Download chapter i politics and religion from 1400 to 1715

Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-0-1. The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, c. 1511-12
Source: http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/images/MichelangeloSlideH.jpg
CHAPTER I
POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM 1400 TO 1715
1. The Age of the Renaissance: Recovery and Rebirth 9
1-1. The Italian City-States in the Renaissance 11
1-2. The Florentine Renaissance 19
1-3. Milan, Venice, and Naples in the Renaissance 29
1-4. European States, Politics and Wars in the Renaissance 39
1-5. Rome: Religion and the Renaissance Church 61
2. The Age of Reformation: Reforms and their Impact 71
2-1. Politics and Religion from Wycliffe to Luther 73
2-2. Religious Revolution: 1517-64 91
2-3. Russians, Muslims, Jews, and the Counter Reformation 117
3. Geographic Discovery and Religious Wars 135
3-1. Geographic Discovery and Expansion 137
3-2. Religious Wars and the Thirty Years War 161
4. State Building: Absolute Monarchy and Republic 187
4-1. The Age of Louis XIV of France, 1643-1715 189
4-2. England: The Great Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution 204
4-3. The Periphery: Eastern and Northern Europe, 1648-1715 211
(Please click each line to see the first page of contents)
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-0-2. The Discovery of America 1492
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Photo I-0-3. Fictitious Dispute between Protestant Reformers
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
CHAPTER I. POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM 1400 TO 1715
Chapter I deals with political and religious changes from the fifteenth century to the death of Louis
IV in 1715. The Dark Ages ended with the miserable Black Death, which was followed by the
Renaissance pursuing humanism through intellectual activities towards ancient Greco-Roman
civilization. As the economy began to revive, the Italian city-states looked back to antiquity for
ancient studies and related activities, that movement was spread to entire Europe. Italy used
foreign forces to keep the balance of power on the peninsula: Milan invited the French army into
the kingdom of Naples, while the kingdom called for aid to Spain. As a result, a series of Italian
wars continued between France and Spain from 1494 to 1555. In Spain, Isabella of Castile married
Ferdinand of Aragon, which solidified politics, conquered Granada in 1492 and expelled Muslims
and Jews from Spain. The Holy Roman Empire elected Albert II (Habsburg) to the emperor, who
was succeeded by Maximilian I and Charles V. Meanwhile, the spread of humanism with
mysticism formed Christian humanism in Europe which challenged the corrupt papal system. The
Reformation began with so-called the Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther against the selling of
indulgences in 1517. Luther emphasized that the Bible was a sufficient authority in Church affairs;
and his movement became successful because of two factors: one was domestic supports for his
spirit of humanism, and the other was foreign problems of Charles V with the French, the Turks,
and the papacy. Being exhausted, Charles V finally closed the religious wars in Germany and
permanently retired to Spain by signing the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. It was a turning point of
the Reformation in history to grant Lutheranism in Germany though it was far to be reality. As
the Protestantism spread, other reform movements appeared: the Zwinglians, Anabaptists,
Calvinists, and Anglicans in different regions or states. In addition, the Catholic Reformation was
initiated by various groups like the Society of Jesus founded in 1540.
Both Portugal and Spain were engaged in discoveries motivated by material gain, religious
endeavor, social recognition, and adventure. Due to the lack of capital, both countries permitted
foreign merchants and shippers to join the expeditions as business partners by providing ships and
trade goods. The Portuguese discovered a trade route to India via the Cape in 1498, the Castilians
discovered the West Indies by crossing the Atlantic in 1492, and the English discovered New
Foundland by crossing the same in 1497. The Spaniards settled in conquered lands and established
two centers in Mexico and Peru, from which Spain imported silver and gold as well as agricultural
products; the Portuguese monopolized trade routes to Asia for exports of European goods and
imports of spices and luxurious goods; and both the Dutch and the English founded the East India
Companies to secure the trade superiority. On the other hand, religious wars continued in Europe.
In France 5,000 Huguenots were killed in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1588; and
the Edict of Nantes of 1598 declared the religious co-existence. In Spain, Philip II suppressed the
Calvinist revolt of Holland in 1566, invaded England in 1585 but was defeated, and crossed into
France in 1595 which battles continued until 1609. In England, Elizabeth settled religious
problems with a moderate Protestantism and aided French Huguenots and Dutch Calvinists to
weaken France and Spain. In Germany, despite the Peace of Augsburg, religion was divisive in
daily life since Lutherans and Catholics tried to control the principalities. The Thirty Years War
began in Germany in 1618 that was decisive between Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain with
the Holy Roman Empire as the European war that was more political than religious. The French
army defeated the imperial army, and the war in Germany ended by the Treaty of Westphalia in
1648, which represented the European order of the seventeenth century. While Spain declined as
a second-class nation, France and England became dominant powers, and the United Provinces
was officially recognized as a Dutch republic prosperous during 1581-1795.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The religious wars from 1555 (Augsburg) to 1648 (Westphalia) transformed Europe from a
united Christendom into a system of secular states. Since Christianity had lost its credibility in
religious wars for near a century, more Europeans thought of politics in secular terms with little
consideration of religion. There appeared three types of government in Europe after Westphalia:
absolute monarchy, limited monarchy, and republic. The absolute monarchy ruled by the king
who has divine right: sovereign power was firmly established in France, Spain, Germany, and
eastern and northern Europe. In France, Louis XIV solidified the monarchy by reorganizing an
efficient administration, building a professional army to secure the border, and increasing taxes
for royal revenues. He revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and established Catholicism in France.
Louis started four major wars in the Netherlands and the Rhine and for the Succession. The last
was for his grandson to succeed the Spanish throne, which made other states (England, Holland,
Austria, and German states) form a coalition for their security against France and Spain. The war
lasted eleven years and the cost of the war paid by France was more than the gain from it. In
Spain, Charles II wanted to remain in the Mediterranean, but Louis XIV made him commit and
consequently lose lands by ceding Spanish Italy to Austria. German states became free from the
Holy Roman Empire by Westphalia, while Prussia and Austria emerged as two rising powers in
Europe. Frederick William of Prussia made the solid foundation for the state by building up the
standing army with good economy. Leopold I of Austria defeated the Turks, and controlled
Hungary and neighboring states: the Ottoman Empire advanced to the Danube by 1520, but the
Austrian army pushed them to the Balkan by 1699. Meanwhile, Peter the Great westernized
Russia with aggressive reforms by creating a strong army and navy, reorganizing central government, developing industry and commerce, and promoting social conditions. Similarly, Denmark
and Sweden established absolute monarchy. Generally, the success of monarchy lay in efficiency
of the state system in politics, military, economy, and society.
The limited monarchy appeared in England and Poland where the king rules the state by law
provided by the representative assembly which members are chosen by the people. When Henry
VIII and Elizabeth had ruled, the English society accepted the divine rights of the king. As the
gentry formed a political force, the House of Commons was strengthened by a radical protestant
group: three-fourths of five hundred members were from the Puritans. The House passed a
Petition of Right in 1628 demanding no taxes without Parliament consent. In the 1640s, the Scots
rose up against the pro-Catholic policies of Charles I, and the outbreak of Irish revolts threatened
the Parliament. As Charles sent soldiers to arrest the leading members of the House, the
Parliament reorganized armed forces led by Oliver Cromwell, who crushed the royal army and
won the civil war. Charles was captured and beheaded in 1649 and the monarchy was destroyed
for a new system. The Rump Parliament with fifty-six members proclaimed England a republic
which lasted until 1653. The Parliament restored the monarchy with Charles II succeeded by
James II, who suspended all laws against the Catholic, but was dismissed by the Glorious
Revolution in 1688. William and Mary ascended the throne and the Parliament passed the Bill of
Rights in 1689. England and Scotland merged into the United Kingdom in 1707. Similarly,
Poland was a limited monarchy as a confederation of landed nobles, but fell under the Russian
influence. Meanwhile, the United Provinces formed a republic with seven provinces of the
Netherlands, which was recognized by the Treaty of Westphalia. The Calvinism remained an
official religion, but other religions were tolerated if they worshiped in private: Catholics,
Protestants, and Jews were allowed to live in the Republic. Since the United Provinces became
safe for refugees, the royalists exiled to Amsterdam under Cromwell, the republicans did the same
under Charles II and James II, and the immigrants like Huguenots resided together. Amsterdam
was prosperous with vast fleets of ships engaged in fishing and shipping.
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
1. The Age of the Renaissance: Recovery and Rebirth
The Renaissance means recovery and rebirth in word, but represents the spirit of self-discovery
and self-realization as well as the spirit of humanism recognizing human dignity by means of
dynamic activities such as working in arts and literature. It was a spirit of growth and expansion.
The fourteenth century was disastrous with the Black Death, political disorder, religious schism,
and economic recession: the passing of the old century and the beginning of the new one were
significant in terms of recovery or revival from the calamity and misfortune. The Dark Ages had
been monopolized by the Church, where freedom expressing individual feeling and thought
against the Church was not allowed to anybody. Man was only a tool for God or the Bible written
by men on behalf of God, and man lived without space and time to think about himself for a
millennium. They needed a break to think about themselves either with or without God. The
growing self-consciousness stimulated people to understand their roles and responsibilities in
society and to pursue ideals of human dignity and self-realization, so called humanism and
individualism, through intellectual activities. They wanted to recover the ancient Greco-Roman
civilization by restoring classical literature, arts, and ideas; and hoped to harmonize the ancient
world with present and philosophy with faith. The Renaissance was an elite movement started in
the rich urban cities of Italy, which movement affected ordinary people in the cities, but was
transplanted to entire Europe, and opened a new age flourishing for two centuries during 13501550. The main engine of the Renaissance in Italy lay not only in self-consciousness of the players
but also in financial supports of the providers who depended on the booming economy. In the
early fifteenth century, fortunately, the woolen industry was reviving in Florence, and the Italian
cities were experiencing an economic expansion, while the Medici family became a great patron
from his success in the banking business with numerous branches in Europe.
The political development in this period is reviewed by four parts. First, major city-states in
Italy – the Dutch of Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal State, and the Kingdom of Naples – used
foreign forces to maintain the balance of power between them. Milan invited the French to
intervene in Italian politics and Naples called for aid to Spain: both armies entered the Kingdom,
but Spain expelled the French army and had ruled Naples for two centuries. France and Germany
continuously competed to rule the Italian Peninsula in the coming centuries even in the Napoleon
era. Second, intellectual and artistic activities in the Italian Renaissance were distinct from the
chivalric culture of nobility and the scholastic culture of clergy, by pursuing ideals of humanity.
The upper class families in the Italian cities favored humanistic education rather than commercial
partnership for their sons to join the ruling class. Scholars like Marsilio Ficino translated ancient
Greek works into Latin and gave lectures to some groups; teachers like Pietro Vergerio improved
education theory toward humanism; and artists produced great pieces of works. Third, European
states centralized political power. France invaded Italy and a series of wars caused financial
difficulties; England secured the throne against factional uprising; Spain consolidated power by
the royal marriage of Isabella with Ferdinand; and the Holy Roman Empire was in line with Spain
for Italian matters and remained decentralized. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turks conquered
Constantinople in 1453 and threatened Hungary and Austria. Fourth, since the feudal system
collapsed by the commercial revolution, the social structure had been transformed. The nobility
was by birth but the rich joined the class. The third estate was led by rich merchants,
manufacturers, bankers; who formed the middle class; the serfs became wage earners in the west
though serfdom remained still powerful in Eastern Europe. For the clergy, radical ideas of John
Wycliffe and John Hus challenged the papal system: John Wycliffe in England was against
temporal authority of Rome, and John Hus in Czech against indulgence of the Church.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
9
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-1-1. Primavera by Sandro Botticelli, 1400s - Renaissance Florence
http://www.walkaboutflorence.com/sites/default/files/styles/news_detail/public/Renaissance_Florence_Italy.jpg?itok=Zd
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Map I-1-1. Renaissance Italy, c. 1500
http://historymaps.wikispaces.com/file/view/1500%20Renaissance%20Italy.gif/471540106/1500%20Renaissance%20Ita
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
1-1. The Italian City-States in the Renaissance
Medieval Communes in Italy: By the end of the Carolingian kings, Italy north of Rome turned
to a line of German kings, beginning with Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, who conquered the
Kingdom of Italy in 9621 stretched from the southern Alps, taking in the whole northern plain but
excluding Venice, down to central Italy along both coasts. “Papal territory was the entire region
around Rome, from Perugia to Terracino, but reaching only halfway across the narrow width of
the peninsula. Next south, on the western side, were the independent principalities of Benevento
and Salerno; and father south still, travelers entered Byzantine territory, which included Naples
and the entire foot of the peninsula. Sicily was under Arab rule until the Norman Conquest 1070s.”
The emperors of the eleventh century were disturbed by four problems in Italy: “(i) the rebelliousness of cities and mighty vassals, (ii) a blazing reform movement directed against a simonist clergy,
(iii) the resolute violence of papal factions and a riotous baronage in Rome, and (iv) the menacing
pressure in southern Italy of Byzantine and especially Norman armies.” 2 In Italy, a rising birth
rate, agricultural productivity, and the swelling tide of trade changed the direction of politics and
economy, while the surplus labor moved into towns and cities. In the eleventh century, the nobility
stood at the social forefront: “bishop, resident feudal magnates, episcopal clergy, the principal
knights, and the array of their surrounding kinsmen. Deacons and cathedral canons headed the
metropolitan clergy. The principal knights – captains and vavasors – composed the larger part of
the nobility. Since the episcopal clergy were recruited largely from among the nobility, social
relations between the two orders were close. As a rule, the captains were the great vassals of the
bishop, count, or marquis. They held their lands as fiefs and in return gave fidelity, military service,
and counsel. The vavasors, vassals of the captains, were really sub-vassals. Although captains
and vavasors had successfully turned their feuds and tenures into hereditary holdings by 1040,
they remained a military class bred to arms, fighting on horseback for civic authority.”3
Next to the urban dignities of the episcopal clergy and the nobility, the cives represented the
thriving popular or plebian element. “They were propertied, city-based, sometimes engaged in
trade, and free, in contrast to the multitudes of serfs and servile tenant beyond the city walls,
though there was servitude within the city too. The cives were a broadly comprehensive log:
notaries, moneylenders, coin makers, merchants, landed proprietors, and in certain cities even a
handful of small tradesmen and artisans. They included inhabitants not long established in the
city, as well as families long associated with civic traditions. In time the richest and most eminent
cives intermarried and mixed with the old nobility, some even taking to the haughty carriage of
mounted noblemen; certain of the latter, in turn, took up international trade and banking.” The
remaining majority included “poor artisans and petty tradesmen free or semi-free, workers skilled
and unskilled, as in the building traders; and the many laborers in various degrees of servitude,
who moved in and out of the city according to the seasonal demands of agriculture and the urban
call for hauling, carting, and lifting. Some labors came into the city by day and left before nightfall;
others, in warm weather, quite likely slept in the open air.” Around a couple of decades before
and after 1100, Italian cities were to develop the communes, if the commune is defined as a sworn
association of free men collectively holding some public authority. “The first urban communes
were aristocratic in their composition. Even their counterparts in the country, rural communes,
were association of knights, small landed proprietors, and freeholders…The emerging commune
also included a scatter of cives – rich merchants and moneylenders, the few local men trained in
law, and a handful of small landed proprietors of some antiquity in the city.” The emergence of
communes was an act of political and social assertion. Leading local men organized selfgovernment pushing toward seizure of power along with waves of immigrants.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The commune coexisted with an older authority, usually that of the bishop or viscounts, but
most communes terminated such dual or interlocking authority in the course of the twelfth century.
Once communes were recognized, they demanded more and more power, but no commune was
strong enough to seize the full range of public powers. Frederick I (reigned 1155-90), the Holy
Roman Emperor, undertook six expeditions into Italy. “The death of Pope Adrian IV in 1159 led
to the election of two rival popes, Alexander III and the antipope Victor IV, and both sought
Frederick's support. Frederick, busy with the siege of Crema, appeared unsupportive of Alexander
III, and after the sacking of Crema demanded that Alexander appear before the emperor at Pavia
and to accept the imperial decree. Alexander refused, and Frederick recognized Victor IV as the
legitimate pope in 1160. In response, Alexander III excommunicated both Frederick I and Victor
IV. Frederick attempted to convoke a joint council with King Louis VII of France in 1162 to
decide the issue of who should be pope. Louis neared the meeting site, but when he became aware
that Frederick had stacked the votes for Alexander, Louis decided not to attend the council. As a
result, the issue was not resolved at that time.” For two years Frederick besieged obdurate Millan,
capturing it at last he burned it to the ground in 1162. Angered by this ruthlessness, sixteen Italian
cities formed the first Lombard League against Frederick I in 1167. At Legnano in 1176, the
troops of the League defeated Frederick’s German army, and forced him to a six years’ truce. A
year later, Emperor and Pope were reconciled; and Frederick signed the Peace of Constance in
1183, restoring self-government to the Italian cities. “The cities of northern Italy were authorized
(i) to elect freely their own consuls, (ii) to govern their own counties, and (iii) to make their own
local laws. In return, citizens were to swear an oath of loyalty to the emperor; communal consuls
were to receive imperial investiture before taking office; citizens were granted the right of appeal
to the empire in cases exceeding twenty-five pounds in gold; and the cities were to pay an imperial
levy when the emperor-elect made his way through Italy to be crowned.”4
The oldest communal institution was the general assembly of all the members of the commune;
and the consulate was the commune’s highest executive and judicial magistracy. The nobility
dominated the consulate, manipulated the general assembly, and ruled the city, except where the
emperor successfully intervened. The nobility was made up first of all of the direct vassals (the
captains) of the bishop or the resident marquis, count, or viscount, as at Genoa, Milan, Lucca,
Mantua, and Florence. In the twelfth century, this nobility changed: “(i) the fragmentation of vast
feudal estates, putting property into many more hands; (ii) the explosive birth rate, which both
attracted rural noblemen into the city and multiplied the urban nobility…, (iii) the rise and cyclonic
force of urban communes, at first manned and captained mainly by noblemen; (iv) intermarriage
of the urbanized vassalry with rich municipal families of old standing; (v) the ascent of a scatter
of new men to positions of command in the commune, where they faded into the nobility, thus
helping to reconstitute the elite groups; (vi) the crescendo of economic opportunities for the
nobility, made possible by long-distance commerce, maritime trade, the boom in real property
values, and by the wars between cities; and finally (vii) the increasing honors and incomes made
available by the commune’s expanding range of public offices.”5 Around the year 1190, the urban
nobility strengthened its grip in terms of property, public and private functions, social contracts,
and family traditions. They flourished in collectivities: to protect themselves, noblemen began to
jell into smaller and more defined corporate units - family blocks. Two or three such blocks
eventually dominated in most cities. The clans entered into alliances with other associations, and
members collectively ruled sections of the city. Their towers stood as a symbol of a clan’s power
and influence: the higher the tower the more influential a clan was, but they also served as safe
heavens and lookout spots for a nervous aristocracy.6 Nevertheless, aristocratic communes in Italy
began to lose power to popular communes, the popolo (the people).
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Most strikingly, at Milan in 1198, a militant association of artisans and small retailers,
consisting mainly of butchers, bakers, and other food staplers, tanners and leather makers, tailors,
smiths, apothecaries, and master craftsmen in the wool industry. They broke decisively with the
big merchants and money men, who were now identified with an entrenched oligarchical order.
They stood up to big landed and money interests by means of resolute organization. The menacing
towers, the armed consorterial groups, and the bloody disputes of the consular nobility introduced
terror and lawlessness to the streets of cities, to Genoa no less than to Siena and Florence, and to
elsewhere. When the long and venomous struggle broke out between the popolo and the nobility,
the popular movement drew its force and numbers from the middle classes, not from the poor, the
day laborers, or the unskilled. Guilds were the first form of popular organization. Many turned
themselves into armed groups. They sought the control of their craft and product, but the route
often lay through politics and some form of violence. The armed federation of guilds at Milan
and elsewhere was organized, and the popolo expelled the nobility from the city in the early
thirteenth century. The emergence of the podesta (a new executive) represented a new stage in
the commune’s growth: “he signaled the crucial need for a united authority, a need imposed by
the richer and more contradictory social forces inside the city and by the escalating dangers outside,
where wars with other communes and with encircling feudatories cried out for more stability and
unity at home.” Historians have often viewed that the communal age as an age of crisis.7 The
communal conflict appeared between the people and the nobility or between knights and foot
soldiers. Nobility and knights tend to be seen as one and the same class, so also popolo and foot
soldiers. At Milan about 1200, the popular movement had its focus in the middle class: big
merchants and bankers were grouped together with a large array of knights in an organization
known as the Motta. Popolo and Motta cooperated and pressed the nobility for reforms.
In the course of the thirteenth century, the urban economy and population reached their
maximum. An inevitable consequence of the popolo’s political ascent was the rapid expansion of
government; so the cost of government rose and the complexities of public finance multiplied,
particularly as the leading cities extended their rule over neighboring lands and towns. Chroniclers
“emphasize the rule of law, election of procedures, and costs of government; they oppose dashing
political figures, fancy dress, and ostentation; they study the play of social forces and stress the
economic health of the community.” Hence, the sense of a larger political community, one of the
popolo’s major legacies, passed over into the feeling and thinking of the republican oligarchies.
So the popolo changed the requirements of citizenship: (i) five to thirty years of residence in the
city, (ii) membership in a guild, (iii) property qualifications or minimum tax assessments, and (iv)
continuous tax disbursements for periods of up to twenty-five years. Thus the citizenship is largely
confined to the men of the middle and upper classes, excluding a mass of men – unskilled, the
poor, the part-time or seasonal field workers, recent immigrants, and whole categories of artisans
who were not allowed to form their own guilds. The number of the legislative council members
was from 400 to 900 for Milan, and from 150 to 1,000 for Pavia in the mid-thirteenth century.8 In
opposition to the nobility, the popolo attracted the bankers and rich merchants; then it lost the
richest parts of the middle class. Moreover, the social and psychological distance divided the
artisans and small shopkeepers from the bankers and wealth merchants. At key moments, artisans
and rich merchants converged to form a middle class with respect to the governing nobility and to
certain commercial and tax policies. But when their interest diverged, artisan and rich merchant
drew apart; the commercial plutocracy gradually turned to shore up the ranks of the enfeebled
nobility, which widened the gap with the majority. In this regard, the popolo’s deficiencies – “a
restricted constituency, internal rifts, and the unreliable role of the big money man” - revealed the
ground of its failure to develop an egalitarian ideology in Italian politics.9
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
There were intolerable strains on communal institutions, which created crises: “(i) war and
economic need; (ii) implacable party conflict and an ensuing atmosphere of disruption, instability,
and fear; (iii) the force of intercity party alliances; and (iv) the propensities of a strong and
numerous nobility.” “After 1250, from Umbria to the Alps, there was a dramatic escalation in the
strife between political blocks: the alignments became sharper, the sides more uncompromising,
the wars bloodier and more expensive. Political passion rose to fever pitch and remained so until
the 1330s. In a number of cities – Perugia, Bologna, Pisa, Genoa – the ferocity of party and
sometimes class conflict persisted for long thereafter. Mass exile became commonplace; so also
the wholesale confiscation of enemy properties, the razing of houses, and the formation of exile
armies. In 1261, Milan’s popular commune captured 900 Milanese noblemen, exiles who had
made war on the city since 1254. The populace wanted them put to the sword, but the government
resisted and the mob managed to catch and kill only a few, as they were being transferred from
prison to another. During the Emperor Henry VII’s attack on Florence in 1312-13, the Florentine
exiles in his train were most rabid in urging the use of violence, as Henry’s forces ravaged and
looted the lands surrounding the city. Around 1300, Genoese exiles did not shrink from leading
flotillas into the port of Genoa to make war on the commune. From March 1318 to February 1319,
the exiled Genoese Ghibellines besieged Genoa with an army of more than 20,000 men. Civil war
lasted until 1331.”10 “The significance of an alliance among the kindred parties of different cities
is that it often enabled a signore to seize power over a whole region. This he did with the help of
local groups and leaders within the alliance, as happened in the cities that fell under the domination
of the Visconti of Milan.” Nearly all the signori who succeeded in founding enduring regimes
issued from eminent feudal families, rich and powerful in city and country.
Usually they disposed of vast estates. The best setting for successful resistance to the signory
was to be found in cities with a strong commercial or industrial base, cities where the old feudal
nobility had been decimated or absorbed into the business class. The easiest targets for signori
were the cities whose commercial-industrial base was small relative to the surrounding rural
economy. During the fourteenth century, the signory brought enough pacification and stability to
a few cities - chiefly Milan, Padua, and Ferrara – to give rise to the myth that civic peace and
seigniorial government went together. “Until a signore obtained recognition via imperial or papal
action, every act of his government had its supposed ultimate legitimacy in the original transfer of
authority, no matter how violent the circumstances connected with his takeover or with the
approval accorded by the commune. The regime insisted upon its legitimacy and admitted to
nothing irregular – indeed, went out of its way to rally lawyers and judges to its cause.” They
used the law to hold the community. Law and order were manipulated to veil the underlying
lawlessness. The new lord recognized that the traditional structure of office in the commune had
to be, or appear to be, respected. The major legislative bodies survived in nearly all the cities that
fell subject to signorial rule. Milan’s Council of Twelve Hundred was reduced to Nine Hundred
shortly before 1330, which was called occasionally into session by the Visconti. As time passed,
these councils met more infrequently. They might be used to rubber-stamp certain of the lord’s
major enactments, or they might be called to meet on minor matters only; but they were not
dissolved. A more devious system of controls, used by oligarchies as well as signories, centered
on the practice of filling offices by drawing names as in a lottery. In the fourteenth century,
signore was governed through a variety of councils, advisers, and aids. The old captain of the
popolo usually disappeared: his functions were absorbed by the signore. The podesta was the
signore’s chief administrative official, while at least one legislative council survived. The lord of
Milan has a privy or secret council, staffed mainly by soldiers and lawyers. 11 Thus, their popular
communes shifted toward the rule of dictatorship or oligarchy in the fourteenth century.
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Kingdom of Naples: The Normans overrun Sicily and the mainland established a
monarchy capable of bringing law and order to the reign. In the late twelfth century, Sicily fell
under the influence of the Hohenstaufen family of Germany when Emperor Henry VI married the
heiress to the Sicilian throne. Under the aggressive despotism of Frederick II (1215-50), Sicily
became more centralized. After the Frederick II’s death and during the ensuing Interregnum, most
areas of Italy repudiated their ties to the Holy Roman Empire, except when it was thought to be to
their advantage to retain the relationship, and rejected the claims of subsequent German emperors
to its over-lordship. The kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were seized by Charles of Anjou, the
third son of King Louis IX of France. Following the rebellion in 1282, Charles of Anjou was
forced to leave the Island of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon’s troops. Charles could maintain his
possessions on the Kingdom of Naples that had been ruled by the house of Anjou until 1435.12
After many battles between the houses of Anjou and Aragon for succession, Alfonso V (1416-58),
the king of Aragon and Sicily, won the throne to rule the kingdom, so the kingdoms of Naples and
Sicily were reunited. At his death, the kingdom was again separated and Naples was inherited by
Ferrante, Alfonso’s illegitimate son. As Ferrante died in 1494, “Charles VIII of France invaded
Italy, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, which his father had inherited on the death
of King René's nephew in 1481, as a pretext, thus beginning the Italian Wars. Charles VIII
expelled Alfonso II of Naples from Naples in 1495, but was soon forced to withdraw due to the
support of Ferdinand II of Aragon for his cousin, Alfonso II's son Ferrantino. Ferrantino was
restored to the throne, but died in 1496, and was succeeded by his uncle, Frederick IV. The French,
however, did not give up their claim, and in 1501 agreed to a partition of the kingdom
with Ferdinand of Aragon, who abandoned his cousin King Frederick. The deal soon fell through,
however, and Aragon and France resumed their war over the kingdom, ultimately resulting in an
Aragonese victory leaving Ferdinand in control of the kingdom by 1504.”13
The Papal States held central Italy which included Rome, Bologna, Urbino, and Perugia.
The popes governed these territories like feudal appanages. “Problems arose, however, from the
widespread resistance to papal political authority, from the employment of foreign administrators
who could not overcome local prejudices and vested interests, and from the overwhelming expense
of administration. Financially, the Papal States were a liability to the papacy, returning only a
fraction of their cost to papal coffers; but unfavorable financial balances such as these were not a
concern of people who considered political and spiritual power not as two separate realms but as
one. It was the nature of the church to be both secular and spiritual, to have a comprehensive
stewardship over religious and temporal affairs…Rome itself occupied a unique position. As the
usual home of the papacy, it was the principal city of the Papal States and the center of a vast
ecclesiastical bureaucracy that reached into every nation, province, city, and hamlet in Christendom.”14 In the fifteenth century, papal policy toward its fiefs became increasingly important,
and Rome’s role in Italian politics grew accordingly. Pope Martin V arrived at Rome in 1420 after
the end of the Great Schism, and restored order but faced financial difficulties at the time of
economic depression. Since the papacy was a government, the popes became statesmen or
warriors rather than saints. The cardinals demanded freedom of speech, guarantees for their
offices, control over half the revenues, and consultation with them on all important issues. The
Council of Basel initiated by Martin V met in 1431 and proposed its supremacy over the popes,
so that his successor Eugene VI ordered it to dissolve. The council refused and commanded him
to appear before the council, then Eugene fled and the council assumed one after another the
prerogatives of the papacy. By Charles VII’s intervention, the ecclesiastical offices were filled
through elections of local chapter or clergy, and the local church chapters of each state became
independent from Rome and pursued nationalistic reformation.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
15
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Republic of Florence was initially dominated by landed nobles, but a rapid expansion
of industry and commerce created a wealthy class of merchants and industrialists. In 1293 a new
constitution of the “Ordinances of Justice” established a republican government controlled by
seven major guilds of the city. Later a small shopkeepers and artisans won their share in politics.
The Ciompi, the working class of the wool industry, revolted and established a proletariat
dictatorship in 1378. They repealed the laws against unionization, declared a moratorium of 12
years on the debts of wage earners, and reduced interest rates. By 1382 the bourgeoisie restored
the power and established a small oligarchy led by the municipal council: four from the Council
of the Commune, and four from the Council of the People. “In addition to the central organs, there
were two larger councils: the Council of the People of 300 members, and the Council of Commune
of 200. All the major legislation had to be debated and approved by these bodies, but they held
no power of initiative. On extraordinary occasions, a parlemento, composed of all citizens, was
summoned to the piazza by the tolling of the great bell. The purpose of this mass meeting was to
appoint a balia or reform commission, to carry out a major change in the government, such as
altering the candidate list for selecting the Signoria, or even temporarily to carry on the functions
of government during an emergency. Thus, throughout the Renaissance, the people of Florence
retained the theoretical right to alter the governmental structure…A number of appointed
commissions administered the various laws and supervised specific aspects of government. Some
of these commissions, like the Eight of Security, were permanent commissions charged with
detecting crimes against the state.”15 Florence conquered most of Tuscany and established a major
territorial state in northern Italy: it conquered Pisa in 1406 and Livorno in 1421, which ports made
the Florentine free from Genoese shippers. Cosimo de’ Medici (1434-64) took power among the
oligarchy, and his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1469-92) ran the government behind the
scene although the Medici firmly maintained the republican form of government.
The Republic of Venice was a republic in northern Italy, which had grown rich through
commerce. During the long Investiture Controversy between Emperor Henry IV and Pope
Gregory VII to control appointments of church officials, Venice remained neutral, which caused
some attrition of support from the popes. In the High Middle Ages, Venice became wealthy
through its control of trade between Europe and the Levant, and began to expand into the Adriatic
Sea and beyond. Venice was involved in the Crusades almost from the very beginning; 200
Venetian ships assisted in capturing the coastal cities of Syria after the First Crusade, and in 1123
they were granted virtual autonomy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the twelfth century, the
Republic built a large national shipyard that is now known as the Venetian Arsenal. Building new
and powerful fleets, the republic took control over the eastern Mediterranean. They also gained
extensive trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire, and their ships often provided the Empire
with a navy. In 1182 there was an anti-Western riot in Constantinople, with the Venetians as the
main targets. The Venetian fleet was crucial to the transportation of the Fourth Crusade. Venice
signed a trade treaty with the Mongol Empire in 1221. In 1297 the Great Council, the source of
political power, was closed to all but the members of about two hundred rich families. The center
of power was the Senate, a body of some 300 men. In 1310 the Council of Ten was formed as
executive power of the state. Establishing colonies and trading posts in the Mediterranean and the
Black Sea, Venice monopolized trade with the Byzantine Empire, and expanded its territory to the
adjoining area in northern Italy. 16 Its prosperity, however, faded away by the invasion of the
Ottoman Turks that conquered Constantinople in 1453, and by the Portuguese discovery of a sea
route to the Indies around Cape of Good Hope in 1498. The League of Cambrai of 1508 forced
Venice to disgorge recent and past conquests, but regained them by diplomacy by 1516. The
Venetian republic remained until 1797 when Napoleon conquered the Italian peninsula.
16
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(a) The Condottieri: The Italian states, like Venice, Florence, and Genoa, though they very
rich from their trade with the Levant, yet could not possess enough soldiers for the family feuds,
party rivalries, and inter-city competition causing almost continuous fighting during the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. In the event for the foreign powers and envious neighbors to attack, the
ruling nobles hired foreign mercenaries to fight for them. The military-service terms and
conditions were stipulated in a condotta (contract) between the city-state and the soldiers, thus,
the contracted leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the Condottiere. “From the
eleventh to the thirteenth century, European soldiers led by professional officers fought against
the Muslims in the Crusades (1095–1291). These crusading officers provided large-scale warfare
combat experience in the Holy Land. On the Crusades’ conclusion, the first masnada (bands of
roving soldiers) appeared in Italy. Given the profession, some masnade were less mercenaries than
bandits and desperate men. These masnada were not Italian, but (mostly) German, from the Duchy
of Brabant, and from Catalonia and Aragon. The latter were Spanish soldiers who had followed
King Peter III of Aragon in the War of the Sicilian Vespers in Italy in October 1282, and, postwar, remained there, seeking military employment.”17 Sometimes the mercenaries were recruited
from as far as Switzerland and Germany who sold their services to the highest bidder. Warfare in
the age of the condottieri became a business enterprise for more money than for honor and glory,
while many leaders of condottieri bands became powerful politicians. As most were educated men
acquainted with Roman military-science, they began viewing warfare from the perspective of
military science, rather than that of valor or physical courage, so they avoided battle when possible,
which reduced the total number of trained soldiers available, and was detrimental to their political
and economic interest of the states. The Condottieri began to decline from 1494, when the French
army of Charles VIII matched the smaller condottieri armies of the divided Italian city-stated, and
their military service disappeared by 1550 except like the Vatican’s Swiss Guards. 18
(b) Rivalry in Venice and Genoa: The two republics of Venice and Genoa had four wars
during 1256-1381 to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. “Venetian policy was set on maintaining
and extending its trade in the East while adjusting to the changing power relations caused by the
decline of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Turks. Being almost entirely
dependent on foreign lands for her food supply and on the flourishing trade routes to the East for
her livelihood, the island republic of Saint Mark could not allow an unfriendly power either to
control the mainland or to dominate the sea.”19 The Genoese, after eliminating the rivalry of Pisa
by a successful naval war, dominated the straits to the Black Sea and thus held a virtual monopoly
of trade in the Black Sea area. The Genoese port of Caffa in the Crimea became one of the most
flourishing cities in the East. In the western Mediterranean, Genoa dominated the trade with
Barcelona and Valencia. In the first war, in 1256–1270, the Venetians had the better of the fighting,
but were unable to prevent the advance of Genoese interests in Byzantium and the Black Sea. “The
Genoese were overwhelmingly victorious in combat in the second war, 1294–1299, but the
conflict ended inconclusively, as did the third, 1350–1355, in which Venice fought in conjunction
with Aragon and in which the fighting was more evenly balanced. In the fourth war, 1377–1381,
Venice itself was threatened with capture by the Genoese and their allies, and although victorious
in the fighting, the exhausted Venetians accepted peace terms which amounted to defeat.” 20 The
War of Chioggia left the rivalry between them unresolved. Venice was seriously damaged but
gradually able to rebuild its public finances and to take advantage of the weaknesses of its
mainland rivals to redress its losses. Genoa had less success in dealing with the debts accumulated
during these wars, and fell into a financial crisis over the following decades. Its chronic political
instability became acute after 1390, contributing to the acceptance of French sovereignty in 1396,
the first of a series of prolonged bouts of foreign rule during the fifteenth century.21
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
17
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Dutch of Milan: The House of Visconti had ruled Milan since 1277. The Duchy of
Milan as a state of the Holy Roman Empire was created in 1395, when Gian Galeazzo Visconti,
lord of Milan, purchased a diploma from the King of Germany becoming Duke of Milan and Count
of Pavia, which included 26 towns. “When the last Visconti Duke, Filippo Maria, died in 1447
without a male heir, the Milanese declared the so-called Ambrosian Republic, which soon faced
revolts and attacks from its neighbors. In 1450 mercenary captain Francesco Sforza, having
previously married Filippo Maria Visconti's illegitimate daughter Bianca Maria, conquered the
city and restored the Duchy, founding the House of Sforza. During the rule of the Visconti and
Sforza, the duchy had to defend its territory against the Swiss, the French and the Venetians, until
the Betrayal of Novara in 1500 when the duchy passed to the French-claim of Louis XII.”22 In
1498, the Duke of Orleans became King of France as Louis XII, and invaded in 1499 and soon
ousted Lodovico Sforza. The French ruled the duchy until 1512, when they were ousted by the
Swiss, who put Lodovico's son Massimiliano on the throne. Massimiliano reign did not last very
long. The French, now under Francis I, invaded the area in 1515 and reasserted their control at
the Battle of Marignano. The French took Massimiliano as their prisoner. “The French were again
driven out in 1521, this time by the Austrians, who installed Massimiliano's younger brother,
Francesco II Sforza. Following the French defeat at Pavia in 1525, which left the imperial forces
of Charles V dominant in Italy, Francesco joined the League of Cognac against the emperor along
with Venice, Florence the Pope, and the French. This resulted quickly in his own expulsion from
Milan by imperial forces, but he managed to remain in control of various other cities in the duchy,
and was again restored to Milan itself by the peace concluded at Cambrai in 1529.”23
Both Petrarch and Boccaccio expressed their ideals toward humanity in writings, which
opened the door toward the Renaissance through Italy. But politically there was no Italy; there
were only city-states, fragments free to consume themselves in hate and war. “Pisa destroyed its
commercial rival Amalfi; Milan destroyed Piacenza; Genoa and Florence destroyed Pisa; Venice
destroyed Genoa; and half of Europe would join most of Italy to destroy Venice.” Paradoxically,
the fragmentation of Italy favored the Renaissance: large states promote order and power rather
than liberty that could be favorable for literature and art if resources were available. By the time
of Petrarch, the basis of the Renaissance had been established. “The amazing growth and zest of
Italian trade and industry had gathered the wealth that financed the movement, and the passage
from rural peace and stagnation to urban vitality and stimulus had begotten the mood that
nourished it. The political basis had been prepared in the freedom and rivalry of the cities, in the
overthrow of an idle aristocracy, in the rise of educational princes and a virile bourgeoisie. The
literary basis had been prepared in the improvement of the vernacular languages, and in the zeal
for recovering and studying the classics of Greece and Rome. The ethical basis had been laid:
increasing wealth was breaking down old moral restraints; contact with Islam in commerce and
Crusades had encouraged a new tolerance for doctrinal and moral deviations from traditional
beliefs and ways; the rediscovery of a pagan world relatively free in thought and conduct shared
in un-determining medieval dogmas and morality; interest in a future life gave ground before
secular, human, earthly concerns. Esthetic development proceeded; the medieval hymns, the
cycles of romance, the songs of the troubadours, the sonnets of Dante and his Italian predecessors,
the sculptured harmony and form of the Divine Comedy, had left a heritage of literary art; the
classic models transmitted a refinement of taste and thought, a polish and politeness of speech and
style, to Petrarch, who would bequeath it to an international dynasty of urbane genius form
Erasmus to Anatole France. And a revolution in art had begun when Giotto abandoned the mystic
rigor of Byzantine mosaics to study men and women in the actual flow and natural grace of their
lives. In Italy, all roads were leading to the Renaissance.” 24
18
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
1-2. The Florentine Renaissance: 1378-1534
The Rise of the Medici (1378-1464): In northern Italy, the towns had kept their ancient structure
and memories, and now renewed their Roman law. “Classic art survived in Rome, Verona, Mantua,
Padua; Agrippa’s Pantheon still functioned as a place of worship, though it was fourteen hundred
years old; and in the Forum one could almost hear Cicero and Caesar debating the fate of Catiline.
Latin language was still a living tongue, of which Italian was merely a melodious variant. Pagan
deities, myths, and rites lingered in popular memory, or under Christian forms. Italy stood athwart
the Mediterranean, commanding that basin of classic civilization and trade. Northern Italy was
more urban and industrial than any other region of Europe except Flanders. It had never suffered
a full feudalism, but had subjected its nobles to its cities and its merchant class. It was the avenue
of trade between the rest of Italy and transalpine Europe, and between Western Europe and the
Levant; its commerce and industry made it the richest region in Christendom. Its adventurous
traders were everywhere, from the fairs of France to the farthest ports of the Black Sea.
Accustomed to dealing with Greeks, Arabs, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, and Chinese, they
lost the edge of their dogmas, and brought into the literate classes of Italy…Mercantile wisdom,
however, conspired with national traditions, temperament, and pride to keep Italy Catholic even
while she became pagan. Papal fees trickled to Rome along a thousand rivulets from a score of
Christian lands, and the wealth of the Curia overflowed throughout Italy. The Church rewarded
Italian loyalty with a generous lenience to the sins of the flesh, and a genial tolerance of heretical
philosophers who refrained from undermining the piety of the people. So Italy advanced, in wealth
and art and thought, a century ahead of the rest of Europe; and it was only in the sixteenth century,
when the Renaissance faded in Italy, that it blossomed in France, Germany, Holland, England, and
Spain.”25 The Renaissance, a mode of life and thought, moved from Italy through Europe.
Florence was a city-state ruling Florence, other cities, and their hinterland. The peasants were
not serfs but partly small proprietors, mostly tenant farmers. The population of the Florentine city
was 91, 500 souls in 1343. About a fourth of the city dwellers were industrial workers; the textile
lines alone, in the thirteenth century, employed 30,000 men and women in two hundred factories.
Florence encouraged its merchants to maintain trade with all ports of the Mediterranean, and along
the Atlantic as far as Bruges. Their products were exported through Pisa by Genoese merchants;
and the eighty banking houses financed their businesses in Florence. The guilds were organized:
seven greater guilds and fourteen smaller guilds. In 1293, the business class gained political power
over the old landed aristocracy, and then the working class began to acquire political power. In
1345 union leaders were put to death for organizing the poorer workers in the woolen industry,
and foreign laborers were imported to break up these unions. In 1368 these little people attempted
a revolution but were suppressed; in 1378 they were successful to establish a dictatorship of the
proletariat. The laws against unionization were repealed, the lower unions were enfranchised, a
moratorium of twelve years was declared on the debts of wage earners, and interest rates were
reduced to ease the burdens of the debtor class. Business leaders retaliated by shutting down their
shops and inducing the landowners to cut the city’s food supply. In 1382 when the revolutionists
split into factions; the conservatives brought in strong men from the countryside, armed them,
overthrew the divided government, and restored the business class to power. The triumphant
bourgeoisie revised the constitution to consolidate its victory. The Signoria (municipal council of
gentlemen) composed of eight leaders of the guilds, four of whom came from the greater guilds;
and the Consiglio del Commune (council of the people), chosen from guild membership, convened
when summoned by the Signory to vote yes or no on proposals. The both councils represented the
business class, and ruled the city without imperial, papal, or feudal impediment. 26
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
19
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Politics in Florence was the conflict of wealthy families and factions for control of the government. The Medici family can be traced back to 1201, when Chiarissimo de’ Medici was a member
of the Communal Council. Averardo de’ Medici, great-great-grandfather of Cosimo, founded the
fortune of the family by bold commerce and judicious finance, and was chosen gonfalonier in
1314. In 1428 when Giovanni di Bicci died, his son Cosimo received a good name and the largest
fortune in Tuscany of 179,221 florins ($4.5 million) at his age of thirty-nine, being able to carry
on the far-flung enterprises of the firm. “These were not confined to banking; they included the
management of extensive farms, the manufacture of silk and woolen goods, and a varied trade that
bound Russia and Spain, Scotland and Syria, Islam and Christendom. Cosimo de’ Medici (13891464), building churches in Florence, saw no sin in making trade agreements, and exchanging
costly presents, with Turkish sultans. The firm made a specialty of importing from the East articles
of little bulk and great value, like spices, almonds, and sugar, and sold these and other products in
a score of European ports. Cosimo directed all this with quite skill, and found time left for politics.
