible as the only true
source of religious authority. All believers were expected to read the Bible in their own vernacular language without the need for a priest to
interpret its meaning. Some historians argue that this had a powerful
Martin Luther
John Calvin
One other aspect of Calvin’s teaching had a profound social and cultural effect on the West: Calvin’s link between “Godliness” and worldly
success. Calvin taught that material success in this life was further evidence that one is among the chosen, a sign that one was included
among the elect. Seriousness of purpose, hard work, and material rewards became bound up in an attitude toward life that historians sometimes call the "Protestant work ethic."
Calvinists eliminated a hierarchy of bishops. Individual churches chose
their own religious leaders. The elaborate ceremonies and rituals of
worship typical of the Catholic Church were also eliminated: worship
centered on hymn singing, scripture readings, and preaching on the
word. Calvinist church buildings were simple: no stained glass, statues,
or elaborate decorations.
John Calvin found many followers around Europe and there are a multitude of Calvinist Christian Churches. Perhaps the most historically
famous were the English Puritans. These English Calvinists put their
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stamp on English history, challenging the power of the kings, and on
American history as the famous Pilgrims and Puritans who settled
New England in the early 1600s.
Notes:
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S ECTION 5
The English Reformation and the CounterReformation
Q UESTIONS :
1. What political factors motivated Henry to
break away from Rome?
2. What role did Thomas More play in the drama
of the English Reformation?
3. Assess the various approaches to religious
change under the various Tudors.
4. Who was unsatisfied with the “Via Media” and
why?
About 15 years after Luther’s protests, a third Protestant movement
resulted in the establishment of the Anglican Church or Church of England. The origin of the Anglican Church had little to do with religious
reform: it began with King Henry VIII and his need for a divorce and
the reluctance of the Catholic Church to grant one.
Political Context
Henry VIII was only the second of his dynasty, the Tudors, to take the
throne. The Tudors had seized the throne of England in 1485 at the end
of a bloody civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which called
into question the legitimacy of their claim to the throne. Having come
to power very recently--and through violence rather than inheritance-Henry did not want to leave a weak heir to inherit his throne.
After nearly 20 years of marriage to the Spanish princess Catherine
of Aragon, Henry had only a daughter, the princess Mary Tudor, to
inherit his kingdom. England had never had a female monarch on the
throne, and the last time (in the 1100s) an English king had tried to
hand the throne to a daughter, a prolonged period of civil war was the
result.
Henry motivations were also personal: he was in love with a younger
lady of the court--Anne Boleyn--a queen he thought could give him
the sons he needed to secure the throne after his death.
For nearly six years, Henry tried to persuade Pope Clement VII to declare his marriage to Catherine invalid and to grant him an annulment.
(Henry had married the widow of his older brother and had needed special papal dispensation to marry Catherine in the first place because
marrying the widow of a brother was not permitted.) Catherine’s failure to produce a son, Henry said, was a sign that God was angry and
that the marriage was unlawful.
But the Pope was in a bind: Catherine was the aunt of Europe’s most
powerful Catholic monarch: Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor
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and king of Spain. Granting an annulment would please Henry but anger and alienate the more powerful Charles.
Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Events came to a crisis in 1533 when Anne Boleyn found she was pregnant. For Anne’s child to be heir to the throne, Henry and Anne had to
be legally married. To achieve this, Henry broke the church away from
Rome and had the English bishops grant his annulment. Parliament
supported the king’s actions by passing the Act of Supremacy,
which made the king, not the pope, the head of the Church of England.
was the dramatic religious change. Hereafter, England became a Protestant nation with Catholics a tiny, embattled minority.
Thomas More Sir Thomas More, the Renaissance scholar and Humanist, author of Utopia, and one of the most famous men in Europe,
fell victim to the crisis of "the King's Great Matter." More was the
king’s high chancellor and king's loyal servant, but he was also a devout
Catholic. More, not able to support the religious changes, was charged
with treason, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and executed. More
went to the ax with great dignity, asking the hushed crowd to witness
his death "for the faith of the Catholic Church, being the King's good
servant, but God's first." The Vatican proclaimed More a Christian martyr. In time, Sir Thomas More was canonized by the Church as Saint
Thomas More.
In two ironic twists to the drama: Anne gave birth to another daughter
not the son Henry craved. (Anne’s failure to produce a male heir led to
her execution a few years later.) But that unwanted daughter lived to
take the throne as Queen Elizabeth I, one of the greatest monarchs
in English history.
Henry would marry a total of six times, finally producing a male heir
with his third wife, Jane Seymour. That son, King Edward VI, came
to the throne as a sickly teenager and reigned only a few short years. So
much for the need for a son.