As a member of the Dieci, or War Council of Ten, he guided Florence to victory against Lucca,
and as a banker he financed the war by lending large sums to the government.27
His popularity excited the envy of other magnates. In 1433, Rinaldo degli Albizzi launched
an attack upon him as planning to overthrow the Republic and make himself dictator. Cosimo, his
sons, and his chief supporters banished for ten years; he took up his residence in Venice, where
his modesty and his means made him many friends. Soon the Venetian government was using its
influence to have him recalled. The Signory elected in 1434 was favorable to him, and reversed
the sentences of exile; Cosimo returned in triumph, and Rinaldo and his sons fled. Without
disturbing republican forms, Cosimo managed Florence by persuasion or money, to have his
adherents remain in office to the end of his life. “His loans to influential families won or forced
their support; his gifts to the clergy enlisted their enthusiastic aid; and his public benefactions, of
unprecedented scope and generosity, easily reconciled the citizens to his rule.” Cosimo used his
power with shrewd moderation, tempered with occasional violence. “He replaced the fixed income
tax with a sliding scale of levies on capital, and was accused of adjusting these assessments to
favor his friends and discourage his enemies…Many aristocrats left the city and resumed the rural
life of the medieval nobility.” Accepting their departure with equanimity, he remarked that new
aristocrats could be made with a few years of scarlet cloth. He was generous to the poor.28
His foreign policy was dedicated to the maintenance of peace, since he knew how the war
ruined the trade. “When the rule of the Visconti of Milan collapsed in chaos at Filippo Maria’s
death, and Venice threatened to absorb the duchy and dominate all northern Italy to the very gates
of Florence, Cosimo sent Francesco Sforza the means to establish himself in Milan and check the
Venetian advance. When Venice and Naples formed an alliance against Florence, Cosimo called
in so many loans made to their citizens that their governments were induced to make peace. Thereafter, Millan and Florence stood against Venice and Naples in a balance of power so even that
neither side dared to risk a war. This policy of balanced powers, conceived by Cosimo and
continued by Lorenzo, gave Italy those decades of peace and order, from 1450 to 1492, during
which the cities grew rich enough to finance the early Renaissance. It was a good fortune of Italy
and mankind that Cosimo cared as much for literature, scholarship, philosophy, and art as for
wealth and power. He was a man of education and taste; he knew Latin well, and had a smattering
of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic;” he was broad enough to appreciate literature, painting, and other
artistic works. “That Greek letters were not completely forgotten, to the great loss of humanity,
and that Latin letters have been revived to the infinite benefit of the people – this all Italy, nay all
the world, owes solely to the high wisdom and friendliness of the house of the Medici.” His
patronage of learning and art have never been equaled by any other family in history. 29
20
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Florentine Humanists: Under the Medici, the humanists captivated the mind of Italy,
turned it from religion to philosophy, from heaven to earth, and revealed the riches of pagan
thought and art. These men mad about scholarship received the name of umanisti because they
called the study of classic culture of the humanities – not more humane but more human letters.
“The proper study of mankind was now to be man, in all the potential strength and beauty of his
body, in all the joy and pain of his senses and feelings, in all the frail majesty of his reason; and
in these as most abundantly and perfectly revealed in the literature and art of ancient Greece and
Rome. This was humanism. Nearly all the Latin, and many of the Greek classics now extant were
known to medieval scholars here and there; and the thirteenth century was acquainted with the
major pagan philosophers. But that century had almost ignored Greek poetry; and many ancient
worthies now honored by us lay neglected in monastic or cathedral libraries. It was mostly in such
forgotten corners that Petrarch and his successors found the lost classics, gentle prisoners, he
called them, held in captivity by barbarous jailers. Boccaccio, visiting Monte Cassino, was
shocked to find precious manuscripts rotting in dust, or mutilated to make psalters or amulets.
Poggio, visiting the Swiss monastery of St. Gall while attending the Council of Constance, found
the Institutiones of Quintilian in a foul dark dungeon, and felt, as he reclaimed the rolls, that the
old pedagogue was stretching out his hands, begging to be saved from the barbarians; for by that
name the culture-conscious Italians, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, called their virile
conquerors beyond the Alps…In the half century before, the Turks took Constantinople a dozen
humanists studied or traveled in Greece; one of them, Giovanni Aurispa, brought back to Italy 238
manuscripts, including the play of Aeschylus and Sophocles; another, Franesco Filelfo, salvaged
from Constantinople texts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and
Aristotle, and seven dramas of Euripides. When such literary explorers returned to Italy with their
finds, they were welcomed like victorious generals, and princes and prelates.” 30
“The editorial revolution ensued. The texts so recovered were studied, compared, corrected,
and explained in a campaign of scholarship that ranged from Lorenzo Valla in Naples to Sir
Thomas More in London. Since these labors in many cases required a knowledge of Greek, Italy
– and later France, England, and Germany – sent out a call for teachers of Greek. Aurispa and
Filelfo learned the language in Greece itself. After Manuel Chrysoloras came to play (1397) as
Byzantine envoy, the University of Florence persuaded him to join its faculty as Professor of
Greek language and literature…In 1439 Greeks met Italians at the Council of Florence, and the
lessons they exchanged in language had far more result than their laborious negotiations in
theology….With all these scholars and their pupils enthusiastically active in Italy, it was but a
short time when the classics of Greek literature and philosophy were rendered into Latin with more
thoroughness, accuracy, and finish than in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries…Now after a reign
of four hundred years, Scholasticism lost its domination in the philosophy of the West; the
dialogue and essay replaced the scholastica disputatio as the form of philosophical exposition,
and the exhilarating spirit of Plato entered like an energizing yeast into the rising body of European
thought. But as Italy recovered more and more of its own classic heritage, the admiration of the
humanists for Greece was surpassed by the pride in the literature and art of ancient Rome. They
revived Latin as a medium of living literature; they Latinized their names, and Romanized the
terms of Christian worship and life…They fashioned their prose style on Cicero, their poetry on
Virgil and Horace…So in its course, the Renaissance moved back from Greek to Latin, from
Athens to Rome; fifteen centuries appeared to fall away, and the age of Cicero and Horace, of
Ovid and Seneca, seemed reborn…In the field of history, it was the humanists who ended the
succession of medieval chronicles – chaotic and uncritical – by scrutinizing and harmonizing
sources, marshalling the matter into order and clarity, visualizing and humanizing the past.” 31
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
21
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
In fact, Italy had become the most highly developed and the wealthiest region in Europe.
About 1300, the educated laymen in the Italian cities began to form a new cultural way of life that
was distinct from the chivalric culture of nobility and the scholastic culture of clergy by pursuing
ideals of human dignity and self-realization. Individualism and secularism grew and were matured
in intellectual and artistic realms of rich urban lay society. Historians labeled the new culture of
humanism originated from the humanistic studies embracing the subjects of grammar, rhetoric,
poetry, history, and moral philosophy in educational programs. As Florence became the center of
new culture, the upper class families favored humanistic education rather than commercial apprenticeship for their sons to join the ruling class of the republic. As discussed previously, Petrarch
devoted to the humanist movement and pursued classical literature; divided history into Antiquity,
Middle Ages, and the new age; and characterized the Middle Ages as a dark age that meant an age
of barbarism, ignorance, and low culture. Petrarch and other Florentine humanists consistently
looked back to the ancient Roman republic as its model, and intellectually and morally favored
Cicero for his political action and literary achievement. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio died before
1375, but the humanist movement continuously spread. Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) became
executive secretary or chancellor to the Signory in 1375, and bridged Petrarch and Boccaccio to
Cosimo, knowing and loving all three. He was an Italian humanist and man of letters, and one of
the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence. Salutati wrote that “I
have always believed, I must imitate antiquity not simply to reproduce it, but in order to produce
something new.”32 Niccolo de’ Niccoli (1364-1437), a Latin stylist, was one of the chief figures
in the company of learned men gathered around the patronage of Cosimo. His major services to
classical literature consisted in his work as a copyist and collator of ancient manuscripts; he
corrected the text, introduced divisions into chapters, and made tables of contents.
Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), educated under Salutati and Chrysoloras, was elected to
chancellor of Florence, but resigned after six months of service to be an apostolic secretary. He
returned to Florence in 1415 where he spent his remaining life. He defended republicanism as the
best form of government in his History of Florentine People by citing the example of ancient
Rome. He views that “the Roman empire began to collapse once the disastrous name of Caesar
had begun to brood over the city....as soon as the commonwealth fell into the power of one man,
high character and magnanimity became suspect in the eyes of rulers.” So Rome fell into inferior
men, and “little by little the empire was brought to ruin” - the growth of authoritarian power
destroyed political liberty and the republican constitution. Lorenzo Valla (1407-57) studied at
Florence, went to Rome to be a papal secretary, which allowed him to access monasterial libraries
of France and Germany. Valla saw historical changes of language: language undergoes historical
development and changes with the passage of time. His Elegances of the Latin Language was a
guide to classical style, usage, and grammar, which became the basis of modern linguistics. In his
Declamation on the Forged Donation of Constantine, he attacked the authenticity of the document
that the first Christian emperor, Constantine, granted political authority to Pope Sylvester I. Valla
argued that the grant would never have been made by Constantine. If it had been offered, the Pope
would have refused it since he had no worldly ambition. Moreover, the language used in the
document is not the Latin used in the fourth century but in the much later time. Poggio Bracciolini
(1380-1459) was born and educated in Florence, served as a papal secretary for fifty years. He
rediscovered many lost classical works through travels in northern Europe, and his literary work
Liber facetiarum is a collection of earthly fables and anticlerical satires. He wrote letters widely
and his works were spread over Europe, owing to the progress of printing process. At seventytwo, he returned to Florence, was made secretary to the Signory, and finally was elected to the
Signory itself. He expressed his appreciation by writing a history of Florence. 33
22
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
It is clear that Christianity, in both its theology and its ethics, had lost its hold on perhaps a
majority of the Italian humanists. “Several remained loyal to the faith, but to many others, the
revelation of a Greek culture lasting a thousand years, and reaching the height of literature,
philosophy, and art in complete independence of Judaism and Christianity, was a mortal blow to
their belief in the Pauline theology, or in the doctrine of no salvation outside the Church. Socrates
and Plato became for them un-canonized saints; the dynasty of the Greek philosophers seemed to
them superior to the Greek and Latin Fathers, the prose of Plato and Cicero made even a cardinal
ashamed of the Greek of the New Testament and the Latin of Jerome’s translation; the grandeur
of Imperial Rome seemed nobler than the timid retreat of convinced Christians into monastic cells;
the free thought and conduct of Periclean Greeks or Augustan Romans filled many humanists with
an envy that shattered in their hearts the Christian code of humanity, otherworldliness, continence;
and they wondered why they should subject body, mind, and soul to the rule of ecclesiastics who
themselves were now joyously converted to the world. For this humanists, the ten centuries
between Constantine and Dante were a tragic error, a Dantesque losing of the right road; the lovely
legends of Virgin and the saints faded from their memory to make room for Ovid’s
Metamorphoses and Horace’s ambisexual odes; the great cathedrals now seemed barbarous, and
their gaunt statuary lost all charm for eyes that had seen, fingers that had touched, the Apollo
Belvedere. So the humanists, by and large, acted as if Christianity were a myth conformable to
the needs of popular imagination and morality, but not to be taken serious by emancipated minds.
They supported it in their public pronouncements, professed a saving orthodoxy, and struggled to
harmonize Christian doctrine with Greek philosophy…implicitly they accepted reason as the
supreme court, and honored Plato’s Dialogues equally with the New Testament.”34
“The influence of the humanists was for a century the dominant factor in the intellectual life
of Western Europe. They taught writers a sharper sense of structure and form; they taught them
also the artifices of rhetoric, the frills of language, the abracadabra of mythology, the fetishism of
classical quotation, the sacrifice of significance to correctness of speech and beauty of style. Their
infatuation with Latin postponed for a century (1400-1500) the development of Italian poetry and
prose. They emancipated science from theology, but impeded it by worshiping the past, and by
stressing erudition rather than objective observation and original thought. Strange to say, they
were least influential in the universities…The influence of the revival of letters operated chiefly
through academies founded by patron princes in Florence, Naples, Venice, Ferrara, Mantua, Milan,
and Rome. There the humanists dictated in Greek or Latin the classic text they proposed to discuss;
at each step they commented in Latin on the grammatical, rhetorical, geographical, biographical,
and literary aspects of the text; their students took down the dictated text, and, in the margins,
much of the commentary; in this way, copies of the classics, and of commentaries as well, were
multiplied and were scattered into the world.” Since the change of generation brought a shift from
rhetoric and moral culture to speculative and philosophical culture, civic humanism was no more
attractive as Platonism became popular. “The humanists became secretaries and advisers to senates,
signories, dukes, and popes, repaying their favors with classic eulogies, and their snubs with
poisoned epigrams. They transformed the ideal of a gentleman from a man with ready sword and
clanking spurs into that of the fully developed individual attaining to wisdom and worth by
absorbing cultural heritage of the race. The prestige of their learning and the fascination of their
eloquence conquered transalpine Europe at the very time when the arms of France, Germany, and
Spain were preparing to conquer Italy. Country after country was inoculated with the new culture,
and passed from medievalism to modernity.” It was the humanists, not the navigators discovering two Indies of East and West via sea, who liberated man from dogma, taught him to love life
rather than brood about death, and made European mind free.35
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
23
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Golden Age (1464-92): Cosimo’s son Piero succeeded his wealth at aged fifty, but his
reign was troubled until his death in 1469. His son Lorenzo, considered the brightest of the five
children, was tutored by a diplomat and bishop, Gentile de' Becchi, and the humanist philosopher
Marsilio Ficino. With his brother Giuliano, he participated in jousting, hawking, hunting, and
horse breeding and a horse race. “Piero sent Lorenzo on many important diplomatic missions when
he was still a youth, which included trips to Rome to meet the pope and other important religious
and political figures. “Lorenzo, groomed for power, assumed a leading role in the state upon the
death of his father in 1469, when he was twenty. Already drained by his grandfather's building
projects and constantly stressed by mismanagement, wars, and political expenses, the bank's assets
contracted seriously during the course of Lorenzo's lifetime. Lorenzo…ruled Florence indirectly
through surrogates in the city councils, threats, payoffs and strategic marriages. Although Florence
flourished under Lorenzo's rule, he effectively reigned as a despot, and people had little political
freedom. Rival Florentine families inevitably harbored resentments over the Medicis' dominance,
and enemies of the Medici remained a factor in Florentine life long after Lorenzo's passing.”
Medici fortunes were further enhanced when Lorenzo led a delegation of Florence to Rome to
congratulate Sixtus IV on his elevation to the papacy; Sixtus responded by renewing the Medici
management of the papal finances. When the papal alum mines proved extremely lucrative, the
citizens of Volterra claimed a share of the profits for their municipal revenue. The contractors
protested, and appealed to the Florentine Signory; the Signory doubled the problem by decreeing
that the profits should go to the general treasury of the whole Florentine state. Volterra denounced
the decree, declared its independence, and put to death several citizens who opposed the secession.
A conciliatory measure was recommended, but Lorenzo rejected them on the ground that they
would encourage insurrection and secession elsewhere. His advice was taken, the revolt was
suppressed by force, and the Florentine mercenaries, getting out of hand, sacked the rebellious
city. Lorenzo hurried down to Volterra and labored to restore order and make amends.36
The most notable of the rival families was the Pazzi, who nearly brought Lorenzo's reign to
an end right after it began. “On Easter Sunday, 26 April 1478, in an incident called the Pazzi
conspiracy, a group including members of the Pazzi family, backed by the Archbishop of Pisa and
his patron Pope Sixtus IV, attacked Lorenzo and his brother and co-ruler, Giuliano, in
the Cathedral of Florence. Giuliano was killed, but Lorenzo escaped with only a stab wound. The
conspiracy was brutally put down by such measures as the lynching of the Archbishop of Pisa and
the death of the Pazzi family members who were directly involved. In the aftermath of the Pazzi
Conspiracy and the punishment of Pope Sixtus IV's supporters, the Medici and Florence suffered
from the wrath of the Holy See, which seized all the Medici assets Sixtus could find, excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire government of Florence and ultimately put the entire Florentine
city-state under interdict. When these moves had little effect, Sixtus formed a military alliance
with King Ferdinand I of Naples, whose son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, led an invasion of the
Florentine Republic, still ruled by Lorenzo. Lorenzo rallied the citizens. However, with little
support from the traditional Medici allies in Bologna and Milan, the war dragged on, and only
diplomacy by Lorenzo, who personally traveled to Naples, ultimately resolved the crisis. That
success enabled Lorenzo to secure constitutional changes within the Florentine Republic's
government, which further enhanced his own power. Thereafter, Lorenzo, like his grandfather
Cosimo de' Medici, pursued a policy both of maintaining peace and a balance of power between
the northern Italian states and of keeping the other major European states such as France and the
Holy Roman Empire's Habsburg rulers out of Italy. Lorenzo maintained good relations with
Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire, as the Florentine maritime trade with the Ottomans was
a major source of wealth for the Medici.” Lorenzo became the unchallenged lord.37
24
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Lorenzo de’ Medici (1469-1492) known as Lorenzo the Magnificent ruled now with a milder
hand than in his youth. “He had just entered his thirties, but men matured quickly in the hothouse
of the Renaissance. “His morals were not as exemplary as his mind. Like many of his contemporaries he did not allow his religious faith to hamper this enjoyment of life. He wrote devout
hymns with apparent sincerity, but turned from them, without evident qualm, to poems celebrating
licentious love. He seems rarely to have known remorse except for pleasures missed. Having
reluctantly accepted, for political reasons, a wife whom he respected rather than loved, he amused
himself with adultery after the fashion of the time. But it was accounted one of his distinctions
that he had no illegitimate children. Debate is still warm as to his commercial morality. No one
questions his liberality; it was as lavish as Cosimo’s. He never rested till he had repaid every gift
with a greater gift; he financed a dozen religious undertakings, supported countless artists, scholars,
and poets, and lent great sums to the state. After the Pazzi conspiracy he found that his public and
private disbursements had left his firm unable to meet its obligations; whereupon a complaisant
Council voted to pay his debts out of the state treasury (1480). It is not clear whether this was a
fair return for services rendered and private funds spent for public purposes, or a plain embezzlement; the fact that the measure, though openly known, did not harm to Lorenzo’s popularity,
suggests the more lenient interpretation.” It was his liberality and his wealth.”38
He rescued the family fortune by gradually withdrawing it from commerce and investing it in
city realty and large-scale agriculture; the lands near his villas became models of agricultural
economy. The economic life of Florence prospered under his government. The rate of interest fell
as low as five percent, and commercial enterprise, readily financed, flourished until, toward the
close of Lorenzo’s career. More conductive to prosperity was his policy of peace, and the balance
of power that he maintained in Italy during the second decade of his rule.
By the constitution of 1480, the Council of Seventy was composed of thirty members chosen
by the Signory of that year, and forty others chosen by these thirty. Membership was for life, and
vacancies were filled by co-optation. Opposition was difficult, for Lorenzo employed spies to
detect it, and had means of troubling his opponents financially. The old factions slept; crime his
its head; order prospered while liberty declined. The
merchants preferred economic prosperity to political
freedom; the proletariat was kept busy with extensive
public works, and forgave dictatorship so long as he
supplied it with bread and games. Tournaments
allured the rich, horse races thrilled the bourgeoisie,
and pageants amused the populace.39 “Nothing could
better illustrate the moral and manners, the complexity
and diversity of the Italian Renaissance than the
picture of its most central character ruling a state,
managing a fortune, jousting in tournament, writing
excellent poetry, supporting artists and authors with
discriminating patronage, mingling at ease with
scholars and philosophers, peasants and buffoons,
marching in pageants, singing bawdy songs, composing tender hymns, playing with mistresses, begetting
a pope, and honored throughout Europe as the greatest
and noblest Italian of his time.”40
Photo I-1-2. Lorenzo de’ Medici (Left)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bd/Lorenzo_de_Medici2.jpg/220px-Lorenzo_de_Medici2.jpg
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
25
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
While reviving Italian literature, “Lorenzo carried on zealously his grandfather’s enterprise
of gathering for the use of scholars in Florence all the classics of Greece and Rome. He sent
Politian and John Lascaris to various cities in Italy and abroad to buy manuscripts; from on
monastery at Mt. Athos Lascaris brought two hundred, of which eighty were as yet unknown to
Western Europe. According to Politian, Lorenzo wished that he might be allowed to spend his
entire fortune, even to pledge his furniture, in the purchase of books. He paid scribes to make
copies for him of manuscripts that could not be purchased, and in return he allowed other collectors,
like King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and Duke Federigo of Urbino, to send their copyists to
transcribe manuscripts in the Medicean Library. After Lorenzo’s death this collection was united
with that which Cosimo had placed in the convent of San Marco; together, in 1495, they included
1039 volumes of which 460 were Greek. Michelangelo later designed a lordly home for these
books, and posterity gave it Lorenzo’s name.” “Lured by the reputation of the Medici and other
Florentines for generous patronage, scholars flocked to Florence and made it the capital of literary
learning…To develop and transmit the intellectual legacy of the race, Lorenzo restored and
enlarged the old University of Pisa, and the Platonic Academy at Florence. The latter was no
formal college but an association of men interested in Plato, meeting at irregular intervals in
Lorenzo’s city palace or in Ficino’s villa at Careggi, dining together, reading aloud part or all of
a Platonic dialogue, and discussing its philosophy.” Among those who attended the discussions
of the Platonic Academy were Politian, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and Marsilio Ficino
(1443-99).41 Marsilio had been so faithful to Cosimo’s commission as to devote almost all his life
to translating Plato into Latin and to studying, teaching, and writing about Platonism…he
addressed his students as ‘beloved in Plato’ rather than ‘beloved in Christ’, he burned candles
before a bust of Plato, and adored him as a saint. Christianity appeared to him…one of the many
religions that hid elements of truth behind their allegorical dogmas and symbolic rites.” 42
Next to Lorenzo himself, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) was the most
fascinating personality in the Platonic Academy. “His eager mind took up one study after another
– poetry, philosophy, architecture, music – and achieved in each some outstanding excellence.
“His mind was open to every philosophy and every faith; he could not find it in him to reject any
system, any man; and though in his final years he spurned astrology, he welcomed mysticism and
magic as readily as he accepted Plato and Christ…He found much to admire in Arabic and Jewish
thought, and numbered several Jews among his teachers and honored friends…he assumed the
high duty of reconciling all the great religions of the West – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam –
and these with Plato, and Plato with Aristotle.” Politian (1454-94) was an Italian poet and
humanist, and protégé of Lorenzo de’ Medici. “The murder of Politian’s father in May 1464 left
the family poverty-stricken, and not later than 1469 Politian was sent to Florence. He started to
write Latin and Greek epigrams and attracted the attention of Lorenzo de’ Medici, to whom
Politian dedicated the first two books of his Latin translation of the Iliad. In about 1473 he entered
the Medici household and was able to study in the Medici library until, in 1475, he was entrusted
with the education of Lorenzo’s eldest son, Piero, then aged three. In 1477 he was given as a
benefice the priory of San Paolo.”43 “Politian fell short of greatness as a poet he avoided the
pitfalls of passion and never plumbed the depths of life or love; he is always charming and never
profound. His love for Lorenzo was the strongest feeling that he knew. He was at his patron’s
side when Giuliano was killed in the cathedral; he saved Lorenzo by slamming and bolting the
doors of the sacristy in the face of the conspirators. When Lorenzo returned from his perilous
journey to Naples, Politian welcomed him with verses almost scandalously affectionate. When
Lorenzo passed away, Politian mourned him inconsolably, and then gradually fade out. He died
two years later, like Pico, in the fateful year 1494, when the French discovered Italy.” 44
26
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Savonarola and the Republic: Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) was an Italian Dominican
friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. His grandfather was a successful physician and
polymath who oversaw his education. His family had amassed in his grandfather's footsteps. At
some point, he abandoned his career intentions. In 1475, Girolamo went to Bologna where he
knocked on the door of the Convent of San Domenico, of the Order of Friars Preachers, and asked
to be admitted. In 1478 his studies were interrupted when he was sent to the Dominican priory of
Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as assistant master of novices. The assignment might have
been a normal, temporary break from the academic routine, but in Savonarola's case it was a
turning point. One explanation is that he had alienated certain of his superiors, particularly one
who resented the young friar’s opposition to modifying the Order’s rules against the ownership of
property. “In 1482, instead of returning to Bologna to resume his studies, Savonarola was assigned
as lector, or teacher, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence.” In 1490, he was reassigned to San
Marco. It seems that this was due to the initiative of the humanist philosopher-prince, Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola, who had heard Savonarola in a formal disputation in Reggio Emilia and
been impressed with his learning and piety. Pico was in trouble with the Church for some of his
unorthodox philosophical ideas and was living under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent…
To have Savonarola beside him as a spiritual counselor, he persuaded Lorenzo that the friar would
bring prestige to the convent of San Marco and its Medici patrons.” 45 Returning to Florence, for
several years, Savonarola lived as an itinerant preacher with a message of repentance and reform
in the cities and convents of north Italy. “He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the
destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical
corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor. He prophesied the coming of a biblical
flood and a new Cyrus from the north who would reform the Church.”
“In September 1494 King Charles VIII of France crossed the Alps with a formidable army,
throwing Italy into political chaos. Many viewed the arrival of King Charles as proof of Savonarola's gift of prophecy. Charles, however, advanced on Florence, sacking Tuscan strongholds and
threatening to punish the city for refusing to support his expedition. As the populace took to the
streets to expel Piero the Unfortunate, Lorenzo de' Medici's son and successor, Savonarola led a
delegation to the camp of the French king in mid-November 1494. He pressed Charles to spare
Florence and enjoined him to take up his divinely appointed role as the reformer of the Church.
After a short, tense occupation of the city, and another intervention by fra Girolamo, the French
resumed their journey southward on November 28, 1494. Savonarola now declared that by
answering his call to penitence, the Florentines had begun to build a new Ark of Noah which had
saved them from the waters of the divine flood.” While Savonarola intervened with the French
king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar's urging, established a popular
republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world center of Christianity
and richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever, he instituted an extreme puritanical campaign,
enlisting the active help of Florentine youth. “In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope
Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He
disobeyed and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for
reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, the Pope
excommunicated him in May 1497, and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by
fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola's divine mandate
turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting
friars were imprisoned. Under torture, Savonarola confessed that he had invented his visions and
prophecies. On May 23, 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the
three friars in the main square of Florence.” The Medici restored to power in 1512.46
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
27
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
“Savonarola was the Middle Ages surviving into the Renaissance, and the Renaissance
destroyed him. He saw the moral decay of Italy under the influence of wealth and a declining
religious belief, and he stood bravely, fanatically, vainly against the sensual and skeptical spirit of
the times. He inherited the moral fever and mental simplicity of medieval saints, and seemed out
of place and key in a world that was singing the praises of rediscovered pagan Greece. He failed
through his intellectual limitations and a forgivable but irritating egotism; he exaggerated his
illumination and his capacity, and naively underestimated the task of opposing at once the power
of the papacy and the instincts of men. He was understandably shocked by Alexander’s morals,
but intemperate in his denunciations and intransigent in his policy. He was a Protestant before
Luther only in the sense of calling for reform of the Church; he shared none of Luther’s theological
dissents. But his memory became a force in the Protestant mind; Luther called him a saint. His
influence on literature was slight, for literature was in the hands of skeptics and realists like
Machiavelli and Guicciardini; but his influence on art was immense. Fra Bartolommeo signed
his portrait of the friar, Portrait of Girolamo of Ferrara, prophet sent by God. Botticelli turned
from paganism to piety under Savonarola’s preaching. Michelangelo heard the friar frequently,
and read his sermons devotedly; it was the spirit of Savonarola that moved the brush over the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and traced behind the altar the terrible Last Judgment. The grandeur
of Savonarola lay in his effort to achieve a moral revolution, to make men honest, good, and just.
We know that this is the most difficult of all revolutions, and we cannot wonder that Savonarola
failed where Christ succeeded with so pitiful a minority of men. But we know, too, that such a
revolution is the only one that would mark a real advance in human affairs; and that beside it the
bloody overturns of history are transient and ineffectual spectacles, changing anything but man.”47
“The chaos that had almost nullified government in the later years of Savonarola’s ascendancy
was not mitigated by his death. The brief term of two months allowed to each Signory and
gonfalonier made for a heretic discontinuity in the executive branch, and inclined the priors to
irresponsibility and corruption. In 1502 the Council, dominated by a triumphant oligarchy of rich
men, sought to overcome part of this difficulty by electing the gonfalonier for life, so that while
still subject to Signory and Council, he might face the popes and the secular rulers of Italy on
terms of equal tenure. The first man to receive this honor was Piertro Soderini, a millionaire
friendly to the people, an honest patriot whose powers of mind and will were not so eminent as to
threaten Florence with dictatorship. He enlisted Machiavelli among his advisers, governed
prudently and economically, and used his private fortune to resume that patronage of art which
had been interrupted under Savonarola. With his support Machiavelli replaced the mercenary
troops of Florence with a citizen militia, which finally (1508) forced Pisa to yield again to a
Florentine protectorate. But in 1512 the foreign policy of the Republic brought on the disaster
that Alexander VI had foretold. Through all the efforts of the Holy League of Venice, Milan,
Naples, and Rome to rid Italy of its French invaders, Florence had persisted in its alliance with
France. When victory crowned the League it turned in revenge upon Florence, and sent its troops
to replace the republican oligarchy with a Medicean dictatorship. Florence resisted, and
Machiavelli labored strenuously to organize its defense. Its outpost, Prato, was taken and sacked,
and Machiavelli’s militia turned and fled from the trained mercenaries of the League. Soderini
resigned to avoid further bloodshed. Giuliano de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo, having contributed
10,000 ducats ($250,000) to the League treasury, entered Florence under the protection of Spanish,
German, and Italian arms; his brother, Cardinal Giovanni, soon join him; the Savonarolan
constitution was abolished, and the Medicean ascendancy was restored (1512).” Clement used the
troops of Charles V, but an army of Spanish and German troops marched upon Florence, and
Alessandro de’ Medici began a regime of oppression and brutality in 1531.48
28
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
1-3. Milan, Venice, and Naples in the Renaissance
In the Italian Renaissance, next to Florence, both Milan and Venice are essential to be focused
because of their strategic locations and political-economic weights. “Milan, the most northern of
the major Italian city-states, came to dominate the Po River valley. The city's strategic location
along trade lines and as a gateway to Italy from the north necessitated a strong military state. Due
to the need for strong leadership, Milan became a strong monarchy under a succession of powerful
dukes. The Visconti family ruled as dukes almost continuously from 1317 to 1447, maintaining
the stability of the volatile region through military might. At the height of their power they
controlled nearly all of northernmost Italy. In 1447 the last Visconti died, and the Milanese
attempted to install a republic. The republic proved unable to protect the city's military interests,
and in 1450, Francesco Sforza, a professional soldier, seized control of the government. His family
would rule Milan for years to come. The most well-known of his descendants, Ludovico Sforza,
played the part of the archetypical Italian Renaissance prince, surrounding himself with intrigue
and corruption. Though Ludovico was not the rightful duke of Milan and was known to use
coercion and manipulation to achieve his political goals, for a time the city of Milan flourished in
his care. Under Ludovico, known as 'Il Moro,' Milan was extraordinarily wealthy and its citizens
participated in a splendid and excessive social culture. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci were
attracted to the glamour and wealth of Milan and flocked to the city in search of commissions. In
the late 15th century, in an effort to reduce the troublesome power of his in-laws and enemies, the
royal family of Naples, Ludovico promised King Charles VIII of France free passage through
Milan and into Naples. The French invasion of 1494 failed, but in 1499 another French expedition
moved into Italy led by the new king, Louis XII. The French turned on Ludovico and took Milan,
moving from there into many other areas of Italy. The glory of the Milanese court collapsed under
French control, and the artists who had flocked to the city now fled to new locations.”49
“Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice traded with the Byzantine Empire and the Moslem
world extensively. During the late thirteenth century, Venice was the most prosperous city in all
of Europe. At the peak of its power and wealth, it had 36,000 sailors operating 3,300 ships,
dominating Mediterranean commerce. During this time, Venice's leading families vied with each
other to build the grandest palaces and support the work of the greatest and most talented artists.
The city was governed by the Great Council, which was made up of members of the most
influential families in Venice. The Great Council appointed all public officials and elected a Senate
of 200 to 300 individuals. The Senate hen chose the Council of Ten, a secretive group which held
the utmost power in the administration of the city. One member of the great council was elected
'doge,' or duke, the ceremonial head of the city. The Venetian doge ruled for life under a system
of constitutional monarchy. The Doge of Venice ruled in great splendor, and laws were passed in
his name, but his power was severely limited by the Great Council, and most notably, the Council
of Ten. In 1423, Francesco Fosari became doge. He ruled with excessive grandeur and exercised
far greater power than had past doges, aggressively pursuing a policy of western expansion. Many
in the Great Council thought he had usurped too great a degree of power. To torment and control
the doge, the Council of Ten falsely accused his son, Jacopo, of treason, and began a long process
during which Jacopo was exiled, readmitted, tortured, and exiled again, all the while refusing to
allow the doge to resign. Finally, when the Council of Ten was satisfied that its message had gotten
across, they forced Fosari to resign, affirming its power over the monarch. Throughout the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Venice was assailed at sea by the Ottoman Turks and on
land by the Holy League against Venice, which sought to knock Venice from its pedestal of
arrogance. The city survived the onslaught, however, by relying on its strength in sea trade.”50
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
29
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Milan in the Renaissance: In the fifteenth century, the economic life of the Italian states was
as diverse as their climate, dialects, and costumes. Will Durant describes the scenery as below:
“The north, - i.g. above Florence - could have severe winters, sometimes freezing the Po from end
to end; yet the coastal region around Genoa, sheltered by the Ligurian Alps, enjoyed mild weather
in almost every month. Venice could shroud its palaces and towers and liquid streets in clouds and
mist; Rome was sunny but miasmic; Naples was a climatic paradise. Everywhere, at one time or
another, the cities and their countryside suffered those earthquakes, floods, drought, tornadoes,
famines, plagues, and wars that a Malthusian Nature sedulously provides to compensate for the
reproductive ecstasies of mankind. In the towns, the old handicrafts supplied the poor with a living
and the rich with superfluities. Only the textile industry had reached the factory and capitalist
stage; one silk mill at Bologna contracted with the city authorities to do the work of 4000 spinning
women. Petty tradesmen, merchants of import and exports, teachers, lawyers, physicians,
administrators, politicians, made up a complex middle class; a wealthy and worldly clergy added
their color and grace to the courts and the streets; and monks and friars, somber or jovial, wandered
about seeking alms or romance. The aristocracy of landowners and financiers lived for the most
part within the city walls, occasionally in rural villas. At the top a banker, presided over a court
hampered with luxuries and gilded with art. In the countryside the peasant tilled his modest acres
or some lord’s domain, and lived in a poverty so traditional that it seldom entered his thoughts.”
Slavery existed on a minor scale, chiefly in domestic service among the rich; occasionally as a
supplement and corrective to free labor on large estates, especially in Sicily; but here and there
even in northern Italy. From the fourteenth century onward, the slave trade grew; Venetian and
Genoese merchants imported them from the Balkans, southern Russia, and Islam; male or female
Moorish slaves were considered a shining ornament of Italian courts.”51
Transport was chiefly on mule-back or by cart, or by river, canal, or sea. “The well-to-do
traveled on horseback or in horse-drawn carriages. Speed was moderate but exciting; it took two
days and a good spine to ride from Perugia to Urbino – sixty-four miles; a boat might take fourteen
days from Barcelona to Genoa. Inn were numerous, noisy, dirty, and uncomfortable…The citystates that divided the peninsula were ruled in some cases – Florence, Siena, Venice – by
mercantile oligarchies; more often by despots of diverse degree, who had superseded republican
or communal institutions vitiated by class exploitation and political violence. Out of competition
of strong men, one emerged – almost always of humble birth – who subdued and destroyed or
hired the rest, made himself absolute ruler, and in some cases transmitted his power to his heir.
So the Visconti or Sforzas ruled in Milan…The despots were cruel because they were insecure.
With no tradition of legitimacy to support them, subject at any moment to assassination or revolt,
they surrounded themselves with guards, ate and drank in fear of poison, and hoped for a natural
death…They suppressed criticism and dissent, and maintained a horde of spies…They waged
frequent but usually petty war, seeking the mirage of security through the advancement of their
frontiers, and having an expansive appetite for taxable terrain. They did not send their own people
to war, for then they would have had to arm them, which might be suicidal; instead they hired
mercenaries, and paid them with the proceeds of conquests, ransoms, confiscations, and pillage…
The despot financed education as well as war, built schools and libraries, supported academics
and universities. Every town in Italy had a school, usually provided by the Church; every major
city had a university. Under the schooling of humanists, universities, and courts, public taste and
manners improved, every second Italian became a judge of art, every important center had its own
artist and its own architectural style. The joy of life spread, for the educated classes, from one end
of Italy to the others; manners were relatively refined, and yet instincts were unprecedentedly free.”
Never since the days of Augustus, had genius found such competition and such liberty.52
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Visconti of Milan (1378-1447): It is said that the Milanese Visconti had their origins in
a family of capitanei whom archbishop Landulf of Milan (978–998) had granted certain feudal
holdings. A document from the year 1157 says the Visconti were holders of the captaincy of
Marliano; before 1070, they had gained the title of viscount to be later inherited down the male
line. The family dispersed into several branches, some of which were entrusted fiefs far off from
the Lombard metropolis; the one which gave the medieval lords of Milan is said to be descended
from Umberto. “The Visconti ruled Milan until the early Renaissance, first as Lords, then, from
1395. Gian Galeazzo Visconti endeavored to unify Northern Italy and Tuscany since 1378, and
became the first Duke of Milan from 1395 until his death in 1402, 53 who used Pavia as a capital.
“Here is a man who would have warmed Machiavelli’s heart. Immersed in the great library of his
palace, taking care of a delicate constitution, winning his subjects by moderate taxation, attending
church with impressive piety, filling his court with priests and monks, he was the last prince in
Italy whom diplomats would have suspected of planning to unite the entire peninsula under his
rule. Yet this was the ambition that seethed in his brain; he pursued it to the end of his life, and
almost realized it; and in its service he used craft, treachery, and murder as if he had studied the
unwritten prince with reverence, and had never heard of Christ.”54
Meanwhile, “his uncle Bernabo was ruling the other half of the Visconti realm from Milan.
Bernabo was a candid villain; he taxed his subjects to the edge of endurance, compelled the
peasantry to keep and feed the five thousand hounds that he used in the chase, and still resentment
by announcing that criminals would be tortured for forty days. He laughed at Giangaleazzo’s
piety, and schemed how to dispose of him and make himself master of all the Visconti heritage.
Gian, equipped with the spies necessary to any competent government, learned of these plans. He
arranged a meeting with Bernabo, who came conveniently with two sons; Gian’s secret guard
arrested all three, and apparently poisoned Bernabo (1385). Gian now ruled Milan, Novara, Pavia,
Piacenza, Parma, Cremona, and Brescia. In 1387 he took Verona, in 1389 Padua; in 1399 he
shocked Florence by buying Pisa for 200,000 florins; in 1400 Perugia, Assisi, and Siena, in 1401
Lucca and Bologna, submitted to his generals; and Gian was master of nearly all north Italy from
Novara to the Adriatic. The Papal State were now weakened by the Schism that had followed the
return of the papacy from Avignon. Gian played pope against rival pope, and dreamed of
absorbing all the lands of the Church. Then, he would send his armies against Naples; his control
of Pisa and other outlets would force Florence into submission; Venice alone would remain
unbound, but helpless against a united Italy.” But Giangaleazzo died in 1402.
Gian’s oldest son, Gianmaria Visconti (1402-12) was thirteen when his father died. The
generals fought for Milan, Italy resumed her fragmentation: “Florence recaptured Pisa; Venice
took Verona, Vicenza, and Padua; and Siena, Perugia, and Bologna submitted to individual
despots. Italy was as before, and worse, for Gianmaria, leaving the government to oppressive
regents, devoted himself to his dogs, trained them to eat human flesh, and joyfully watched them
feed on the live men whom he had condemned as political offenders or social criminals. In 1412
three nobles stabbed him to death. His brother Filippo Maria Visconti (1412-47) succeeded the
dukedom, managed, by marriage to Beatrice Tenda, the widow of the condottiere Facino Cane, 55
to gain control of Cane’s troops and territories and gradually reconstructed the Visconti dominions.
In the 1420s, Milan began to expand again, but by then Venice, with territorial ambitions, had
joined with Florence to block Milan’s advance, while the other Italian states took sides. A breed
of powerful condottieri developed in his wars with Venice and Florence. Muzio Sforza served
Queen Joana II of Naples; he lost her favor and was thrown into prison. He was given command
of one of the Milanese armies, but was drowned soon while crossing a stream in 1424. His son
leaped into his father’s place at age of twenty-two, fought and married his was to a throne. 56
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
31
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Francesco Sforza (1450-66) was an illegitimate son of a mercenary commander, Muzio
Sforza, and grew up at the court of Ferrara and accompanied his father to Naples, where Muzio
entered the employ of King Ladislas. “Francesco later served in Muzio’s company until 1424,
when his father drowned in battle against an old rival…Francesco then took over the command,
defeating and fatally wounding Braccio near L’Aquila, northeast of Rome. Entering the service
of Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, Sforza fought alternately for and against him in the
succeeding 20 years. During periods of uneasy truce he became betrothed (1433) to and married
(1441) the duke’s illegitimate daughter and only child, Bianca Maria. In 1434 Sforza made a pact
with Cosimo de’ Medici, who paid him a substantial subsidy and had him appointed condottiere
of Florence. Fighting for the Florentine-Venetian League against Milan in 1438, he won a battle
at Lake Garda and captured Verona. Two years later he inflicted an even more crushing defeat on
the Milanese at Anghiari, near Florence. In 1443 Sforza was once more at war with his father-inlaw. The duke fell mortally ill in 1447; and, with a Venetian army threatening Milan, he called
on his son-in-law for help. On his way to Milan, Sforza learned that the duke had died and had
named, not him, but Alfonso of Aragon, king of Naples, as his successor. The Milanese seized the
occasion to rebel and proclaimed a republic, hiring Sforza as their captain general. A threecornered struggle then ensued among the Milanese republic, Venice, and Sforza. In 1449 Milan
concluded peace with Venice behind Sforza’s back, whereupon he blockaded the city, starving it
into insurrection. Subsequently, on February 26, 1450, he made his triumphant entry into the city
as duke of Milan. The following year Venice, Naples, Savoy, and Montferrat joined forces against
Sforza, who turned to Cosimo de’ Medici and concluded a Milan–Florence alliance that brought
about the Peace of Lodi (1454) and permitted him to consolidate his rule over Milan. His
government, though despotic, apparently was enlightened. Though Sforza was primarily a warrior,
he and his children became known as patrons of the arts and enriched Milan architecturally.”57
His son Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466-76) never knew the discipline of poverty and struggle.
“He gave himself up to pleasure, luxury, and pomp, seduced with special relish the wives of his
friends, and punished opposition with a cruelty that seemed to have descended to him, deviously
and mysteriously, through the kindly Bianca from the hot Visconti blood. The people of Milan,
inured to absolute rule, offered no resistance to his despotism, but private vengeance punished
what public terror brooked.” One grieved over a sister seduced and then discarded by the Duke;
the other thought himself despoiled of property by the same load; together with another, they had
been trained in Roman history and ideals, including tyrannicide from Brutus to Brutus. “After
imploring the help of the saints, the three youths entered the church of St. Stephen, where Galeazzo
was worshipping, and stabbed him to death in 1476. His son Gian Galeazzo Sforza (1476-94) was
only seven years-old when his father Galeazzo Maria Sforza was assassinated, and he became the
Duke of Milan. “For three chaotic years Guelf and Ghibelline factions competed in force and
fraud to capture the regency. The victor was one of the most colorful and complex personalities
in all the crowded gallery of the Renaissance. Ludovico Sforza was the fourth of Francesco
Sforza’s sons, so his uncle acted as regent to the young duke, but quickly wrested all power from
him and became the de facto ruler of Milan. Ludovico later became the duke after Gian Galeazzo's
death, which was widely viewed as suspicious. In 1488, Gian Galeazzo married his cousin princess
Isabella of Naples and together they had four children. Concerning Gian Galeazzo's death in 1494
at Pavia, the Italian historian Francesco Guicciardini had to say in The History of Italy: “The rumor
was widespread that Gian Galeazzo’s death had been provoked by immoderate coitus; nevertheless, it was widely believed throughout Italy that he had died not through natural illness nor as a
result of incontinence, but had been poisoned…one of the royal physicians…asserted that he had
seen manifest signs of it…if it had been poison, it had been administered through his uncle.”58
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Lodovico Sforza (1494-99) was the second son of Francesco Sforza, who had made himself
duke of Milan. Brought up at his father’s refined court, he remained, after his father’s death in
1466, in the service of the new ruler. “When Galeazzo was murdered, however, in 1476, leaving
the duchy to his seven-year-old son, Gian Galeazzo, Ludovico first revealed his appetite for power,
plotting to win the regency from the child’s mother, Bona of Savoy. “The plot failed, and Ludovico
was exiled but eventually, through threats and flattery, won a reconciliation with Bona and brought
about the execution of her most influential adviser and chief minister in 1480. Shortly afterward,
he compelled Bona to leave Milan and assumed the regency for his nephew. From that moment
he entered the arena of equilibrium politics, by which a precarious balance was maintained among
the major Italian states. Taking advantage of the rivalry between these states, he established
Milan’s supremacy. Distrusting Venice, he remained on good terms with Florence and its Medici
ruler, Lorenzo the Magnificent. He secured useful alliances with Ferdinand I, king of Naples,
whose granddaughter Isabella was married in 1489 to Gian Galeazzo, and with the Borgia pope
Alexander VI, through the influence of Ludovico’s brother Ascanio, who was a cardinal. In 1491
Ludovico married Beatrice d’Este, the beautiful and cultured daughter of the duke of Ferrara. The
marriage proved to be unusually harmonious, in spite of Ludovico’s mistresses, and Beatrice bore
him two sons, Massimiliano and Francesco, both of whom later became dukes of Milan. With
lavish but enlightened patronage of artists and scholars, Ludovico made the court of Milan the
most splendid not only in Italy but in Europe. Leonardo da Vinci and the architect Donato
Bramante were among the many artists, poets, and musicians who gathered in Milan. Ludovico
sponsored extensive work in civil and military engineering, such as canals and fortifications. The
court and the common people alike rejoiced in Ludovico’s magnificent celebrations; the Milanese,
however, though enjoying well-being, were increasingly burdened by taxes.”59
“Resentful of the court of Ludovico and Beatrice, Gian Galeazzo, the rightful ruler of Milan,
and his wife Isabella left Milan to establish another court at Pavia. “Isabella was more outraged
by Ludovico’s flagrant usurpation of the ducal powers than her husband was, and she appealed to
her grandfather, Ferdinand I, who intervened in 1492, ordering Ludovico to surrender control of
the duchy to Isabella and Gian Galeazzo. Ludovico refused and, fearing a war with Naples, formed
an alliance with two foreign sovereigns, the emperor Maximilian I and King Charles VIII of
France. For an enormous sum of money, Maximilian not only bestowed upon Ludovico the title
of duke of Milan in 1494, legitimizing his usurpation, but also married Bianca Maria, Gian
Galeazzo’s sister. Charles VIII, who was contemplating the seizure of the kingdom of Naples from
Ferdinand, received Ludovico’s promise of help. The campaign of Charles VIII to conquer Naples
in 1494–95 threw the whole of Italy into confusion and eventually alarmed even Ludovico himself.