Henry’s actions, undertaken to secure the Tudor hold on the throne,
did not produce the generations of Tudor monarchs he sought. None of
his children produced heirs so the Tudor dynasty lasted only a single
generation after Henry. A more permanent result of the marriage crisis
Thomas More
The Church of England
Despite the break with Rome, Henry remained decidedly conservative
in his religious beliefs. Early on, he had written an essay attacking Luther. (Ironically, the Pope awarded him the title “Defender of the
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Faith” in thanks--all this before the divorce crisis). Henry maintained
most Catholic doctrines and practices. Henry absolutely forbade the
English clergy, for example, to marry, and reaffirmed Catholic teaching
on the Eucharist and other doctrinal issues.
Religious turmoil continued during the reign of Henry’s children. During the brief reign of the boy-king Edward VI (d. 1553) a powerful Calvinistic party at Court attempted to introduce Calvinist reform, but Edward’s early death prevented a full swing toward that more extreme
form of Protestantism.
Mary I, “Mary Tudor,” daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried to
swing the pendulum the other way and restore Catholicism in England.
Mary is sometimes called "Bloody Mary" for her vigorous persecution
of Protestants. In an era of frequent executions over religion by both
Protestant and Catholic monarchs, it might be a little historically unfair to single her out in this way. History, always remember, is written
by the "winners," and it is the Protestant side that triumphed in England.
Elizabeth established a middle way--a “Via Media” between religious
extremes. Under Elizabeth, the church retained its hierarchy of bishops
and archbishops with the monarch at the top as "Supreme Governor."
It also retained a Catholic-like liturgy. At the same time, Elizabeth issued a set of moderate Protestant doctrines called the Thirty-Nine Articles. It was a compromise that mostly worked while the popular Elizabeth sat on the throne.
Not everyone, however, was satisfied. A small but influential number
of English men and women were deeply committed to the ideas of
John Calvin. For these “dissenting Protestants,” the compromises enacted by Elizabeth were deeply offensive—a “pollution” of religion that
required a reform of the Reformation itself in England. A “purification”
of the English Church was the goal of English Calvinists, the Puritans.
When Mary died childless in 1558, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, inherited the throne. She would turn out to be the greatest of
the Tudors.
Elizabeth I
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S ECTION 6
Counter Reformation
Q UESTIONS
1. What was the Catholic “Counter” Reformation?
2. What role did the Counter Reformation play in
reform within the Catholic Church?
3. What are the long-term impacts of the
Protestant Reformation?
The Catholic Reformation
The movement known as the Catholic Reformation (also called the
Counter Reformation) was an attempt to address the problems exposed by the Protestant Reformation. Important leaders in this movement were reformers such as Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) who
founded the Jesuit order. The Jesuits founded superb schools
throughout Europe. The association between the Jesuits and academic
excellence exists to this day.
The Jesuits’ second mission was to convert nonChristians to Catholicism. So, they sent out missionaries around the world. Their third goal
was to stop the spread of Protestantism. Jesuits brought a new vitality
to the Church.
Pope Paul III, pope from 1534 to 1549, he took steps to reform the
Church, ordering investigations of indulgence selling and other abuses
in the Church. Most important, he called a council of Church leaders
called the Council of Trent to clarify Church teachings and eliminate
corrupt practices such as the sale of indulgences.
4. Note the long-term impact of the geographical
distribution of religion in Europe.
St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits
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The work of new orders such as the Jesuits and the reforms of the
Council of Trent did not erase the gains made by Protestant reformers.
The Catholic Reformation did, however, slow the spread and Protestantism and restore the faith of many Catholics in the institution of the
Church and its leaders.
The Legacy of the Reformation
Era of Conflict The Reformation unleashed a century and a half of
wars of religion throughout much of Western Europe, culminating in
the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in which about one third of the
population of Germany perished. Europe will move in the direction of
greater religious tolerance in the aftermath of this disastrous conflict.
Social Effects of the Reformation The emphasis on Bible reading
expanded literacy and the growth of a middle class in Protestant
Europe was another result of the Protestant Reformation. Both Catholics and 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.
Map: note the geographical pattern: Protestant movements
in the north and north-west of Europe, the Catholic Church
strong in the South. This pattern still exists today.
Political Effects of the Reformation
• A Divided Europe: As the map on page 57 shows, a split between a
largely Protestant north and a mostly Catholic south became a permanent feature of European history. To this day, it is a feature of European culture.
• Decline of Catholic Church power: Once the Church of nearly all
Western Europeans, the Roman Catholic Church lost their authority
over those who left the Church, becoming much less influential and
northern and western Europe.
Lutheran Bible
• Rise of Nationalism: Many of the new Protestant churches were
strongly associated with nation-states. Kings were able to use na-
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tional churches to increase their power and foster a spirit of national
identity.
• Questioning of beliefs and authority: This laid the groundwork for
the political revolutions. As you will read in the next unit, revolutions
will rock England in the 1600s and France in the 1700s.
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