He joined the league led by Venice, which, in spite of Charles’s initial successes, soon expelled
him from Italy. Ludovico was the ultimate victor in this affair, achieving for a time maximum
safety and almost unlimited power; both Gian Galeazzo and Ferdinand died in 1494, and Charles
VIII himself soon became reconciled with him. Ludovico is reported to have said at the time that
Pope Alexander was his chaplain, the emperor Maximilian his general, the governing Signoria of
Venice his chamberlain, and Charles VIII his courier. The illusion, however, did not last long.
Charles VIII died in 1498 and was succeeded by Louis XII, a descendant of the first duke of Milan.
Louis claimed the duchy and, with the support of Venice and a Milanese population oppressed by
Ludovico’s taxation, quickly conquered it. When the Milanese had in turn tired of Louis’s rule,
Ludovico, who sought refuge with Maximilian, tried to retake Milan with German and Swiss
mercenaries. His Swiss troops, however, refused to fight for him in a crucial battle, and in April
1500 Ludovico was captured by the French.” His fall was celebrated all over Italy. He was
imprisoned in the castle of Loches in Touraine, where he died, still un-resigned, in May 1508.60
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
33
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Venice and her Realm (1378-1534): In the early Middle Ages, Venice began to establish its
military might which would influence the later crusades and dominate the Adriatic for centuries.
Tradonico (837-64) secured the sea by fighting Slavicand Saracen pirates. His reign was long and
successful, but the dynasty was finally established by his successor. Around 841, the Republic of
Venice sent a fleet of 60 galleys (each carrying 200 men) to assist the Byzantines in driving
the Arabs from Crotone, but it failed. “In the High Middle Ages, Venice became extremely
wealthy through its control of trade between Europe and the Levant, and it began to expand into
the Adriatic Sea and beyond. In 1084, Domenico Selvo personally led a fleet against the Normans,
but he was defeated and lost nine great galleys, the largest and most heavily armed ships in the
Venetian war fleet. Venice was involved in the Crusades almost from the very beginning. Two
hundred Venetian ships assisted in capturing the coastal cities of Syria after the First Crusade. In
1110, Ordelafo Faliero personally commanded a Venetian fleet of 100 ships to assist Baldwin
I of Jerusalem and Sigurd I of Norway in capturing the city of Sidon. In 1123 they were granted
virtual autonomy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem through the Pactum Warmundi. The Venetians
also gained extensive trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire during the 12th century, and their
ships often provided the Empire with a navy. In 1182, a vicious anti-Western riot broke out in
Constantinople targeting Latins, and Venetians in particular. Many in the Empire had become
jealous of Venetian power and influence, and thus when the pretender Andronikos I Komnenos
marched on the city, Venetian property was seized and the owners imprisoned or banished, an act
which humiliated and angered the Republic. In 1183, the city of Zara successfully rebelled against
Venetian rule. The city then put itself under the dual protection of the Papacy and King Emeric of
Hungary. The Dalmatians separated from Hungary by a treaty in 1199, and they paid Hungary
with a portion of Macedonia. In 1201, the city of Zadar recognized Emeric as overlord.”61
“The leaders of the Fourth Crusade (1202–04) contracted with Venice to provide a fleet for
transportation to the Levant. When the crusaders were unable to pay for the ships, Doge Enrico
Dandolo offered transport if the crusaders were to capture Zara, which had proven too well
fortified for Venice to retake alone. Upon the capture of Zara, the crusade was again diverted, this
time to Constantinople to avenge the 1182 massacre. The capture and sacking of Constantinople
has been described as one of the most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city in history. The
Venetians claimed much of the plunder, including the famous four bronze horses that were
brought back to adorn St. Mark's basilica. Furthermore, in the subsequent partition of the
Byzantine lands, Venice gained a great deal of territory in the Aegean Sea, amounting to threeeighths of the Byzantine Empire. This included the islands of Crete and Euboea (Negroponte); the
present core city of Chania on Crete is largely of Venetian construction, built atop the ruins of the
ancient city of Cydonia. The Aegean islands came to form the Venetian Duchy of the Archipelago.
The Byzantine Empire would be re-established in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaiologos but never
again recovered its previous power and was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks. The
Republic of Venice signed a trade treaty with the Mongol Empire in 1221. In 1295, Pietro
Gradenigo sent a fleet of 68 ships to attack a Genoese fleet at Alexandretta, then another fleet of
100 ships were sent to attack the Genoese in 1299. From 1350 to 1381, Venice fought an
intermittent war with the Genoese. Initially defeated, they devastated the Genoese fleet at
the Battle of Chioggia in 1380 and retained their prominent position in eastern Mediterranean
affairs at the expense of Genoa's declining empire. In 1363, the revolt of Saint Titus against
Venetian rule broke out in the overseas colony of Candia (Crete). It was a joint effort of Venetian
colonists and Cretan nobles who attempted to create an independent state. Venice sent a
multinational mercenary army which soon regained control of the major cities. However, it was
not until 1368 that Venice managed to fully reconquer Crete.”62
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Figure I-1-1. The Government Structure of Venice
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Venice-government.png
Map I-1-2. The Republic of Venice: 15th and 16th Centuries
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Repubblica_di_Venezia.png
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
35
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
In 1387 Padua joined Genoa in attempting to subjugate Venice. In 1380 Venice, exhausted
by her war with Genoa, ceded to the duke of Austria the city of Treviso, strategically situated on
her north. Padua passed under Venetian rule in 1405; during the wars of the League of Cambrai
(to be discussed later), it was taken a few weeks by imperial supporters; but mostly remained so
until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797. In the early fifteenth century, “the Venetians also
began to expand in Italy, as well as along the Dalmatian coast from Istria to Albania, which was
acquired from King Ladislaus of Naples during the civil war in Hungary. Ladislaus was about to
lose the conflict and had decided to escape to Naples, but before doing so he agreed to sell his now
practically forfeit rights on the Dalmatian cities for the reduced sum of 100,000 ducats. Venice
exploited the situation and quickly installed nobility to govern the area, for example, Count Filippo
Stipanov in Zadar. This move by the Venetians was a response to the threatening expansion
of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Control over the north-east main land routes was also
a necessity for the safety of the trades. By 1410, Venice had a navy of 3,300 ships (manned by
36,000 men) and taken over most of what is now the Veneto, including the cities of Verona (which
swore its loyalty in the Devotion of Verona to Venice in 1405) and Padua. The situation in
Dalmatia had been settled in 1408 by a truce with King Sigismund of Hungary but the difficulties
of Hungary finally granted to the Republic the consolidation of its Adriatic dominions. At the
expiration of the truce, Venice immediately invaded the Patriarchate of Aquileia, and
subjected Traù, Spalato, Durazzo and other Dalmatian cities. Slaves were plentiful in the Italian
city-states as late as the 15th century. Between 1414 and 1423, some 10,000 slaves were sold in
Venice, almost all of whom were "nubile" young women from the Balkans. In February 1489, the
island of Cyprus, previously a crusader state (the Kingdom of Cyprus), was annexed to Venice.”63
In the early years of the republic, “the Doge ruled Venice in an autocratic fashion, but later
his powers were limited by the promissione, a pledge he had to take when elected. As a result,
powers were shared with the Great Council, composed of 480 members taken from patrician
families, so that He could do nothing without the Major Council and the Major Council could do
nothing without him. In the 12th century, the aristocratic families of Rialto further diminished the
Doge's powers by establishing the Minor Council (1175), composed of six advisers of the Doge,
and the Quarantia (1179) as a supreme tribunal. In 1223, these institutions were combined into the
Signoria, which consisted of the Doge, the Minor Council and the three leaders of the Quarantia.
The Signoria was the central body of government…Also created were the sapientes, two (later six)
bodies that combined with other groups to form a collegio, which formed an executive branch. In
1229, a senate, was formed, being 60 members elected by the Major Council. These developments
left the Doge with little personal power and saw actual authority in the hands of the Major Council.
Whilst Venice claimed to be a Republic, in reality it followed a mixed government model,
combining monarchy in the Doge, aristocracy in the senate, and a democracy of Rialto families in
the Major Council. Machiavelli also refers to Venice as a republic, considering it excellent among
modern republics. In 1310, a Council of Ten was established, becoming the central political body
whose members operated in secret. Around 1600, its dominance over the Major Council was
considered a threat and efforts were made in the Council and elsewhere to reduce its powers, with
limited success. In 1454, the Supreme Tribunal of the three state inquisitors was established to
guard the security of the republic. By means of espionage, counterespionage, internal surveillance
and a network of informers, they ensured that Venice did not come under the rule of a single
signore, as many other Italian cities did at the time. One of the inquisitors – popularly known as Il
Rosso (the red one) because of his scarlet robe – was chosen from the Doge's councillors, two –
popularly known as I negri (the black ones) because of their black robes – were chosen from the
Council of Ten. The Supreme Tribunal assumed some of the powers of the Council of Ten.”64
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Kingdom of Naples: (a) Angevin Kingdom of Naples: “Following the rebellion in 1282,
King Charles I of Sicily (Charles of Anjou) was forced to leave the island of Sicily by Peter III of
Aragon's troops. Charles, however, maintained his possessions on the mainland, customarily
known as the "Kingdom of Naples", after its capital city. Charles and his Angevin successors
maintained a claim to Sicily, warring against the Aragonese until 1373, when Queen Joan I of
Naples formally renounced the claim by the Treaty of Villeneuve. Joan's reign was contested by
Louis the Great, the Angevin King of Hungary, who captured the kingdom several times (1348–
1352). Queen Joan I also played a part in the ultimate demise of the first Kingdom of Naples. As
she was childless, she adopted Louis I, Duke of Anjou, as her heir, in spite of the claims of her
cousin, the Prince of Durazzo, effectively setting up a junior Angevin line in competition with the
senior line. This led to Joan I's murder at the hands of the Prince of Durazzo in 1382, and his
seizing the throne as Charles III of Naples. The two competing Angevin lines contested each other
for the possession of the Kingdom of Naples over the following decades. Charles III's daughter
Joan II (r. 1414–1435) adopted Alfonso V of Aragon (whom she later repudiated) and Louis III of
Anjou as heirs alternately, finally settling succession on Louis' brother René of Anjou of the junior
Angevin line, and he succeeded her in 1435. René of Anjou temporarily united the claims of
junior and senior Angevin lines. In 1442, however, Alfonso Vconquered the Kingdom of Naples
and unified Sicily and Naples once again as dependencies of Aragon. At his death in 1458, the
kingdom was again separated and Naples was inherited by Ferrante, Alfonso's illegitimate son.”65
(b) Aragonese Kingdom of Naples: “When Ferrante died in 1494, Charles VIII of France
invaded Italy, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, which his father had inherited on
the death of King René's nephew in 1481, as a pretext, thus beginning the Italian Wars. Charles
VIII expelled Alfonso II of Naples from Naples in 1495, but was soon forced to withdraw due to
the support of Ferdinand II of Aragon for his cousin, Alfonso II's son Ferrantino. Ferrantino was
restored to the throne, but died in 1496, and was succeeded by his uncle, Frederick IV. The French,
however, did not give up their claim, and in 1501 agreed to a partition of the kingdom with
Ferdinand of Aragon, who abandoned his cousin King Frederick. The deal soon fell through,
however, and Aragon and France resumed their war over the kingdom, ultimately resulting in an
Aragonese victory leaving Ferdinand in control of the kingdom by 1504. The Spanish troops that
were occupying Calabria and Apulia, led by Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova and public inspectors
to Fernando the Catholic, did not respect the new agreements and Frenchmen were expelled from
Mezzogiorno. The agreements of peace that continued were
never definitive, but they established at least that the title of
King of Naples was reserved for Ferdinand's grandson…
Fernando the Catholic nevertheless continued in possession
of the kingdom, being considered as a legitimate inheritor of
his uncle Alfonso I of Naples and of the former one
Kingdom of Sicily. The kingdom continued as a focus of
dispute between France and Spain for the next several
decades. The French finally abandoned their claims to the
kingdom…by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. With
the Treaty of London (1557) the new territory of State of
Presidi was born and was governed directly by Spain, as part
of the Kingdom of Naples.”66
Map I-1-3. Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples (Left)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Province_Due_Sicilie_1454.jpg/200pxProvince_Due_Sicilie_1454.jpg
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-1-3. Pieta by Michelangelo housed in St. Peter’s Basilica
https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/270/flashcards/4955270/jpg/0009_pieta-144FFE492D2758BFBAE.jpg
Photo I-1-4. Christ Giving the Keys to Peter by Pietro Perugino, 1480
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Entrega_de_las_llaves_a_San_Pedro_%28Perugino%29.j
pg/390px-Entrega_de_las_llaves_a_San_Pedro_%28Perugino%29.jpg
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
1-4. European States, Politics and Wars in the Renaissance
Before the end of the fifteenth century, there had been considerable intercourse between Italy and
the rest of the Europe in political, economic, intellectual, and religious affairs, but there existed
very little understanding between them. “By the end of the fifteenth century, these barriers were
rapidly crumbling as European armies turned the peninsula into a half-century battleground and
as Italian artists, poets, and scholars helped shape new cultures beyond the Alpine slopes.” Since
the devastation of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the population had recovered to
some 70 million people by the end of the fifteenth century. The largest percentage of the people
still lived outside the cities, in thousands of small villages and hamlets, but this condition was
slowly changing by then. The growth of cities was visible “along the water trade routes in the
Low Countries, on the Baltic coast, and along the Rhine and Danube rivers. Southern Germany
was an area of many rich and ancient cities whose importance increased with the growth of trade
between northern Europe and Italy, as did those of Flanders and Brabant, where the northern cloth
trade had its center. Danzig on the Baltic and Ragusa on the Adriatic were flourishing commercial
ports. Spain, too, was a country of numerous cities, many of which still religiously guarded their
medieval charters…of privileges and freedoms. Urban life, however, did not expand noticeably in
Castile and Aragon during the fifteenth century, and there was some decline in the eastern region
of Catalonia and Valencia. In England, London experienced its first prolonged period of
population growth in the fifteenth century, although many famous medieval cities showed no sign
of expansion for another 200 years. Paris did not as yet dominate the cultural, economic, and
political life of France as it has since the seventeenth century; however, with the city’s convenient
location along the Seine, Marne, and Oise waterways, Paris was destined to play an important role,
along with Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, and La Rochelle, as Europe’s commercial center gradually
shifted from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic seaboard.”67
The rise of nation states corresponded to the decline of feudalism, as the monarchs were able
to absorb more and more of the smaller feudal estates into the royal domain. “The establishment
of royal authority depended on many factors, not the least of which was the determination and
ability of the ruler himself. Sometimes territory was acquired by military conquest, but this was
tentative in the Middle Ages because of the capriciousness of vassal loyalty. As rulers acquired
more money through direct taxation, they became less dependent on noble support and were able
to maintain standing armies of their own. With the increasing fluidity of funds, territories might
also be purchased, that is, the allegiance of the landed lords could be bought. The royal domain
was often increased by diplomacy and well-planned marriage alliances, a policy that was less risky
than war and usually much less costly. Centralization took place also as monarchs freed themselves from dependence upon the nobles for military strength and shifted administrative functions
from the nobles to paid administrators. Baronial court were often replaced by royal court presided
over by crown-appointed judges. The staffing of these royal bureaucracies was provided largely
from the middle class – lawyers, merchants, bankers, even artisans. This coalition of crown and
bourgeoisie was mutually advantageous, for just as the king could now reduce private warfare and
thereby provide the peace desired by the merchants, they in turn could furnish the money needed
by the king to make that possible.” Another factor for later-medieval monarchies to ascend was
the emergence of representative institutions. The practice of representation was inherited from
the Roman law principle requiring the consent of the people, and was first adopted in the medieval
church. It also developed in the secular states in the thirteenth century when the rulers sought the
advice of delegates from the towns regarding matters of importance. These assemblies took
different forms in various states that existed throughout Europe.68
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-1-5. The Battle of Pavia, a military engagement of February 24, 1525
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Battle_of_Pavia%2C_oil_on_panel.jpg
Map I-1-3. Europe about 1500
Source: http://kushnerclassroom.weebly.com/uploads/6/4/9/7/6497617/3897057_orig.png
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Revival of France: In 1350-1450, the French monarchy was weak and ineffective, and
institutions of government were in chaos. The rivalries of powerful noble families such as Anjou,
Berry, Orleans, and Burgundy undermined the royal government, which made the situation worse.
Charles VII (1422-61) strengthened the authority of the king by obtaining the right to levy the
taille, an annual direct tax on land and property, with the consent of the Estate-General, and by
securing the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1443) with the papacy, that strengthened the freedom
of church administration and enabled the king to control over the church in France. In 1453 when
the Hundred Years’ War ended and the English were finally expelled, France began to revive. The
nobility possessed varying degrees of judicial and administrative autonomy; they had their own
knights and retainers; and they were exempted from the direct tax by the government. “During the
last phase of the Hundred Years’ War, the Estate General had granted the king the right to collect
by his own authority without summoning a meeting of the estates, an annual direct tax known as
the taille. Under Louis XI (1461-83) it became a permanent tax imposed by royal authority. The
king of France was now able to meet the rising costs of administration and war without selling his
soul either to the nobles or to the estates, and could acquire a standing army, which helped control
politics and economy against the nobles. Although the nobles obtained perpetual exemption from
the taille, this taxation was a unique advantage for the king to struggle with the nobility and against
other rival princes. The financial position of Louis XI was enviable by the middle of his reign,
and he was able to secure his position against his rivals by 1475.69
“The ordinary revenues of the crown consisted primarily of income from crown lands, the
demesne, tenant’ dues of various kinds, and judicial income from court fines, confiscated estates,
letters of pardon, ennoblement, legitimation, and so forth. In addition to this personal income of
the king, were the extraordinary revenues developed over the years. Among these were indirect
taxes such as aides, or excises on the sale of goods; duties and tolls levied on the transit of goods
from province to province; and the gabelle, the hated but lucrative salt tax, assessed as a crown
monopoly on the sale of salt. In the fourteenth century, the French kings also acquired from the
papacy the regale, or income from vacant ecclesiastical benefices. Finally, the taille, a variable
direct tax, usually on land or property, but occasionally a head tax, sometimes amounted to as
much as all the other levies combined. The financial burden of all these taxes on the French
peasants was extremely heavy. These revenues gave the French king a much greater income than
his neighbors had, and thereby, an important margin of advantage over them.” 70
Charles the Bold (1433-77) was Duke of Burgundy, possessing some of the richest territories
in Europe inherited from his father, Philip the Good, “including the duchy of Burgundy in France,
the free county of Burgundy lying within the Holy Roman Empire, Luxembourg, upper Alsace,
and most of the Netherlands.” Charles challenged Louis XI to create a middle kingdom between
France and Germany. But his possessions were not united or his power was not complete. Charles
would not be contented until he could humble his arch rival, the king of France, and carve out of
central Europe a Burgundian kingdom that would be respected and honored by all the world. If
he mobilized the entire resources under his domain, Charles could have been the most powerful
ruler in Europe. “Alarmed by the pretensions of the chivalrous duke and incited by the stealthy
diplomacy of Louis XI, the duke of Lorraine, along with many of the Rhineland towns, formed an
alliance with the wary Swiss against Burgundian enlargement. During the autumn of 1476, in a
series of encounters with the ferocious Swiss pikemen at Grandson and Murten, the Burgundian
knights were defeated, and in January, 1477, Charles himself was killed in battle at Nancy. Since
he had no male heir, Charles’s French territories reverted to the French crown. But the marriage
of his daughter, Mary, to Maximilian of Austria, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III,
prevented Franche-Comte and Flanders from also falling into French hands.” 71
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Charles VIII (1483-98) succeeded his father Louis XI at the age of thirteen. His elder sister
Anne of France acted as regent jointly with her husband Peter II, Duke of Bourbon until 1491,
when Charles married Anne of Britany, heiress to the duchy. Eight years later Charles died, his
cousin Louis XII succeeded the throne; he quickly repudiated his own wife and married Anne
himself, thereby continuing the containment of Brittany. The most important organization of
French government was the Royal Council that composed of the princes of the blood, the peers of
the realm, and additional members as the king saw fit to appoint, numbering some sixty or more
during the reign of Louis XII. The Estate General represented three estates consisting of the clergy,
the nobility, and the rest of the population, which was summoned, as was the Parliament of
England, to grant taxes, ratify treaties, and advise the king on whatever matters he put to them.
The chancellor of France was the highest judicial officer of the Crown. His appointment was for
life, and during the Renaissance he became an important and influential man. The parlements
were the principal judicial and administrative organs in the provinces. During the second half of
the fifteenth century, these bodies had been established in Languedoc, Dauphine, Guyenne, and
Burgundy. Louis XII instituted them in both Provence and Normandy. By 1500 the French crown
had achieved the absolute monarchy by consolidating politics and economy.72
Louis XII (1498-1515) was known as Louis of Orleans, who was one of the great feudal lords
who opposed the French monarchy in the conflict known as the Mad War. At the royal victory in
the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in 1488, Louis was captured, but Charles VIII pardoned him
and released him. He subsequently took part in the Italian War of 1494–1498 as one of the French
commanders. When Louis XII became king in 1498, he had his marriage with Joan annulled
by Pope Alexander VI and instead married Anne of Brittany, the widow of his cousin Charles VIII.
This marriage allowed Louis to reinforce the personal Union of Brittany and France. Louis
persevered in the Italian Wars, initiating a second Italian campaign for the control of the Kingdom
of Naples. Louis conquered the Duchy of Milan in 1500 and pushed forward to the Kingdom of
Naples, which fell to him in 1501. Proclaimed King of Naples, Louis faced a new coalition
gathered by Ferdinand II of Aragon and was forced to cede Naples to Spain in 1504. Louis XII
did not encroach on the power of local governments or the privileges of the nobility, in opposition
with the long tradition of the French kings to attempt to impose absolute monarchy in France.
Louis, who remained Duke of Milan after the second Italian War, was interested in further
expansion in the Italian Peninsula and launched a third Italian War (1508–1516).73
Francis I (1515-47) was the first king of France from the Angouleme branch of the House of
Valois. Succeeding his cousin and father-in-law Louis XII, he died without a male heir. “A
prodigal patron of the arts, he initiated the French Renaissance by attracting many Italian artists
to work on the Château de Chambord, including Leonardo da Vinci, who brought the Mona
Lisa with him, which Francis had acquired. Francis' reign saw important cultural changes with the
rise of absolute monarchy in France, the spread of humanism and Protestantism, and the beginning
of French exploration of the New World.”74 Francis invaded Italy but was captured and detained
in Spain for several months. Being released, he challenged again but lost the war. Francis
negotiated the concordat of Bologna with the pope in 1516 which allowed that Francis was to
nominate the prelates, and the pope was to approve them if they met canonical requirements. The
concordat enhanced the crown’s power over the church, and the appointed bishops and abbots
were never able to attempt to turn to Protestant in later years. Henry II (1547-59) continued the
costly war in Italy for which he increased taxes and created offices to sell. In response to Henry’s
request to the three estates, only the church provided a substantial sum for a period of years to
overcome his financial difficulties. The accidental death of Henry led to the reigns in turns of his
three sons, none of whom was intelligent and energetic to rule effectively. 75
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
England and Scotland: (a) Jack Cade’s Rebellion: The Hundred Years’ War had strained
economy and dried society due to the cost of war and the losses of manpower. The final failure
of the English kings in the long war in France caused an upheaval at home against corruption and
the chaotic conditions. In 1450, a popular revolt in England was led by Jack Cade. At the time of
the revolt, the weak and unpopular King Henry VI (1422-71) was on the throne. “While little is
known about the rebel leader himself, the events of the rebellion to which he gave his name are
well recorded in fifteenth-century chronicles. The Jack Cade Rebellion stemmed from local
grievances concerned about the corruption and abuse of power surrounding the king's regime and
his closest advisors. Furthermore, the rebels were angered by the debt caused by years of warfare
against France and the recent loss of Normandy. Leading an army of men from Kent and the
surrounding counties, Jack Cade marched on London in order to force the government to end the
corruption and remove the traitors surrounding the king's person. Despite Cade's attempt to keep
his men under control once the rebel forces had entered London they began to loot. The citizens
of London turned on the rebels and forced them out of the city in a bloody battle on London Bridge.
To end the bloodshed the rebels were issued pardons by the king and told to return home. Cade
fled but was later caught on 12 July 1450 by Alexander Iden, a future High Sheriff of Kent. As a
result of the skirmish with Iden, Cade was mortally wounded before reaching London for trial. The
Jack Cade Rebellion has been perceived as a reflection of the social, political and economic issues
of the time period and as a precursor to the Wars of the Roses which saw the decline of the
Lancaster dynasty and the rise of the Yorks. The Jack Cade Rebellion was the largest popular
uprising to take place in England during the 15th century.” 76 Cade’s rebellion inspired the minor
rebellions, which can be seen as important precursors of the Wars of the Roses.
The Wars of the Roses (1455-87) were a series of dynastic wars for the throne of England.
They were fought between the supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet:
the Houses of Lancaster (red rose) and of York (white rose). Many of great nobles returned from
the French wars with numerous private armed retainers owing them fealty and homage, which
they continued to hold and use against their rivals and enemies at home. The result was a
degeneration and disorder such as had not been seen in England since the dark days of Henry III’s
reign.” The War of the Roses was a sporadic struggle for power caused by ineptitude, frustration,
and ambition: “the ineptitude of the Lancastrian king, Henry VI (1422-61, 1470-71); the
frustration of the nobility over their humiliating defeat in France; and the ambition not only of the
house of York for the throne, but of other unscrupulous people like Richard Neville, earl of
Warwick, and Henty VI’s ruthless wife, Margaret of Anjou. Hostilities began in 1455 when
Richard duke of York and his followers attempted to overthrow the king. The Yorkists did in fact
have a better claim to the throne than the Lancastrians, but the party of the queen were ready to
fight to maintain their ascendancy, while many other lords and their retinues eagerly join the melee.
After Richard was killed in battle, the Yorkist cause was ably championed by his young son
Edward IV (1461-70, 1471-83), whom Parliament declared king in 1461 following the Lancastrian
defeat. Henry VI was later captured and lodged in the Tower of London.”77 With the collaboration
of Louis XI of France, the kingmaker Warwick deposed Edward IV and restored Henry VI to the
throne in 1470. The Yorkist king Edward IV took the throne from a Lancastrian king Henry VI
in 1471 who took refuge in Brittany. Confining Edward V and his brother Richard in Tower in
1483, Richard III (1483-85) seized the throne in 1483. Henry Tudor, duke of Richmond, returned
from exile and defeated Richard III in 1485. Thus, the English throne shifted between two Houses
until Henry VII stabilized politics as shown below: Lancastrian Henry VI (1421-61) – Yorkist
Edward IV (1461-70) – Lancastrian Henry VI (1470-71) - Yorkist Edward IV (1471-83) – Yorkist
Richard III (1483-85) – Lancastrian Henry VII (1485-1509).
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
43
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Henry VII (1485-1509) was the first monarch of the House of Tudor. “Henry won the throne
when his forces defeated the forces of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the culmination
of the Wars of the Roses. Henry was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of
battle. He cemented his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and niece
of Richard III. Henry was successful in restoring the power and stability of the English monarchy
after the political upheavals of the civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses.” In 1487, Henry
created the Court of Star Chamber that allowed the ancient right of the king’s council to hear
petitions of redress, to which two judges of royal courts were appointed. It did not use juries and
allowed torture for confession. The court exercised wide civil and criminal jurisdiction and was
able to try nobles, through which Henry strengthened the royal power. Henry eliminated the
private wars of nobility by abolishing private armies serving their lords. He obtained sufficient
royal revenues from taxation by parliamentary grant or grant of the convocation of the church, and
other financial resources such as the crown lands, judicial fees and fines, and customs duties. In
the economy, nearly all the statutes relating to shipping, alien merchants, trade regulations,
weights and measures, prices, and usury were based upon petitions by the commons. Henry’s
primary aims were in peace and security, and he encouraged commercial activities. “Although
Henry can be credited with the restoration of political stability in England, and a number of
commendable administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives, the latter part of his reign was
characterized by a financial greed which stretched the bounds of legality. The capricious -ness and
lack of due process which indebted many in England were soon ended upon Henry VII's death
after a commission revealed widespread abuses.”78 He was orthodox and pious, and his relations
with the church remained unchanged. In 1494, he sent Edward Poynings to Ireland to establish
English control. His weakness in international position made him defensive in foreign affairs.
Scotland, since 1314, had been an independent country from the previous domination of
English lords and kings. The Stuart line was established by the accession of Robert II (1371-90).
“Fearing the encroachment of England, the Scottish rulers turned to France for support and began
the two-century commitment of Scottish affairs to the foreign policy of France. Based primarily
on aristocratic acceptance of the rule of the king, government institutions were less sophisticated
in Scotland than in England. A rudimentary parliament developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries along the lines of its English counterpart, built it was less an instrument of royal control.
The lesser knights as well as the great nobles preferred to maintain their individual independence
from the crown as much as possible. In 1460 the young warrior king of Scotland, James II, was
accidentally killed by an exploding cannon during the siege of Roxburgh castle. He was succeeded
by his eight-years-son, James III (1460-88)…James was unable to bring either peace or justice to
realm, and his large-scale debasement of coinage brought financial ruin. He was assassinated
while trying to put down a rebel uprising nominally led by his son. “His son and successor, James
IV (1488-1513) was an outstanding figure of the Stuart dynasty. He was well educated, proficient
in several languages, athletic, skilled at arms and horsemanship, a generous patron of the arts and
literature, and founder of the University of Aberdeen. He was also interested in ships, guns,
tournaments, music, and even surgery. His court in Edinburgh was a model for the Renaissance
courtier. Above all, he wanted to provide good government for his people, and to do that he
needed a strong government…He was not so successful in international affairs, however. His
long-range ambition was to participate in a crusade against the Turks, while at the same time trying
to maintain the Auld Alliance with France and securing the safety of his frontier with England.”
Henry VII finalized a perpetual peace with Scotland by arranging for the marriage of James IV
with his daughter Margaret Tudor in 1502. Henry VIII joined the Holy League against France in
1511, but James IV sided France, which caused a war with England, killing 10,000 Scots. 79
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Henry VIII (1509-47) was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty by succeeding his
father’s throne. “Besides his six marriages, Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of
the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. His disagreements with the Pope led to
his separation of the Church of England from papal authority, with himself, as king, as the
Supreme and to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Because his principal dispute was with papal
authority, rather than with doctrinal matters, he remained a believer in core Catholic theological
teachings despite his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry oversaw the
legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. He is also well
known for a long personal rivalry with both Francis I of France and the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, with whom he frequently warred. Domestically, Henry is known for his radical
changes to the English Constitution, ushering in the theory of the divine right of kings to England.
Besides asserting the sovereign's supremacy over the Church of England, thus initiating the
English Reformation, he greatly expanded royal power. Charges of treason and heresy were
commonly used to quash dissent, and those accused were often executed without a formal trial, by
means of bills of attainder. He achieved many of his political aims through the work of his chief
ministers, some of whom were banished or executed when they fell out of his favor. Figures such
as Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich, and Thomas Cranmer
figured prominently in Henry's administration. An extravagant spender, he used the proceeds from
the Dissolution of the Monasteries and acts of the Reformation Parliament to convert money
formerly paid to Rome into royal revenue. Despite the influx of money from these sources, Henry
was continually on the verge of financial ruin due to his personal extravagance as well as his
numerous costly continental wars.” 80 He was one of the most charismatic ruler to sit on the
English throne, mostly remembered by his six marriages and his break with the Pope.
The power of Tudor monarchs was ruling by the grace of God alone. The crown could also
rely on the exclusive use of those functions that constituted the royal prerogative, recognized in
common law. These include acts of diplomacy, declarations of war, management of the coinage,
the issue of royal pardons and the power to summon and dissolve parliament as and when required.
From 1514 to 1529, “it was Thomas Wolsey (1473-1530), a cardinal of the established Church,
who oversaw domestic and foreign policy for the young king from his position as Lord Chancellor.
Wolsey centralized the national government and extended the jurisdiction of the conciliar courts,
particularly Star Chamber. Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) also came to define Henry’s government, He became Wolsey’s man of work. Cromwell’s power as an efficient administrator in a
Council full of politicians exceeded what Wolsey had achieved. The role of the King’s Council
was transferred to a reformed Privy Council, much smaller but more efficient. His reforms were
grounded in 1539 and he was executed in the next year. In finance, Henry inherited a vast fortune
and a prosperous economy from his father, but his reign was financially near disastrous. Much of
his wealth was spent on maintaining his court and household, including many of the building
works he undertook on royal palaces. In military, apart from permanent garrisons at Berwick,
Calais, and Carlisle, England’s standing army number only a few hundred men. This was
increased slightly by Henry. Henry’s invasion force of 1513, some 30,000 men, was composed
of billmen and long-bowmen, at a time when the other European nations were moving to hand
guns and pikemen. They were supported by battlefield artillery. Henry supported the Royal Navy
by investing in large cannon for his warships. Henry’s break with Rome incurred the threat of a
French or Spanish invasion. At the beginning of Henry’s reign, Ireland was effectively divided
into three zones. Henry continued the policy of his father, to allow Irish lords to rule in the king’s
name and accept steep divisions between the communities. However, fractional Irish politics
combined with a more ambitious Henry began to cause trouble. 81
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Map I-1-4. The Iberian Peninsula, 1270-1492
Source: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2007/09/1492spain.jpg
Spain under Ferdinand and Isabel: Modern Spain merged from a conjunction of various
peninsular powers, each of which possessed its own institutions, laws, and monarchs, whereas
France and England were created from the expansion and strengthening of their respective political
centers. In the fifteenth century, Castile and Aragon were the strongest kingdoms in the Iberian
Peninsula; Portugal was in the west, Navarre in the north, and Granada in the south. In 1469,
Isabella of Castile (1474-1504) married Ferdinand of Aragon (1479-1516), and they had become
joint sovereigns of the two kingdoms as equal partners governed by each of traditional laws.
Castile colonized the Canary Islands by settling the dispute with Portugal in 1479, which islands
became the staging post on the route to America. Conquering Granada in 1492, the kingdom of
Castile covered 65.2 percent of the peninsula with 8.3 million people, while Aragon and Portugal
ruled 17.2 and 15.5 percent of land with around 1.4 and 1.5 million respectively. In 1492, Isabella
authorized Columbus expeditions who discovered Haiti and other islands, which stimulated the
Spanish discovery and conquest of South America. In 1476 Ferdinand and Isabella revived the
medieval hermandades as a police force in town that was transformed into national militia to rule
the lawless landed aristocrats but was disbanded in 1498 when royal power became strong enough
to maintain law and order. Ferdinand and Isabella secured from the pope the rights of personnel
and finance over the church in Spain and America. Pursuing religious reform and introducing the
Inquisition in 1478, they decided to expel unconverted Muslims and Jews in Spain. To avoid the
expulsion order, many of them chose to convert, but the unconverted left Spain for Italy and the
lands of the Ottoman Empire. When Spain remained tolerant, Jews were influential in economic
and intellectual affairs in some areas. But the expulsion of Jews was the loss of skilled labor and
the flight of Jewish capital, which weakened the economic foundation. Ferdinand conquered
Navarre in 1512 which was annexed to Castile in 1515. Isabella and Ferdinand died in 1504 and
1516, and their grandson Charles of Ghent succeeded the thrones of Castile and Aragon. Crushing
the revolt of the Comuneros during 1520-21, Charles V firmly established his power by 1522.
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Austria and the Holy Roman Empire: By the end of the fifteenth century, the Holy Roman
Empire was a vast area encompassing all of the German-speaking states of central Europe plus
most of the Netherlands, all of Lorraine, Franche-Comte, Savoy and northwestern Italy as far south
as the Papal States, the kingdom of Bohemia, Moravia, and some of Polish-speaking Silesia. The
total population of the Empire is estimated at between 15 and 20 million and was made up of some
300 separate, sovereign, and semi-sovereign states, not counting the petty territories of the
imperial knights. The Golden Bull of 1356 created a loose imperial diet, or Reichstag, composed
of the leading princes in one house and the seven electors in the other, but the princes chose to
play independent roles within the Empire rather than work together as a parliament in the broader
interests of the Empire itself. Later, representatives of the free imperial cities were also allowed
to attend meetings, but they still had relatively little influence. By the Golden Bull, emperors had
been elected by seven electors including four of princely lords (Count Palatine, Duke of Saxony,
Margrave of Brandenburg, and King of Bohemia) and three of ecclesiastical lords (Archbishops
of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne). The three houses of the Habsburgs, Wittelsbachs, and Luxembergs
had competed for the throne for two centuries. “The house of Habsburg was founded in the Middle
Ages by one of the petty landowner-counts of eastern Switzerland. From there the family nucleus
moved eastward and gradually acquired the mountainous regions of Tyrol, Carinthia, Carniola,
and Styria, and finally the duchies of Upper and Lower Austria along the Danube plain; it became
one the largest landholders in the Empire. Under Count Rudolf of Habsburg, elected Holy Roman
Emperor in 1273, the family began playing a leading role in German politics.”82 The Bohemian
kings were the Holy Roman emperors from 1347 to 1437. In 1438 the Golden Bull elected Albert
II, duke of Austria, from the Habsburgs to the emperor, succeeding Sigismund of Hungary and
Bohemia, initiating an dynastic succession of the house of Habsburg for the next 400 years.
His son Frederick III (1452-93), duke of Austria, was also elected to the Holy Roman Emperor.
“Frederick's political initiatives were hardly bold, but they were still successful. His first major
opponent was his brother Albert VI, who challenged his rule. He did not manage to win a single
conflict on the battlefield against him, and thus resorted to more subtle means. He held his second
cousin once removed Ladislaus the Posthumous, the ruler of the Archduchy of Austria, Hungary
and Bohemia, as a prisoner and attempted to extend his guardianship over him in perpetuity to
maintain his control over Lower Austria. Ladislaus was freed in 1452 by the Lower Austrian
estates. He acted similarly towards his first cousin Sigismund of the Tyrolian line of the Habsburg
family. Despite those efforts, he failed to gain control over Hungary and Bohemia in the
Bohemian War (1468-78) and was even defeated in the Austrian-Hungarian War (1477-88) by the
Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus in 1485, who managed to maintain residence in Vienna until
his death five years later. Ultimately, Frederick prevailed in all those conflicts by outliving his
opponents and sometimes inheriting their lands…Still, in some ways his policies were astonishing
successful. In the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), he forced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give up
his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick's son Maximilian.” His son Maximilian of
Austria married Mary, heiress of Burgundy in 1477, which was not able to prevent the French
king from seizing the duchy of Burgundy after Charles’ death, though they retained French-Comte,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. “With the inheritance of Burgundy, the House of Habsburg
began to rise to predominance in Europe. This gave rise to the saying ‘Let others wage wars, but
you, happy Austria, shall marry’, which became a motto of the dynasty. The marriage of his
daughter Kunigunde of Austria to Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria, was another result of intrigues and
deception, but must be counted as a defeat for Frederick… In some smaller matters, Frederick was
quite successful: in 1469 he managed to establish bishoprics in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt, a
step that no previous Duke of Austria had been able to achieve.”83
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Philip the Handsome was born to Maximilian and Mary in 1478, as the first member of the
house of Habsburg to be king of Castile. Upon Mary’s death in 1482, Philip became ruler and,
Maximilian was recognized as regent during Philip’s minority. “The son of Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I, at the age of three Philip inherited the greater part of the Duchy of Burgundy and
the Burgundian Netherlands (as Philip IV) from his mother, Mary, and at 27 briefly succeeded to
the Crown of Castile as the husband of Queen Joanna, who was also heiress-presumptive to
the Crown of Aragon. He was the first Habsburg monarch in Spain. He never inherited his father's
territories, nor became Holy Roman Emperor, because he predeceased his father.”84 Maximilian
I (1493-1519) had ruled jointly with his father Frederick III for the last ten years from 1483. He
expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary
of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also the Austrian territories in present
Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy. Through marriage of his son Philip, Maximilian helped to
establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain which allowed his grandson Charles to hold the thrones
of both Castile and Aragon. Since his father died in 1506, Charles succeeded his grandfather
Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and thus ruled both the Holy Roman Empire and
the Spanish Empire simultaneously. After the death of Ferdinand in 1516, his grandson Charles
V eventually united the Habsburg, Burgundian, Castilian, and Aragonese inheritances. (i) During
the reign of Maximilian I, the prolonged Italian Wars resulted in Maximilian joining the Holy
League to counter the French. In 1513, with Henry VIII of England, Maximilian won an important
victory at the battle of Spurs against the French, but his progress was quickly checked. (ii) His
reform efforts to establish a new organ, the Reichsregiment, which proved to be politically weak.
He felt it is necessary to introduce reforms in the historic territories of the House of Habsburg in
order to finance his army, which was not successful. (iii) Finally, in the end, his hope for dynastic
aggrandizement had to come from his marriage diplomacy rather than from arms.85
Charles V (1519-56) of the Habsburgs ruled Spain, southern Italy, Austria, Burgundy, and
South America. Due to his vast inheritance, his reign was dominated by war, and particularly by
three major simultaneous conflicts: the Habsburg-Valois Wars with France, the struggle to halt
the Ottoman advance, and the Protestant Reformation, resulting in conflicts with the German
princes. (i) The war with France, mainly fought in Italy. The French army was defeated at Pavia
in 1525, and Francis I was captured by the Spanish army and signed the Treaty of Madrid in 1526:
France relinquished his claim to Milan and Naples, and abandoned Burgundy, although the wars
continued for three more decades. (ii) In 1526 when the Ottoman Turks defeated Hungary, the
parliaments of Hungary and Bohemia elected Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, as their king,
hoping to gain alliance with Charles; so whose influence reached to central Europe. (iii) Charles
opposed the Reformation and in Germany he was in conflict with the Protestant Princes of the
Schmalkaldic League who were motivated by both
religious and political opposition to him. He could not
prevent the spread of Protestantism. He won a
decisive victory against the Princes at the Battle of
Mühlberg in 1547, but was forced to concede the
Peace of Augsburg of 1555 which divided Germany
on confessional lines. Charles was abdicated to seek
the peace of a monastery two years before his death,
where he died at aged fifty eight.86 His son Philip II
inherited his possessions of the Netherland and Italy.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Empire-Roman-Emperor-Charles-V.jpg/220px-EmpireRoman-Emperor-Charles-V.jpg Map I-1-5. Charles V’s European Territories
48
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Scandinavia and Eastern Europe: Passing the age of Vikings, Scandinavia began a new era
of internal consolidation with conflict. A new land holding aristocracy arose and dominated the
political and social life in the north for the next three centuries, while the hard-working peasants
were reduced to semi-servile status. “The election of Waldemar IV (1340-75) to the throne of
Denmark began a resurgence of the monarchy and a revival of Danish influence in the Baltic. It
also red to a series of disastrous confrontations with the Hanseatic League. The sting of defeat in
these encounters was partially removed when Waldemar’s enterprising daughter, Margaret (wife
of King Haakon of Norway), succeeded in uniting the crowns of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
under her own control after the death of her husband. The Union of Kalmar (1397) institutionalized
the arrangement, leaving each kingdom autonomous but establishing a personal union of all three
under a single monarch. Margaret managed the union until her death in 1412. Skillfully maintain
order while repressing the powerful nobles and reestablishing Danish ascendancy. Union never
functioned as successfully after her death. Bitter rivalries among the nobles, the economic
dominance of the Hansa, unrest among the Swedish peasantry, and the active interference of the
clergy in political affairs eventually led to revolution and separation.”87
Poland had been divided into a number of independent principalities of the Piast family,
which family bond and Christianity united the land. The marriage of the Polish queen Jadwiga
and the Lithuanian prince Jagiello created a large Lithuanian-Polish state in 1386. In about 1500,
conflict with neighboring states weakened royal authority that enabled aristocrats to reestablish
their power: they controlled the national diet, strengthened the serfdom, and secured the right to
elect their kings. In Bohemia, the Premyslids established a centralized rule in the tenth century.
Frederick II made Bohemia an independent kingdom within his empire in 1212. It absorbed a
large part of Silesia in 1335 and founded the Charles University in Plague in 1348. In the fifteenth
century, Bohemia and Hungary were ruled by a Polish prince, Vladislav II, but the throne was
finally succeeded by Ferdinand I of the Habsburg in 1526; which created conflict between the
Czech nobility and the Habsburg monarchy. Hungary was part of the old Roman province of
Pannonia seized by the Germans, Huns, Avars, Moravians, and Magyars. Stephen I (997-1038)
founded the Arpad dynasty formally recognized as king of Hungary by the pope. The invasion of
Mongols in 1241 weakened the royal power. In 1301, Charles Robert of Anjou was elected to the
king and founded the Angevin dynasty in Hungary. The Ottomans threatened Hungary but was
defeated by the military leader Janos Hunyadi, whose son Matthias Corvinus (1458-90) was
elected to king. As the Ottoman threatened Hungary in the sixteenth century, the Catholic
Habsburgs increased its control over the Protestant Hungarians.88
Russia had been ruled by the Mongols even a century after falling of the Yuan dynasty in
China in1368. Ivan III (1462-1505) established a new Russian state by absorbing other principalities after the battle of Ugra in 1480 when the Mongols fled without a fight. He expanded territories
by invading the Lithuania-Polish state. “Ivan dispossessed Novgorod of over four-fifths of its land,
keeping half for himself and giving the other half to his allies. Subsequent revolts (1479–1488)
were punished by the removal en masse of the richest and most ancient families of Novgorod to
Moscow, Vyatka, and other central Rus' cities…The rival republic of Pskov owed the continuance
of its own political existence to the readiness with which it assisted Ivan against its ancient enemy.
The other principalities were eventually absorbed, be it by conquest, purchase or marriage contract:
The Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov was bought in 1474, Tver in 1485, and Vyatka 1489.” 89 Ivan
attempted to seize church lands causing corruption, but his son Vasily III sided with the church,
who succeeded the crown after the death of Ivan. The Russian kings wanted Moscow to connect
the Baltic and Caspian Seas by controlling the Dnieper and Volga rivers.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
49
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Ottoman Turks began to rise while the Byzantine Empire served as a buffer between
the Latin West and the Muslim Middle East in the thirteenth century. The invasion of the Mongols
pushed the Turkmens to move from central Asia to Iran and eastern Anatolia. They moved again
westwards and concentrated on the frontier between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk sultanate
in western Anatolia. While the Mongols subjugated the Seljuks, the Turks in Anatolia revolted
against the Mongols in 1277, which was suppressed although Muslim Mamluk fought for them.
The frontier became a place of refugees for people escaping from the Mongolian rule and for
opportunistic people seeking better lives and optimistic future. They wanted to settle on the rich
plains of the Byzantine side of the border, which stimulated them to engage in the Holy War
against Byzantium led by warriors for faith (gazis) like Christian knights. They gathered around
gazi leaders and frequently penetrated across the Byzantine border. During 1260-1320, these
leaders organized the Turkmens and founded independent principalities in western Anatolia. In
1302 when Osman Gazi seized Iznik, the Byzantine emperor sent 2,000 soldiers to save his former
capital, which was defeated. The Osman’s victory made him famous and attracted fresh waves of
settlers from central Anatolia, which became the basis of the Ottoman principality. The Ottomans
established their empire by uniting Muslim Anatolia and the Christian Balkans under the ideal of
Holy War, which was intended not to destroy but to subdue the infidel world with unified power
of Muslims. When Balkan principalities needed external forces to settle their disputes, it was a
great advantage for the Ottoman to possess the standing army to conquer Balkan, south of the
Danube. Unlike Christians of Crusades, the Muslim conquerors protected the lives and properties
of Christians and Jews on conditions of obedience and payments of taxes which made them easy
to expand their realm and to increase their sources of state revenue. The growth of the Ottomans
referred to as Pax Ottomana: the economic and social stability attained in the conquered provinces
of the Ottoman Empire, which forecasted the fall of Byzantium, the Greek state. 90
In the 1350s, the Ottoman state was one of many frontier Muslim principalities, but the
political and social developments were beneficial to expand their territories – the invasion of
Mongols and the decline of Seljuk; the weakness of Byzantine Empire; the fragmentation of
Balkan states; the Greeks against Latin influences; and non-existence of balancing power in
Christendom. The Ottomans respected the principles of feudalism in the conquered lands, but
centralized administration in the place of feudal decentralization. They expanded territories in
Asia simultaneously with Balkan: Muhrad I (1362-89) founded the empire of vassal states in
Balkans and Anatolia.91 The Ottomans became strong enough to be recognized by 1451 when
Muhrad II died. In 1453 Mehmed II (1451-81), most importantly, conquered Constantinople and
converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque and proclaimed “Hereafter my capital is Istanbul.” In 1454
the Ottoman fleet sailed into the Black Sea and made all the governments on its shores pay tribute
as a suzerain. He established the Danube from Belgrade to the Black Sea as the northern limit of
the empire, and extended its eastern border to the Euphrates in Anatolia. Venice still occupied
important sea coasts; the Hungarians occupied Belgrade and northern Bosnia; and Rhodes and
Mordavia threatened Ottoman supremacy. But Mehmed was a true founder of the Ottoman
Empire in Europe and Asia as well as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which was to remain
for four centuries.92 The empire began to play a part of European politics when its fleet could
challenge Venice on the open sea as shown in the Venetian war of 1499-1502. Belgrade fell in
1521, Rhodes was captured in 1522, and Hungary and Austria were threatened in 1529. Allied
with Henry II (1519-59) of France, the Ottomans intended to maintain political disunity in Europe,
weaken the Habsburgs, and prevent a united crusade. Considering the Protestants close to
themselves, the Muslims supported the Lutherans and Calvinists. Ottoman pressure forced the
Habsburgs to grant concessions to the Protestants and final recognition of them. 93
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Europe and the Italian Wars: The Italian wars were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559
that involved at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major
states of Western Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and Scotland) was
well as Ottoman Empire. The political situation in Italy - particularly of Milan, Venice, and Naples
- invited interference from outside. “The once-powerful duchy of Milan, guardian of the passes
over the Alps across which northern invaders might descend onto the Lombard plain, was in a
period of disorder. Economically, the duchy was in good condition, but there was growing unrest
among the opponents of the Sforzas at home and abroad. Tension increased after 1476 with the
accession of the infant Giangaleazzo Sforza as duke and the assumption of actual power by his
ambitious but incompetent uncle, Ludovico Sforza, known to his contemporaries as Il Moro (The
Moor) because of his swarthy complexion. Neighboring Venice was riding the crest of a period
of prosperity and expansion at the expense of Milan on the west and the Papal States to the south.
The Venetian government was strong, its hold on its mainland satellites secure, and its wealth
unequaled. As a consequence, the jealousy and hatred of the surrounding states was keen. The
papacy was particularly piqued by Venetian intrusions into the Romagna and constant pressures
on the buffer duchy of Ferrara, a papal fief ruled by the popular house of Este. Naples was still
dominated by restless nobles who cancelled out one another’s power by their continuous rivalry
and disorder. The house of Aragon had ruled Sicily, but the supporters of the French Anjou
dynasty that had previously ruled there remained the threat. When Alfonso V, The Magnanimous,
of Aragon died in 1458, his kingdoms were divided between his brother, Juan II, who became king
of Aragon and Sicily, and his illegitimate son, Ferrante, who assumed the throne of Naples. In
1494, King Ferrante died, and the Italian political bubble burst.” 94
“From early in his reign, many pressures were exerted on young Charles VIII (1483-98) of
France to lead an army across the Alps into Italy. Charles’s distant claim to the throne of Naples
through his great-grandfather, Louis II of Anjou, was at best ephemeral, but it made a useful
pretext – along with an avowed crusade against the Turks. Ludovico Sforza persistently urged
Charles to intervene in Italy on behalf of Il Moro’s niece, Isabella, wife of the legitimate Milanese
duke, Giangaleazzo Sforza, to prevent an anticipated attack on Milan by the violent young Alfonso
of Calabria, Ferrante’s son (who now assumed the Neapolitan throne as Alfonso II). Whether the
French king responded or not, the threat of intervention could serve Ludovico as a valuable shield
against his foes. After Ferrante’s death, the doors also opened for Il Moro’s claim to at least a
share in the Neapolitan spoils through his sister, Ippolita, who, as a wife of Alfonso II, now became
queen of Naples. Other influential individuals at the French court who also appealed to Charles
for intervention in Italy included the disgruntled Neapolitan nobles; the disaffected Giuliano della
Rovere (the future Pope Julius II), arch-enemy of the present Borgia pope, Alexander VI; and the
king’s hot-blooded counselors. Charles VIII, however, really needed no coaxing. What could
provide a more glorious or profitable means of occupying the restless French nobles and diverting
them from nefarious activities against the crown than an exhilarating march through Italy?
Resistance should not be strong, if reports of Italian disunity and rivalry were correct, and the
opportunities for booty and ransom were great. Besides, Charles had more of the medieval knighterrantry in him than his father had, and he easily fancied himself in the role of a benevolent
conqueror. Misshapen in body and weak in intellect, the almost illiterate king had been brought
up on the tales of chivalry and conquest that he now intended to emulate.” 95 The wars became a
general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and caused an increasing
number of alliances, counter-alliances, and betrayals. The Italian city-states used foreign forces to
maintain the balance of power between them. While neighboring city-states were strengthened,
Milan felt so isolated that its duke invited the French to intervene in Italian politics.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
51
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-1-6. The Siege of Florence, 1529-30 painted by Giorgio Vasari 1558
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Siege_of_Florence.JPG/230px-Siege_of_Florence.JPG
Map I-1-6. Italy in 1494
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Italy_1494.svg/800px-Italy_1494.svg.png
52
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(a) The First Italian War (1494-1498): In September 1494 Charles VIII (1483-98) invaded
Italy with 18,000 cavalry and 12,000 infantry with a large train of artillery across the Alps unto
the Lombard plain, supported by a sizable fleet providing flank cover and supplies. “No one in
Italy had ever seen such an array of military strength. Ludovico Sforza probably began repenting
his rash invitation before the last column of French troops had passed through Milan.” The new
king of Naples, Alfonso II was immediately exiled by the Signoria. “Its economy crippled by a
French embargo on Florentine cloth and its outlying defense ring corrupted and weak, the onceproud city surrendered to the French king, submitting almost unconditionally to French protection,
and agreed to help finance the invasion of Naples. Similarly, Charles VIII passed through Rome
after receiving papal permission to traverse the Papal States. Five month after he had crossed the
Alps, Charles VIII arrived triumphantly in Naples, frightened Alfonso and his young son,
Ferrantino, across the strait of Messina into Sicily, and had himself crowned king of Naples. A
kingdom had been won without fighting a battle. But the fortunes of war changed quickly in
Renaissance Italy. Neapolitans soon learned that French rule was as corrupt and oppressive as the
Aragonese had been, and that offices as well as landed estates were quickly distributed to the
invaders. Soon riots and insurrections against the French regime were mounting.” The Italians
soon became hatred with deceived expectations and waited for a chance to expel the invaders.
Charles decided to withdraw northward before his the retreat route was cut off. “Bolstered by
assurances and reinforcements from Ferdinand of Aragon, Alfonso returned to the mainland and
raised the standard of revolt against the French. At the head of an Aragonses and Castilian army
transported across from Sicily came the Great Captain, Gonzalo de Cordoba, soon to become the
most successful military organizer and tactician of the age.” In March 1495, Pope Alexander VI
was negotiating a Holy League (the League of Venice) with the repentant Lodovico, the angry
Ferdinand, the jealous Maximilian, the cautious Senate of Venice for the purpose of a crusade
against the Turks on the surface, but the real purpose intended to drive Charles VIII out of Italy.
The French army made a hurried withdrawal and was able to retreat successfully across the Alps
with only one major encounter, the battle of Fornovo, where 20,000 of 40,000 allied forces fought
against 12,000 of the French army, which was indecisive but they returned to France. 96
(b) The Second Italian War (1499-1504): After the death of his father Charles VIII, the duke
of Orleans became Louis XII (1498-1515). Louis was determined to press his claim on the thrones
of Milan and Naples on behalf of his great-grandmother Valentina Visconti, the wife of Louis de
Valois, Duke of Orleans.97 In the First Italian War, Ludovico Sforza suddenly and unexpectedly
changed sides by joining the Venetians and the Kingdom of Naples against the French, so “King
Louis concluded an alliance with the Republic of Venice and obtained some Swiss mercenaries
and invaded the Duchy of Milan under the condition that the Lombardian territories be split
between Venice and France. Papal support was given for the campaign in exchange for Louis XII's
military support for Cesare Borgia's Romagna campaigns. Ludovico Sforza, having also hired an
army of Swiss mercenaries returned to Milan find it occupied by Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who
had joined the French; Ludovico's army was soon scattered, and he himself imprisoned in
France. Following the final overthrow of Sforza, the Duchy of Milan would serve, for the next
twelve years, as a French stronghold and as a spring-board for further French military adventures
in Italy.” Louis XII became worried about the intention of newly unified Spain to his west if he
moved into Italy. To avoid this prospect, Louis signed an agreement with Spain in November
1500 - the Treaty of Granada that divided the spoils of Naples between them. The Spanish and
French armies entered the kingdom, but they quarreled over spoils. Obtaining superiority over the
French army, the Spanish army expelled them; by the Treaty of Lyon in January 1504, France
ceded Naples to Spain but was allowed to control northern Italy from Milan. 98
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(c) The War of the League of Cambrai (1508-16): “The Ottomans started sea campaigns as
early as 1423, when it waged a seven-year war with the Venetian Republic over maritime control
of the Aegean, the Ionian, and the Adriatic Seas. The wars with Venice resumed in 1463 until a
favorable peace treaty was signed in 1479 just after the troublesome siege of Shkodra. In 1480
(now no longer hampered by the Venetian fleet), the Ottomans besieged Rhodes and briefly
captured Otranto. By 1490, the population of Venice had risen to about 180,000 people. War with
the Ottomans resumed from 1499 to 1503. In 1499, Venice allied itself with Louis XII of France
against Milan, gaining Cremona. In the same year, the Ottoman sultan moved to attack Lepanto
by land, and sent a large fleet to support his offensive by sea. Antonio Grimani, more a businessman and diplomat than a sailor, was defeated in the sea battle of Zonchio in 1499. The Turks once
again sacked Friuli. Preferring peace to total war both against the Turks and by sea, Venice
surrendered the bases of Lepanto, Durazzo, Modon and Coron. Venice's attention was diverted
from its usual maritime position by the delicate situation in Romagna, then one of the richest lands
in Italy, which was nominally part of the Papal States but effectively divided into a series of small
lordships which were difficult for Rome's troops to control. Eager to take some of Venice's lands,
all neighboring powers joined in the League of Cambrai in 1508, under the leadership of Pope
Julius II. The pope wanted Romagna; Emperor Maximilian I: Friuli and Veneto; Spain: the
Apulian ports; the king of France: Cremona; the king of Hungary: Dalmatia, and each of the others
some part. The offensive against the huge army enlisted by Venice was launched from France. On
14 May 1509, Venice was crushingly defeated at the battle of Agnadello, in the Ghiara d'Adda,
marking one of the most delicate points in Venetian history. French and imperial troops were
occupying Veneto, but Venice managed to extricate itself through diplomatic efforts. The Apulian
ports were ceded in order to come to terms with Spain, and Pope Julius II soon recognized the
danger brought by the eventual destruction of Venice (resulting in facing of super powers). 99
Accordingly, various parties having interests responded. “The citizens of the mainland rose
to the cry of Marco, Marco, and Andrea Gritti recaptured Padua in July 1509, successfully
defending it against the besieging imperial troops. Spain and the pope broke off their alliance with
France, and Venice regained Brescia and Verona from France also. After seven years of ruinous
war, the Serenissima regained its mainland dominions west to the Adda River. Although the defeat
had turned into a victory, the events of 1509 marked the end of the Venetian expansion. In 1489,
the first year of Venetian control of Cyprus, Turks attacked the Karpasia Peninsula, pillaging and
taking captives to be sold into slavery. In 1539 the Turkish fleet attacked and destroyed Limassol.
Fearing the ever-expanding Ottoman Empire, the Venetians had fortified Famagusta, Nicosia, and
Kyrenia, but most other cities were easy prey. By 1563, the population of Venice had dropped to
about 168,000 people. In the summer of 1570, the Turks struck again, but this time with a fullscale invasion rather than a raid. About 60,000 troops, including cavalry and artillery, under the
command of Mustafa Pasha landed unopposed near Limassol on 2 July 1570, and laid siege to
Nicosia. In an orgy of victory on the day that the city fell – 9 September 1570 – 20,000 Nicosians
were put to death, and every church, public building, and palace was looted.[14] Word of the
massacre spread, and a few days later Mustafa took Kyrenia without having to fire a shot.
Famagusta, however, resisted and put up a heroic defense that lasted from September 1570 until
August 1571. The fall of Famagusta marked the beginning of the Ottoman period in Cyprus. Two
months later, the naval forces of the Holy League, composed mainly of Venetian, Spanish, and
Papal ships under the command of Don John of Austria, defeated the Turkish fleet at the Battle of
Lepanto. Despite victory at sea over the Turks, Cyprus remained under Ottoman rule for the next
three centuries. By 1575, the population of Venice was about 175,000 people, but partly as a result
of the plague of 1575–76 dropped to 124,000 people by 1581.”100
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(d) The Third Italian War (1521-26): The elevation of Charles V of Spain to Holy Roman
Emperor on June 28, 1519 led to a collapse of relations between France and the Habsburgs. Francis’
candidacy for Emperor had been supported by Pope Leo X, who now had a real fear of Charles V.
Charles' empire included the Kingdom of Naples, the northern border of which was just forty miles
from the Vatican. The deterioration of relations between the Habsburgs and Francis I provided
the latter with a pretext for war with Charles V. However, just when Francis I began to count on
the support of Pope Leo in a war against Charles V, Pope Leo suddenly made peace with the
Emperor and sided with the Holy Roman Empire against France. Soon Francis I was surrounded
by enemies: not only was Charles V emperor, but he also remained King of Spain. Thus Francis I
faced war from two fronts: the east of the Holy Roman Empire and the west of Spain. Then to
make matters worse, Henry VIII of England joined the pope and the emperor. Charles V took
Milan from the French in 1521 and returned Milan to Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan. The
French were outmatched by the Spanish arquebusier tactics, and suffered from crippling defeats
at Bicocca on April 27, 1522 and Sesia against Spanish troops under Fernando de Avalos on April
30, 1524. With Milan in Imperial hands, Francis I personally led a French army into Lombardy in
1525, but was utterly defeated and captured at the battle of Paviaon February 24, 1525. “With
Francis imprisoned in Spain, a series of diplomatic maneuvers centered around his release ensued,
including a special French mission sent by king’s mother Louise of Savoy to the court of Suleiman
the Magnificent that would result in an Ottoman ultimatum to Charles - an unprecedented alliance
between Christian and Muslim monarchs that would cause a scandal in the Christian world…
Despite all these efforts, Francis was required to sign the Treaty of Madrid in January of 1526 in
which he surrendered his claims to Italy, Flanders, and Burgundy, in order to be released from
prison.”101 Suleiman used the opportunity to invade Hungary in the summer of 1526, defeating
Charles' allies at the Battle of Mohács on August 29, 1526.
(e) War of the League of Cognac (1526-30): Pope Clement VII, alarmed at the growing power
of the Empire, formed the League of Cognac against Charles V on May 22, 1526. Members of the
League were the Papal States, France, England, Venice, Florence, and Milan. The League began
a war against the Empire immediately: the military commander of the League wished to take
advantage of the disorder and demoralization of the imperial troops in attacking the troops. The
League commanders knew that they were soon to be joined by some Swiss mercenaries they had
hired. Venetian troops under the Duke of Urbino were marching westward across northern Italy
to join their allies - the Papal troops. “In June of 1526, Ugo de Moncada, the commander of
Imperial forces in Italy was sent as an ambassador from the Emperor to Pope Clement VII in the
Vatican. His message from Emperor Charles V was that if the Papal States aligned themselves
with the French in the current war, the Holy Roman Empire would seek to use both the Italian
towns of Colonna and Siena against the papacy. Pope Clement VII recognized the threat these two
cities presented to the Papal States should they join forces with the Imperial troops already in Italy.
Accordingly, the pope withdrew his forces at just the time the French forces entered Lombardy in
northern Italy. Suddenly the League started to fall apart. Venice had suffered devastating damage
in the Italian Wars…As a result, Venice refused to contribute any more troops to the war effort…
Venice would cease all direct involvement in Italian Wars. Realizing that their goal of reconquering Milan was not on the table anymore, the French army left Lombardy and headed back to France.
With the withdrawal of French forces from Lombardy, Charles V proceeded to subdue Florence,
and, in 1527, Rome itself was sacked by mutinous Imperial forces. Clement was imprisoned by
Imperial troops and offered no further resistance to Charles V. With the conclusion of the Treaty
of Cambrai in 1529, which formally removed Francis I from the war, the League collapsed; Venice
made peace with Charles V, while Florence was placed again under the Medici.”102
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(f) Italian War of 1536-38: “When the Treaty of Cambrai was being signed in August of
1529, thus ending the War of the League of Cognac, Emperor Charles V was already making his
way to Italy. This trip to Italy and the settlement of Italian affairs during the trip is traditionally
viewed as marking the end of Italian political liberty and independence and the beginning of a
long period of control by the Spanish and the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V's influence and
control of affairs in Italy had grown out of King Louis XII's much criticized invitation to Spain
under the Treaty of Grenada (1500) to join in settling problems in Italy. (See, the entry on the
"Second Italian War" above.) In 1500, Spain had been a separate and independent kingdom under
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Now under Charles V, both Spain and the Holy Roman
Empire were part of the same political entity. Even in 1500, the influence that Spain could bring
to Italian politics was significant, but it was still minor compared to the power that Charles V
could now exercise in Italy. The main goal of that power and influence was now aimed at France,
the very power that had invited the Spanish into Italy in the first place.”
“Thus, this third war between Charles V and King Francis I of France began with the death
of Francesco Maria Sforza, the duke of Milan during the night of November 1-2, 1535. Upon his
death, Francesco Sforza left no heirs. Emperor Charles V was on another trip to Italy when he
heard about the death of Sforza. When the representatives of Emperor Charles V took charge of
the Duchy of Milan upon the death of Sforza, there were no protests or uprisings among the people
of Milan. Nor were there any objections from any other Italian states. There were, however,
objections from France. Francis I, king of France, firmly believed that Asti, Genoa and the Duchy
of Milan were all rightfully his. Thus recovering Milan for France remained the primary goal for
Francis I. So when Charles bequeathed the Duchy of Milan to his son Philip, King Francis I of
France invaded Italy. At about this time, Francis told his council that he had allowed Emperor
Charles V to become too strong in Italy. This was an open admission by a French King that Louis
XII's signing of the Treaty of Grenada in November of 1500 had been a mistake.”
In late March of 1536, a French Army…advanced into Piedmont with 24,000 infantry and
3,000 horse. The French Army under Philippe de Chabot captured and entered Turin in early April
of 1536, but failed to take Milan. Meanwhile, the pro-French section of the population in the city
of Asti rose up against and overthrew their Imperial occupiers. In response to the capture of Turin
by the French, Charles V invaded Provence, advancing to Aix-en-Provence. Charles took Aix on
August 13, 1536, but could go no further because the French Army blocked all roads leading to
Marseilles. Consequently, Charles withdrew back to Spain rather than attacking the heavily
fortified town of Avignon. Charles V's fruitless expedition to Provence distracted his attention
from events in Italy. French troops operating in the Piedmont were joined by 10,000 Italian
infantry and a few hundred horse on a march to Genoa…In preparation for his invasion of Italy,
Francis I's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire - Jean de La Forêt - obtained, in early 1536, a treaty
of alliance between the Ottoman Empire and France. By the end of 1536 an Ottoman fleet was
poised off the coast of Genoa ready to strike in coordination with the land forces marching toward
Genoa. However, when the land forces arrived before Genoa in August of 1536, they found that
the garrison at Genoa had recently been reinforced. Furthermore, an expected uprising
among Fregoso partisans in Genoa did not materialize. So the land forces moved by Genoa and
marched on into the Piedmont where they captured and occupied Carignano along with three other
towns…The Ottomans active participation in the war was not significant, but the very entry of
them into the war had a curbing effect on the actions of Charles V. Fighting a two front war,
against the Ottomans in the east and the French in the west did not appeal to Charles V.
Consequently, by 1538, Charles was ready for peace. The Truce of Nice, signed on June 18, 1538,
ended the war, leaving Turin in French hands but effecting no significant changes to the map.”103
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(g) Italian War of 1542-46: Francis I allied himself once more with Suleiman I of the Ottoman
Empire and on July 12, 1542 declared war on the Holy Roman Empire. Francis I launched his
final invasion of Italy against the town of Perpignan. A Franco-Ottoman fleet under the command
of Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa captured the city of Nice on August 22, 1543, and laid
siege to the citadel. The defenders of the citadel were relieved within a month. For Christian and
Islamic troops to act in coordination to attack a Christian town was regarded as shocking. Thus,
in this attack on Nice, King Francis needed to play down the role of the Ottoman Turks…Once
again Milan was the pretext for the War of 1542–1546. However, the French Army commanded
by the François de Bourbon, Count d'Enghien was defeated in the Piedmont by an Imperial army
at the Battle of Ceresole on April 14, 1544. The French failed to penetrate further into Lombardy.
On January 6, 1537, Alessandro de Medici, the Duke of Florence, was assassinated by his distant
cousin, Lorenzino de' Medici. Alessandro de Medici had the support of the Holy Roman Empire.
Indeed, Alessandro was married to Charles V's daughter - Margaret. With the Duke of Florence
removed some citizens of Florence attempted to establish a republic in the city, while other proMedici citizens of Florence sought to install the seventeen-year-old Cosimo de' Medici as the new
Duke. The republican faction raised an army under the command of Piero Strozzi. The pro-Medici
faction sought assistance from Charles V to defeat the republican faction. Francis I, supported the
now-exiled republican faction as a means of preventing Charles V from taking over Florence. On
June 4, 1544, the army of republican exiles from Florence…was defeated by an Imperial army…
Charles V and Henry VIII of England then proceeded to invade northern France, seizing Boulogne
and Soissons. At one point the English and the Imperial troop were within sixty miles of Paris. A
lack of cooperation between the Spanish and English armies, coupled with increasingly aggressive
Ottoman attacks, led Charles to abandon these conquests, restoring the status quo once again.”104
(h) Italian War of 1551-59: “On March 31, 1547, King Francis I died. Francis I was succeeded
to the throne by his son, Henry II of France. In 1551, Henry II declared war against Charles with
the intent of recapturing Italy. An early French offensive against Lorraine was successful, but the
invasion of Tuscany was stopped in 1553. The French were decisively defeated at the Battle of
Marciano on August 2, 1554. Nonetheless, as a result of this war, France obtained three French
speaking cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun. In 1556, during the course of the war Charles V
abdicated the Imperial throne as well as the throne of Spain. He abdicated the Imperial throne of
the Holy Roman Empire to his brother, who became Ferdinand I of the Holy Roman Empire. The
throne of Spain went to Charles' son who became Phillip II of Spain. The abdication of Charles V
split the Habsburg empire that had surrounded France. From this point on, Spain and The Holy
Roman Empire would no longer act in absolute coordination as they had under the personal union
of Charles V. Gradually, the two Habsburg entities would drift off separately in their own
directions following their own divergent interests. At this point the focus of the war shifted away
from Italy and toward Flanders, where Philip, in conjunction with Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy,
decisively defeated the French at St. Quentin on August 10, 1557. Following the defeat at St.
Quentin, the French did recover and took some new initiatives in the war. England's entry into the
war in 1557 led to the French capture of Calais in January of 1558. Additionally, French armies
plundered Spanish positions in the Low Countries. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ended the
sixty-year conflict of the Italian Wars between France and Spain, by signing at Le Cateau on April
3, 1559 between three representative parties: Henry II of France, Philip II of Spain, and Elizabeth
I of England. France restored Savoy, acknowledged Spanish hegemony over Italy, and consented
to a rectification of its border with the Spanish Netherlands. Calais, however, was confirmed in
French possession by England. Henry II's sister, Margaret, was given in marriage to Emmanuel
Philibert of Savoy; Henry's daughter, Elizabeth of Valois, was given to Philip II of Spain.”105
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Wars and Society in Renaissance Europe: The Renaissance inherited a class society of three
estates from the Middle Ages: clergy, nobility, and peasants and townspeople. The nobility
declined in the late Middle Ages as the middle class began to rise, but was reconstructed by around
1500. The nobles, 2 to 3 percent of the population in most countries, dominated society by holding
important political posts and serving as military officers. The nobility was hereditary but rich
people joined as new members, so that it was certainly birth and wealth. They respected virtue as
a spiritual qualification, and pursued high education to hold high positions in the government. In
The Book of the Courtier of 1528 Baldesar Castiglione described the attributes of the courtier as
the ideals of the Renaissance. According to him, noble birth possesses native endowments of
talent, beauty, and grace. The courtier is the profession of arms having healthy soul and body.
Since the soul is worthier than the body, the former should be more cultivated and adorned.
Physical readiness is trained by sports, and spiritual harmony is obtained by music, dancing, and
arts as Plato taught. The profession of arms requires a man of honor and integrity who understands conservative virtues of prudence, goodness, fortitude, and temperance. “I blame the French
for believing that letters are harmful to the profession of arms, and I maintain myself that it is
more fitting for a warrior to be educated than for anyone else.” The warrior should speak and
write well with proper knowledge in both Greek and Latin. Since we are born capable of acquiring
virtues and similarly vices, “we become habituated to the one or the other through the behavior
we adopt.” Therefore, “good masters not only teach children their letters but polite manners and
correct bearing in eating, drinking, speaking and walking.” In comparing monarchy with republic,
princes keep their subjects under the strictest surveillance, while republics always conserve
freedom that God has given us as the supreme gift. The opinions of many persons are superior to
that of a single man, a republic is the more desirable form of government than a monarchy.
Peasants and townspeople were the third estate with about 85 to 90 percent of the European
population except commercialized northern Italy and Flanders. In the fourteenth century, the
Black Death and economic crisis expedited the collapse of the manorial system and the decline of
serfdom. The landlords either rented land to tenant farmers or directly tilled by hiring wage
workers. By around 1500 many serfs became free from the bondage to the land and fell into wage
earners in town or country in Western Europe, though the serfdom remained powerful in Eastern
Europe where the local authorities were still politically influential. The townspeople of urban
society consisted of three economic groups: on the top rich merchants, manufacturers, and bankers
dominated politics and economy of the community; in the middle shopkeepers, artisans, and
guildsmen provided goods and services for local consumption; at the bottom property-less workers
supplied unskilled manual labor for pitiful wages if not unemployed. In fact, increased poverty in
the urban area created serious social problems in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Below the
bottom of society, slavery continued to exist in the early Middle Ages, but almost disappeared by
the eleventh century except some domestic servants, since agricultural slavery was replaced by
serfdom in the ninth century. In the re-conquest of Spain, both Christians and Muslims used
captured prisoners as slaves. After the Black Death, the Italians introduced slavery to overcome
their labor shortage: slaves were mainly Tartars, but some were Russians, and even Christian
Greeks. During 1414-23 Venice imported ten thousand slaves; and Genoa, Pisa and Ancona
opened large slave markets. In 1444 the Portuguese began to import slaves from the trading posts
of the African coast for agricultural labor. Arab traders in northern Africa shipped African people
taken from central Africa to markets in Arabia, Iran, and India throughout the fifteenth century.
Since them, the Spanish supplied slaves to their American colonies in the sixteenth century, and
the English followed the suite in the seventeenth century. The Italian Wars began with the French
invasion in 1494, but ended with the Spanish occupation of Italy in 1558.
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Then, why were there so many wars? In this age, wars are embarked on for desire of glory,
for the hope of booty, for the fear incurring disaster later, and for avenging a wrong and defending
friends. The objects of glory could be to own more land generating human resources and materials
with more tax revenues. Fear that the balance between the Italian states was shifting against Milan
caused Lodovico Sforza to invite Charles VIII on to the conquest of Naples. For avenging a wrong
and defending friends, the equivalent motive in this period is the supporting of foreign co-religion.
The religious conflict led to no wars between a Protestant and a Catholic country since faith wars
were mostly internal. Despite advocate on both sides, Europe did not split into two warring
religious camps. “The German cities and princes were happy to receive profit and to lose sources
of discontent by succeeding the Swiss as the prime exporters of mercenary companies and
vagabonds-turned-soldiers. The Scandinavian-Baltic area was fully occupied with dynasticeconomic broils of its own. The Italian states, though Catholic to a man, were quite without
quixotry, and in any case were small and sufficiently diverted by Muslim pirate raids. Spain, in
spite of freshets of spendable subsequent occupation were beyond its financial reach, in spite of
the frail hope in 1588 that the Armada might bring back the days of English satellitism when Philip
had been briefly married to Mary Tudor.”106 Religion poisoned or exalted domestic tension, led
to intervention for defending friends, was able to cause war. If any combination of motives triggers
war, military mobilization demands more man power and weapons and logistic supports, which
requires negotiation between rulers, ministers, and commoners or tax payers. Chivalry was the
key element to win war, and the larger echelon of men was necessary for running the war machine.
It is essential for the people to accept a war as the justice of its course to consolidate war efforts.
The rulers of early modern Europe had advantages over the medieval predecessors when planning
a campaign with better sources of information; they had larger revenues and better facilities.
Since the permanent forces were restricted, and the availability of mercenaries was uncertain,
governments naturally looked to their own citizens. Traditionally, members of the Second Estate
or landed nobility led the war in the field. “Faith in the great nobles’ sense of duty, natural authority
and ability to learn as he went along, kept the highest commands in their hands throughout the
period.” Legally, most able-bodies males of all classes between the ages of fifteen or sixteen and
sixty were liable to serve with conscription. In fact, the Third Estate provided the mass of the
armies. By the mid fourteenth century, Florence, Venice and Siena tamed the aristocracies by the
associations of the bourgeoisie and their sprits as noted previously. The society of soldiers had
formed the military professionals as “entrepreneurial captains came to play as large a part in
raising and leading troops as did natural local chieftains, as longer campaigns led to the snapping
of more of the ties that connected the mores of field and village with those of battlefield and camp,
and as permanent forces came into being.” As major campaigns were over, the military occupation
needed the permanent garrison forces to maintain law and order in the region. The inaction of
garrison life caused three major failings in terms of abuses and corruption. “One was an abuse of
the leave system. Peacetime leave for cavalry company commanders was always generous because
their social position meant that they frequently had property, and hence administrative and legal
affairs to deal with at home. On request, their three-month annual leave could stretch to six.
Naturally these regulations were abused. Infantry governors could seldom plead such a reason,
but their normal monthly leave of seven to ten days could, again, be stretched…The second was
corruption among paymasters and captains and the infrequency of governmental inspections to
check it. The result was that soldiers found their pay being docked or diverted into the pockets of
officers’ pages and servants…The third failing was the counter-part of this: going native on the
spot, blending, through cohabitation or marriage and s second, civilian job, so thoroughly into the
social fabric of the garrison town that the soldier was subsumed into the civilian.” 107
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Italian Wars brought the direct and indirect impact on civilians and the economy. “Larger,
ill-disciplined armies, extended campaigning seasons, prolonged sieges: the brush-strokes of war
in the sixteenth century were broader than formerly, and probably leached our more widely into
the fabric of civilian society. Compared with the spasmodic nature of the Hundred Years War,
the Wars of Italy and the Netherlands were almost unremitting molestations of normal life… saw
nothing but scenes of infinite slaughter, plunder and destruction of multitudes of towns and cities,
attended with the licentiousness of soldiers no less destructive to friends than foes.”108 Military
hordes upset the local balance of production and consumption, which raises prices of necessities.
“The high taxes levied by the viceroys to sustain their pomp and soldiery, the severity of their
laws, the state monopolies in grain and other necessaries, discouraged industry and commerce;
and the native princes, competing in vain luxury, followed the same policy of taxing to frustration
the economic activity that supported them. Shipping declined to a point where the surviving
galleys could no longer protect themselves from Berber pirates, who raided ships and coasts and
carried Italians off to serve Moslem dignitaries as slaves. Almost as irksome were the foreign
troops quartered on Italian homes, openly despising a once unrivaled people and civilization, and
contributing more than their share to the sexual laxity of the age.” 109
In addition to the devastation of war and the subjection to Spain, there had been several
developments in Europe, which brought another misfortune to Italy. First of all, the Portuguese
rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1448 and opened an all-water route to India in 1498, which
provided a cheaper means of transport between the Atlantic nations and Central Asia and the Far
East than the troublesome route across the Alps to Genoa or Venice, thence to Alexandria,
overland to the Red Sea, and again by ship to India. “Moreover, the control of the eastern
Mediterranean by the Turks made that route hazardous, subject to tribute, piracy, and war; and
this was still truer of the route via Constantinople and the Black Sea. After 1498 Venetian and
Genoese trade. And Florentine finance, declined. As early as 1502 the Portuguese bought so much
of the available pepper in India that the Egyptian-Venetian merchants there found little left for
export. The price of pepper rose one third in a year on the Rialto, while in Lisbon it could be had
for the price that merchants had to charge in Venice, the German traders began to desert their
Fondaco on the Grand Canal and transfer their buying to Portugal.” Second, the religious
Reformation of Martin Luther was both a cause and a result of the economic decline of Italy. It
was a cause in so far as it diminished the movement of pilgrims and ecclesiastical revenues from
the northern nations into Rome. “It was an effect insomuch as the replacement of the
Mediterranean-Egyptian route to India by the all-water route, and the development of European
commerce with America, enriched the Atlantic countries while helping to impoverish Italy;
German trade moved more and more down the Rhine to North Sea outlets, less and less over the
mountains to Italy; Germany became commercially independent of Italy; a northward drift and
pull of power wrenched Germany from the Italian web of trade and religion, and gave Germany
the will and strength to stand alone.” Third, the discovery of America in 1492 resulted in more
lasting effect upon Italy than the new route to India. Gradually the Mediterranean nations declined,
left on a siding in the movement of men and goods; the Atlantic nations came to the fore, enriched
with American trade and gold. “This was a greater revolution in commercial routes than any that
history had recorded since Greece, by her victory at Troy, had opened to her vessels the Black Sea
route to Central Asia. It would be equaled and surpassed only by the airplane transformation of
trade routes in the second half of the twentieth century.” Finally, the Counter Reformation was
now added a detrimental but natural change in the mood and conduct of the Church, to Italy’s own
political disorder and moral decay, to her subjugation and desolation by foreign powers, to her
loss of trade to the Atlantic nations, to her forfeiture of revenue in the Reformation. 110
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1-5. Religion and the Renaissance Church
The period of the Great Schism corresponded with the worst moral degeneration of the church of
centuries. The main abuses within the Roman Catholic Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries are as follows. “(i) Simony – the buying and selling of church positions. (ii) Ignorance
– Most of the clergy was poorly educated; so they did not know scripture and could not preach
well at all. (iii) Absenteeism – Many senior churchmen did not live in their parish or diocese. (iv)
Pluralism – It was not uncommon or members of the church to hold more than one post, illegal by
cannon law; this even extended to some members of the Regular Clergy (Religious orders) also
holding posts confined to members of the Secular Clergy (regular priests and bishops). (v)
Worldliness – Members of the church did everything from lead armies to father illegitimate
children; moreover, there was gambling, drunkenness and numerous other behaviors and practices
which did not adhere with the ideology of being above worldly things. (vi) Indulgence – This was
a massive industry in the church of the Middle Ages and first century of the early modern period.
These indulgences were issued with the Pope’s blessing and entitled the purchaser to forgiveness.
They were used to finance church activities which during this period were not necessarily holy.
The indulgence themselves are not an abuse, merely the selling of them. (vii) Nepotism – Many
church positions were handed out by senior churchmen to their relatives.” 111
During the Renaissance, the institution of indulgences, in connection with the sacrament of
penance, came into wide use and abuse. “Penance involved four important steps: contrition, or
sorrow for sins committed; confession to a priest, who then granted absolution, which freed the
penitent from the guilt of sin and from eternal punishment; satisfaction, or the outward manifesttation of sorrow through performing prescribed works of penance, thus satisfying the divine
demand for the temporal punishment of sin. If for any reason insufficient penance was imposed,
or if the sinner died before performing all that was required, the temporal punishment would
continue in purgatory. Originally, penance was a public ceremony involving confession before
the congregation…An indulgence, then, was the permission, also granted by the congregation, to
relax or remit all or part of the temporal punishment – usually because a person was physically
unable to perform it. With the conversion of penance into a sacrament and its change from a
public to a private rite, many abuses developed in the granting of indulgences. The authority to
issue them was taken over by priests, then the bishops, and finally the popes. During the Crusades
the church began granting plenary indulgences to those who would participate in a crusade. In
addition, partial indulgences were given for pilgrimages and other forms of religious devotion.
Eventually they were granted for cash donations…the remission of temporal punishment by
purchased indulgences was extended to include souls already in purgatory.” 112
“Theologians made careful distinctions between contrition (sorrow prompted by love) and
attrition (sorrow prompted by fear of retribution), between temporal punishment (required of all
absolved confessants) and eternal punishment (decreed for all unconfessed, and therefore unabsolved, sinners), and between the guilt of sin (which could be forgiven by a priest) and the
penalties of sin (which had to be paid either in this life or in purgatory, unless remitted by
indulgences). Yet…many ordinary people, confused by such subtleties, simply thought they were
buying salvation when they purchased indulgences, whether they were contrite, confessed, and
absolved, or not. The curia’s active promotion of indulgences for raising revenue further perverted
their original intent. The increased venality of the papacy may be seen in the second half of the
fifteenth century, when printing indulgences became one of the important activities of the newly
established printing houses, and circulating and selling indulgences involved not only the curia
and the indulgence sellers but also bankers, lawyers, and secular rulers.”
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-1-7. The Alba Madonna by Raphael, c. 1510
Source: http://www.nga.gov/thumb-l/a00005/a00005e1.jpg
Photo I-1-8. St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Italy
Source: http://www.miraclerosarymission.org/stpeterbasilica2.jpg
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Conciliarism and the Council of Constance: Conciliarism was a reform movement in the
Catholic Church which held that supreme authority in the Church resided with an Ecumenical
council, apart from or even against, the pope; which challenged the papal authority. “These new
challenges were marked by disputes between the Papacy and the secular kings of Europe. In
particular the quarrel between Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII over the right to tax the
clergy in France was especially heated. Philip was excommunicated and Boniface was accused of
corruption, sorcery, and sodomy. In his "Unam Sanctam", Boniface asserted that the papacy held
power over both the spiritual and temporal worlds and that only God could judge the pope. Philip
responded by sending knights to Italy to arrest Boniface. Though the mission eventually failed,
the Pope died just three weeks after his release because of the trauma of the experience and a high
fever. This was followed by the move of the Roman papacy to Avignon, France in 1305. Although
the move had precedent, the Avignon Papacy's (1305–1377) image was damaged by accusations
of corruption, favoritism toward the French, and even heresy. Indeed Pope Clement VI who was
criticized for his apparent extravagant lifestyle asserted that his predecessors did not know how to
be Pope. During the span of the Avignon Papacy all the popes and most Cardinals and curial
officials were French. The reputation of the Avignon Papacy led many to question the absolute
authority of the pope in governing the universal Catholic Church. The Western Schism (1378–
1417), was a dispute between the legal elections of Pope Urban VI in Rome and Pope Clement
VII in Avignon. The schism became highly politicized as the kings of Europe chose to support
whichever pope served their best interests. Both popes chose successors and thus the schism
continued even after Urban and Clement's deaths. In this crisis, Conciliarism took center stage as
the best option for deciding which pope would step down. The cardinals decided to convene the
Council of Pisa (1409) to decide who would be the one pope of the Catholic Church. The council
was a failure and even led to the election of a third pope.”113
The Council of Constance (1414-8) was summoned under pressure from the Holy Roman
Emperor Sigismund, John XXIII, the successor of the Pisa pope, mainly to reunite Christendom
but also to examine the teachings of John Wycliffe and John Hus and to reform the church. The
Council was attended by “roughly 29 cardinals, 100 learned doctors of law and divinity, 1334
abbots, and 183 bishops and archbishops.”114 “Political rivalries so divided the large number of
council delegates that a revolutionary system of voting was adopted, whereby each of the four
power blocs (Italy, England, Germany, and France) was granted a single vote; later the cardinals
were given a vote as a group, and still later Spain was empowered to vote. John XXIII, after being
threatened with an investigation of his life, promised to resign if his rivals would do the same.
Shortly after, however, he fled from Constance, hoping that this act would deprive the council of
its power and lead to its dissolution. The emperor insisted that the council continue, and it issued
the decree Sacrosancta, affirming that a general council of the church is superior to the pope. It
further decreed that frequent councils are essential for the proper government of the church. John
XXIII was then captured and deposed. Gregory XII agreed to abdicate, provided that he was
permitted officially to convoke the council and so assert the legitimacy of his own line of popes,
to which the council agreed. Benedict XIII, who refused to resign, was also deposed. In November
1417 the council elected Oddone Colonna, who became pope as Martin V, and the Great Schism
was effectively healed. The authenticity of the decree Sacrosancta has been a matter of great
dispute among scholars. The council condemned 45 propositions of Wycliffe and 30 of Hus, who
was declared an obstinate heretic, delivered to the secular power, and burned at the stake. Furthermore, the council adopted seven reform decrees, and Martin V concluded concordats on other
points, chiefly methods of taxation, with the various nations. To the council’s failure to effect
stronger reforms, however, the Protestant Reformation has in large part been attributed.”115
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Council of Basel (1431-45) was held in Basel, Switz, called by Pope Martin V a few
weeks before his death in 1431 and then confirmed by Pope Eugenius IV. “Meeting at a time when
the prestige of the papacy had been weakened by the Great Schism, it was concerned with two
major problems: the question of papal supremacy and the Hussite heresy. The council was
inaugurated on July 23, 1431; but, when the pope’s legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, arrived in
September, he found few people there. In December, because of the sparse attendance, war, and
the prospect of a council with the Greeks in Italy, the pope adjourned the council. The council,
however, refused to be dissolved and renewed the decree Sacrosancta of the Council of Constance
which declared that a general council draws its powers immediately from God and that even the
pope is subject to a council’s direction. More delegates arrived at Basel, and, although the number
of bishops and abbots was never large, the council proceeded to deal with the Hussites, the
majority of whom were received back into communion by the Compactata of Prague in November
1436. On Dec. 15, 1433, the pope yielded and revoked his decree of dissolution. In the negotiations
and discussions that followed, the council and the pope could not agree, and the council gradually
lost prestige. The council proposed several antipapal measures, and in 1437 Eugenius transferred
the council to Ferrara, Italy, in order to consider reunion with the Greeks. Many of the bishops at
Basel accepted the move to Ferrara, but several remained at Basel as a rump council. When the
rump council suspended Eugenius, he excommunicated its members. The council, with only seven
bishops present, then declared Eugenius deposed and in 1439 elected as his successor a layman,
the Duke of Savoy, Amadeus VIII, who took the name Pope Felix V. The next 10 years of this
rump council are important only because the princes used it to strengthen their control over the
churches in their own territories. On the death of Eugenius in 1447, his successor, Nicholas V,
brought about the abdication of Felix V and ended the rump council in April 1449.”116
In 1460 Pius II (1458-64) issued the papal bull Execrabilis which condemned appeals to a
council over the pope as heretical. “This bull denounces those who presume to appeal from the
pope to a future council, in spite of the fact that the pope is the vicar of Jesus Christ and condemn[s]
all such appeals and prohibit[s] them as erroneous and detestable. Penalties for violators of any
status or rank, including those having imperial, royal or even papal dignity, are grave. Anyone
who contravened this papal decree would ipso facto incur sentence of anathema, from which he
cannot be absolved except by the Roman Pontiff and at the point of death…Pius II had intended
Execrabilis to put a definitive end to all future attempts to appeal papal decisions to a council.
However, his intention was weakened by the fact that this injunction was not consistently invoked
by subsequent Renaissance popes in response to the manifestations of conciliarist tendencies.”117
The Fifth Lantern Council (1512-17) was convoked by Pope Julius II in response to a council
summoned at Pisa by a group of cardinals who were hostile to the Pope. “There were twelve
sessions. The first five of them, held during Julius II's pontificate, dealt primarily with the
condemnation and rejection of the quasi-council of Pisa, and with the revoking and annulment of
the French Pragmatic Sanction. After the election of Pope Leo X in March 1513, the council had
three objectives: first, achieving a general peace between Christian rulers; second, church reform;
and third, the defense of the faith and the rooting out of heresy. The seven sessions after Leo's
election gave approval to a number of constitutions, among which are to be noted the condemnation of the teaching of the philosopher Pomponazzi, and the approval of the agreement completed
outside the council between pope Leo X and king Francis I of France .”118 Julius II reasserted the
supremacy of papal authority over that of the councils, supported by the many cardinals, cannon
lawyers and theologians. But “Conciliarism did not disappear in the face of these polemics. It
survived to endorse the Council of Trent (1545-63) which launched the Catholic CounterReformation in the 1540s and later appeared in the anti-curial polemics of Gallicanism.”119
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The Renaissance Papacy: Harassed by internal corruption, military and fiscal incompetence,
and the confusion of European with Italian politics, and of ecclesiastical with secular affairs, “the
papacy struggled through centuries to preserve its traditional territories from internal usurpation
by condottieri, and from external encroachment by other Italian states; so Milan repeatedly tried
to appropriate Bologna, Venice seized Ravenna and sought to absorb Ferrara, and Naples stretched
tentative tentacles into Latium. To meet these attacks, the popes seldom depended on their little
army of mercenaries, but played the covetous states one against another in a balance-of-power
policy, striving to keep any one of them from growing strong enough to swallow papal terrain…As
political rulers, the popes felt compelled to adopt the same methods as their secular compeers.
They distributed – sometimes they sold – offices or benefices to influential persons, even to minors,
to pay political debts, or to advance political purposes, or to reward or support men of letters or
artists. They arranged marriages for their relatives into politically powerful families. They use
armies like Julius II, or the diplomacy of deceit like Los X. They put up with – sometimes profited
from – a degree of bureaucratic venality probably no greater than that which prevailed in most
governments of the time. The laws of the Papal States were as severe as those of others; thieves
and counterfeiters were hanged by papal vicars as a more or less bitter necessity of government.
Most of the popes lived as simply as the supposedly requisite display of official ceremony would
permit; the worst tales we read of them were legends set afloat by irresponsible satirists like Berni,
or disappointed place hunters like Aretino, or the Roman agents – e.g., Infessura – of powers in
violent or diplomatic conflict with the papacy. As for the cardinals who administered the ecclesiastical and political affairs of the Church, they thought of themselves as senators of a wealthy state,
and lived accordingly; many of them built palaces, many patronized letters or arts, some indulged
themselves with mistresses; they genially accepted the easy moral code of their reckless time.” 120
“As a spiritual power the Renaissance popes faced the problem of reconciling humanism with
Christianity. Humanism was half pagan, and the Church had once set herself to destroy paganism
root and branch, creed and art. She had encouraged or countenanced the demolition of pagan
temples and statuary…To reserve that attitude, to preserve and collect and cherish the remaining
art and classics of Rome and Greece, required a revolution in ecclesiastical thought. The prestige
of humanism was already so high, the impetus of the neo-pagan movement was so strong, her own
leaders were so deeply tinged with it, that the Church had to find place for these developments in
the Christian life, or risk losing the intellectual classes of Italy, perhaps later of Europe.” The
Renaissance papacy from Martin V (1417-31) to Leo X (1513-21) can be characterized by three
features: (i) the endeavor to win back papal ecclesiastical supremacy over the church after the era
of schism and conciliarism; (ii) the drastic secularization of the church as Renaissance popes
competed with princes and condottieri in the politics of Italy; and (iii) papal patronage of arts and
letters during the heyday of the cultural Renaissance. The popes did not contribute or participate
equally in all of these areas, but taken as a whole, the popes of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries did pay more attention to these three activities than any of their predecessors or
successors. Furthermore, they devoted much more energy to these activities than they did to
spiritual matters.121 Although popes had been temporal and spiritual for centuries, Renaissance
popes were more temporal rulers maintaining the papal state than the spiritual leader influencing
Christendom. The first few popes after the restoration of the papacy in 1417 were those hardest
pressed by conciliarism yet the ones to make the most headway against it. However, as discussed
above, Pope Pius II issued the bull Execrabilis, anathematizing any future appeal to a council.
“The irony of this pronouncement was that it was made by a man who, before his elevation to the
papacy, had been one of the more outspoken critics of the popes and an advocate of conciliarism.”
Let’s review briefly the reigns of the popes in the Renaissance capturing Rome.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) was born in Sarzana of Genoa in 1937, studied at Bologna and
Florence, gaining a degree in theology in 1422. He was appointed Bishop of Bologna in 1444.
Civic disorders at Bologna were prolonged, so Pope Eugene IV soon named him as one of the
legates sent to Frankfurt. He was to assist in negotiating an understanding between the Papal
States and the Holy Roman Empire, regarding undercutting or at least containing the reforming
decrees of the Council of Basel. His successful diplomacy gained him the reward, on his return
to Rome, of the title Cardinal-Priest of Santa Susanna in 1446. He was elected Pope succeeding
Eugene IV in 1447. Nicholas had three aims: to be a good pope, to rebuild Rome, and to restore
classical literature, learning, and art. In 1450, Nicholas held a Jubilee at Rome, and the offerings
of the numerous pilgrims who thronged to Roma gave him the means of furthering the cause of
culture in Italy, which he had so much at heart. In March 1452 he crowned Frederick II as Holy
Roman Emperor in St. Peter’s, in what was the last imperial coronation held in Rome. Within the
city of Rome, Nicholas introduced the fresh spirit of the Renaissance…His first care was practical,
to reinforce the city’s fortifications, cleaning and even paving some main streets and restoring the
water supply. He rebuilt the Vatican, the Borgo district, and St. Peter’s Basilica, where the reborn
glories of the papacy were to be focused. Under his generous patronage, humanism made rapid
strides as well. For him, humanism became a tool for the cultural aggrandizement of the Christian
capital, and he sent emissaries to the East to attract Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople.
He employed Lorenzo Valla to translate Greek histories, pagan as well as Christian, into Latin.
This industry, coming just before the dawn of printing, contributed enormously to the sudden
expansion of the intellectual horizon.122Restoring peace within the Church with order and splendor
to Rome; he had founded the greatest libraries, and reconciled the Church and the Renaissance. 123
Pope Pius II (1458-64), was born in 1405 in the village of Corsignano, near Siena, Italy, into
a noble family. After studying at the universities of Siena and Florence, he settled the former city
as a teacher, but in 1431 he became secretary to Cardinal Domenico Capranica and went with him
to the Council of Basel, a meeting of bishops concerned with church reform. With Cardinal
Niccolò Albergati he visited many European countries on a diplomatic mission. On returning
to Basel in 1436, he became an official of the council, which gave him opportunities to show his
great skill as an orator. “As representative of the Basel remnant at the Diet of Frankfurt, he
attracted the attention of Frederick III of Austria, who invited him to Vienna (1442) and made him
imperial poet laureate and his private secretary…In Frederick’s name he proposed to end the
rivalry between the papal council at Florence and the rebellious council at Basel by summoning a
third council but could persuade neither Eugenius nor the bishops at Basel…Made bishop of
Trieste by the new pope, Nicholas V, in 1447, he continued his successful mediation between the
German states and the Holy See, explaining in a letter of retraction his change of role from
supporting Basel to being advocate of the papacy. He was transferred in 1449 to the see of Siena,
where he was still able to be of service to King Frederick by negotiating his marriage with a
Portuguese princess and arranging his coronation as Holy Roman emperor in Rome by Nicholas
V (1452). Nicholas’ successor, Calixtus III (1455–58), made Enea cardinal-priest of Santa Sabina
as a reward for negotiating peace with Alfonso V, king of Aragon and Naples, and persuading him
to cooperate in the crusade against the Turks.”124 On Calixtus’ death Enea Silvio was elected pope
as Pius II (Aug. 19, 1458). As pope he wanted to organize a grand crusade to drive back the Turks,
who, having captured Constantinople in 1453, were threatening to overrun the rest of Europe. He
summoned the Christian princes to a congress in Mantua to study and meet the danger, but no
princes attended. He pursued once more in 1464 but failed and died. Pius II knew well conditions
of Germany, but failed in its application. He was successful in denouncing the general council of
the Church, and he was a patron of humanists and renovated church buildings.
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Sixtus IV (1471-84) was born in Savona, Genoa in 1414. Becoming a Franciscan, he taught
and was chosen minister general of his order in 1464. He was made cardinal in 1467 by Pope Paul
II, whom he succeeded in 1471. Sixtus aimed at the aggrandizement of his family and of the Papal
States, subordinating his duties. In 1472, as a crusade he sent a fleet that participated in the landing
at the important Muslim stronghold of Smyrna, but a new expedition in 1473 failed. His relations
were strained with France, whose king Louis XI firmly upheld the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
(1438), which had established the liberties of the French Church. “His efforts in 1474 and 1476 to
reunite the Russian Church with Rome and to gain Russian support against the Turks were
unsuccessful. Sixtus IV soon abandoned universal interests, concentrating on Italian politics and
revealing his confirmed nepotism. His beneficiaries were members of his own family, whom he
greatly enriched and who involved him in messy disputes, perhaps the worst of which was a
conspiracy against Lorenzo de’ Medici…Out of this scandal and its counteraction, he justifiably
managed to excommunicate Lorenzo, to put Florence under interdict, and to induce King
Ferdinand I of Naples, the papacy’s ally, to declare a fruitless and inglorious war that kept Italy
confused for two years. In 1480 Lorenzo boldly made peace with Ferdinand, despite Sixtus, who
maintained war between the papacy and Florence. He finally absolved Lorenzo and removed the
interdict. Apart from meddling in feuds between the great Roman families, Sixtus IV committed
himself rather scandalously to Venice’s aggression against the duchy of Ferrara, which he incited
the Venetians to attack (1482); their combined assault was opposed by Milan, Florence, and
Naples. For refusing to desist from the hostilities that he had instigated and for appearing to be a
dangerous rival to the Papal States, Sixtus placed Venice under interdict in 1483. In ecclesiastical
affairs, Sixtus IV instituted for the Roman Church the feast (December 8) of the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He formally annulled (1478) the decrees of the Council
of Constance and condemned (1482) abuses in the Spanish Inquisition. He granted many
privileges to the mendicant orders, particularly to his own Franciscans.”125
Innocent VIII (1484-92) was born in Genoa in 1432. “Named bishop of Savona, Italy, in 1467
by Pope Paul II, he was made cardinal in 1473 by Pope Sixtus IV, whom he succeeded. His
election was manipulated by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II), whose tool
Innocent remained.” (i) Relations with the Ottoman Empire: “Bayezid II ruled as Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire from 1481 to 1512. His rule was contested by his brother Cem who sought the
support of the Mamluks of Egypt. Defeated by his brother's armies, Cem sought protection from
the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. Prince Cem offered perpetual peace between the Ottoman
Empire and Christendom. However, the sultan paid the Knights a large amount to keep Cem
captive…Cem's presence in Rome was useful because whenever Bayezid intended to launch a
military campaign against the Christian nations of the Balkans, the Pope would threaten to release
his brother. In exchange for maintaining the custody of Cem, Bayezid paid Innocent VIII 120,000
crowns, a relic of the Holy Lance, and an annual fee of 45,000 ducats. Cem died in Capua on
February 25, 1495, while on a military expedition under the command of King Charles VIII of
France to conquer Naples.” (ii) Witchcraft: On the request of German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer,
Innocent VIII issues the papal bull Summis desiderantes (1484), which supported Kramer’s
investigation against magicians and witches. (iii) Other events: In 1486 he persecuted one of the
chief exponents of Renaissance Platonism, Pico della Mirandola, by condemning his theses and
prohibiting his defense. In 1487, Innocent confirmed Tomas de Torquemada as Grand Inquisitor
of Spain. Also in 1487, Innocent issued a bull for the extermination of the Waldensians (Vaudois), offering
plenary indulgence to all who should engage in the Crusade against them. The fall of Granada in 1492 was
celebrated in the Vatican. “Innocent had two illegitimate children born before he entered the
clergy "towards whom his nepotism had been as lavish as it was shameless.”126
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Alexander VI (1492-1503), as Rodrigo Borgia, was born into the Spanish branch of the
prominent and powerful Borgia family at Valencia in 1431. Studying law at Bologna, he was
created a cardinal by his uncle, now Pope Calixtus III. As vice chancellor of the Roman Catholic
Church, Rodrigo amassed enormous wealth and, despite a severe rebuke from Pope Pius II, lived
as a Renaissance prince. He patronized the arts and fathered a number of children for whom he
provided livings, mainly in Spain. By a Roman noblewoman, he had four legitimized offspring,
making his pontificate troubled. Despite the shadow of simony that surrounded the disposal of
his benefices among the papal electors, Rodrigo rose to Pope Alexander VI in 1492. He embarked
upon a reform of papal finances and a vigorous pursuit of the war against the Ottoman Turks. The
French king Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494, threatened the pope “with disposition and the
convocation of a reform council.” Alexander refused to support the king’s claim to Naples and,
by an alliance with Milan, Venice, and the Holy Roman emperor, eventually forced the French to
withdraw from Italy.127 “In September 1493 Alexander created his teenaged son Cesare a cardinal,
along with Alessandro Farnese (the brother of the papal favorite Giulia la Bella and the future
pope Paul III). In the course of his pontificate Alexander appointed 47 cardinals to further his
complicated dynastic, ecclesiastical, and political policies. His son Juan was made duke of Gandía
(Spain) and was married to Maria Enriquez, the cousin of King Ferdinand IV of Castile; Jofré was
married to Sancia, the granddaughter of the king of Naples; and Lucrezia was given first to
Giovanni Sforza of Milan, and, when that marriage was annulled by papal decree on the grounds
of impotence, she was married to Alfonso of Aragon. Upon his assassination Lucrezia received
as a third husband Alfonso I d’Este, duke of Ferrara.” After his favorite son Juan was murdered,
he announced “a reform program and called for measures to restrain the luxury of the papal court,
reorganize the Apostolic Chancery, and repress simony and concubinage.”
Cesare Borgia, illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, resigned the cardinalate in 1498 and
married Charlotte d’Albret in order to cement the Borgia alliance with the French king Louis XII,
whose request for a marriage annulment was granted by the pope. “By a ruthless policy of siege
and assassination, Cesare brought the north of Italy under his control; he conquered the duchies
of Romagna, Umbria, and Emilia and earned the admiration of Niccolò Machiavelli, who used
Cesare as the model for his classic on politics, The Prince. In Rome, Alexander destroyed the
power of the Orsini and Colonna families and concluded an alliance with Spain, granting Isabella
and Ferdinand the title of Catholic sovereigns. In 1493, in the wake of Christopher Columbus’
epochal discoveries, and at the request of Ferdinand and Isabella, Alexander issued a bull granting
Spain the exclusive right to explore the seas and claim all New World lands lying west of a northsouth line 100 leagues (about 320 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal was granted
similar rights of exploration east of the demarcation line. This papal disposition, which was never
subsequently recognized by any other European power, was jointly amended by Spain and
Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. As a patron of the arts, Alexander erected a center
for the University of Rome, restored the Castel Sant’Angelo, built the monumental mansion of the
Apostolic Chancery, embellished the Vatican palaces, and persuaded Michelangelo to draw plans
for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica. He proclaimed the year 1500 a Holy Year of Jubilee and
authorized its celebration with great pomp. He also promoted the evangelization of the New World.
Attempts to whitewash Alexander’s private conduct have proved abortive. While his religious
convictions cannot be challenged, scandal accompanied his activities throughout his career. Even
from a Renaissance viewpoint, his relentless pursuit of political goals and unremitting efforts to
aggrandize his family were seen as excessive. Neither as corrupt as depicted by Machiavelli and
by gossip nor as useful to the church’s expansion as apologists would make him, Alexander VI
holds a high place on the list of the so-called bad popes.”128
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Julius II (1503-13), as Giuliano della Rovere, was born in Genoa in 1443 into the only brother
of Pope Sixtus IV. Educated among the Franciscans, Guiliano did not join the order, but remained
a member of the secular clergy. “In 1468 he became a Franciscan, and in 1471 Sixtus IV made
him a cardinal. In this office Giuliano displayed all of the attributes of cupidity and corruption of
an unscrupulous Renaissance prince. The Pope lavished on him six bishoprics in France and three
in Italy along with an abundance of wealthy abbeys and benefices. The Cardinal, who lacked any
interest in spiritual pursuits, became an outstanding patron of the arts…When Rodrigo Borgia,
elected pope as Alexander VI in 1492, plotted Giuliano’s assassination, Giuliano fled in 1494 to
the court of Charles VIII of France. He accompanied the French king on his expedition against
Naples in the hope that Charles would also depose Alexander VI. After accompanying Charles on
his forced return to France, Giuliano took part in Louis XII’s invasion of Italy in 1502. Alexander
VI twice attempted to seize him. Following the death of the Borgia pope in 1503, Giuliano
returned to Rome, having been 10 years in exile, and, after Pius III’s brief pontificate, was, with
the liberal help of simony, elected Pope Julius II in October 1503. Immediately after his election
he decreed that all future simoniacal papal elections would be invalid and subject to penalty.”
Julius II viewed as the main task of his pontificate the restoration of the Papal States, which
had been reduced to ruin by the Borgias. “Large portions of it had been appropriated by Venice
after Alexander VI’s death. As a first step as pope, Julius subjugated Perugia and Bologna in the
autumn of 1508. Then, in March 1509, he joined the League of Cambrai, an anti-Venetian alliance
formed in December 1508 between Louis XII, who then ruled Milan, Emperor Maximilian I,
and Ferdinand II of Spain, who had been king of Naples since 1503. The league troops defeated
Venice in May 1509 near Cremona, and the Papal States were restored. Having become an
exponent of Italian national consciousness, Julius II proposed to drive the French from Italy, but
his second war, which lasted from September 1510 to May 1511, was unsuccessful. Several
cardinals defected to Louis XII and called a schismatic council, to which Julius responded by
summoning the fifth Lateran Council. After concluding an alliance with Venice and Ferdinand II
of Spain and Naples in October 1511, he opened the council in May 1512 at the Lateran Palace.
Louis XII had defeated the troops of the alliance at Ravenna in April 1512, but the situation
changed when Swiss troops were sent to the Pope’s aid. The territories in northern Italy occupied
by the French revolted, the French left the country, and the Papal States were augmented by the
acquisition of Parma and Piacenza. Toward the end of his life, he viewed with concern the
replacement of French by Spanish efforts to attain supremacy in Italy.”129
“The enduring impact of the life of Julius II stemmed from his gift for inspiring great artistic
creations. His name is closely linked with those of such great artists as Bramante, Raphael, and
Michelangelo. With his wealth of visionary ideas, he contributed to their creativity. Following an
overall plan, he added many fine buildings to Rome and laid the groundwork in the Vatican
Museum for the world’s greatest collection of antiquities. Among the innumerable Italian churches
that benefitted from his encouragement of the arts was Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome, for which
he commissioned Andrea Sansovino to create sepulchres for a number of cardinals and
Pinturicchio to paint the frescoes in the apse. Donato Bramante became the architect of Julius’
fortifications in Latium, of the two galleries that form the Belvedere Court, and of other Vatican
buildings. Around 1503 the Pope conceived the idea of building a new basilica of St. Peter, the
first model of which Bramante created. Its foundation stone was laid on April 18, 1506…The Pope
added wisely to the church’s treasures. Although he had little of the priest in him, he was
concerned toward the end only with the church’s grandeur. He wished for greatness for the papacy
rather than for the pope, and he wished for peace in Italy.” Julius had a daughter born to Lucrezia
Normanni in 1483 after he had been made a cardinal. 130
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Leo X (1513-21) was born Giovanni de’ Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent,
in 1475. Studying theology and cannon law at the University of Pisa, in 1492 he became a member
of the Sacred College of Cardinals and attempted to take up residence in Rome. The death of his
father later brought him back to Florence, where he lived his old brother, Piero. The Cardinals,
after the death of Julius II in 1513, the Cardinals, who desired a peace-loving successor to the
warlike Julius, elected Cardinal de’ Medici as Pope Leo X. “The new pope was the personification
of Renaissance ideals. Having spent his youth at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he had acquired
the mannerisms and tastes of one of the most brilliant societies of Europe and posed a sharp
contrast to the soldier-pope whom he succeeded. He fit extremely well into the atmosphere of
calm and quiet of which Rome was desirous after 10 years under Julius II. Leo was lavish in his
spending not only of the church’s money but also of his own. Under his patronage Rome again
became the cultural center of Europe. The construction of St. Peter’s Basilica - initiated under
Julius II - was accelerated, the holdings of the Vatican Library were greatly increased, and the arts
flourished. Even the piety of the papacy was restored to some extent after the low reputation it had
reached under the Borgia popes (Calixtus III and Alexander VI). The Lantern Council, summoned
by his predecessor, was dissolved in 1517 without significant action.
“Leo X was not only the head of the Christian church but also the temporal ruler of the Papal
States and head of the Medici family that ruled the Florentine republic. To exert his influence in
Italy, he resorted to the common practice of nepotism (granting offices or benefits to relatives,
regardless of merit). He appointed his cousin Giulio de’ Medici (the future pope Clement VII) to
the influential archbishopric of Florence. He also named his younger brother Giuliano and his
nephew Lorenzo to be Roman patricians. Giuliano’s premature death in 1516 brought an end to
the pope’s plan to create a central Italian kingdom for him. On July 1, 1517, following, and as a
result of, an attempt upon his life earlier in the year, Leo named 31 new cardinals in order to secure
the support of the College of Cardinals. One cardinal, Alfonso Petrucci, was strangled in prison,
and several others were imprisoned and executed when they were implicated in the attempted
assassination.” In his struggle to dominate Italy, Leo X was confronted by the awesome power of
Spain and the determination of the French kings. Leo formed the league siding Spain providing
the major military strength. The Italian Wars continued even after his pontificate. As Charles V
led to war between France and Spain, Leo cast his lot with Spain.131
Conflict with Luther: The wars with France, his lavish support of the arts, the construction of
St. Peter’s, and a projected Crusade against the Turks all contributed to the financial needs of the
papacy. “One important source of revenue had long been the dispensing of indulgences (remission
of the temporal penalty for sins) for money. During the reign of Julius II, indulgences had been
authorized for financial contributions for the construction of St. Peter’s. Leo, who was very much
interested in continuing this work, reaffirmed the indulgence shortly after his ascent. Nevertheless,
because of its unpopularity in northern Europe, based primarily on economic reasons, it was not
until early in 1517…Martin Luther circulated his Ninety-five Theses. By the following year (1518)
Luther’s ideas had reached Rome, and Leo ordered the head of the Augustinian order, of which
Luther was a member, to silence him. When this failed, the pope tried to work through Frederick
of Saxony, but again to no avail. On June 15, 1520, Leo issued Exsurge Domini, a papal bull that
charged Luther with 41 instances of deviation from the teaching and practice of the church and
ordered him to recant within 60 days or suffer excommunication. Luther, who by this time had
gained the support of influential figures in Germany, defied the pope. Thus, Leo was left no
alternative but to issue a papal bull of excommunication on January 3, 1521. Leo had not viewed
that the Lutheran movement with the seriousness.” In December 1521 Leo dies suddenly, leaving
political and religious turmoil in Italy as well as throughout Europe. 132
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2. The Age of the Reformation: Reforms and their Impact
The seeds of the Papal States were planted in the sixth century. While the popes remained
Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, a small area, equivalent to present Latium,
became an independent state ruled by the pope. The independence of the Church, with popular
support, enabled various popes to defy the will of the Byzantine emperor. “As Byzantine power
weakened, the papacy took a large role in defending Rome from the Lombards. A climactic
moment in the founding the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the
Lombard kin Liutprand’s Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of
Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the Duchy of Rome was completely cut off from the
Byzantine Empire.” In 781 Charlemagne codified the region, of which the territory of the Papal
State was expanded to include mostly the middle of the Italian peninsula. In practice, however,
the popes were unable to exercise effective sovereignty over the extensive and mountainous
territories of the Papal States, so that the region preserved its old system of government, with many
small countships and marquistates. An anonymous Latin treatise on Imperial power on the city of
Rome suggested that the Holy Roman Emperors were vicars of the pope ruling Christendom, with
the pope directly responsible only for the environs of Rome and spiritual duties. By 1300, the
Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent. During
the Avignon Papacy, local despots took advantage of the absence of the popes to establish
themselves in nominally papal cities. During the Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly,
notably under the popes Alexander VI and Julius II. So the pope became one of Italy’s most
important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church, signing treaties with other sovereigns
and fighting wars. Thence, the Papal States included most of Central Italy – Latium, Umbria,
Marche and the Legations of Ravenna, Ferrara and Bologna, and more.133
Meanwhile, Europe was undergoing economic, political, and intellectual changes, which
undermined the structure of Latin Christianity. Religion normally thrives in an agricultural regime,
science in an industrial economy. “The growth of industry, commerce, and finance in the fifteenth
century, the passage of labor from the countryside to the town, the rise of the mercantile class, the
expansion of local to national to international economy – all were of evil omen for a faith that had
fitted in so well with feudalism and the somber vicissitudes of the fields. Businessmen repudiated
ecclesiastical restraints as well as feudal tolls; the Church had to yield, by transparent theological
jugglery, to the necessity of charging interest for loans if capital was to expand enterprise and
industry; by 1500 the old prohibition of usury was universally ignored. Lawyers and businessmen
more and more replaced churchmen and nobles in the administration of government. Law itself,
triumphantly recapturing its Roman Imperial traditions and prestige, led the march of secularization and day by day encroached on the sphere of ecclesiastical regulation of life by canon law.
Secular courts extended their jurisdiction; episcopal courts declined. The adolescent monarchies,
enriched by revenues from commerce and industry, freed themselves day by day from domination
by the Church. The kings resented the residence, in their realms, of papal legates or nuncios who
acknowledged no authority but the pope’s, and made each nation’s church a state with the state.”
Meanwhile, intellectual environment of the Church was changing due to the rise of the schools
and universities, which raised an educated minority. Moreover, the business class was the least
pious; as wealth mounts, religion decline. The failure of the Crusades had left a fading wonder
why the God of Christendom had permitted the victory of Islam, and the capture of Constantinople
by the Turks refreshed these doubts. The discovery of America and the exploitation of the East
revealed numerous nations ignoring and rejecting Christ. Philosophers and theologians in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries became boldly secular and fragrantly skeptical. 134
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-2-1. A Question to Mintmaker by Jorg Breu the Elder of Augsburg, c. 1530
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Jeorg_Breu_Elder_A_Question_to_a_Mintmaker_c1500.p
ng/220px-Jeorg_Breu_Elder_A_Question_to_a_Mintmaker_c1500.png
Photo I-2-2. Martin Luther Memorial in Worms. His statue is surrounded by the figures of his
lay protectors and earlier Church reformers: John Wycliffe, Jan Hus and Girolamo Savonarola.
http://www.nauterre.com/pages/Europe/Germany/worms-luther/worms-luther-memorialmikereed-350.jpg
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
2-1. Politics and Religion from Wycliffe to Luther: 1300-1517
The Roman Catholic Church (1300-1517): (a) Concentration of the Church Wealth: In the
Hundred Grievances, the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522-23 listed against the Church: it was alleged
that she owned half of the wealth of Germany. “A Catholic historian reckoned the Church’s share
as a third in Germany and a fifth in France; but a procurer-general of the Parlement calculated in
1502 that three quarters of all French wealth was ecclesiastical. No statics is available to check
these estimates. In Italy, of course, one third of the peninsula belonged to the Church as the Papal
State, and she owned rich properties in the rest.” This is explained by six factors as below. “(i)
Most of those who bequeathed property left something to her as fire insurance; and as the Church
controlled the making and probating of wills, her agents were in a position to encourage such
legacies. (ii) Since ecclesiastical property was safer than other property from ravage by bandits,
soldiers, or governments, some persons, for security, deeded their lands to the Church, held them
as her vassals, and surrendered all right to them at death. Others willed part or all of their property
to the Church on condition that she should provide for them in sickness or old age; in this way the
Church offered disability insurance. (iii) Crusaders had sold – or mortgaged and forfeited – lands
to the ecclesiastical bodies to raise cash for their venture. (iv) Hundreds of thousands of acres had
been earned for the Church by the reclamation work of monastic orders. (v) Land once acquired
by the Church was inalienable – could not be sold or given away by any of her personnel except
through discouragingly complex means. (vi) Church property was normally free from taxation by
the state; occasionally, however, kings reckless of damnation forced levies from the clergy, or
found legal dodges to confiscate some portion of ecclesiastical wealth. The rulers of northern
Europe might have grumbled less about the riches of the Church if the income therefrom, or the
multifarious contributions of the faithful, had remained within the national boundaries; they fretted
at the sight of northern gold flowing in a thousand streamlets to Rome.”135
(b) Simony: The Church was “the chief agent in maintaining morality, social order, education,
literature, scholarship, and art; the state relied upon her to fulfill these functions; to perform them
she needed an extensive and expensive organization; to finance this she taxed and gathered fees;
even a church could not be governed by paternosters. Many bishops were the civil as well as the
ecclesiastical rulers of their regions; most of them were appointed by lay authorities, and came of
patrician stock accustomed to easy morals and luxuries; they taxed and spent like princes;
sometimes, in the performance of their multiple functions, they scandalized the saints by donning
armor and lustily leading their troops in war. Cardinals were chosen rarely for their piety, usually
for their wealth or political connections or administrative capacity; they looked upon themselves,
not as monks burdened with vows, but as the senators and diplomats of a rich and powerful state;
in many instances they were not priests; and they did not let their red hats impede their enjoyment
of life. The Church forgot the poverty of the Apostles in the needs and expenses of power. Being
worldly, the servants of the Church were often as venal as the officials of contemporary governments. Corruption was in the mores of the time and in the nature of man; secular courts were
notoriously amenable to the persuasiveness of money, and no papal election could rival in bribery
the election of Charles V as emperor. This excepted, the fattest bribes in Europe were paid at the
Roman court. Reasonable fees had been fixed for the services of the Curia, but the cupidity of the
staff raised the actual cost to twenty times the legal sum. Dispensations could be had from almost
any canonical impediment, almost any sin, provided the inducement was adequate. Aeneas
Sylvius, before becoming pope, wrote that everything was for sale in Rome, and that nothing could
be had there without money. A generation later, monk Savonarola, with the exaggeration of
indignation, called the Church of Rome a harlot ready to sell her favors for coin.” 136
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(c) Clerical Celibacy: A favorite papal device raising funds was to sell ecclesiastical offices,
or to appoint a sine-cures or honors, even to the cardinalate, persons who would make a substantial
contribution to the expenses of the Church. “Alexander VI created eighty new offices, and
received 760 ducats from each of the appointees. Julius II formed a college or bureau of 101
secretaries, who together paid him 74,000 ducats for the privilege. Leo X nominated sixty
chamberlains and 141 squires to the papal household, and received from them 202,000 ducats.”
In thousands of cases, the appointee lived far away from the benefits, while one might be the
absentee beneficiary of several such posts. A more serious charge lay in the personal morality of
the clergy. Of the four orders of friars founded in the thirteenth century – Franciscans, Dominicans,
Carmelites, and Augustinians – all but the last had become scandalously lax in piety and discipline.
“The monastic rules formulated in the fervor of early devotion proved too rigorous for a human
nature increasingly freed from supernatural fears. Absolved by their collective wealth from the
necessity of manual labor, thousands of monks and friars neglected religious services, wandered
outside their walls, drank in taverns, and pursued amours. There were numerous cases of moral
problems. “They never fear nor love God; they have no thought of the life to come, preferring
their fleshly lusts to the needs of the soul.” “The lack of rule in the monasteries of France and the
immodest life of the monks have come to such a pitch that neither kings, princes, nor the faithful
at large have any respect left for them.” “The chief sin of the simple parish priest was his ignorance,
but he was too poorly paid and hard worked to have funds or time for study, and the piety of the
people suggests that he was often respected and loved. Violations of sacerdotal bow of chastity
were frequent…Thousands of priests had concubines; in Germany nearly all. In Rome it was
assumed that priests kept concubines.” The Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Basel in 1431
argued that the marriage of the clergy would improve public morals. 137
(d) The Sale of Indulgences: “Through the powers apparently delegated by Christ to Peter, by
Peter to bishops, and by bishops to priests, the clergy were authorized to absolve a confessing
penitent from the guilt of his sins and from their punishment in hell, but not from doing penance
for them on earth…On the other hand, many saints, by their devotion and martyrdom, had earned
merits probably in excess of the penances due to their sins; Christ by his death had added an
infinity of merits; these merits, said the theory of the Church, could be conceived as a treasury on
which the pope might draw to cancel part or all of the temporal penalties incurred and underperformed by absolved penitents. Usually the penances prescribed by the Church had taken the
form of repeating prayers, giving alms, making pilgrimage to some sacred shrine, joining the
Crusade against the Turks or other infidels, or donating money or labor to social projects like
draining a swamp, building a road, bridge, hospital, or church. The substitution of money fine for
punishment was a long-established custom in secular courts; hence no furor was caused by the
early application of the idea to indulgences. A shriven penitent, by paying such a fine – i.e., making
a money contribution – to the expenses of the Church, would receive a partial or plenary
indulgence, not to commit further sins, but to escape a day, a month, a year in purgatory, or all the
time he might have had to suffer there to complete his penance for his sins. An indulgence did
not cancel the guilt of sins; this, when the priest absolved a contrite penitent, was forgiven in the
confessional. An indulgence, therefore, was the remission, by the Church, of part or all of the
temporal (i.e., not eternal) penalties incurred by sins whose guilt had been forgiven in the
sacrament of penance.” As purveyors were allowed to retain a percentage of the receipts, some
of them omitted to insist on repentance, confession, and prayer: “I care not how many evils I do
in God’s sight, for I can easily get plenary remission of all guilt and penalty by an absolution and
indulgence granted me by the pope, whose written grant I have bought for four or six pence, or
have won as a stake of a game of tennis with the pardoner.” 138
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The popes repeatedly condemned these misconceptions and abuses, but they were too pressed
for revenue to practice effective control. “They issued bulls so frequently, and for so confusing a
variety of causes, that men of education lost faith in the theory, and accused the Church of
shamelessly exploiting human credulity and hope.” In some cases, the official wording lent itself
to the purely monetary interpretation. A historian sums up the matter of their abuses as follows:
“Nearly all abuses connected with indulgences rose from this, that the faithful, after frequenting
the sacrament of penance as the recognized condition for gaining the indulgence, found themselves
called on to make an offering of money in proportion to their means. This offering for good works,
which should have been only accessory was in certain cases made into the chief condition…The
need of money, instead of good of souls, became only too often the end of the indulgence…Though
in the working of the bulls the doctrine of the Church was never departed from, and confession,
contrition, and definitely prescribed good works were made the condition for gaining the
indulgence, still the financial side of the matter was always apparent, and the necessity for making
offerings of money was placed most scandalously in the foreground. Indulgences took more and
more the form of a monetary arrangements, which led to many conflicts with the secular powers,
who were always demanding a share of the proceeds.” Alost as mercenary as the sale of
indulgences was the acceptance or solicitation, by the clergy, of money payments, grants, legacies,
for the saying of Masses supposed to reduce a dead soul’s term of punishment in purgatory. “Large
sums were devoted to this purpose by pious people, either to relieve a departed relative or friend,
or to shorten or annul their own purgatorial probation after death. The poor complained that
through their inability to may for Masses and indulgences it was the earthly rich, not the meek,
who would inherit the kingdom of heaven; and Columbus ruefully praised money because, he said,
he who possesses it has the power of transporting souls into paradise.”139
(e) The Legal Privilege of the Clergy: “Many of the laity resented the exemption of the clergy
from the laws of the state, and the dangerous lenience of ecclesiastical courts to ecclesiastical
offenders. The Nuremberg Diet of 1522 declared that no justice could be had by a lay plaintiff
against a clerical defendant before a spiritual tribunal, and warned that unless the clergy were
subjected to secular courts, there would be an uprising against the Church in Germany; the uprising,
of course, had then already begun. Further complaints alleged the divorce of religion from
morality, the emphasis laid on orthodox belief rather than on good conduct, the absorption of
religion in ritual, the useless idleness and presumed sterility of monks, the exploitation of popular
credulity through bogus relics and miracles, the abuse of excommunication and interdict, the
censorship of publications by the clergy, the espionage and cruelty of the Inquisition, the misuse,
for other purposes, of funds contributed for crusades against the Turks, and the claim of a
deteriorated clergy to be the sole administrators of every sacrament except baptism.” 140
All the above factors entered into the anti-clericalism of Roman Catholic Europe at the
beginning of the sixth century. “The contempt and hatred of the laity for the degenerate clergy
was no mean factor in the great apostasy. A London bishop complained in 1515 that the people
be so maliciously set in favor of heretical privity that they will…condemn any cleric, though he
were innocent as Abel. Among laymen, Erasmus reported, the title of clerk or priest or monk was
a term of bitter insult. In Vienna the priesthood, once the most desired of all careers, received no
recruits in the twenty years preceding the Reformation.” Throughout Latin Christendom, men
cried out for a reform of the Church in head and members. Passionate Italians had attacked
ecclesiastical abuses without ceasing to be Catholics, but some of them had been burned at the
stake. The councils tried to reform the Church, but were defeated by the popes. Denunciations of
the Church’s shortcomings mounted in the memory and resentment of men, until the dam of
reverence and tradition burst, and Europe was swept by a religious revolution. 141
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England (1308-1509): (a) John Wycliffe (1330-84): What were the conditions that led
England to rehearse the Reformation? Was it clerical morality or a flow of fund? The clergy
insisted that no tax could be laid upon them without their consent. “Besides being represented by
the Upper House of Parliament by their bishops and abbots, they gathered in convocations under
the archbishop of Canterbury and York, and they determined there all matters dealing with religion
of the clergy. It was usually from the ranks of the clergy, as the best-educated class in England,
that the king chose the highest officials of the state. Suits of laymen against clergymen, touching
Church property, were subject to the king’s courts, but the bishops’ courts had sole jurisdiction
over tonsured offenders. In many towns the Church leased property to tenants and claimed full
judicial authority over these tenants, even when they committed crimes. Such conditions were
irritating, but the major irritant was the flow of wealth from the English Church to the popes – i.e.,
in the fourteenth century, to Avignon – i.e., to France. It was estimated that more English money
went to the pope than to the state or king…In 1333 Edward III (1327-77) refused to pay any longer
the tribute that King John of England had pledged to the popes in 1213. In 1351 the Statute of
Provisors sought to end papal control over the personnel or revenues of English benefices. The
First Statute of Praemunire (1353) outlawed Englishmen who sued on foreign (papal) courts on
matters claimed by the king to lie under secular jurisdiction. In 1376 the Commons officially
complained that papal collectors in England were sending great sums of money to the pope, and
that absentee French cardinals were drawing rich revenues from English sees.” 142
John Wycliffe (1320-84) was the first of the English reformers. He was born at Hipswell in
north Yorkshire, studied at Oxford, became professor of theology there, and was Master of Balliol
College for a year. He was ordained to the priesthood, and received from the popes various
benefices or livings in parish churches, but continued meanwhile to teach at the University. “His
literary activity was alarming. He wrote vast scholastic treatises on metaphysics, theology, and
logic, two volumes of polemics, four of sermons, and a medley of short but influential tracts…
Most of his compositions were in graceless and impenetrable Latin that should have made them
harmless to any but grammarians. But hidden among these obscurities were explosive ideas that
almost severed Britain from the Roman Church 155 years before Henry VII, plunged Bohemia
into civil war, and anticipated nearly all the reform ideas of John Huss and Martin Luther.”
Wycliffe wrote, God gives His grace to whomever He wishes, and had predestined each
individual, an eternity before birth, to be lost or saved through all eternity. Good works do not
win salvation, but they indicate that he who does them has received divine grade and is one of the
elect. We act according to the disposition that God has allotted to us; to invert Heraclitus, our fate
is our character. Only Adam and Eve had free will, by their disobedience they lost it for
themselves and for their posterity…Hence the relationship of man to God is direct, and requires
no intermediary; any claim of Church or priest to be a necessary medium must be repelled. In this
sense all Christians are priests, and need no ordination. God holds dominion over all the earth and
the contents thereof; a human being can justly hold property only as His obedient vassal. Anyone
who is in a state of sin – which constitutes rebellion against the Divine Sovereign – loses all right
of possession, for rightful possession (dominion) requires a state of grade. Now it is clear from
Scripture that Christ intended His Apostles, their successors, and their ordained delegates to have
no property. Any Church or priest that owns property is violating the Lord’s commandment, is
therefore in a state of sin, and consequently cannot validly administer the sacraments. The reform
most needed in Church and clergy is their complete renunciation of worldly goods.” Wycliffe thus
deduced a theological communism and anarchism. “Private property and government are results
of Adam’s sin, and man’s inherited sinfulness; in a society of universal virtue, there would be no
individual ownership, no man-made laws of either Church or state.”143
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In 1374 Edward III gave him the rectory of Lutterworth, regaining fee; in July 1376, Wycliffe
was appointed to the royal commission sent to Bruges to discuss with papal agents the continued
refusal of England to pay the tribute. When John of Gaunt proposed that the government should
confiscate part of the Church’s property, he invited Wycliffe to defend the proposal in a series of
sermons in London; Wycliffe complied, and was thereafter branded by the clerical party as a tool
of Gaunt. Bishop Courtenay of London decided to attack Gaunt indirectly by indicting Wycliffe
as heretic. The preacher was summoned to appear before the council of prelates at St. Paul’s in
February 1377.” He was protected by John of Gaunt and returned unhurt to Oxford. In May,
Gregory XI issued bulls condemning eighteen propositions, mostly from the treatise On Civil
Dominion. “By this time, Wycliffe had won the support not only of John of Gaunt and Lord Percy
of Northumberland but of a large body of public opinion as well. The Parliament that met in
October was strongly anticlerical. The argument for disendowment of the Church had charms for
many members, who reckoned that if the King should seize the wealth now held by English
bishops, abbots, and priors, he could maintain with it fifteen earls, 1500 knights, 6,200 squires,
and have £ 20,000 a year left for himself. At this time, France was preparing to invade England,
and the English treasury was almost empty; how foolish it seemed to let papal agents collect funds
from English parishes for a French pope and a college of cardinals overwhelmingly French!...
Against the contention that the English Church was part of, and should obey, the universal or
Catholic Church, Wycliffe recommended the ecclesiastical independence of England.”
After the Parliament adjourned, the embattled bishops published the condemnatory bulls, and
bade the chancellor of Oxford to enforce the Pope’s order of arrest. Since half of the faculty
supported Wycliffe, at least in his right to express his opinions, the chancellor of Oxford refused
to obey the bishops, and denied the authority of any prelate over the university in matters of belief;
meanwhile he counseled Wycliffe to remain in modest seclusion for a while. In March 1378, he
appeared before the bishop’s assembly to defend his views. In the midst of the proceedings, a
crowd forced its way in from the street and declared that the English people would not tolerate
any Inquisition in England. Yielding to this combination of government and populace, the bishops
deferred decision, and Wycliffe returned home unhurt. Soon Gregory XI died, and a few months
later the Papal Schism divided and weakened the papacy. Wycliffe resumed his offense.
Wycliffe viewed that prelate deceive men by feigned indulgences or pardons, and rob them
cursedly of their money, and men be great fools that buy these bulls of pardon do dear; that the
crimes of the clergy should be punishable by secular courts; and that the simony of the court of
Rome does most harm, for it is most common, and under most color of holiness, and robs most
our land of men and treasure. Wycliffe saw that the solution of problem lay in separating the
Church from all material possessions and power: Christ and his Apostles had lived in poverty; so
should his priests. “If the clergy will not dis-endow themselves by a voluntary return to evangelical
poverty, the state should step in and confiscate their goods.” He said that the state should consider
itself supreme in all temporal matters and should take control of all ecclesiastical property. Priest
should be ordained by the king. He doubted the validity of a sacrament administered by a sinful
or heretical priest. Wycliffe denied transubstantiation and reaffirmed his view in a Confessio of
1381. “A month later social revolution flared out in England, and frightened all property owners
into discountenancing any doctrine that threatened any form of property, lay or ecclesiastical.
Wycliffe now lost most of his backing in the government, and the assassination of Archbishop
Sudbury by the rebels promoted his most resolute enemy, Bishop Courtenay, to the primacy of
England.” King Richard II ordered the chancellor to expel Wycliffe and all his adherents. He
retired to his living at Letterworth. In 1384 he was summoned to appear in Rome, but the ailing
reformer suffered a paralytic stroke, and died three days later. 144
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(b) The Peasants’ Revolt 1381: The Black Death beginning in 1348 resulted in a rapid decline
of the population by a third to a half, and the shortage of labor raised wages and the excess of idle
land reduced rent rapidly. The plague collaborated with the Hundred Years’ War to expedite the
fall of the manorial system. “Many peasants, having lost their children or other aids, deserted their
tenancies for the towns; landowners were obliged to hire free workers at twice the former wage,
to attract new tenants with easier terms than before, and to commute feudal services into money
payments.” As the landlords appealed to the government to stabilize wages, the Royal Council
responded with ordinances to control wages and labor affairs, but employers and employees
mostly disregarded them. The rebellion that ensued had a dozen sources. “Those peasants who
were still serfs demanded freedom; those who were free called for an end to feudal dues still
required of them; and tenants urged that the rent of land should be lowered to four pence per acre
per year. Some towns were still subject to feudal overlords, and longed for self-government. In
the liberated communities the workingmen hated the mercantile oligarchy, and journeymen
protested against their insecurity and poverty.” On the other hand, the government was nearing
bankruptcy, while the war in France were crying out for new funds. A tax of £ 100,000 was laid
upon the people, to be collected from every inhabitant above all the age of fifteen: the poll tax of
1380 was three times higher than that of the previous years and, unlike the predecessors, taxed the
rich and the poor at the same time to finance the Hundred Year’s War. In fact, “All alike – peasants,
proletarians, even parish priests – denounce the governmental mismanagement of Edward III’s
last years, of Richard II’s earliest; they asked why English arms had so regularly been beaten after
1369, and why such heavy taxes had been raised to finance such defeat. They particularly
abominated Archbishop Sudbury and Robert Hales, the chief ministers of the young king, and
John of Gaunt as the front and protector of governmental corruption and incompetence.” 145
However, the main motivation of the peasant rebels was for the abolition of serfdom. “The
landowners of Parliament legislated to keep wages low and to restrict the free movement of serfs.
Locally, landowners in their capacity as manorial lords also tried to tighten the feudal dues that
serfs were obliged to carry out for them. Needless to say, the peasantry resented both these
measures and there were local revolts both in the decade before and after 1381. Hence, the rebels
attacked symbols of lordship and lordly authority, such as manors and manorial records.”146 All
the diverse elements of revolt were united by this fresh imposition. “Thousands of persons evaded
the collectors, and the total receipts fell far short of the goal. When the government sent new
commissioners to ferret out the evaders, the populace gathered in force and defied them; at
Brentwood the royal agents were stoned out of the town…Mass meetings of protest against the
tax were held in London; they sent encouragement to the rural rebels, and invited them to march
upon the capital, to join the insurgents there, and so press the King that there should no longer be
a serf in England.”147 From Brentwood, resistance to tax collectors spread to neighboring villages,
while across counties, armed bands of villagers and townsmen also rose up and attacked manors
and religious houses. It was the rebels of Essex and Kent who marched on London. They burned
down the Savoy Palace; set fire to the Treasurer's Highbury Manor; opened prisons and destroyed
legal records. King Richard met the rebel leader Tyler and granted nearly all demands: “Serfdom
was to be abolished throughout England, all feudal dues and services were to end, the rental of the
tenants would be as they had asked; and a general amnesty would absolve all those who had shared
in the revolt” with the confiscation of Church property and the distribution of the proceeds among
the people. At first, many citizens sympathized with the revolt, but later were disturbed by the
murders and pillage. The embittered king revoked all charters and amnesties granted by him
during the revolt, and sent the main participants to judicial inquiry. The Parliament voted that all
existing feudal relations should be maintained to keep interests of their landowners. 148
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(c) Jack Cade’s Rebellion: Through the Peasants' Revolt, as many as 7,000 alleged rebels
were executed. A new class of gentry emerged as a result of these changes, renting land from the
major nobility to farm out at a profit. The legal system continued to expand during the fourteenth
century, dealing with an ever wider set of complex problems. “By the time that Richard II was
deposed in 1399, the power of the major noble magnates had grown considerably; powerful rulers
such as Henry IV would contain them, but during the minority of Henry VI they controlled the
country. The magnates depended upon their income from rent and trade to allow them to maintain
groups of paid, armed retainers, often sporting controversial livery, and buy support amongst the
wider gentry; this system has been dubbed bastard feudalism. Their influence was exerted both
through the House of Lords at Parliament and through the king's council. The gentry and wealthier
townsmen exercised increasing influence through the House of Commons, opposing raising taxes
to pay for the French wars. By the 1430s and 1440s the English government was in major financial
difficulties, leading to the crisis of 1450 and a popular revolt under the leadership of Jack Cade.”
The Jack Cade Rebellion stemmed from local grievances concerned about the corruption and
abuse of power surrounding the king's regime and his closest advisors. Furthermore, the rebels
were angered by the debt caused by years of warfare against France and the recent loss of
Normandy. Leading an army of men from Kent and the surrounding counties, Jack Cade marched
on London in order to force the government to end the corruption and remove the traitors surrounding the king's person. Despite Cade's attempt to keep his men under control once the rebel forces
had entered London they began to loot. The citizens of London turned on the rebels and forced
them out of the city in a bloody battle on London Bridge. To end the bloodshed, the rebels were
issued pardons by the king and told to return home. The Rebellion was a reflection of the social,
political and economic issues of the time period and as a precursor to the Wars of the Roses.
(d) The Growth of Wealth: Law and order deteriorated, and the crown was unable to intervene
in the factional fighting between different nobles and their followers. The resulting Wars of the
Roses saw a savage escalation of violence between the noble leaderships of both sides: captured
enemies were executed and family lands attainted. By the time that Henry VII took the throne in
1485, England's governmental and social structures had been substantially weakened, with whole
noble lines extinguished.”149 He devoted himself to administration. “Strong individuals resented
the decline of liberty and the desuetude of Parliament; but peasants forgave much in a king who
disciplined their lords, and manufacturers and merchants thanks him for his wise promotion of
industry and trade.”150 By 1500 only 1 percent of the population were serfs. A class of yeomen
grew, tilling their own land, and gradually giving to the English commoner the sturdy independent
character that would later forge the Commonwealth and build an unwritten constitution of
unprecedented liberty. Feudalism became unprofitable as industry and commerce spread into a
national and money economy bound up with foreign trade. When the serf produced for his lord
he had scant motive for expansion or enterprise; when the free peasant and the merchant could sell
their product in the open market the lust of gain quickened the economic pulse of the nation; the
villages sent more food to the towns, the towns produced more goods to pay for it, and the
exchange of surpluses overflowed the old municipal limits and guild restrictions to cover England
and reach out beyond the sea. Some guilds became merchant companies, licensed by the King to
sell English products abroad. Whereas most English trade had been carried in Italian vessels, the
British now built their own ships, and sent them into the North Sea, the coastal Atlantic, and the
Mediterranean. The Genoese and Hanseatic merchants resented these newcomers, and fought
them with embargoes and piracy; but Henry VII, convinced that the development of England
required foreign trade, took English shipping under government protection, and arranged with
other nations commercial agreements that established maritime order and peace.
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France Survives: In the fourteenth century, life was ruinous and the morality of the people
shared in the common debacle because of the long war. “Cruelty, treachery, and corruption were
endemic. Commoner and governor were alike open to bribes. Profanity flourished; Chancellor
Gerson complained that the most sacred festivals were passed in card-playing, gambling, and
blasphemy. Sharpers, forgers, thieves, vagabonds, and beggars clogged the streets by day, and
gathered at night to enjoy their gleanings, at Paris…Sodomy was frequent, prostitution was general,
adultery was almost universal. A sect of Adamites in the fourteenth century advocated nudism,
and practiced it in public till the Inquisition suppressed them…It was taken as a matter of course
that kings and princes should have mistresses, since royal – maybe noble – marriages were
political matches involving, it was held, no due of love. Highborn ladies continued to hold formal
discussions on the casuistry of sexual relations.” “We lived in the senility of the world, and the
Last Judgment was near. An old woman thought that every twitch of pain in her toes announced
another soul heaved into hell. Her estimate was moderate; according to popular belief no one had
entered paradise in the past thirty years. What did religion to in this collapse of an assaulted nation?
In the first four decades of the Hundred Years’ War the popes, immured at Avignon, received the
protection and command of the French kings. Much of the revenues drawn from Europe by the
popes of that captivity went to those kings to finance the struggle of life and death against Britain;
in eleven years (1345-55) the Church advanced 3.392,000 florins to the monarchy. The pope tried
again and again to end the war, but failed. The Church suffered grievously from the century-long
devastation of France; hundreds of churches and monasteries were abandoned or destroyed; and
the lower clergy shared in the demoralization of the age.”151
After the French victory with new spirits and aggressive tactics of Joan of Arc, in 1435, Philip
of Burgundy, England’s ally, tired of the struggle and made a separate peace with France. His
defection weakened the hold of the English on the conquered cities of the south; one by one these
expelled their alien garrisons. In 1436 Paris itself, for seventeen years a captive, drove out the
British, and Charles VII at last ruled in his capital. In 1439 a States-General enthusiastically
supported Charles’s resolve do drive the English from French soil by empowering the King with
a famous succession of ordonnances (1443-47), to take the whole taille of France – i.e., all taxes
hitherto paid by tenants to their feudal lords; the government’s revenue now rose to 1.800,000
crowns a year. From that time onward the French monarchy, unlike the English, was independent
of the Estates’ power of the purse, and could resist the growth of a middle-class democracy. This
system of national taxation provided the funds for the victory of France over England; but as the
King could raise the rate of assessment, it became a major tool of royal oppression, and shared in
causing the Revolution of 1789. Jacques Coeur was a French merchant, one of the founders of
the trade between France and Levant. He played a leading role in these fiscal developments,
earning the admiration of many and the hatred of a powerful few. In 1451 he was arrested on a
charge – never proved – of hiring agents to position Agnes Sorel. He was condemned and banished,
and all his property was confiscated to the state. 152 By 1449 Charles VII was prepared to break
the truce that had been signed in 1444. The English were surprised and shocked. “They were
weakened by internal quarrels, and found their fading empire in France relatively as expensive to
maintain in the fifteenth century as India in the twentieth; in 1427 France cost England £ 68,000,
brought her £ 57,000. The British fought bravely but not wisely; they relied too long on archers
and stakes, and the tactics that had stopped the French cavalry at Crecy and Poitiers proved
helpless at Formigny (1450) against the cannon of Bureau. In 1449 the English evacuated more
of Normandy; in 1451 they abandoned its capital, Rouen. In 1453 the great Talbot himself was
defeated and killed at Castillon; Bordeaux surrendered; all Guienne was French again; the English
kept only Calais.” France and England signed the peace on October 19, 1453.153
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Bohemia and John Huss: (a) Bohemia: Germany was a federation, but its constituent parts
were ruled not by democratic assembly but by secular or ecclesiastical princes who acknowledged
only a limited fealty to the Holy Roman Empire. Some of these states were ruled by dukes, counts,
margraves, or other secular lords; some were politically subject to bishops or archbishops; but
nearly a hundred cities by 1460 had won charters of practical freedom from their lay or church
superiors. In each principality, delegates of three estates – noble, clergy, commons – met in a
territorial diet, that exercised some restraint through taxes on the authority of prince. By the
Golden Bull of 1356, a special Diet of Electors, consisting of the king of Bohemia, the duke of
Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, the count Palatine, and the three archbishops of Mainz,
Trier, and Cologne, chose the Holy Roman Emperor. By 1400 the Holy Roman Empire was a
loose association of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Holland, and Switzerland; while the authority
of emperor rested on tradition and prestige rather than on possessions or force. Since the Italian
peninsula had been politically under control of the empire, the conflict between emperors and
popes remained unchanged. Hence Germany challenges the papacy. For example, William of
Ockham had fled from a papa; prison in Avignon; now he offered his services to the Emperor by
saying that “Defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen.” Sigismund of
Luxemburg (1368-1437) was “Prince-elector of Brandenburg from 1378 to 1388, and from 1411
to 1415, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1387, King of Germany from 1411, King of Bohemia
from 1419, King of Italy from 1431, and Holy Roman Emperor for four years from 1433 until
1437, the last male member of the House of Luxemburg.” He was well-educated, speaking several
languages; and he was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance ending the Papal
Schism, but which also led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the later period of his life.
(b) John Huss (1369-1415): He was born of poor parents in Husinec in southern Bohemia.
About 1390 he entered the University of Prague, and two years after his graduation in 1394 he
received a master’s degree and began teaching at the university, where he became dean of the
philosophical faculty in 1401. “At this time the University of Prague was undergoing a period of
struggle against foreign, chiefly German, influence as well as an intense rivalry between, on the
one hand, German masters who upheld nominalism and were regarded as enemies of church
reform and, on the other, the strongly nationalistic Czech masters, who were inclined to realist
philosophy and were enthusiastic readers of the philosophical writings of John Wycliffe, a bitter
critic of nominalism. Hus studied Wycliffe’s works and later his theological writings, which were
brought into Prague in 1401. Hus was influenced by Wycliffe’s underlying principles, though he
never accepted their extreme implications, and was particularly impressed by Wycliffe’s proposals
for reform of the Roman Catholic clergy. The clerical estate owned about one-half of all the land
in Bohemia, and the great wealth and simoniacal practices of the higher clergy aroused jealousy
and resentment among the poor priests. The Bohemian peasantry, too, resented the church as one
of the heaviest land taxers. There was thus a large potential base of support for any church reform
movement at a time when the authority of the papacy itself was discredited by the Western Schism.
Attempts at reform had been made by the Bohemian king Charles IV, and Wycliffe’s works were
the chosen weapon of the national reform movement founded by Jan Milíč of Kroměříž (d. 1374).
In 1391 Milíč’s pupils founded the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, where public sermons were
preached in Czech in the spirit of Milíc̆’s teaching. From 1402 Hus was in charge of the chapel,
which had become the centre of the growing national reform movement in Bohemia. He became
increasingly absorbed in public preaching and eventually emerged as the popular leader of the
movement…Hus continued to teach in the university faculty of arts and became a candidate for
the doctor’s degree in theology.” Hus became the adviser to the young nobleman Zbyněk Zajíc
who was named archbishop of Prague in 1403, giving the movement a firmer foundation.154
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“In 1403 a German university master, Johann Hübner, drew up a list of 45 articles, presumably
selected from Wycliffe’s writings, and had them condemned as heretical. Because the German
masters had three votes and the Czech masters only one, the Germans easily outvoted the Czechs,
and the 45 articles were henceforth regarded as a test of orthodoxy. The principal charge against
Wycliffe’s teaching was his tenet of remanence - i.e., that the bread and wine in the Eucharist
retain their material substance. Wycliffe also declared the Scriptures to be the sole source of
Christian doctrine. Hus did not share all of Wycliffe’s radical views, such as that on remanence,
but several members of the reform party did.” As the reform leader, Hus in-hesitantly quarreled
with Archbishop Zbyněk when the latter opposed the Council of Pisa (1409). Hus refused to obey
the pope’s order, whereupon Zbyněk excommunicated him. Despite his condemnation, Hus
continued to preach at the Bethlehem Chapel and to teach at the University of Prague. Zbyněk was
ultimately forced by the king to promise Hus his support before the Roman Curia, but he then died
suddenly in 1411, and the leadership of Hus’s enemies passed to the Curia itself. “In 1412 the
case of Hus’s heresy, which had been tacitly dropped, was revived because of a new dispute over
the sale of indulgences that had been issued by Alexander’s successor, the antipope John XXIII,
to finance his campaign against Gregory XII. Their sale in Bohemia aroused general indignation
but had been approved by King Wenceslas, who, as usual, shared in the proceeds. Hus publicly
denounced these indulgences before the university and, by so doing, lost the support of Wenceslas.
This was to prove fatal to him. Hus’s enemies then renewed his trial at the Curia, where he was
declared under major excommunication for refusing to appear and an interdict was pronounced
over Prague or any other place where Hus might reside, thereby denying certain sacraments of the
church to communicants in the interdicted area. In order to spare the city the consequences, Hus
voluntarily left Prague in October 1412. He found refuge mostly in southern Bohemia in the castles
of his friends, and during the next two years he engaged in feverish literary activity.”
“With the Western Schism continuing unabated, King Sigismund of Hungary, as the newly
elected (1411) king of Germany, saw an opportunity to gain prestige as the restorer of the church’s
unity. He forced John XXIII to call the Council of Constance to find a final solution of the schism
and to put an end to all the heresies. Sigismund, therefore, sent an emissary to invite Hus to attend
the council to explain his views - an invitation Hus naturally was reluctant to accept. But when
John threatened King Wenceslas for noncompliance with the interdict, and after Sigismund had
assured Hus of safe-conduct for the journey to Constance and back, Hus finally consented to go.
He left for Constance but did not receive the safe-conduct until two days after his arrival there, in
November 1414. Shortly after arriving in Constance he was, with Sigismund’s tacit consent,
arrested and placed in close confinement, from which he never emerged. Hus’s enemies succeeded
in having him tried before the Council of Constance as a Wycliffite heretic. All that the earnest
intervention by the Bohemian nobles could obtain for him was three public hearings, at which he
was allowed to defend himself and succeeded in refuting some of the charges against him. The
council urged Hus to recant in order to save his life, but to the majority of its members he was a
dangerous heretic fit only for death. When he refused to recant, he was solemnly sentenced on
July 6, 1415, and burned at the stake…During his exile in 1412–14, Hus substituted for his popular
preaching in Prague a series of writings in Czech; these have since become classics of Czech
literature and are equally important in the history of the Czech language, because Hus developed
a new and simpler orthography. The most important of these works is his popular tract Vyklad
viery, desatera a patere (Exposition of the Faith, of the Ten Commandments, and of the Lord’s
Prayer). Hus’s writings in Czech and Latin include other religious tracts, learned treatises and
lectures, collections of his sermons, and personal letters.”155
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(c) The Bohemian Revolution (1415-36): The news of Huss’s death, relayed by couriers to
Bohemia, aroused a national revolt. “An assembly of Bohemian and Moravian nobles sent to the
Council of Constance a document signed by 500 leading Czechs; it upheld Huss as a good and
upright Catholic, denounced his execution as an insult to his country, and proclaimed that the
signatories would fight to the last drop of their blood to defend the doctrines of Christ against
man-made decrees. A further declaration pledged the members to obey thereafter only such papal
commands as agreed with Scripture; the judges of such agreement were to be the faculty of the
University of Plague. The university itself hailed Huss as a martyr, and praised the imprisoned
Jerome. The Council summoned the rebellious nobles to appear before it and answer charges of
heresy; note came. It ordered the university closed; the majority of masters and students went on
with their work…After Huss’s death the University of Prague and the nobles, led by Queen Sophia,
adopted lay communion in both kinds as a command of Christ, and the chalice became the symbol
of the Utraquist revolt. The followers of Huss formulated in 1420 the Four Articles of Prague as
their basic demands: that the Eucharist should be given in wine as well as bread; that ecclesiastical
simony should be promptly punished; that the Word of God should be preached without hindrance
as the sole standard of religious truth and practice; and that an end should be put to the ownership
of extensive material possessions by priests or monks. A radical minority among the rebels
rejected the veneration of relics, capital punishment, purgatory, and Masses for the dead. All the
elements of the Lutheran Reformation were present in this Hussite revolt.” 156
King Wenceslaus, who had sympathized with the movement, possible because it promised to
transfer church property to the state, now began to fear it as threatening civil as well as ecclesiastical authority. “On July 30, 1419, a Hussite crowd paraded into New Town, forced its way into
the council chamber, and threw the councilors out of the windows into the street, where another
crowd finished them off. A popular assembly was organized, which elected Hussite councilors.
Wenceslaus confirmed the new council, and then died of a heart attack. The Bohemian nobles
offered to accept Sigismund as their king if he would recognize the Four Articles of Prague. He
countered by demanding from all Czechs full obedience to the Church, and burned at the stake a
Bohemian who refused to renounce the lay chalice. The new pope, Martin V, announce a crusade
against the Bohemian heretics, and Sigismund advanced with a large force against Prague (1420).
Almost overnight the Hussites organized an army…Twice they defeated Sigismund’s troops…
Meanwhile, and for seventeen years (1419-36), Bohemia survived without a king.”157
The native Bohemians resented the wealth and arrogance of the German settlers, and hoped
to drive them from the country. “The nobles coveted ecclesiastical properties, and thought them
worth an excommunication. The proletariat aspired to free itself from middle-class masters. The
middle classes hoped to raise their modest power, as against the nobility, in the Diet that ruled
Prague and gave some government to Bohemia. The serfs, especially on church estates, dreamed
of dividing those blessed acres, and, at worst, of freeing themselves from villain bonds. Some of
the lower clergy, fleeced by the hierarchy, give the rebellion their tacit support, and provided for
it the religious services interdicted by the Church. When the arms of the Hussite had won them
most of Bohemia, the contradictions in their aims broke them into fratricidal factions. After the
nobles had seized most of the property owned by orthodox ecclesiastical groups, they felt that the
revolution should subside and invite the sanctifying effects of time.” In the town of Tabor another
party of Hussite formed, who held that real Christianity required a communistic organization of
life: “all is held in common, no one owns anything for himself alone; so to own is considered a
deadly sin.” In 1436 the Bohemian Diet made its peace with Sigismund, and accepted him as king,
but he died in the following year. In 1485 the Catholic and Utraquist parties signed the Treaty of
Kutna Hora, pledging themselves to peace for thirty years. 158
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The Challenge of Mysticism and Humanism: Italian humanism spread to north of the Alps
through intellectuals and artists who went Italy and returned home with enthusiastic mind about
the recovery of ancient thought and writings with advanced education. In Germany and the
Netherlands, humanism was more profoundly related to mysticism. Being interested in the
Scriptures and the writings of early Christianity, through education in the sources of religious
antiquity, they built up a true inner piety which brought about a reform of the church and society.
Martin Luther began to challenge the Catholic Church and the pope by his ninety-five theses, and
courageously defended his writings in front of the emperor and princes of Germany at Worms in
1521. The rising Lutheranism generated new forms of religious practices, doctrines, and organizations of Zwinglianism, Anabaptism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism; which stimulated the reform
of Rome (to be discussed later). German mysticism was successfully transplanted into the
Netherlands in the fifteenth century, and their inhabitants were deeply influenced by the new
religious movement. Gerard Groote (1340-1384) was born in Deventer in the Netherlands, studied
at Aachen, then went to the University of Paris to learn scholastic philosophy and theology under
William of Ockham. After graduation in 1358, he was appointed teacher at the Deventer in 1362.
After recovering from a serious illness, in 1374, Groote turned his family home in Deventer into
a shelter for poor women and lived for several year as a guest of a Carthusian monastery. In 1379,
having received ordination as a deacon, he became a missionary preacher throughout the diocese
of Utrecht. “The bishop of Utrecht supported him warmly, and got him to preach against
concubinage in the presence of the clergy assembled in synod. The impartiality of his censures,
which he directed not only against the prevailing sins of the laity, but also against heresy, simony,
avarice, and impurity among the secular and regular clergy, provoked the hostility of the clergy,
and accusations of heterodoxy were brought against him.”159
Founding the Brethren of the Common Life at Zwolle, Groote and his disciples founded a
monastery in 1387 that became the cradle of the Windesheim Congregation of canons regular
embracing in course of time nearly one hundred houses, and leading the way in the series of
reforms undertaken during the 15th century by all the religious orders in Germany. Henceforth
his communities were spreading through the Netherlands, Lower Germany, and Westphalia,
claimed and received all his attention. “He contemplated organizing his clerics into a community
of canons regular, but it was left to Radewyns, his successor…A movement known as the Modern
Devotion was founded in the Netherlands by Groote and Florens Radewyns, in the late fourteenth
century. For Groote the pivotal point is the search for inner peace, which results from the denial
of one's own self and is to be achieved by ardor and silence. This is the heart of the New Devotion.
Solitary meditation on Christ’s Passion and redemption, on one’s own death, the Last Judgment,
heaven, and hell was essential. In the course of the 15th century, the Modern Devotion found
adherents throughout the Netherlands and Germany. Its precepts were further disseminated in texts
such as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, which reached an increasingly literate public.
In this context small works of art such as diptychs that provided a focus for private worship
enjoyed wide popularity.”160 Thus, the early mystical movement was in criticizing corruption and
secularism of the church, and stressing inner piety and communion with God. Constituting no
regular religious orders, they established schools throughout Germany and the Netherlands, and
educated their students to imitate the life of Christ by serving others. The quest for a tranquil
spirituality became a popular mystical movement as the other form of religious piety. As
humanistic idea spread widely into Europe, humanism combined with elements of piety affected
intellectual climate of the time. The northern Renaissance humanists were “Christian humanists”
because of their preoccupation with religion. They focused on the sources of early Christianity,
the Holy Scriptures, and the writings of church fathers, which led them to master Greek.
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Christian humanists coexisted with the scholastic theologians, who were against changes.
Despite the opposition of the deeply rooted conservatives, they were largely supported by all
directions of society. Believing in the ability of human being to reason, they improved themselves and could gradually introduce a true inner piety into Christian faith. They translated the
classics into native languages, and prepared new editions of the Bible and writings of the Christian
fathers. Christian humanists believed that the change of society came from the change of people
who composed it, which was possible through education. The leading intellectuals and humanists
believed that religious reform was necessary to remove the shortcomings of society and to
revitalize Christianity with humanist endeavors. The religious reformation movement was so
enthusiastic and widespread that popes feared their expansion that might weaken the control of
Rome. The demand for reformation against religious dominance with papal corruption had been
accumulated, exploded, and advanced by combined forces of politics, economy, and society of the
states. Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471) was a Dutch cannon regular: born in Kempen of Germany,
studied in Deventer of the Netherlands, and entered Augustinian monastery school and was
ordained a priest in 1413. He turned his passion from copying manuscripts toward writing The
Image of Christ, the first handwritten copy of which was anonymously circulated around 1418. It
was finally printed in 1471, and remains one of the most frequently read Christian works, except
the Bible. It consists of four books emphasizing the teaching of Christ in the Bible: thought of
helpful in the life of the soul, the interior life, internal consolation, and an invitation to Holy
Communion. “The teach of Christ is more excellent than all the advice of the saints, and he who
has His sprit will find in it a hidden manna. Now, there are many who hear the Gospel often but
care little for it because they have not the spirit of Christ. Yet whoever wishes to understand fully
the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ.” 161
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1436) was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social
critic, teacher, and theologian. He was a classic scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style, and has
been called “the crowning glory of the Christian humanists.” Born in Rotterdam, South Holland,
he received the highest education available to a young man of his day in a series of monastic or
semi-monastic schools. He chose the Augustinian canons regular at Steyn, near Gouda, where he
seems to have remained about seven years (1485–92). After his ordination to the priesthood in
1492, he was happy to escape the monastery by accepting a post as Latin secretary to the bishop
of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen. Since Erasmus was not suited to a courtier’s life, nor did things
improve much, the bishop was induced to send him to the University of Paris to study theology
(1495). Disliking the quasi-monastic studies, Erasmus inclined to classical studies; to support his
studies, he began taking in pupils. In 1499 his pupil, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, invited him
to England, where he met Thomas More, then only twenty-two. At Oxford, he was almost as
charmed by the informal companionship of students and faculty as he had been by the embraces
of country-house divinities. Erasmus was impressed by the progress of humanism in England:
“When I hear my Colet I seem to be listening to Plato himself.” In 1500, he returned to Paris and
published the Adages, an anthology of ancient proverbs from classical authors, with several
revisions which became one of the best sellers of its time. In his Handbook of the Christian Knight
of 1503, he emphasizes that inner piety is more important than the external forms of religion such
as the sacraments, pilgrimages, fasts, veneration of saints, and relics. It was like a manifesto of lay
piety in its assertion that monasticism is not piety. By Henry VIII’s invitation, Erasmus stayed in
England five years until 1514. In the home of Thomas More, he wrote The Paradise of Folly in
1509 and published it in Paris in 1511, in which Erasmus humorously criticizes corrupt society
through Folly who dominates the human affairs as a main character. With its forty editions in his
lifetime, as late as 1632, Milton found it in everyone’s hand at Cambridge.
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The Paradise of Folly moves “to criticize various academic and social classes. She begins
with lawyers and doctors and then moves to philosophers, gamblers, hunters, superstitious folk,
authors of books, poets, businessmen, grammarians, men obsessed with their lineage and ancestry,
artists and performers, and even nations and cities themselves.” Folly argues that “as for the popes,
who act in Christ’s place, if they tried to imitate his way of life....So much wealth, honor, power,
so many victories, offices, dispensations, taxes, indulgences, so many horses, mules, retainers, so
many pleasures! These would be replaced by vigils, fasts, tears, prayers, sermons, studies, sighs,
and thousands of such wretched labors. Nor should we neglect another point: so many scribes,
copyists, notaries, advocates, ecclesiastical prosecutors, so many secretaries, mule-curriers,
stableboys, official bankers, pimps, in short, the huge mass of humanity....the see of Rome would
be turned out to starve. Certainly an inhuman and monstrous crime! ” Thus, Erasmus showed a
new boldness in commenting on the ills of Christian society - popes who in their warlike ambition
imitated Caesar rather than Christ; princes who hauled whole nations into war to avenge a personal
slight; and preachers who looked to their own interests by pronouncing the princes’ wars just or
by nurturing superstitious observances among the faithful. To remedy these evils Erasmus looked
to education. In particular, the training of preachers should be based on the philosophy of Christ
rather than on scholastic methods. In 1516, Erasmus first published the New Testaments in Greek
based on recently discovered manuscripts with critical notes, and secondly a new Latin translation,
which made him the father of the Reformation. He mentioned that “My mind is so excited at the
thought of emending Jerome’s text, with notes, that I seem to myself inspired by some god. I have
already almost finished emending him by collating a large number of ancient manuscripts, and
this I am doing at enormous personal expense.” With his New Testament, Erasmus believed that
if the Gospel were truly preached, the Christian people would be spared many wars. 162
“Martin Luther's movement began in the year following the publication of the New Testament
and tested Erasmus' character. The issues between growing religious movements, which would
later become known as Protestantism, and the Catholic Church had become so clear that few could
escape the summons to join the debate. Erasmus, at the height of his literary fame, was inevitably
called upon to take sides, but partisanship was foreign to his nature and his habits. In all his
criticism of clerical follies and abuses, he had always protested that he was not attacking the
Church itself or its doctrines, and had no enmity toward churchmen. The world had laughed at his
satire, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work so far had commended
itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world. Erasmus described
Luther as “a mighty trumpet of gospel truth while agreeing that “It is clear than many of the
reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed.” He had great respect for Luther, and Luther
spoke with admiration of Erasmus’s superior learning. However, Erasmus declined to commit
himself, arguing that to do so would endanger his position as a leader in the movement for pure
scholarship which he regarded as his purpose of life. Continuously attacking the evils and errors
of the church authorities, Erasmus had no intention to destroy the unity of the church: he declared
his theological position against Luther in his Discourse on Free Will of 1524.163 Certain works of
Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration. Opposing certain views of Martin Luther, he
concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors.
Although Erasmus did not oppose the punishment of heretics, in individual cases he generally
argued for moderation and against the death penalty: it is better to cure a sick man than to kill
him.164 “The Catholic Counter-Reformation movement often condemned Erasmus as having laid
the egg that hatched the Reformation. Their critique of him was based principally on his not being
strong enough in his criticism of Luther, not seeing the dangers of a vernacular Bible and dabbling
in dangerous scriptural criticism that weakened the Church's arguments against Arianism…”165
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Germany on the Eve of Luther (1453-1517): (a) Economy and Finance: In the half century
before the Reformation, all classes in Germany prospered except the knights. “Probably it was
the rising status of the peasants that sharpened their resentment against surviving disabilities. A
few were bondsmen, a minority were proprietors, the great majority were tenant farmers paying
rent to feudal lords in produce, services, or money. The tenant complained of the lord’s exactions;
of the twelve – in some case sixty – days of labor which custom required them to give him yearly;
of his withdrawal of land from the Allgemeine or commons in which tradition had allowed them
to fish, cut timber, and pasture their animals; of the damage done to crops by the lord’s huntsmen
and hounds; of biased administration of justice in the local courts which the landlords controlled;
and of the death tax laid upon the tenant family when the passing of its head interrupted the care
of the land. Peasant proprietors raged at the usurious rates they had to pay form loans to move
their crops, and at the quick foreclosure of farms by clever money lenders who had made loans to
owners obviously unable to repay. All classes of tillers grudged the annual tithe levied by the
Church on their harvests and broods. These discontents ignited agrarian revolts sporadically
throughout the fifteenth century. In 1431 the peasants around Worms rose in futile rebellions.
They chose as their standard a farmer’s shoe…Bundschub became the favorite title of rebel rural
bands. In 1476 a cowherd, Hand Böhm, announced that the Mother of God had revealed to him
that the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was at hand. There should be no more emperors, popes,
princes, or feudal lords; all men were to be brothers, all women sisters; all were to share alike in
the fruits of the earth; lands, woods, waters, pastures, were to be common and free. Thousands of
peasants came to hear Hans; a priest joined him…But when Hans told his followers to bring to the
next meeting all the weapons they could muster, the bishop had him arrested; the bishop’s soldiers
fired into the crowd that tried to save him; and the movement collapsed.”166
“In 1491 the peasants on the domain of the abbot of Kempten in Alsace attacked his monastery,
alleging that they were being forced into serfdom by forged documents; the Emperor Frederick III
effected a compromise. Two years later the feudatories of the bishop of Strasburg proclaimed the
Bundshub; they demanded an end to feudal dues and ecclesiastical tithes, the abolition of all debts,
and the death of all Jews…In 1502 the peasants of the bishop of Speyer formed a Bundschub of
7,000 men pledged to end feudalism, to hunt out and kill all priests and monks, and to restore what
they believed to have been the communism of their ancestors. A peasant revealed the scheme in
the confessional; ecclesiastics and nobles joined in circumventing it; the main conspirators were
tortured and hanged. In 1512 Joss Fritz secretly organized a similar movement near Freiburg-imBreisgau; God, the pope, and the emperor were to be spared, but all feudal ownership and dues
were to be abolished…the authorities arrested and tortured the leaders…In 1517 a league of 90,000
peasants in Styria and Carinthia undertook to end feudalism there: for three months their bands
attacked castles and slew lords; finally Emperor Maximilian, who sympathized with their cause
but rebuked their violence, sent against them a small force of soldiery, which subdued them into
sullen peace. But the stage was set for the Peasants’ War, and the Anabaptist communism, of
Reformation Germany. Meanwhile a more matter-of-fact revolution was proceeding in German
industry and commerce. Most industry was still handicraft, but it was increasingly controlled by
entrepreneurs who provided material and capital, and bought and sold the finished product. The
mining industry was making rapid progress; great profits were drawn from mining silver, copper,
and gold; gold and silver bullion now became a favorite means of storing wealth; and the royalties
paid for mining rights to territorial princes – especially to the elector of Saxony who protected
Luther – enable some them to resist both pope and emperor. Reliable silver coins were minted,
currency multiplied, the passage to a money economy was almost complete. Silver plate became
a common possession in the middle and upper classes.”167
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The financiers were now a major political power. “The Jewish money-lenders of Germany
were displaced by the Christian family-firms of the Welsers, the Hochstetters, and the Fuggers –
all of Augsburg, which, at the end of the fifteenth century, was the financial capital of Christendom.
Johannes Fuggers, a weaver’s son, became a textile merchant, and left at his death (1409) a small
fortune of 3,000 florins. His son Jakob expanded the business; when he died (1469) his wealth
ranked seventh in Augsburg. Jakob’s sons Ulrich, Georg, and Jakob II raised the firm to
supremacy by advancing money to the princes of Germany, Austria, and Hungary in return for the
revenue of mines, lands, or cities. From these speculative investments, the Fuggers derived
immense profits, so that by 1500 they were the richest family in Europe. Jakob II was the
culminating genius of the family, enterprising, ruthless, and industrious…He formed cartels with
other firms to control the price and sale of various products; so in 1498 he and his brothers entered
into an agreement with Augsburg merchants to corner the Venetian market in copper and uphold
the price. In 1488 the family lent 150,000 florins to Archduke Sigismund of Austria, and as
security it received the entire yield of the Schwarz silver mines until the debt should be repaid. In
1492 the Fuggers intermarried with the Thurzos of Cracow in a cartel to work the silver and copper
mines of Hungary, and to maintain the highest possible prices for the products. By 1501 the
Fuggers were operating vast mining enterprises in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and
Spain. In addition they imported and manufactured textiles; they traded in silks, velvets, furs,
spices, citrus fruits, munitions, jewelry; they organized express transportation and a private postal
service. By 1511, when Jakob II became sole head of the firm, its assets reached 196,791 builders;
by 1527 (two years after his death) its capital was reckoned at 2,021,202 guilders ($50 million?)
– a profit of 50 percent per year through sixteen years.”168
Part of this profit came from the Fuggers’ relations with emperors and popes. “Ulrich Fugger
made loans to Frederick III; Jakob II became chief broker to Maximilian I and Charles V; the vast
extension of the Habsburg power in the sixteenth century was made possible by Fugger loans…In
his final years Jakob Fugger was the most honored and unpopular citizen in Germany. Some
Catholics attacked him as a usurer; some nobles for out-bribing them in the pursuit of office or
power; some merchants for his enviable monopolies; many workers for overriding medieval
regulations of trade and finance; most Protestants for managing the export of German money to
the popes. But emperors and kings, princes and prelates, sent envoys to him as to a ruler.” There
were thriving hubs of industry, commerce, letters, and arts. German cities made their own laws,
sent representatives to the provincial and Imperial diets, and acknowledged no political obedience
except to the emperor, who was too indebted to them for financial or military aid to attack their
liberties. Though they were ruled by guilds dominated by businessmen, nearly every one of them
was a paternalistic welfare state to the extent that it regulated production and distribution, wages
and prices and the quality of goods. Augsburg was not only the financial center of Germany but
also main commercial link with then flourishing Italy. “So bound to Italy, Augsburg echoed the
Italian Renaissance; its merchants supported scholars and artists, and some of its capitalists
became models of manners and culture, if not of morals.” Nuremberg was a center of arts and
crafts. “The voyages of Da Gama and Columbus, the Turkish control of the Aegean, and
Maximilian’s wars with Venice disturbed the trade between Germany and Italy. More and more
German exports and imports moved along the great rivers to the North Sea, the Baltic, and the
Atlantic; wealth and power passed from Augsburg and Nuremberg to Cologne, Hamburg, Germen,
and, above all, Antwerp. The Guggers and Welsers furthered this trend by making Anwerp a chief
center of their operations. The northward movement of German money and trade divorced
northern Germany from the Italian economy, and made it strong enough to protect Luther from
emperor and pope. South Germany, perhaps for opposite reasons, remained Catholic.” 169
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(b) The State and the Germans: “The knights or lower nobility, who in former years had ruled
the countryside as vassals of feudal seigneurs, were losing their military, economic, and political
position. Mercenary troops hired by princes or cities, and equipped with firearms and artillery,
were mowing down knightly cavalry helplessly brandishing swords; commercial wealth was
raising prices and costs, and was outstripping landed property as a source of power; cities were
establishing their independence, and princes were centralizing authority and law.” The knights
took some revenge, but major cities joined with some of the higher mobility to reform the Swabian
League (1488); these and other combinations checked the robber knights. “If the power of the
Catholic emperor over the German princes had been greater, the Reformation might have been
defeated or postponed.” Maximilian I (reigned 1493-1519) was never crowned by the Pope; he
expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary
of Burgundy, the heiress, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today’s Switzerland to the
Swiss Confederacy. Through marriage of his son Philip the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna
of Castile in 1498, Maximilian helped to establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, allowing his
Grandson Charles to hold the thrones of both Castile and Aragon. As discussed previously, since
Philip died in 1506, his son Charles succeeded Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and
thus ruled both Germany and Spain simultaneously. Maximilian loved and encouraged music,
learning, literature, and art; reorganized the University of Vienna with new professorships of law,
mathematics, poetry, and rhetoric; and made Vienna most active of learning in Europe.170
The Germans were at this time “the healthiest, strongest, most vital and exuberant people in
Europe.” Bathing was a national passion: every well-arranged house had its bathroom, usually
two sexes bathed together, chastely closed. They drank too much at all ages, and imbibed sexual
experience lavishly in their youth; houses of prostitution were licensed and taxed. Like elsewhere,
marriage was a union of properties; love was considered a normal result, not a reasonable cause
of marriage. Family life flourished; households of fifteen children were no uncommon. Houses
were externally mostly of wood; and fires were frequent. Political morality accorded with the
general moral laxity. Bribery was widespread, and worst at the top. Adulteration of goods was
common. Sacrifice of morals to money was intense in any age; money was the measure of all
things; plutocracy of money superseded the aristocracy of birth in controlling the economy. 171
(c) The German Humanists: The humanist movement in Germany was at first more orthodox
in theology than its Italian counterpart. “Germany had no classical past like Italy’s; she had no
had the privilege of being conquered and educated by Imperial Rome; she had no direct bond with
non-Christian antiquity. Her memory hardly went beyond her Christian centuries; her scholarship,
in this age, hardly ventured beyond the Christian fathers; her Renaissance was a revival of early
Christianity rather than of classic letters and philosophy. In Germany the Renaissance was
engulfed in the Reformation. Nontheless, German humanism took its lead from Italy. Poggio
Bracciolini, Aeneas Sylvius, and other humanists, visiting Germany, brought the seed; German
students, pilgrims, ecclesiastics, merchants, and diplomats, visiting Italy, came back bearing on
them, even unwittingly, the pollen of the Renaissance. Rodolphus Agricola, son of a Dutch parish
priest, received plentiful schooling at Erfurt, Cologne, and Louvain; gave seven years to further
studies of Latin and Greek in Italy; and returned to teach at Groningen, Heidelberg, and Worms.
There were some orthodox humanists. However, there were questions: Will the soul live after
death? And It there really a God? This skeptical amoralism grew in fashion among the German
humanists in the final decade before Luther. “The natural resentment aroused among the orthodox
by the skepticism of the later humanists fell in accumulation upon the mildest and kindliest scholar
of the time.” Through studies he retained the orthodox faith. “He muddied it a bit with mysticism,
but he devoutly submitted all his writings and teachings to the authority of the Church.” 172
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(d) The German Church: “There were some scattered atheists whose names are lost in the
censorship of time; and Erasmus mentions ‘man amongst us who think, like Epicurus, that the soul
dies with the body.’ There were skeptics among the humanists. There were mystics who denied
the necessity of Church or priest as intermediaries between man and God, and emphasized inward
religious experience as against ceremonies and sacraments. Here and there were little pockets of
Waldensians who denied the distinction between priests and laymen; and in eastern Germany were
some Hussites who called the pope Antichrist. In Eger two brothers, John and Lewin of Augsburg,
denounced indulgences as a hoax (1466).” Nevertheless, the German family was almost a church
in itself. “The complaints against the German clergy were chiefly against the prelates, and on the
score of their wealth and worldliness. Some bishops and abbots had to organize the economy and
administration of great areas that had come into the possession of the Church. The German Church
was the richest in Christendom: it was reckoned that nearly a third of the whole landed property
of the country was in the hands of the Church. There were marked contrasts in respect of income.
“The lower orders of parochial clergy, whose merely nominal stipends were derived from the
many precarious tithes, were often compelled by poverty – if not tempted by avarice – to work at
some trade which was quite inconsistent with their position, and which exposed them to the
contempt of their parishioners. The higher ecclesiastical orders, on the other hand, enjoyed
abundant and superfluous wealth, which many of them had no scruples in parading in such an
offensive manner as to provoke the indignation of the people, the jealously of the upper classes,
and the scorn of all serious minds…In many places complaint were loud against the mercenary
abuse of sacred things…against the large and frequent sums of money sent to Rome, of annates
and hush money. A bitter feeling of hatred against the Italians…began gradually to gain ground,
even amongst men who…were true sons of the Holy Church.”173
The rising spirit of nationalism resented the claims of the papacy to hold emperor legitimate
till confirmed, and to depose emperors and kings at will. Conflict between secular-ecclesiastical
authorities persisted in appointments to benefices. Anticlericalism had risen among the people.
German nobles looked upon the rich possession of the Church, and businessmen grieved that
monasteries claiming exemption from taxation were competing with them in manufacturing and
trade.174 In sum, a thousand factors and influences were coming together: “The weakening of the
papacy by the Avignon exile and the Papal Schism; the breakdown of monastic discipline and
clerical celibacy; the luxury of prelates, the corruption of the Curia, the worldly activities of the
popes; the morals of Alexander VI, the wars of Julius II, the careless gaiety of Leo X; the relicmongering and peddling of indulgences; the triumph of Islam over Christendom in the Crusades
and the Turkish wars; the spreading acquaintance with non-Christian faiths; the influx of Arabic
science and philosophy; the collapse of Scholasticism in the irrationalism of Scotus and the
skepticism of Ockham; the failure of the consular movement to effect reform; the discovery of
pagan antiquity and of America; the invention of printing; the extension of literacy and education;
the translation and reading of the Bible; the newly realized contrast between the poverty and
simplicity of the Apostles and the ceremonious opulence of the Church; the rising wealth and
economic independence of Germany and England; the protests against the flow of money to Rome;
the secularization of law and governments; the intensification of nationalism and the strengthening
of monarchies; the nationalistic influence of vernacular languages and literatures; the fermenting
legacies of the Waldenses, Wicliffe, and Huss; the mystic demand for a less ritualistic, more
personal and inward and direct religion: all these are now uniting in a torrent of forces that would
crack the crust of the medieval custom, loosen all standards and bonds, shatter Europe into nations
and sects, sweep away…the supports and comforts of traditional beliefs, and perhaps mark the
beginning of the end for the dominance of Christianity in the mental life of European man.” 175
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2-2. The Religious Revolution: 1517-64
The Protestant Reformation was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin
Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and other early Protestant Reformers of Europe in the
sixteenth century. There had been significant earlier attempts to reform the Catholic Church
before Luther, such as John Wycliffe (1320-84) and John Huss (1369-1415), but the Ninety-Five
Theses of Martin Luther ignited the Reformation Movement in 1517. “Luther began by criticizing
the selling of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the
Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The Protestant
position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola
fide. The core motivation behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played
a part, including the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism which eroded people's faith in the
Papacy, the perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism and the new
learning of the Renaissance which questioned much of the traditional thought. The initial
movement within Germany diversified almost right then and there, and other reform impulses
arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for
the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The largest groups were the
Lutherans and Calvinists. Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and
Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the
Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after
1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, although the national church had been made independent
under Henry VIII in the early 1530s for political rather than religious reasons.”176
Outside Germany, Ulrich Zwingli began to lead a movement in the Swiss Confederation in a
year after Martin Luther began. “Although Zwinglianism does hold uncanny resemblance to
Lutheranism, historians have been unable to prove that Zwingli had any contact with Luther's
publications before 1520, and Zwingli himself maintained that he had prevented himself from
reading them. The German Prince Philip of Hesse saw potential in creating an alliance between
Zwingli and Luther, seeing strength in a united Protestant front.” Meantime, the work and writings
of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526,
Calvin was invited to discipline the fallen city of Geneva. “His Ordinances of 1541 involved a
collaboration of Church affairs with the City council and consistory to bring morality to all areas
of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial
capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe
and educating them as Calvinist missionaries.” The Church of England separated from Rome
under Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and completed in 1537. The English Reformation took a
more conservative way, gradually developing into a middle between the Roman Catholic and
Protestant traditions, because the reform was motivated by the political necessities of Henry VIII.
The Protestantism migrated: all of Scandinavia ultimately adopted Lutheranism over the course
of the sixteenth century as the monarchs of Denmark (who also ruled Norway and Iceland) and
Sweden converted into the Protestantism. The Reformation of Scotland was led by John Knox,
politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France: the Reformation Parliament
repudiated the pope’s authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act of 1560. Protestantism also spread
from German lands into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots; this eventually
led to decades of civil warfare. In Spain, the Spanish Inquisition was already 40 years old by the
time of Luther, and had the capability of quickly dealing with any new movement that the Catholic
Church perceived or interpreted to be religious heterodoxy. 177
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Photo I-2-3. Protestant Reformers
Source: https://mcneillstown.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/reformation-image.jpg?w=586&h=250
Map I-2-1. Religious Situation in Europe, c. 1560
Source: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/ralimage/map19rel.jpg
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Luther and the Reformation in Germany: Martin Luther (1483-1546) was born at Eisleben
of Germany to a peasant family, entered the University of Erfurt where he received a bachelor’s
degree in 1502 and a master’s in the liberal arts in 1505. He began to study law but decided to
become a monk two months later. Entering the Eremites of St. Augustine in Erfurt, Luther was
ordained a priest in 1507; transferred to an Augustine monastery at Wittenberg in 1508, and earned
his doctorate at the University of Wittenburg in 1512, where he became a professor of theology
lecturing on the Bible. Through his study of Scripture during 1512-16, Luther rediscovered the
justice of God: salvation is a product of divine grace obtained through faith, not through good
works of humans. In 1517, Leo X had issued a special indulgence to finance the reconstruction
of St. Peter’s Basilica that was beyond repair. “The rulers of England, Germany, France, and
Spain protested that their countries were being drained of wealth, their national economies were
being disturbed, by repeated campaigns for luring money to Rome. Where kings were powerful,
Leo was considerate: he agreed that Henry VIII should keep a fourth of the proceeds in England;
he advanced a loan of 175,000 ducats to King Charles I (the later Emperor Charles V) against
expected collections in Spain; and Francis I was to retain part of the sum raised in France. Germany
received less favored treatment, having no strong monarchy to bargain with the Pope; however,
the Emperor Maximilian was allotted a modest 3,000 florins from the receipts, and the Fuggers
were to take from the collections the 20,000 florins that they had loaned to Albrecht of Brandenburg to pay the Pope for his confirmation as Archbishop of Mainz. Unfortunately that city had
lost three archbishops in ten years (1504-14), and had twice paid heavy confirmation fees; to spare
it from paying a third time Albrecht borrowed. Now Leo agreed that the young prelate should
manage the distribution of the indulgences in Magdeburg and Halberstadt as well as in Mainz. An
agent of the Fuggers accompanied each of Albrecht’s preachers, checked expenses and receipts,
and kept one of the keys to the strongbox that held the funds.” 178
On this mission, the principal agent received the aid of the local clergy: “when he entered a
town a procession of priests, magistrates, and pious laity welcomed him with banners, candles,
and song, and bore the bull of indulgence aloft on a velvet or golden cushion, while church bells
pealed and organs played.” The chief agent, Johann Tetzel, prayed for a plenary indulgence: “May
our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on thee, and absolve thee by the merits of His most holy Passion.
And I, by His authority, that of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy Pope,
granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee, first from all ecclesiastical censures,
in whatever manner they may have been incurred, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and
excesses, how enormous so ever they may be, even from such as are reserved for the cognizance
of the Holy See; and as far as the keys of the Holy Church extend, I remit to you all punishment
which you deserve in purgatory on their account, and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the
Church…and to that innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism; so that when you die
the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight shall be opened; and
if you shall not die at present, this grace shall remain in full force when you are at the point of
death. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Tetzel had said that
“even if a man had violated the Mother of God, the indulgence would wipe away his sin.” This
bargain was in harmony with the official conception of indulgences for the living. Frederick the
Wise, Elector of Saxony, was a pious and provident ruler, who had no theoretical objection to
indulgences; he gathered 19,000 saintly relics into his Castle Church at Wittenberg. He had
procured another indulgence for contributors to the building of a bridge at Torgau, but he had
withheld from Pope Alexander VI (1501) the sum raised in Electoral Saxony by an indulgence for
donations to a crusade against the Turks; he said that he would release the money when the crusade
materialized. Frederick kept the fund, and applied them to the University of Wittenberg. 179
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As a young professor of theology, Luther drafted his Ninety-Five Theses entitled under the
Disputation for Clarification of the Power of Indulgences. “He did not consider his propositions
heretical, nor were they indubitably so. He was still a fervent Catholic who had no thought of
upsetting the Church; his purpose was to refute the extravagant claims made for indulgences, and
to correct the abuses that had developed in their distribution. He felt that the facile issuance and
mercenary dissemination of indulgences had weakened the contrition that sin should arouse, had
indeed made sin a trivial matter to be amicably adjusted over a bargain counter with a peddler of
pardons. He did not yet deny the papal power of the keys to forgive sins; he conceded the authority
of the pope to absolve the confessing penitent from the terrestrial penalties imposed by churchmen;
but in Luther’s view the power of the pope to free souls from purgatory, or to lessen their terms
of punishment there, depended not on the power of the keys – which did not reach beyond the
grave – but on the intercessory influence of papal prayers, which might o might not be heard.
Moreover, Luther argued, all Christians shared automatically in the treasury of merits earned by
Christ and the saints, even without the grant of such a share by a papal letter of indulgence. He
exonerated the popes from responsibility for the excesses of the preachers, but slyly added: “This
unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the
reverence due the pope from…the shrewd questionings of the laity, to wit: Why does not the pope
empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he
redeems a…number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?” At
noon on October 31, 1571, Luther affixed his theses to the main door of the Castle Church of
Wittenberg, which door had been regularly used as an academic bulletin board. He had a German
translation circulated among the people for wide publicity, and a copy of the theses was also sent
to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz.180 His theses declared that “The pope himself cannot remit guilt
(by indulgences), but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God.”
In October 1518, Luther met Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, who demanded a retraction and
a pledge never again to disturb the peace of the Church. Cajetan asked Frederick to send him to
Rome, Frederick refused. The debate at Leipzig in June-July 1519, Luther was brilliant and
powerful, but recklessly candid: “He denied emphatically the primacy of the bishop of Rome in
the early days of Christianity, and reminded his mostly antipathetic audience that the widespread
Greek Orthodox Church still rejected the supremacy of Rome.” It was beyond indulgences to deny
the authority of popes, committing himself to a definite heresy. The Reformation now advanced
from a minor dispute about indulgences to a major challenge of papal authority over Christendom.
In an Epitome published in the spring of 1520, Luther attacked Rome: “If Rome thus believes and
teaches with the knowledge of popes and cardinals (which I hope is not the case), then in these
writings I freely declare that the true Antichirst is sitting in the temple of God and is reigning in
Rome – that empurpled Babylon – and the Rome Curia is the Synagogue of Satan.” 181Among his
three books of 1520, first one was Address to the Nobility of the German Nation: Luther attacked
three walls between the clergy and the laity, which must be overthrown. “First, there is no real
difference between clergy and laity; every Christian is made a priest by baptism. Secular rulers,
therefore, should exercise their powers without let or hindrance, regardless whether it be pope,
bishop or priest whom they affect…All that the canon law had said to the contrary is sheer
invention of Roman presumption. Second, since every Christian is a priest, he has the right to
interpret the Scriptures according to his own light. Third, Scripture should be our final authority
for doctrine or practice, and Scripture offers no warrant for the exclusive right of the pope to call
a council. If he seeks by excommunication or interdict to prevent a council, we should despise his
conduct as that of a madman, and, relying on God, hurl back the ban on him, and coerce him as
best we can. A council should be called very soon…should examine the horrible anomaly.” 182
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Luther urged that the German church should abolish its annual tribute to Rome by establishing
a national church under the leadership of the archbishop of Mainz; priests should be allowed to
marry to avoid temptations; and one should not decide to enter a religious life before the age of
thirty. The second book was The Babylonian Captivity of the Church: Luther attacked the sacramental system being captivated for one thousand years by the popes, and developed a Reformation
conception of the sacraments and of the church regarding the Lord’s Supper, baptism, penance,
confirmation, marriage, ordination, and unction. The third book was On the Freedom of the
Christian Man: Luther views that faith alone without works brings complete salvation and saves
man from every evil. True faith “does not induce us to live in idleness or wickedness but makes
the law and works necessary for any man’s righteousness and salvation.” Works cannot glorify
God since “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” A person
should be good (through true faith in Christ) before any good works can be done. As Leo X
excommunicated Luther in 1521, Emperor Charles V (1519-56) summoned him to appear before
the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms. When Charles questioned whether he
would retract all heresies contained in his writings, Luther answered that “I cannot and I will not
recant anything, for to go against my conscience is neither right nor safe.” The emperor gave his
opinion: “a single friar who goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years must be wrong.”
The Edict of Worms forced that no one could harbor Luther and his followers, and that his books
should be eradicated from the memory of man. To avoid the arrest, under the protection of
Frederick of Saxony, Luther hided at the castle of Wartburg for almost a year while Charles’s
fever cooled. Returning to Wittenburg early in 1522, he began to organize a reformed church and
rapidly spread his ideas in the coming decade. The University of Wittenburg became the center
for the diffusion of Lutheranism, and its students returned home and spread his teachings. As the
Lutheranism became favorable, the reform was instituted by state authorities. 183
Nevertheless, the reformation in Germany was largely limited to the urban area in the 1520s,
and the traditional forces remained strong in the countryside. The Lutheran movement had faced
problems with internal radicalism, external opposition, and social revolution. Some from Wittenburg wanted a more radical reform by abolishing all relics, images, and the mass. In response,
Luther emphasized that the Bible was sufficient authority in religious affairs by keeping only two
of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. When it became apparent that Luther’s movement
threatened the unity of Catholic Church in 1521, the older Christian humanists like Erasmus broke
with the reformer, while the younger generation of them consistently supported Luther. When
peasant dissatisfaction was entangled with religious revolts in the mid-1520s, one of ex-Lutheran
followers named Thomas Müntzer inflamed the peasants against their rulers. Some 30,000
peasants in arms in south Germany, by the end of 1524, refused to pay state taxes, church tithes,
or feudal dues and swore to emancipation or death. At Memingen in 1525, their delegates
formulated the Twelve Articles and declared that “in the future we should have authority and power
so that a whole community should choose and appoint a pastor and also have the right to depose
him.” Luther quickly reacted against the peasants by issuing a pamphlet: Against the Robbing and
Murdering Hordes of Peasants. He rejected communistic aspiration of rebels: “The Gospel does
not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the
Apostles and disciples did.” Since the reformation depended on the full support of German princes
and magistrates, Luther’s religious support for princes was necessary for the returning favor to his
ongoing movement. Since the social and political world was alien to him, his deep concern was
in purity of spiritual religion. Even though Luther had taken the rebel side, he would not have
changed the defeat of the peasants. They had colorful leaders, but the lack of a central target and
of competent leadership prevented them to develop an effective force. 184
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Luther’s supreme achievement as a writer was his translation of the Bible into German; which
had the same effect and prestige in Germany as the King James’ version in English and during his
lifetime, 100,000 copies of his New Testament were printed. Luther said that you cannot accept
both the Bible and reason; one or the other must go: reason seemed to be a weak instrument when
compared with faith in a divine revelation. “He condemned the Scholastic philosophers for making
so many concessions to reason, for trying to prove Christian dogmas rationally, for trying to
harmonize Christianity with the philosophy of that cursed, conceited, wily heathen Aristotle.”
Luther did not make any effort to meet the demands of the peasants for reforms. He viewed that
a true Christian was bounded by his conscience to an ethic of love, not of anger. God created
government with secular authorities for the enforcement of law and order, without which man
corrupted by original sin would lead the world into chaos, which will terminate the existence of
the world. So the preservation of the natural order was ordained by God, and it was a service to
Him for the princes to adhere to the secular law. Luther preached that complete obedience in all
matters, except religious conviction, was the supreme and absolute law (not allowing opposition
to tyrants to promote human rights). The Lutheran state was authoritarian and its congregation
was always identical with the political community, and the territorial ruler acted as the highest
bishop for the territorial church. Hence, monasteries and cathedral chapters came under political
control, and a large slice of church properties fell into their hands. Luther married in 1525. Since
then, the Lutheran movement was deeply influenced by political powers, and its religious nature
was modified by the next generation. Being attracted to Luther, Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)
had taught at Wittenburg since 1518, became the foremost theological representative of
Lutheranism. In 1521, he published the Main Topics of Theology exposing Luther’s religion. His
desire was in the humanization and civilization of mankind. His Lutheran philosophy views that
knowledge comes from both intuitive and abstract cognition; “intuitive” is available to God but
“abstract” to a human being, so human reason cannot discover theological truths.
“The most revolutionary item in Luther’s theology was his dethronement of the priest. He
allowed for priests not as indispensable dispensers of the sacraments, nor as privileged mediators
with God, but only as servants chosen by each congregation to minister to its spiritual wants. By
marrying and raising a family these ministers would shed the aura of sanctity that had made the
priesthood awesomely powerful; they would be first among equals, but any man might at need
perform their functions, even to absolving a penitent from sin. Monks should abandon their selfish
and often idle isolation, should marry and labor with the rest; the man at the plow, the woman in
the kitchen, serve God better than the monk mumbling in stupefying repetition unintelligible
prayers. And prayers should be the direct communion of the soul with God, not appeals to halflegendary saints. The adoration of the saints, in Luther’s judgment, was not a friendly and
consoling intercourse of the lonely living with the holy dead; it was a relapse into primitive
polytheistic idolatry.” Luther explained that “though true Christians do not need law, and will not
use law or force on one another, they must obey the law as good examples to the majority, who
are not true Christians, for without law the sinful nature of man would tear a society to pieces.
Nevertheless the authority of the state should end where the realm of the spirit begins.” In his On
Trade and Usury of 1524, “Kings and princes ought to look into these things and forbid them by
strict laws, but I hear that they have an interest in them, and the saying of Isaiah is fulfilled, Thy
princes have become companions of thieves. They hang thieves who have stolen a gulden or half
a gulden, but trade with those who rob the whole world…Big thieves hang the little ones; and…
Simple thieves lie in prisons and in stocks…princes and merchants, one thief with another, He
will melt them together like lead and brass, as when a city burns, so that there shall be neither
princes nor merchants any more. That time, I fear, is already at the door.” 185
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The Peasants’ War and Anabaptists: (a) The Peasants’ War (1524-26): Pope Adrian VI in
1522 sent a demand to a Diet at Nuremberg for Luther’s arrest and confession of ecclesiastical
faults. The Assembly agreed to ask Elector Frederick to check Luther, but it asked why Luther
should be condemned for pointing out clerical abuses now so authoritatively confirmed. The same
Diet, dominated by the nobility, gave a sympathetic hearing to charges that monopolists were
enriching themselves at the expense of the people. A new pope, Clement VII (1523-34) sent
Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio with fresh demands for the arrest of Luther. “He warned the Diet
that the religious revolt, if not soon suppressed, would soon undermine civil authority and order;
but the Diet replied that any attempt to put down Lutheranism by force would result in riot,
disobedience, slaughter…and general ruins.” As the deliberations proceeded, the social revolution
began. In the Germany, “Church and state were so closely meshed – clergymen played so large a
role in social order and civil administration – that the collapse of ecclesiastical prestige and power
removed a main barrier to revolution. The Waldensians, Beghards, Brethren of the Common Life,
had continued an old tradition of basing radical proposals upon biblical texts. The circulation of
the New Testament inn print was a blow to political as well as to religious orthodoxy. It exposed
the compromises that the secular clergy had made with the nature of man and the ways of the
world; it revealed the communism of the Apostles, the sympathy of Christ for the poor and
oppressed; in these respect the New Testament Was for the radicals of this age a veritable
Communist Manifesto. Peasant and proletarian alike found in it a divine warrant for dreaming of
a utopia where private property would be abolished, and the door would inherit the earth.” The
pamphleteers printed and abusive speakers declaimed against both papal and secular authority: the
causes were the just grievances of the peasantry. “But it could be argued that the gospel of Luther
and his more radical followers poured oil on the flames, and turned the resentment of the oppressed
into utopian delusions, uncalculated violence, and passionate revenge.”186
Under the guidance or influence of Zwinglian Protestants from Zurich, the Twelve Articles
were formulated in March 1525 that set half of Germany on fire: “First, it is our humble petition
and request, as also the will and intention of all of us, that in the future we should have authority
and power so that a whole community should choose and appoint a pastor, and also have the right
to depose him.”187 The peasant leaders, encouraged by Luther’s semi-revolutionary pronouncements, sent him a copy of the Articles, and asked for his support. Luther replied with a pamphlet
printed in April 1525: “We have no one on earth to thank for this mischievous rebellion except
you.” He counseled the princes and lords to recognize the justice of many of the Articles, and
urged a policy of kindly consideration. To the peasants he addressed a frank admission of their
wrongs, but pleased with them to refrain from violence and revenge. Towns were seized and
monasteries were sacked by rebels, and were compelled to pay high ransoms. In May 1525 Luther
wrote a pamphlet: “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants: “Any man against
whom sedition can be proved is outside the law of God and the Empire, so that the first who can
slay him is doing right and well…Fro rebellion brings with it a land full of murder and bloodshed,
makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down.” Luther rejected the supposed
Scriptural warrant for communism: “The Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case
of those who do of their own free will what the Apostles and disciples did in Act iv.” Elector
Frederick died in May 1525, his brother Duke John succeeded him. His united forces massacred
rebels, and prisoners condemned to death, and the rebel leaders were captured and beheaded. The
losses of German life and property in the Peasant revolt were exceeded only in the Thirty Years’
War. The Reformation itself almost perished in the Peasants’ War, and Charles V interpreted the
uprising as a Lutheran movement. For years after the revolt, Luther was so unpopular that he
seldom dared leave Wittenberg, even to attend his father’s deathbed. 188
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(b) The Anabaptists, consisting of many different groups, demanded radical changes. They
were not simple reformers but revolutionaries who wanted to upset the balance of established
institutions and social order, while both Lutherans and Zwinglians pursued reforms for greater
social and economic justice. The turmoil in the empire and the religious changes in Switzerland
and elsewhere gave an opportunity for radical movement or revolution demanding new society.
Conrad Grebel (1498-1526) and Felix Manz of Zurich, and Balthasar Hubmaier of Waldshut
became leaders of Anabaptists. Being dissatisfied with Zwingli’s pace of reform, the Anabaptists
(again-baptizers) insisted that baptism, if given in infancy, should be repeated in maturity, and
baptism was the sign of membership in their voluntary Christian community. Grebel baptized
Felix Manz, a married former priest, in January 1525, which was the first adult baptism of the
Reformation. They followed strict democracy and chose their own minister by all members of the
community; rejected theological speculation and believed pure words of God in the Bible; insisted
complete separation of church and state and refused to hold political offices; and rejected military
services since it is sinful to take human life. They were the anarchists three centuries before
Tolstoy. Some of them proclaimed a community of goods, although the sect in general rejected
any compulsory sharing of goods but advocating voluntary mutual aid. The successful Peasants’
War in the spring of 1525 promoted conversions of many peasants, miners, and laborers of
industries and commerce in large cities to Anabaptism, but its final failure encouraged the
propertied class to suppress them. Both Protestant and Catholic cantons equally used their energy
in suppressing Anabaptists. Grebel was arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to life in prison in
1525 and escaped in spring 1526, but died of plague in that summer. Manz was captured and
thrown into the Limmat River in 1526, while Hubmaier recanted and freed. Although nothing
remained of Anabaptists in Switzerland by 1530, Anabaptism advanced continuously into Austria,
Germany, and the Netherlands through the Rhine River.189
At Austerlitz in Moravia in 1529, Jacob Hutter joined an Anabaptist group and was elected to
chief bishop of the Moravian communities in 1533. Continued persecution and rapid influx of
oppressed Anabaptists into Moravia drove them to adopt economic egalitarianism. Under his
leadership, Anabaptism became a cohesive and well-disciplined communitarian movement. The
communities required personal abilities and possessions to be surrendered to the public welfare,
while all of selfishness was regarded as evil. Hutter became influential, but King Ferdinand took
harsh measures to make their flourishing communities perish, and captured and burned him in
1536. However, the hundred of Hutterian Brethren survived and flourished again by the 1560s.
Meanwhile, the town of Munster of Westphalia near the Dutch border was another uprising site
of Anabaptists although it converted to Lutheranism in 1532. It became a heaven for Anabaptists
from neighbors who believed in the imminent end of the world and the establishment of the
kingdom of God on earth. In 1534, fanatic Anabaptists gained control over the town, drove out
the godless, burned all books except the Bible, and proclaimed communal property ownership.
Eventually, John Buekels of Leiden assumed the leadership of the town as the New Jerusalem and
proclaim himself king. In 1535, the joint army of Catholics and Lutherans recaptured the town,
executed the leaders of radical Anabaptists, and slaughtered most of the inhabitants. After the
tragedy of Munster, Menno Simons (1496-1561) led the other Anabaptist movement in the
Netherlands and northern Germany in a peaceful way. Menno was ordained a priest in 1524 when
he was encouraged by Lutheranism.190 As Anabaptism became known in the Netherlands, he
rejected infant baptism, began to preach the evangelical doctrines of the movement, and resigned
his priestly office in 1536. He rejected military service and killing, the holding of the magistrate
office, and marriage to persons outside the church. He built huge congregations and became so
influential by 1542 that an imperial edict placed a high price on his head.
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Zwingli and the Reformation in Switzerland: Ulich Zwingli (1484-1531) was born in rural
Switzerland and received Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees at Vienna and Basel. Being
influenced by Christian humanism, he was ordained a priest in 1506, accepted a parish post in
rural Switzerland, and became a cathedral priest of the Great Minster of Zurich in 1518 where he
began the Reformation in Switzerland. “Zwingli at once began to preach his new convictions.
Apart from topical criticism of abuses, he did not at first attack traditional positions, being content
to expound the regular Gospel passages. A minor indulgence crisis arose in 1518, but Zwingli’s
witty castigation of the abuse found ecclesiastical favor and, finally, a titular honor by the papacy,
from which he also drew a chaplaincy pension. In 1518, despite much opposition, he was
appointed people’s priest at the Grossmünster (Great Minster) at Zürich. The post gave him little
income or official influence but great scope for preaching. He commenced a series of expositions
of the New Testament enlivened by topical application. Serious plague in 1519 found him faithful
in his ministry, and his own illness and recovery, followed by his brother’s death in 1520,
deepened the spiritual and theological elements in his thinking and teaching that had hitherto been
overshadowed to some degree by the humanistic. In 1520 he secured permission from the city’s
governing council to preach the true divine scriptures, and the resulting sermons helped to stir
revolts against fasting and clerical celibacy that initiated the Swiss Reformation (1522). In
pursuance of his view of the supremacy of Scripture, Zwingli preached his now famous sermons
at the Oetenbach convent and, despite local opposition to many of his ideas, he secured fresh
authorization from his bishop to continue preaching. A tract On Meats and a printed version of
the Oetenbach addresses, The Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, appeared in 1522.”
“The year 1523 was crucial in the Zürich Reformation. In preparation for a disputation with
the vicar general of Constance, arranged for January in the town hall of Zürich, Zwingli published
his challenging 67 Artikel. His main contentions were adopted by most priests in the district and,
in consequence, the celibacy of clergy came to be flouted, liturgical reform was begun, and a plan
for the reform of the Grossmünster was drafted. A key part of this program was the reconstitution
of the cathedral school as both a grammar school and a theological seminary to train Reformed
pastors. The question of removing the images from the churches provoked a second disputation in
October, in which Zwingli and his most intimate friend and fellow Reformer Leo Jud carried the
day. Successive steps taken during 1524 and 1525 included the removal of images, the suppression
of organs, the dissolution of religious houses, the replacement of the mass by a simple Communion
service, the reform of the baptismal office, the introduction of prophesyings or Bible readings, the
reorganization of the ministry, and the preparation of a native version of the Bible…He was
publicly married. From the city of Zürich the movement quickly spread not only to the canton of
Zürich but to neighboring cantons as well. Aided by the learned Roman Catholic theologian
Johann Eck, the five forest cantons…resisted the new trend, but important centres like Basel and
Bern declared for Zwingli. Zwingli himself, assisted by his fellow Swiss Reformer Heinrich
Bullinger, took part in a disputation at Bern (1528) that formally introduced the principles of the
Reformation to that city. The main theses he put forth were (1) that the church is born of the Word
of God and has Christ alone as its head; (2) that its laws are binding only insofar as they agree
with the Scripture; (3) that Christ alone is man’s righteousness; (4) that the Holy Scripture does
not teach Christ’s corporeal presence in the bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper; (5) that the mass
is a gross affront to the sacrifice and death of Christ; (6) that there is no biblical foundation for the
mediation or intercession of the dead, for purgatory, or for images and pictures; and (7) that
marriage is lawful to all. With the friendly cantons of Basel and Bern, Zürich negotiated a Christian
Civic Alliance based on the treaty by which Basel had been received into the Swiss confederacy
but also including a common profession of faith.”191
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“From 1525 Zwingli’s work was hampered by disagreements, both within Switzerland and
with the Lutherans outside. In Zürich itself an extremist group quickly became dissatisfied with
the Zwinglian program, desiring the abolition of tithes, a severance of the state connection, the
creation of a pure or gathered church of true believers, and the consequent ending of infant
Baptism. Disputations were held with the leaders of the Anabaptist group in January and March
1525, but these were abortive. The first rebaptisms took place in February, and widespread
propaganda was initiated…Zwingli wrote a special work, On Baptism (1525), in which his main
emphasis was on the significance of water Baptism as a covenant sign. During the following years
he devoted many other tracts to the subject, culminating in his Tricks of the Catabaptists (1527).”
Meanwhile, his thinking and practice in relation to the mass had led to a sharp disagreement with
Martin Luther. The two agreed in rejecting the eucharistic sacrifice, and in rejecting the medieval
notion of a change of substance in the sacrament. Luther, however, felt himself bound by the words
“This is my body” to teach the real presence of Christ’s body and blood not in place of, but in,
with, and under the bread and wine. Zwingli, on the other hand, convinced that the word is has the
force of signifies, did not maintain a real presence but simply the divine presence of Christ or his
presence to the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit, as signified by the elements.”
In May 1529, a Protestant missionary from Zurich, attempting to preach in the city of Schwyz,
was burned at the stake. Zwingli persuaded the Zurich Council to declare war. June 24, 1529 the
First Peace of Kappel was signed. The terms were a victory of Awingli: the Catholic cantons
agreed to pay an indemnity to Zurich; and to end their alliance with Austria; neither party was to
attack the other because of religious differences. Through the good offices of Philip the
Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, the Colloquy of Marburg (1529) was arranged with a view to
reconciliation; Luther, Zwingli, and Martin Bucer all participated. Cordial agreement was reached
on most issues, but the critical gulf remained in relation to the sacramental presence, and Luther
refused the hand of fellowship extended by Zwingli and Bucer. Zwingli would undoubtedly have
welcomed agreement with Luther for political as well as theological reasons, for he saw a growing
danger in the isolation of the Reforming cantons. The forest cantons had organized themselves
against the alliance, and there was a real threat of imperial intervention. In offensive defense, the
alliance attacked the forest cantons at Kappel in 1529, and enforced terms on the opposing districts.
Attempts also were made to link up with Strassburg and allied reforming cities, but these were at
first unsuccessful. The results of division were seen at the Diet of Augsburg (1530).192
In May 15, 1531, an assembly of Zurich and her allies voted to compel the Catholic cantons
to allow freedom of preaching in their territory. When cantons refused, Zwingli proposed war,
but his allies preferred an economic blockade. The Catholic cantons, denied all imports, declared
war. Again rival armies marched; they finally met at Kappel on October 11, 1531 with the
Catholics with 8,000 men and the Protestants with 1,500. The Catholics won, and Zwingli, aged
forty-seven, was among the 500 Zurichers slain. Zwingli was succeeded in Zurich by Heinrich
Bullinger, who avoided politics, superintended the city’s schools, sheltered fugitive Protestants,
and dispensed charity to the needy of any creed. He approved the execution of Servetus, but,
barring that, he approached a theory of general religious freedom. He joined with Myconius and
Leo Jud in formulating the First Helvetic Confession (1536), which for a generation was the
authoritative expression of Zwinglian views; and with Calvin he drew up the Consensus Tigurinus
(1549), which brought the Zurich and Genevan Protestants into one Reformed Church. Despite
that protective accord, Catholicism regained in later years much of its lost ground in Switzerland,
partly through its victory at Kappel; theologies are proved or disproved in history by competitive
slaughter or fertility. Seven cantons adhered to Catholicism; four were definitely Protestant; the
rest remained poised between the two faiths, uncertain of their certainties. 193
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John Calvin (1509-1564): Born in Noyon, France, Carvin entered the University of Paris,
studied theology and received the Master of Arts degree. By his father’s advice, working on a law
degree at the school of Bourges and Orleans during 1528-33, Calvin was licensed in law, and he
continued his humanistic studies. By 1527 when the Lutheranism had become orthodoxy in half
of Germany, being convinced by the sovereignty of God, Calvin believed himself chosen by God
to carry out a divine program of reform. His sudden conversion to Protestantism made him join
his friend Cop in Basel for exile in late 1534, where he wrote his theological beliefs in the Institutes
of the Christian Religion published in Latin in 1536 and translated it into French in 1541. It
consists of six chapters: the first four chapters analyze the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and the remaining
two chapters attack the five “false sacraments” and defend Christian liberty. The scriptures are the
final authority in all matters of spiritual truth; the church as a Christian community must be freed
from hierarchical control; and in sacraments, baptism signifies remission of sins and a mark of the
covenant between God and man, and communion unites the faithful community “in one body and
one substance with our head.” Like Luther, Calvin emphasized the theology of predestination.
Expecting to pass Geneva, implored by William Farel, the leader of the Genevan Reformation,
Calvin began his ministry there in 1536 without ordination under the approval of the Council and
Presbytery. In 1538, the newly elected Council deposed the two ministers and ordered them to
leave the city. Farel returned to Newchatel and Calvin moved to Strasbourg to join Martin Brucer,
the evangelical church leader of the city. He remained in Strasbourg as pastor to a congregation
of French refugees for three years, and lectured on the New Testament in the Strasbourg academy.
Calvin married in 1540, and returned to Geneva with honor by invitation in 1541.
The Great Council of Geneva passed an ecclesiastical ordinance in 1542, which features are
still accepted by the Presbyterian churches around the world. Calvin believed that the real law of
a Christian state must be the Bible and the clergy are the proper interpreters of that law. He divided
the ministry into pastors, teachers, lay elders, and deacons; and organized the Consistory or
Presbytery administrating church affairs with five pastors and twelve lay elders all annually chosen
by the Council. The Consistory maintained social morality: the clergy leads by example as well
as precept; they may marry but must abstain from hunting, gambling, feasting, commerce, and
secular amusements; and accept annual visitation and moral scrutiny by their superiors. Calvin
established schools and an academy with qualified teachers for Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
theology recruited from Western Europe; and trained young ministers to carry his gospel into
France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England. He believed that the unit of society was the citystate community with strict law and discipline, and emphasized diligence, frugality, and temperance of the people. Recognizing the private property fundamental to social order, Calvin believed
in the primacy of community over individual in economics, religion and morals. The Consistory
punished engrossers, monopolists, and lenders who charged excessive interest; fixed prices for
necessities and fined merchants defrauding their clients. Calvin regarded government as a divine
institution by accepting political absolutism dominant in his time, so that the citizens were required
to respect and obey their rulers unless they do not deny to God. He favored a combination of
popular election and aristocratic government, which would best preserve responsible liberty such
as in the Genevan structure. Calvin faced many theological challenges: free will, predestination,
heaven or hell, Christ and the Trinity, and other difficult matters. Managing the problems, Calvin
became influential as many years gave him roots. In 1566, the Helvetic Confession united
Zwinglians and Calvinists into a Reformed church and all Calvinists overseas adopted the
Confession. While Lutheranism tied with German nationalism, Calvinism formed international
Protestantism throughout Europe that replaced Lutheranism.
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“Scholars have debated Calvin's view of the Jews and Judaism. Some have argued that Calvin
was the least anti-Semitic among all the major reformers of his time, especially in comparison to
Martin Luther. Others have argued that Calvin was firmly within the anti-Semitic camp. Scholars
agree, however, that it is important to distinguish between Calvin's views toward the biblical Jews
and his attitude toward contemporary Jews. In his theology, Calvin does not differentiate between
God's covenant with Israel and the New Covenant. He stated, all the children of the promise,
reborn of God, who have obeyed the commands by faith working through love, have belonged to
the New Covenant since the world began. Still he was a covenant theologian and argued that the
Jews are a rejected people who must embrace Jesus to re-enter the covenant. Most of Calvin's
statements on the Jewry of his era were polemical. For example, Calvin once wrote, I have had
much conversation with many Jews: I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or
ingenuousness – nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew. In this respect, he differed
little from other Protestant and Catholic theologians of his day. Among his extant writings, Calvin
only dealt explicitly with issues of contemporary Jews and Judaism in one treatise. Response to
Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew. In it, he argued that Jews misread their own scriptures
because they miss the unity of the Old and New Testaments.”194
“The aim of Calvin's political theory was to safeguard the rights and freedoms of ordinary
people. Although he was convinced that the Bible contained no blueprint for a certain form of
government, Calvin favored a combination of democracy and aristocracy (mixed government). He
appreciated the advantages of democracy. To further minimize the misuse of political power,
Calvin proposed to divide it among several political institutions like the aristocracy, lower estates,
or magistrates in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Finally, Calvin taught
that if rulers rise up against God they lose their divine right and must be put down. State and
church are separate, though they have to cooperate to the benefit of the people. Christian
magistrates have to make sure that the church can fulfill its duties in freedom. In extreme cases
the magistrates have to expel or execute dangerous heretics. But nobody can be forced to become
a Protestant. Calvin thought that agriculture and the traditional crafts were normal human activities.
With regard to trade and the financial world he was more liberal than Luther, but both were strictly
opposed to usury. However, Calvin allowed the charging of modest interest rates on loans…Calvin
understood work as a means through which the believers expressed their gratitude to God for their
redemption in Christ and as a service to their neighbors. Everybody was obliged to work; loafing
and begging were rejected. The idea that economic success was a visible sign of God's grace
played only a minor role in Calvin's thinking. It became..partly secularized forms of Calvinism
and became the starting-point of Max Weber's theory about the rise of capitalism.”195
“After the deaths of Calvin and his successor, Beza, the Geneva city council gradually gained
control over areas of life that were previously in the ecclesiastical domain. Increasing
secularisation was accompanied by the decline of the church. Even the Geneva académie was
eclipsed by universities in Leiden and Heidelberg, which became the new strongholds of Calvin's
ideas, first identified as "Calvinism" by Joachim Westphal in 1552. By 1585, Geneva, once the
wellspring of the reform movement, had become merely its symbol.[125] However, Calvin had
always warned against describing him as an "idol" and Geneva as a new "Jerusalem". He
encouraged people to adapt to the environments in which they found themselves. Even during his
polemical exchange with Westphal, he advised a group of French-speaking refugees, who had
settled in Wesel, Germany, to integrate with the local Lutheran churches. Despite his differences
with the Lutherans, he did not deny that they were members of the true Church. Calvin's
recognition of the need to adapt to local conditions became an important characteristic of the
reformation movement as it spread across Europe.”196
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The Faith at War (1525-60): Charles V inherited enormous problems with foreign powers.
“Each country had a peculiar internal structure which gave rise to constitutional opposition to the
ruler, and furthermore most of the countries had a tradition in foreign policy related to their
specific interests and situation in Europe. As an Austrian prince, Charles inherited the continuous
struggle against the Turks in Hungary and the Balkans. As emperor, he was directly involved in
the preservation of imperial power against the German semi-independent princes; moreover, he
had to defend the remnants of imperial suzerainty that were being challenged by France in northern
Italy. As king of Aragon, he had to protect the commercial Mediterranean interests of his subjects
and their traditional involvement in southern Italy. The Castilians wanted him to carry the conquest
of the Moslems into North Africa; and the huge Castilian possessions in South America also made
demands upon him. Traditionally, the Burgundian-Netherlands princes had been the foes of France,
but now the majority of the Netherlands leaders wanted a policy of peace with both France and
England, which would be advantageous to trade. Charles had to find a way to integrate all these
interests, essentially an impossible task. Moreover, the jealously guarded privileges of his various
lands did not allow him to create a universal imperial policy.”197
“Charles V derived unparalleled power from his vast empire, upon which the sun never set,
but at the same time he was the victim of its conflicts. He spent most of his reign combating
enemies in one section of his empire, thus allowing his enemies in other parts to organize. Among
the foreign powers that opposed him, the most stubborn and dangerous was France under Francis
I and later Henry II. Since the late 15th century France had tried to get a foothold in either Naples
or Milan (which had been conquered by Francis I in 1515); later it attacked Alsace as well. A
series of French-Hapsburg wars (a continuation of the wars of Maximilian I) started in 1521. In
that year the French king, Francis I, attacked Lombardy, but this conflict ended with a resounding
Hapsburg victory. Francis was captured near Pavia and was forced to conclude a very unfavorable
peace (Madrid, 1525). In 1526, however, he was back in the field, now supported by the Pope and
other Italian powers. But again Charles's forces prevailed. In 1527 his predominantly Protestant
armies sacked Rome, and in 1529 they recaptured Milan. Charles's domination of Italy was
guaranteed by the treaty ending the war (Peace of Cambrai, 1529). In 1526 Charles married Isabel
of Portugal, and their son, Philip (later Philip II of Spain), was born in 1527.”198
In Germany, after the Diet of Worms in 1521, his absence from Germany during 1521-29
gave the anti-Habsburg princes the opportunity to consolidate their opposition to the Emperor. “At
the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 both the Emperor and the Protestants were in a mood for compromise,
but attempts at reconciliation failed. Because of his plan to move against the Turks, however,
Charles could not proceed with force against the Protestants. He tried instead to persuade the Pope
to call a general council and meanwhile hoped to enlist the support of the German princes against
Islam in Hungary and northern Africa. During the 1530s the situation did not improve. Charles
lost the support of Henry VIII of England, who divorced Charles's aunt Catherine in 1533 and was
subsequently driven into separation from Rome. In Germany the Protestant princes, led by Philip
of Hesse, allied with France to wage a new war (1536-1538) against the Emperor. Charles's
stubborn imperialism also alienated his brother. Charles had arranged for Ferdinand's election as
emperor-designate (1531) but tried afterward to change the succession to his own son Philip, thus
causing much resentment on Ferdinand's part.” The unlikely combination of France, Turkey,
Rome, and the Dutch forced the Peace of Crepy in 1544 that ended this inconclusive war. Charles’
efforts to guarantee the unity of his empire failed because of anti-Habsburg coalitions. In the
1550s, France and the German Protestant princes formed a coalition against Habsburg; the
finalized Treaty of Augsburg (1555) gave Lutheranism equal status with Catholicism and left
religious matters in the hands of the German princes, who became the ultimate victors.
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(a) The Protestant Advance (1525-30): “What combination of forces and circumstances
enabled nascent Protestantism to survive the hostility of both papacy and Empire? Mystical piety,
Biblical studies, religious reform, intellectual development, Luther’s audacity, were not enough;
they might have been diverted or controlled. Probably the economic factors were decisive: the
desire to keep German wealth in Germany, to free Germany from papal or Italian domination, to
transfer ecclesiastical property to secular uses, to repel Imperial encroachments upon the territorial,
judicial, and financial authority of the German princes, cities, and states. Add certain political
conditions that permitted the Protestant success.” The expansion of the Ottomans and Habsburg
threatened the balance of power in Europe; while emperors and pops were different more than
similar in their interests. By the 1527 the Lutheranism had become orthodoxy in half of Germany,
and their cities found Protestantism profitable: they are only anxious to dominate their hands, to
be free from the control of bishops; for a slight alteration in their theological garb they escaped
from episcopal taxes and courts, and could appropriate pleasure parcels of Church property. 199
(b) The Diets Disagree (1526-41): “As internal liberty varies with external security, Protestantism, during its safe period, indulged in the sectarian fragmentation that seemed inherent in the
principles of private judgment and the supremacy of conscience…In 1525 three artists were
banished from Protestant Nuremberg for questioning the divine authorship of the Bible, the Real
Presence in the Eucharist, and the divinity of Christ.” Still needing Germany unity against the
Turks, Charles called another Diet at Augsburg on June 20, 1530. Philip Melanchthon drafted the
Augsburg Confession in both German and Latin that was presented to Charles V on June 25 th in
attempt to reach some compromise and a chance to deal with the German situation. At the time
of the Diet of Augsburg, Luther was an outlaw of the Empire, so was unable to present at the Diet.
He made himself present through a variety of publications: Luther’s impact was evident with the
increased resistance of Protestant for concession demands in the later stages of negotiations. 200
(c) The Lion of Wittenberg (1536-46): Luther took no direct part in the pacific conferences
during his declining years; the princes rather than the theologians were now the Protestant leaders,
for the issues concerned property and power far more than dogma and ritual. Luther was not made
for negotiation, and he was getting too old to fight with weapons other than the pen: a papal envoy
described him in 1535 as still vigorous and heartily humorous. Luther tried hard to be reasonable
in his treatise On the Councils and the Churches (1539): “Before sanctioning Protestant attendance
at the Church council, we must first condemn the bishop of Rome as a tyrant, and burn all his bulls
and decretals.” His political opinions in his later years suggest that silence is trebly golden after
sixty. “He had always been politically conservative, even when appearing to encourage social
revolution. His religious revolt was against practice rather than theory.” Luther died in 1546. 201
(d) The Triumph of Protestantism (1542-55): In 1545 Charles V, helped by Lutheran troops,
compelled Francis I to sign the Peace of Crepy. Suleiman, at war with Persin, gave the West a
five-year truce. Pope Paul III promised the Emperor 1,100,000 ducats, 12,000 infantry, 500 horse,
if he would turn his full force against the heretics. In May 1546, Charles mobilized his Spanish,
Italian, German, and Lowland troops, and summoned to his side the Duke of Alva, his ablest
general. Duke Maurice of Albertine Saxony led the Protestants, and the Fuggers promised aid and
the Pope issued a bull excommunicating all who should resist Charles, and offering liberal
indulgences to all who should aid him in the holy war. During the war, Pope changed his mind
and ordered the papal troops who were with Charles to leave him and return to Italy, since he
worried about that the rising imperial power after winning this war would dominate the papacy.
As a result, Charles turned west to renew his struggle with France; and the Protestants were to be
free in the practice of their faith in all German territory; Catholic worship was to be forbidden in
Lutheran territory; and confiscations of Church property were to be held valid.202
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Francis I and the Reformation in France (1515-59): “The Catholic Church in France on
the eve of the Reformation came closest to fitting the description of a national church. The
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438 made the king of France the head of the Gallican Church
in nearly everything outside of matters of belief and ritual. The crown could and did tax the clergy,
could try clerics in lay courts, and appoint bishops and abbots. At the same time, papal authority
in these areas was circumscribed…The Reformation therefore presented a very real threat to royal
authority and royal control. Abolition of Catholicism would have meant a substantial loss of
authority, influence, and revenue. Francis was a sincere Catholic, but even had he not been, the
political implications of Protestantism were too unsettling to consider. As significant as the
Pragmatic Sanction. Francis negotiated it in the wake of his victory at Marignano in 1515, by
which Francis agreed that the pope was not subject to a council. He also agreed the French clergy
should again pay annates to Rome; in return, Francis got the right to tithe the clergy, and to
nominate all archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors. This ended the elective principal in France
and there was some resistance.”203 It was a catastrophe that Francis himself was captured at the
battle of Pavia in February 1525. “He spent six months as an imperial captive, a huge indemnity
and an alliance with Spain. He also agreed to give his two sons as hostages, and agreed to root out
Lutheranism in his realm. As soon as he was freed, he got the Parlement of Paris to void all the
terms of the Treaty of Madrid because Francis had agreed to it under duress. His two sons were
still hostages, but Charles treated them well despite the betrayal.” Lutheranism entered France
while the king was occupied with Italy. The humanists Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) and Jacques
Lefevre (1455-1536) were influential. The king's sister, Marguerite d'Angoulême, was another;
after two years widowhood, at thirty-five, she remarried Henri of Navarre; aside from her charities,
three interests dominated her life – literature, Platonic love, and a mystic theology.204
“Once freed from Madrid, Francis had little interest in persecuting the reformers in France,
even though by this time the Peasant Revolt in Germany was demonstrating that Luther's Cause
could have social and political consequences. In large part this was because to persecute them at
this point would have meant cooperating with the Emperor and the Pope, from whom he was
struggling to keep free. Moreover, in the wake of Pavia (1525) and the sack of Rome (1527), all
nations were becoming alarmed at the seemingly unbounded power of the Habsburgs. Francis was
actually allying with Protestants in Germany; it wouldn't do to persecute Lutherans at home while
seeking their friendship abroad. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Francis for one moment
admired or even tolerated Protestant ideas. The preaching of Lutheran doctrine and the
dissemination of Lutheran literature was forbidden in France in 1525, first by papal bull and later
the same year in a royal decree. A second papal bull came in 1533 and Francis again followed
with his own decree. He issued a harsh edict in 1540. In general, he grew more ardent in his
persecution of reformers later in life, largely in response to things done by the reformers themselves.” Francis died in 1547 and was succeeded by Henry II (1547-59), who married Catherine
de’ Medici, becoming the Queen Mother and regent for many years after Henry’s death. By the
end of the 1550s, the Calvinism was capturing southern and western France; and noble families
were converting to Protestantism. Henry II set himself to crush out the heresy. By his instructions,
the Parlement of Paris organized a special commission to prosecute dissent: those condemned
were sent to the stake, and the new court came to be the burning room. The Edict of Chateaubriand
(1551) made the printing, sale, or possession of heretical literature a major crime, and persistence
in Protestant ideas was to be punished with death. Informers were to receive a third of the goods
of the condemned. Renewing the war against the Emperor, Henry never forgive the long imprisonment of his father, his brother, and himself. Now history moved into the phase Wars of Religion
starting from the conflict between Huguenots and Catholics in France. 205
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Henry VIII and the Reformation in England: (a) Thomas Wolsey (1509-29): The son of a
butcher of Ipswich, Wolsey was educated at the University of Oxford. “In 1498 he was ordained
a priest, and five years later he became chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy lieutenant of Calais,
who recommended him to King Henry VII. When Nanfan died in 1507, Wolsey became Henry
VII’s chaplain and, shortly before the king’s death in April 1509 he was appointed dean of Lincoln.
His energy and self-confidence soon won him the favor of Henry VII’s son and successor, Henry
VIII. Appointed royal almoner in November 1509, Wolsey easily persuaded the pleasure-loving
young monarch to surrender more and more of the unwelcome cares of state. The ties between the
two men became particularly close after Wolsey organized Henry’s successful expedition against
the French in 1513. On Henry’s recommendation Pope Leo X made him bishop of Lincoln
(February 1514), archbishop of York (September 1514), and cardinal (1515). In December 1515
Wolsey became lord-chancellor of England. Three years later the pope appointed him a special
papal representative with the title legate a latere. Wolsey used his vast secular and ecclesiastical
power to amass wealth second only to that of the king. The first priority for both Wolsey and
Henry was to make England the arbiter of power in Europe. At that time Western Europe was split
into two rival camps, with France, England’s traditional enemy, on the one side and the Holy
Roman Empire of the Habsburgs on the other. Wolsey attempted to make peace with France by
promoting a European-wide peace treaty in 1518 and by arranging meetings between Henry and
the French king Francis I and between Henry and the emperor Charles V in 1520. Nevertheless,
war broke out between France and the Empire in 1521, and two years later Wolsey committed
English troops against France. In order to finance this campaign Wolsey raised taxes, thereby
arousing widespread resentment. In 1528 he sided with the French against Charles, but by August
1529 France and the emperor had made peace, and England was diplomatically isolated.”206
“Although Wolsey had obtained his legatine commission with the intent of reforming the
English church, his incessant diplomatic activities left him little time for ecclesiastical concerns.
Besides, he was worldly, greedy for wealth, and unchaste - he had an illegitimate son and daughter.
Nevertheless, he did at least propose some monastic reforms and even suppressed about 29
monasteries, mainly to obtain the revenues that he needed to found Cardinal’s College (later Christ
Church) at the University of Oxford. Wolsey’s influence on England’s judicial institutions was far
more substantial. Possessed of a great legal mind, he extended the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber
- the King’s Council sitting as a court - and used it to impose Henry’s justice on lawless nobles.
The conciliar committee that he delegated to hear suits involving the poor soon evolved into the
Court of Requests (1529). The immediate cause of Wolsey’s fall from power was his failure to
persuade Pope Clement VII to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
There had long been a party of nobles who hated the lowborn, overbearing cardinal. When his
final attempt to obtain the annulment collapsed in July 1529, these enemies easily turned the king
against him.” In fact, seven months after his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, she bore her first
child, which died at birth. A year thereafter she bore a son, but in a few weeks the infant died. A
second and third son succumbed soon after birth. Henry began to think of a divorce or more
precisely, an annulment of his marriage as invalid. In 1516 Catherine gave birth to future Queen
Mary; and 1518 she delivered of another stillborn child. If no son came to Henry, Mary would
inherit the English throne, and her husband, becoming King of France, would in effect be King of
England too, making Britain a province of France. Henry expressed fear that his sonless-ness was
a divine punishment for having used a papal dispensation from a Biblical command. In 1527,
Henry turned his charm upon Anne, a lady-in waiting to Queen Catherine, but sister of Mary who
had been his mistress. Wolsey was not successful in making the pope to approve an annulment of
his marriage, so his chancellorship was replaced by Thomas More.”207
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(b) Thomas More (1478-1535) was the eldest son of John More, a lawyer who was later
knighted and made a judge of the King’s Bench was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four
legal societies preparing for admission to the bar. In 1501 More became an utter barrister, a full
member of the profession. Although bowing to his father’s decision that he should become a
lawyer, More was prepared to be disowned rather than disobey God’s will. To test his vocation to
the priesthood, he resided for about four years in the Carthusian monastery adjoining Lincoln’s
Inn and shared as much of the monks’ way of life as was practicable. Although attracted especially
to the Franciscan order, More decided that he would best serve God and his fellowmen as a lay
Christian. “In late 1504 or early 1505, More married Joan Colt, the eldest daughter of an Essex
gentleman farmer. She was a competent hostess for non-English visitors, such as the Dutch
humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who was given permanent rooms in the Old Barge on the Thames
side in Bucklersbury in the City of London, More’s home for the first two decades of his married
life. Erasmus wrote his Praise of Folly while staying there. The important negotiations More
conducted in 1509 on behalf of a number of London companies with the representative of the
Antwerp merchants confirmed his competence in trade matters and his gifts as an interpreter and
spokesman. From September 1510 to July 1518, when he resigned to be fully in the king’s service,
More was one of the two undersheriffs of London, the pack-horses of the City government. He
endeared himself to the Londoners - as an impartial judge, a disinterested consultant, and the
general patron of the poor. More’s domestic idyll came to a brutal end in the summer of 1511
with the death, perhaps in childbirth, of his wife. He was left a widower with four children, and
within weeks of his first wife’s death he married Alice Middleton, the widow of a London mercer.
She was several years his senior and had a daughter of her own; she did not bear More any children.
More’s History of King Richard III, written in Latin and in English between about 1513 and 1518,
is the first masterpiece of English historiography. Though never finished, it influenced succeeding
historians. William Shakespeare is indebted to More for his portrait of the tyrant.”208
“In May 1515 More was appointed to a delegation to revise an Anglo-Flemish commercial
treaty. The conference was held at Brugge, with long intervals that More used to visit other Belgian
cities. He began in the Low Countries and completed after his return to London his Utopia, which
was published at Leuven in December 1516. The book was an immediate success with the
audience for which More wrote it: the humanists and an elite group of public officials. Utopia is
a Greek name of More’s coining, from ou-topos (no place); a pun on eu-topos (good place) is
suggested in a prefatory poem. More’s Utopia describes a pagan and communist city-state in which
the institutions and policies are entirely governed by reason. The order and dignity of such a state
provided a notable contrast with the unreasonable polity of Christian Europe, divided by selfinterest and greed for power and riches, which More described in Book I, written in England in
1516. The description of Utopia is put in the mouth of a mysterious traveler, Raphael Hythloday,
in support of his argument that communism is the only cure against egoism in private and public
life. Through dialogue More speaks in favor of the mitigation of evil rather than its cure, human
nature being fallible. Among the topics discussed by More in Utopia were penology, statecontrolled education, religious pluralism, divorce, euthanasia, and women’s rights.” In Book II,
More introduces the imaginary world of utopia, an island of common-wealth, where Plato’s
communism is the rule of life, pursuing justice and equality. The island consisting of fifty-four
cities and its prince is annually elected by all syphogrants, each of whom represents thirty families.
He declares towns, magistrates, trade, traffic, traveling, slaves, life, wars and religions of this
Utopian island. “The resulting demonstration of his learning, invention, and wit established his
reputation as one of the foremost humanists. Soon translated into most European languages,
Utopia became the ancestor of a new literary genre, the utopian romance.”209
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
In 1520 and 1521 More took part in talks, at Calais and Brugge, with the emperor Charles V
and with the Hansa merchants. In 1521 he was made under-treasurer and knighted. In April 1523,
More was elected speaker of the House of Commons. “In the Parliament that assembled at
Westminister on November 3, 1529, the controlling groups – the nobles in the Upper House, the
merchants in the Commons – agreed on three policies: the reduction of ecclesiastical wealth and
power, the maintenance of trade with Flanders, and support of the King in his campaign for a male
heir. This did not carry with it approval of Anne Boleyn, who was generally condemned as an
adventuress, nor did it prevent an almost universal sympathy with Catherine…Henry kept this
opposition temporarily quiet by remaining orthodox in everything but the right of the popes to
govern the English Church. On that point the national spirit, even stronger in England than in
Germany, upheld the hand of the King; and the clergy, though horrified at the thought of making
Henry their master, were not averse to independence from a papacy so obviously subject to a
foreign power.”210 “More attended the congress of Cambrai at which peace was made between
France and the Holy Roman Empire in 1529. Though the Treaty of Cambrai represented a rebuff
to England and, more particularly, a devastating reverse for Cardinal Wolsey’s policies, More
managed to secure the inclusion of his country in the treaty and the settlement of mutual debts.
When Wolsey fell from power, having failed in his foreign policy and in his efforts to procure the
annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine, More succeeded him as lord-chancellor on October
26, 1529…As the king’s mouthpiece, More indicted Wolsey in his opening speech and, in 1531,
proclaimed the opinions of universities favorable to the divorce; but he did not sign the letter of
1530 in which England’s nobles and prelates, including Wolsey, pressured the pope to declare the
first marriage void, and he tried to resign in 1531, when the clergy acknowledged the king as their
supreme head, albeit with the clause as far as the law of Christ allows.”
“More’s refusal to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, whom Henry married after his
divorce from Catherine in 1533, marked him out for vengeance. Several charges of accepting
bribes recoiled on the heads of his accusers.” He was summoned to appear before royal
commissioners on April 13 to assent under oath to the Act of Succession, which declared the
king’s marriage with Catherine void and that with Anne valid. This More was willing to do,
acknowledging that Anne was in fact anointed queen. But he refused the oath as then administered
because it entailed a repudiation of papal supremacy. On April 17, 1534, he was imprisoned in the
Tower. More was sentenced to the traitor’s death – to be drawn, hanged, and quartered – which
the king changed to beheading. “Despite More’s scathing denial of this perjured evidence, the
jury’s unanimous verdict was guilty. Before the sentence was pronounced, More spoke in
discharge of his conscience. The unity of the church was the main motive of his martyrdom. His
second objection was that no temporal man may be head of the spirituality. The news of More’s
death shocked Europe. Erasmus mourned the man he had so often praised, whose soul was more
pure than any snow, whose genius was such that England never had and never again will have its
like. The official image of More as a traitor did not gain credence even in Protestant lands. Though
the triumph of Anglicanism brought about a certain eclipse of Thomas More, the publication of
the state papers restored a fuller and truer picture of More, preparing public opinion for his
beatification (1886). He was canonized by Pius XI in May 1935. Though the man is greater than
the writer and though nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it, his golden little book
Utopia has earned him greater fame than the crown of martyrdom or the million words of his
English works. Erasmus’s phrase describing More as omnium horarum homo was rendered later
as a man for all seasons and was given currency by Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons
(1960). Monuments to More have been placed in Westminster Hall, the Tower of London, and the
Chelsea Embankment, all in London.” He may come to be counted the greatest Englishman.
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Consequently, Henry VIII divorced with Catherine and married Anne Boleyn, which required
an annulment of his marriage by the pope. Sine Rome was sacked by Charles V in 1527 who was
the nephew of Catherine, Pope Clement VII was unable to accept Henry’s request. Henry replaced
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) to archbishop of Canterbury for Woolsey in 1532, and obtained an
annulment from the English ecclesiastical court and married Anne. Appointing Thomas Cromwell
(1485-1540) to the king’s principal secretary in 1534, Henry pursued the break of the English
church with Rome by making Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy with the Treason Act,
allowing the English king to control all matters of the church and to punish by death if anyone
denied his supremacy over the church, by which Fisher, More and many others were beheaded in
1535. Within some thirty months of More’s death, Henry lost three of his six queens. Catherine
of Aragon was removed to Kimbalton Castle in 1535, where she confined herself to one room,
leaving it only to hear Mass. She received visitors, and used them very obligingly. Mary, now
nineteen, was kept at Hatfiled, only twenty miles away; but mother and daughter were not allowed
to see each other. Catherine died in December. His second wife, Anne Boleyn was beheaded on
charges of adultery, incest, and high treason on May 1536, leaving Elizabeth I. His third wife,
Jane Seymour was one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies-in-waiting. She produced legitimate male heir,
Edward, but died twelve days later in October 1537. Henry had three more wives: Anne of Cleves
was his fourth wife who married in January 1540 but divorced six month later; Catherine Howard
the fifth who married July 1540 but was divorced after fifteen months, later beheaded; Catherine
Parr was the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII married in July 1543, but three and half years later
Henry died. The last three wives did not produce any child. 211
(c) Henry VIII and the Monasteries (1535-47): Dissatisfaction with the general state of regular
religious life, and with the gross extent of monastic wealth, was near to universal amongst late
medieval secular and ecclesiastical rulers in the Latin West. “Erasmus's criticisms of the monks
and nuns of his day were threefold: (i) that, in withdrawing from the world into their own
communal life, they elevated man-made monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience above
the God-given vows of sacramental baptism; and elevated man-made monastic rules for religious
life above the God-given teachings of the Gospels; (ii) that, notwithstanding exceptional
communities of genuine austere life and exemplary charity, the overwhelming majority of abbeys
and priories were havens for idle drones; concerned only for their own existence, reserving for
themselves an excessive share of the commonwealth's religious assets, and contributing little or
nothing to the spiritual needs of ordinary people; and (iii) that the monasteries, almost without
exception, were heavily involved in promoting and profiting from the veneration of relics, in the
form of pilgrimages and purported miraculous tokens. The cult of relics was by no means specific
to monasteries, but Erasmus was scandalized by the extent to which well-educated and highly
regarded monks and nuns would participate in the perpetration of obvious frauds against gullible
and credulous lay believers.”212 Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) was a lawyer and statesman who
served as chief minister to Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540. “Cromwell was one of the strongest
and most powerful advocates of the English Reformation. He helped to engineer an annulment of
the king's marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon to allow Henry to marry his mistress Anne
Boleyn. After failing in 1534 to obtain the Pope's approval of the request for annulment,
Parliament endorsed the King's claim to be head of the breakaway Church of England, thus giving
Henry the authority to annul his own marriage. Cromwell subsequently plotted an evangelical,
reformist course for the embryonic Church of England from the unique posts of vicegerent in
spirituals and vicar-general. During his rise to power, Cromwell made many enemies…Cromwell
was arraigned under a bill of attainder and executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on 28
July 1540. The King later expressed regret at the loss of his chief minister.”213
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On February 4, 1536, Cromwell submitted a Black Book, now lost, revealing the faults of the
monasteries, and recommending, with strategic moderation, that monasteries and convents having
an income of £ 200 or less per year should be closed; and the Parliament consented. A court of
Augmentations was appointed by the King to receive the property and revenues from monasteries.
Henry decided to dissolute monasteries in 1536: Cromwell closed religious houses, confiscated
their land and possession, and sold them at bargain prices to nobles, gentry, and rich merchants
for the royal treasury. “All in all 578 monasteries and some 130 convents were closed; 6,521
monks or friars as well as 1,560 nuns were dispersed. “Among these, some fifty monks and two
nuns willingly abandoned the religious habit; but many more pleased to be allowed to continue
somewhere their conventual life. Some 12,000 persons formerly employed by the religious houses
lost their places or alms. The confiscated lands and buildings had enjoyed an annual revenue of
some £ 200,000, but quick sales reduced the annual income of the properties after nationalization
to some £ 37,000. To this should be added £ 85,000 in confiscated precious metal, so that the total
spoils in goods and income accruing to Henry during his life may have been some £ 1,423,500.
The King was generous with these spoils. Some of the properties he gave – most of them he sold
at bargain prices – to minor nobles or major burgesses (merchants and lawyers) who had supported
or administered his policies. Cromwell received or bought six abbeys, with an annual revenue of
£ 2,293; his nephew Sir Richard Cromwell received seven, with an income of £ 2,552; this was
the origin of the fortune that made Richard’s great-grandson Oliver a man of substance and
influence in the next century. Some of the spoils went to build ships, forts, and ports; some helped
to finance war; some went into the royal palaces at Westminster, Chelsea, and Hampton Court…
Six monasteries were returned to the Anglican Church as episcopal sees; and a small sum was
assigned to continue the most urgent of the charities formerly provided by the monks and nuns.” 214
The effects of the dissolution were complex and interminable. “The liberated monks may have
shared modestly or not in the increase of England’s population from about 2,500,000 in 1485 to
some 4,000,000 in 1547. A temporary increase in the unemployed helped to depress the earnings
of the lower classes for a generation, and the new landlords proved more grasping than the old.
Politically, the effect was to augment still further the power of the monarchy; the Church lost the
last stronghold of resistance. Morally, the results were a growth of crime, pauperism, and beggary,
and a diminished provision of charity. Over a hundred monastic hospitals were closed; a few were
rehabilitated by municipal authorities. The sums that fearful or reverent souls had bequeathed to
priests as insurance against infernal or purgatorial fire were confiscated in expectation that no
harm would come to the death; 2,374 chantries, with their endowments of Masses, were
appropriated by the King. The severest effects were in education. The convents had provided
schools for girls, the monasteries and the chantry priests had maintain schools and ninety colleges
for boys; all these institutions were dissolved.” “Henry’s greed and Cromwell’s ruthlessness
merely advanced by a generation an inevitable lessening in the number and influence of English
monasteries. These had once done admirable work in education, charity, and hospital care, but
the secularization of such functions was proceeding throughout Western Europe, even where
Catholicism prevailed. The decline in religious fervor and other-worldliness was rapidly
narrowing the flow of novices into conventual establishments; and many of these were reduced to
so small a number as seemed out of proportion to the splendor of their buildings and the income
of their lands. It is a pity that the situation was met by the brusque haste of Cromwell rather than
by Wolsey’s humane and sounder plan of transforming more and more monasteries into colleges…
Our chief regrets go to the nuns who for the most part labored dutifully in prayer, schooling, and
benevolence; and even one who cannot share their trustful faith must be grateful that their like
attain minister, with lifelong devotion, to the needs of the sick and the poor.” 215
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Edward VI and Mary Tudor (1547-58): The ten-year-old boy succeeded to the throne of
England as Edward VI in 1547. “Henry had decreed that during Edward’s minority the government
was to be run by a council of regency; in fact, Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset,
wielded almost supreme power as regent, with the title of protector, until he was overthrown in
1549 by the unscrupulous John Dudley, earl of Warwick (soon to be duke of Northumberland).
The young king was the mask behind which Northumberland controlled the government. The
measures taken by both Somerset and Northumberland to consolidate the English Reformation,
however, agreed with Edward’s own intense devotion to Protestantism. In January 1553 Edward
showed the first signs of tuberculosis, and by May it was evident that the disease would be fatal.
Working with Northumberland, he determined to exclude his two half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth,
from the succession and to put Northumberland’s daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, and her male
heirs in direct line for the throne. As a result, a power struggle erupted after Edward’s death. Lady
Jane Grey ruled for nine days (July 10–19, 1553) before she was overthrown by the more popular
Mary I (reigned 1553–58).”216 “Edward Seymour’s chief rival for power was John Dudley, earl of
Warwick. Somerset tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Scots to join a voluntary union with
England, but, when his appeal was rejected, he destroyed all chances of reconciliation by invading
Scotland and defeating the Scots at the Battle of Pinkie (Sept. 10, 1547). In domestic affairs, the
Protector proceeded with moderation in consolidating the Protestant Reformation in England. He
repealed Henry VIII’s heresy laws, which had made it treason to attack the king’s leadership of
the church; the first Book of Common Prayer, which was imposed (1549) by an Act of Uniformity
by Somerset, offered a compromise between Roman Catholic and Protestant learning.”217 But this
moderate measures stirred up antagonisms that resulted in Catholic uprisings in 1549.
Upon Henry VIII’s death, Warwick became a member of the regency council set up to govern
the country. “He acquiesced while Hertford assumed almost supreme power as protector with the
title of duke of Somerset. At first the two men continued to work together. Warwick’s military
ability was chiefly responsible for Somerset’s victory over the Scots at Pinkie in September 1547.
But in 1549 Warwick took advantage of popular unrest generated by Somerset’s policies to join
with the propertied classes and the Roman Catholics in a coalition that deposed and imprisoned
the protector. When the coalition collapsed, Somerset was released (February 1550), and the two
rivals were ostensibly reconciled. But Warwick was now in complete control of the government.
Warwick’s foreign policy included the abandonment of English efforts to obtain control of
Scotland. At home he reversed Somerset’s liberal agrarian policies by suppressing peasants who
resisted enclosure - normally the taking by propertied classes of arable land held in common by
the peasants. In continuing the consolidation of the Protestant Reformation in England, he seized
for himself and his henchmen much of the remaining wealth of the Church. A second Book of
Common Prayer was imposed by another Act of Uniformity (1552). The general unpopularity of
his rule caused him to strengthen his position by making himself duke of Northumberland (1551)
and by having the potentially dangerous Somerset arrested and (on January 22, 1552) executed.
Thereafter he imposed strict conformity to Protestant ceremony and doctrine. The only aspects of
his policies that historians have applauded were his attempts to deal with England’s economic ills
by fighting inflation, stabilizing coinage, and expanding trade. When it became evident in 1553
that the 15-year-old Edward VI would die of tuberculosis, Northumberland caused his son,
Guildford Dudley, to marry Lady Jane Grey and persuaded the king to will the crown to Jane and
her male heirs - thereby excluding from the succession Henry VIII’s daughters, Mary and
Elizabeth. Edward died on July 6, 1553, and on July 10 Northumberland proclaimed Jane queen
of England. But the councilors in London and the populace backed Mary Tudor. Northumberland’s
supporters melted away…A month later he was executed for treason.”218
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Upon the death of Edward in 1553, Mary fled to Norfolk, as Lady Jane Grey had seized the
throne and was recognized as queen for a few days. “The country, however, considered Mary the
rightful ruler, and within some days she made a triumphal entry into London. A woman of 37 now,
she was forceful, sincere, bluff, and hearty like her father but, in contrast to him, disliked cruel
punishments and the signing of death warrants. Insensible to the need of caution for a newly
crowned queen, unable to adapt herself to novel circumstances, and lacking self-interest, Mary
longed to bring her people back to the Church of Rome. To achieve this end, she was determined
to marry Philip II of Spain, the son of the emperor Charles V and 11 years her junior, though most
of her advisers advocated her cousin Courtenay, earl of Devon, a man of royal blood. Those
English noblemen who had acquired wealth and lands when Henry VIII confiscated the Catholic
monasteries had a vested interest in retaining them, and Mary’s desire to restore Roman Catholicism as the state religion made them her enemies. Parliament, also at odds with her, was offended
by her discourtesy to their delegates pleading against the Spanish marriage: My marriage is my
own affair, she retorted. When in 1554 it became clear that she would marry Philip, a Protestant
insurrection broke out under the leadership of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Alarmed by Wyatt’s rapid
advance toward London, Mary made a magnificent speech rousing citizens by the thousands to
fight for her. Wyatt was defeated and executed, and Mary married Philip, restored the Catholic
creed, and revived the laws against heresy. For three years rebel bodies dangled from gibbets, and
heretics were relentlessly executed, some 300 being burned at the stake. Thenceforward the queen,
now known as Bloody Mary, was hated, her Spanish husband distrusted and slandered, and she
herself blamed for the vicious slaughter. An unpopular, unsuccessful war with France, in which
Spain was England’s ally, lost Calais, England’s last toehold in Europe. Still childless, sick, and
grief stricken, she was further depressed by a series of false pregnancies.” She died in 1558.219
Cardinal Regniald Pole (1500-58), whose father was a cousin of King Henry VII and whose
mother was a niece of Edward IV, wrote in 1536 a treatise In Defense of Ecclesiastical Unity
attacking Henry VIII’s claim of royal supremacy over the English church and strongly defending
the pope’s spiritual authority. Pope sent him on two diplomatic missions to persuade Europe’s
Catholic monarchs to ally against Henry. “Both endeavors were totally unsuccessful, and Henry,
in revenge for Pole’s treasonous activities, executed Pole’s brother, Lord Montague, in 1538 and
his mother in 1541. In August 1541 Pole was appointed papal governor of the Patrimony of St.
Peter. He took up residence at Viterbo and gathered around him a group of humanists. Later, he
was the presiding legate at the Council of Trent; and, upon the death of Paul III in November 1549,
Pole, with backing from the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, was nearly elected pope. The office
fell to Julius III only after the French and Italian prelates refused to endorse Pole’s candidacy. On
the accession of Mary Tudor to the English throne in July 1553, the pope at once appointed Pole
legate for England. He landed at Dover on Nov. 20, 1554, and 10 days later formally received the
country back into the Catholic fold. He then began to refound the monasteries, and in November
1555 he assembled at Westminster a synod that instituted a number of church reforms. Soon Pole
was virtually running the government. Although he was not directly responsible for the burnings
of Protestants that marked Mary’s reign, he did not oppose them. Pole was made archbishop of
Canterbury in March 1556. Regrettably for Pole, Paul IV, the pope elected in 1555, was a longtime
bitter enemy of Catholic humanism and of the attempts of men like Pole to soften the teachings of
Catholicism to win back those who had deserted to Protestantism. Further infuriated by Mary’s
support for her husband, Philip II of Spain, in his temporal conflicts with the papacy, Paul IV first
canceled Pole’s legatine authority and then sought to recall Pole to Rome to face investigation for
heresy in his earlier writings. Mary refused to let Pole leave England, but he accepted his
suspension from office.” Pole died, a few hours after Queen Mary died in November 1558.220
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Reformation in Scotland - John Knox (1300-1560): It is supposed that Knox trained
for the priesthood under the scholar John Major, most probably at the University of St. Andrews.
Knox did not take a master’s degree, however, but he ended his training with a mind imbued with
that delight in abstract thought and dialectical disputation which, even in that age, was recognized
throughout Europe as typical of Scottish scholarship. He was in priest’s orders by 1540, and in
1543 he was known to be also practicing as an apostolic notary in the Haddington area, which
would seem to indicate that he was in good standing with the ecclesiastical authorities. Two years
later, however, Knox was in more equivocal company as tutor to the sons of two gentlemen of
East Lothian who were deeply involved in the intrigues of political Protestantism. Under their
protection, George Wishart, a Scottish Reformation leader who was to become an early martyr for
the cause, began a preaching tour in the Lothians in December 1545. Knox was much in his
company, and Knox’s complete conversion to the Reformed faith dates from his contact with
Wishart, whose memory he cherished ever afterward. Wishart was burned for heresy in March
1546 by Cardinal David Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews…Meantime, Knox, accompanied by
his pupils, was moving from place to place to escape persecution and arrest…in April 1547, less
than a year after the cardinal’s murder and against his own desire, Knox arrived with his pupils in
St. Andrews - still an unknown man. The three months that he spent there transformed him, against
his own predisposition, into the acknowledged spokesman and protagonist of the Reformation
movement in Scotland. The Protestants in the castle had become involved in controversy with the
university; several of them, becoming aware that a man of uncommon gifts had joined them,
pressed upon Knox’s conscience the duty of taking up the public office and charge of preaching.
Knox’s inclination was for the quiet of the study and the school-room, not for the responsibilities
and perils of the life of a preacher of a proscribed and persecuted faith.” 221
At the end of June 1547, French assistance reached the governor of Scotland. The garrison of
St. Andrews castle, bombarded from without and assailed by plague within, capitulated on terms
that were not kept; Knox and others were carried off to slavery in the French galleys. English
intervention secured his release 19 months later, though with permanently broken health. In
England the Protestant government of Edward VI was endeavouring to hurry clergy and people
into the Reformation faster, if anything, than most of them were willing to go. For this program
preachers and propagandists were urgently required; and because a return to a Scotland under
Roman Catholic rule was impossible for Knox at this time, the English government promptly made
him one of a select corps of licensed preachers and sent him north to propagate the Reformation
in the turbulent garrison town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. He brought order to the town and
established a congregation on Puritan lines, and there he met Marjorie Bowes, who was to become
his wife. Early in 1551 he was given a new assignment in Newcastle and a little later was appointed
to be one of the six royal chaplains whose duties included periodic residence at, and preaching
before, the court as well as itinerant evangelism in areas where the regular clergy were lacking in
Protestant zeal. He later refused to accept the bishopric of Rochester and the vicarage of
Allhallows, London, but continued, under the patronage of the government, to exercise an itinerant
ministry, mainly, but not exclusively, in Buckinghamshire, Kent, and London. In three respects
Knox left his mark on the Church of England: he took part in the shaping of its articles; he secured
the insertion into The Book of Common Prayer of the so-called black rubric, which denies the
corporal presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine used in Holy Communion and
explains that kneeling at communion implies no adoration of the elements; and he was one of the
chief foster fathers of English Puritanism, a reform movement started within the state church with
a view to the more rigorous application of Reformation principles in doctrine and worship.” As
Mary Tudor rose, Knox was one of the last of the Protestant leaders to flee the country.222
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
John Knox escaped to the Continent disturbed by the realization that the fate of true religion
in England had turned on the religious opinions of one woman. He could see no security for the
Reformation anywhere if the personal whim of a sovereign was permitted to settle the religion of
a nation. Might it not be legitimate for Protestant subjects, in such circumstances, to resist - if
necessary by force - the subversion of their religion by a Roman Catholic ruler? Knox formulated
his fateful conclusion, later to be applied in Scotland, that God-fearing magistrates and nobility
have both the right and the duty to resist, if necessary by force, a ruler who threatens the safety of
true religion. Also in 1554 Knox published his Faithful Admonition to the Protestants who
remained in England. Its extremism and intemperate language served to increase the sufferings of
those to whom it was addressed; and, coming as it did from one who was in comparative safety, it
alienated many in England from him. In the same year, on the insistence of John Calvin, Knox
became minister of a congregation of English refugees, mainly Puritan, in Frankfurt am Main; but
he remained there for only a few months. He then became minister of the growing congregation
of English exiles in Geneva, a pastorate that lasted until his final return to Scotland in 1559, but
was interrupted at the outset by a visit (1555–56) to Berwick and a nine-month sojourn in Scotland,
in the course of which he married Marjorie Bowes. She died, having borne him two sons, in 1560.
In Edinburgh Knox was astounded by the progress made by the Reformed cause and by the eager
reception given to him by all classes in the community. To the nobility, in visits to their country
houses, he propounded his doctrine of “justifiable resistance” to Roman Catholic rulers who
attacked the faith of Protestant subjects and urged them to withdraw from all the rites and
ceremonies of the Roman Church and to band themselves together for the defense of Protestantism
in case that should prove necessary. A peremptory summons from his congregation called him
back to Geneva, where he spent the happiest years of his life.”223
Knox returned. “By the end of June, Edinburgh was temporarily in Protestant hands and Knox
was preaching in St. Giles’s; but the triumph was illusory and Knox knew it. The voluntary army
of Protestants could not keep the field for more than a few weeks; the mercenary army of the queen
regent could keep the field indefinitely and strike a crushing blow as Protestant strength declined.
At this juncture Henry II of France died and power fell into the hands of the Guises, the brothers
of the queen regent and uncles of the young queen of France - Mary, Queen of Scots and consort
of Francis II, the new king of France. Strong French intervention in Scotland was now assured in
furtherance of the Guise plan to displace Queen Elizabeth of England and to unite France, Scotland,
and England under Francis II, of France, and Mary. Thus a political issue of critical international
importance cut athwart the religious issue in Scotland. A French victory in Scotland would place
Elizabeth and England in peril. It therefore behooved England to make common cause with the
Scottish Protestants. Knox lost no opportunity to drive this fact home to Elizabeth. The autumn
and winter of 1559 saw the Scottish Protestants in desperate plight. Only Knox’s superhuman
exertions and indomitable spirit kept the cause in being. In the blackest hour Knox put fresh heart
into the despairing Protestant leaders and staved off defeat at the hands of the government’s French
mercenaries. On Knox’s resolution alone in these months hung the fate not only of Scottish
Protestantism but of Elizabeth’s England as well. In the spring of 1560, Elizabeth at last consented
to English action. In April, 10,000 English troops joined the Scottish Protestants, the queen regent
died in Edinburgh castle, and the disheartened French gave up. By treaty, French and English
troops were then withdrawn, leaving the victorious Scottish Protestants to set their own house in
order. Queen Mary was a Roman Catholic and an absentee in France, and all her sympathies were
with the defeated side. The Scottish Parliament had never exercised much power, but now, meeting
in August without royal authority, it proceeded to grapple with the religious issue. The Scots
Confession was adopted, and papal jurisdiction was abolished.”224
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Migration of Reform (1517-60): (a) Sweden: “The Reformation in Sweden did not
involve a radical break with past church practices; the episcopal form of church government and
the apostolic succession of the clergy were maintained. Gustav I Vasa, king of independent
Sweden (1523–60) after the Scandinavian union of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark had broken
up, wished to eliminate the extensive economic power of the Roman Catholic Church in Sweden.
He was aided in introducing the Reformation in Sweden by his chancellor, Laurentius Andreae,
who had studied on the European continent and was aware of the new religious teachings, and by
Olaus Petri, the Reformer of Sweden, who had studied in Wittenberg, Ger., with Martin Luther
and Philipp Melanchthon. Ties with the Roman church were gradually weakened until 1527, when
the king, with the approval of the Swedish Diet, confiscated the church’s property, and the Church
of Sweden became independent. Some of the clergy left Sweden rather than accept Lutheranism,
but gradually the new religious teachings were accepted by the remaining clergy and the people.
In 1544 the king and the Diet officially declared Sweden a Lutheran nation. Petri was a teacher
and preacher who served as pastor (1543–52) in the Storkyrkan in Stockholm, city councilman in
Stockholm, and secretary (1527) and chancellor (1531) to the king. He served the Swedish
Reformation in many ways. He prepared a Swedish New Testament (1526), a hymnbook (1526),
a church manual (1529), and a Swedish liturgy (1531), and he wrote several religious works. The
entire Bible was translated into Swedish by Olaus…Laurentius prepared the “church order” of
1571, a book of rites and ceremonies that regulated the life of the church. Subsequent attempts by
Roman Catholics to regain power in Sweden were unsuccessful. Under King Gustav II Adolf,
Lutheranism was no longer threatened, and Gustav’s intervention in the Thirty Years’ War has
been credited with saving Protestantism in Germany.”225
(b) Denmark: Lutheranism was established during the Protestant Reformation. “Christianity
was introduced to Denmark in the 9th century by St. Ansgar, bishop of Hamburg. In the 10th
century, King Harald Bluetooth became a Christian and began organizing the church…by the 11th
century, Christianity was gradually becoming accepted throughout the country. In the late Middle
Ages the church had become worldly and offered little spiritual leadership. King Christian II
(reigned 1513–23) attempted to reform the church, but the Reformation was brought to Denmark
by King Christian III (reigned 1536–59), who had known Martin Luther and had become a
Lutheran. After winning a civil war, Christian III decreed in 1536 that Denmark would be Lutheran.
Roman Catholic bishops and clergy who objected were imprisoned or deposed, and the church’s
property was confiscated by the government. Johannes Bugenhagen, Lutheran reformer and
theologian at Wittenberg…came to Copenhagen in 1537 to help organize the Lutheran Church of
Denmark. In 1683 King Christian V decreed that the law of Denmark would recognize the
Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, Luther’s Small Catechism, and the Augsburg
Confession as the authoritative confessions of the Danish church. German Lutheran orthodoxy
influenced Danish Lutheranism in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th century the church was
influenced by Pietism, the Lutheran movement that began in Germany and encouraged personal
religious experience and reform. As a result, missions, orphanages, and schools were established
in Denmark. In the 19th century the outstanding figure in the renewal of Danish church life was
N.F.S. Grundtvig. Although the king and Parliament have legal control over the Danish church,
in practice the church enjoys considerable independence. It is divided into dioceses, each headed
by a bishop. The bishop of Copenhagen also supervises the Lutheran churches in Greenland, which
is part of the Danish kingdom. Women were given the right to seek ordination in 1947. Under the
Danish constitution the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the state church, and instruction in
Lutheran beliefs is given in schools. As in all Scandinavian countries, the church’s official
membership includes most of the population, though only a small percentage…active.”226
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(c) Poland: “In the first half of the 16th century, the enormous Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a country of many creeds, but Roman Catholic Church remained the dominating
religion. Reformation reached Poland in the 1520s, and quickly gained popularity among mostly
German-speaking inhabitants of such major cities as Gdańsk, Toruń and Elbląg. In Koenigsberg,
in 1530, a Polish-language edition of Luther's Small Catechism was published. The Duchy of
Prussia, which was a Polish fief, emerged as key center of the movement, with numerous
publishing houses issuing not only Bibles, but also catechisms, in German, Polish and Lithuanian.
Lutheranism gained popularity in northern part of the country, while Calvinism caught the interest
of the nobility (known as szlachta), mainly in Lesser Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Several publishing houses were opened in Lesser Poland in mid-16th century in such locations as
Słomniki and Raków. At that time, Mennonites and Czech Brothers came to Poland, with the latter
settling mostly in Greater Poland around Leszno. In 1565, Polish Brethren appeared as yet another
reformation movement. The 16th century Commonwealth was unique in Europe, because of
widespread tolerance confirmed by the Warsaw Confederation. In 1563, the Brest Bible was
published (see also Bible translations into Polish). The period of tolerance ended during the reign
of King Sigismund III Vasa, who was under the strong influence of Piotr Skarga and other Jesuits.
After the Deluge, and other wars of the mid-17th century in which all enemies of Poland were
either Protestant or Orthodox Christians, the Poles' attitude changed. The Counter-Reformation
prevailed: in 1658 the Polish Brethren were forced to leave the country, and in 1666, the Sejm
banned apostasy from Catholicism to any other religion, under punishment of death. Finally, in
1717, the Silent Sejm banned non-Catholics from becoming deputies of the Parliament.”227
(d) Netherland: “The Reformation in the Netherlands, unlike in many other countries, was not
initiated by the rulers of the Seventeen Provinces, but instead by multiple popular movements,
which in turn were bolstered by the arrival of Protestant refugees from other parts of the continent.
While the Anabaptist movement enjoyed popularity in the region in the early decades of the
Reformation, Calvinism, in the form of the Dutch Reformed Church, became the dominant
Protestant faith in the country from the 1560s onward. Harsh persecution of Protestants by the
Spanish government of Philip II contributed to a desire for independence in the provinces, which
led to the Eighty Years' War and, eventually, the separation of the largely Protestant Dutch
Republic from the Roman Catholic-dominated Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium).”228
(e) Spain: “Between 1530 and 1540 Protestantism in Spain was still able to gain followers
clandestinely, and in cities such as Seville and Valladolid adherents would secretly meet at private
houses to pray and study the Bible. Protestants in Spain were estimated at between 1000 and 3000,
mainly among intellectuals who had seen writings such as those of Erasmus. Notable reformers
included Dr. Juan Gil and Juan Pérez de Pineda who subsequently fled and worked alongside
others such as Francisco de Enzinas to translate the Greek New Testament into the Spanish
language, a task completed by 1556. Protestant teachings were smuggled into Spain by Spaniards
such as Julián Hernández, who in 1557 was condemned by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake.
Under Philip II conservatives in the Spanish church tightened their grip, and those who refused to
recant such as Rodrigo de Valer were condemned to life imprisonment. In May 1559 sixteen
Spanish Lutherans were burnt at the stake, 14 strangled prior to burning and the other 2 burnt alive.
In October another thirty were executed. Spanish Protestants that were able to flee the country
were to be found in at least a dozen cities in Europe such as Geneva, where some of them embraced
Calvinist teachings. Those that fled to England were given support by the Church of England.”229
There had been two fundamental movements under the long reign of Charles V: one was the
growth of nationalism under centralized monarchies, and the other was the religious revolution,
rising from national and territorial divisions and interests. 230
116
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
2-3. Russians, Muslims, Jews, and the Counter Reformation
There were three developments in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: the unification
of Russia, the expansion of the Muslim empires, and the expulsion of the Jews in Europe. In 1300
Russia did not exist. “The North belonged for the most part to three self-governed city-states:
Novgorod, Viatka, and Pskov. The western and southern provinces were dependencies of
Lithuania. In the east the principalities of Moscow, Ryazan, Suzday, Nijni Novgord, and Tver all
claimed individual sovereignty, and were united only in common subjection to the Gold Horde.
The state originated with Daniel I, who inherited Moscow in 1283, eclipsing and eventually
absorbing its parent duchy of Vladimir-Suzdal by the 1320s. It later destroyed and annexed the
Novgorod Republic in 1478 and the Grand Duchy of Tver in 1485. The Grand Duchy of Moscow
expanded through conquest and annexation from just 20,000 square kilometers in 1300 to 430,000
in 1462, 2.8 million in 1533, and 5.4 million by 1584. Muscovy remained a tributary to the Golden
Horde until 1480. Ivan III further consolidated the state during his 43-year reign, campaigning
against his major remaining rival power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and by 1503 he had tripled
the territory of Muscovy, adopting the title of tsar and claiming the title of Ruler of all Rus'.”231
Map I-2-2 shows the growth of Russia between 1500 and 1900 on the next page.
The Ottoman Empire was created by Osman I (reigned 1299-1326). The military campaigning
season of 1453 commenced with the fifty-day siege of Constantinople, during which Mehmed II
(reigned 1451-81) brought warships overland on greased runners into the Golden Horn to bypass
the chain barrage and fortresses that had blocked the entrance to Constantinople's harbor. On May
29 the Turks fought their way through the gates of the city and brought the siege to a successful
conclusion. Mehmed II made “Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire as it had been of
the Byzantine Empire, and he set about rebuilding the city.” Selim I extended the empire to Syria
and Egypt, and his son Süleyman the Magnificent brought victory over the Christian powers.
Belgrade fell to him after a siege in 1521. In 1526 Ottoman forces killed the king of Hungary and
the flower of the Magyar nobility at the Battle of Mohács and took Buda on the Danube. Vienna
was besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of 1529. The Safavid Empire was one
of the most significant ruling dynasties after the fall of the Sasanian Empire, following the Muslim
conquest of Persia in the seventh century. “The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing
a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736) and, at their height, they controlled all of modern Iran,
Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Armenia, most of Georgia, the North Caucasus, Iraq, Kuwait and
Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.”232
In 1290 Edward I expelled all Jews from England, which policy was reversed in 1655. The
joint crowns of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued Alhambra Decree in 1492,
ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and its territories and
possessions by July 31 of the year. The number of expelled Jews were approximately 200,000
from Spain; from Sicily 37,000 in 1493; from Portugal in 1496, and Calabria Italy in 1554. Finally,
the Catholic Church itself pursued the Counter-Reformation beginning with the Council of Trent
(1545-63). “Such reforms included the foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests
in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church, the reform of religious life by
returning orders to their spiritual foundations, and new spiritual movements focusing on the
devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ, including the Spanish mystics and the
French school of spirituality. It also involved political activities that included the Roman
Inquisition. One primary emphasis of the Counter-Reformation was a mission to reach parts of the
world that had been colonized as predominantly Catholic and also try to reconvert areas such as
Sweden and England that were at one time Roman Catholic.”233
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Map I-2-2. The Growth of Russia between 1500 and 1900
Source: http://historiana.eu/assets/uploads/Growth_of_Russia.png
Map I-2-3. The Gunpowder Empires: The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires
Source: http://www.columbia.edu/~amm2009/3956/mapgunpow.jpeg
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Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Unification of Russia (1300-1584): “When the Mongols invaded the lands of Kievan
Rus', Moscow was an insignificant trading outpost in the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal.
Although the Mongols burnt down Moscow in the winter of 1238 and pillaged it in 1293, the
outpost's remote, forested location offered some security from Mongol attacks and occupation,
and a number of rivers provided access to the Baltic and Black Seas and to the Caucasus region.
More important to the development of the state of Moscow, however, was its rule by a series of
princes who collaborated with the Mongols. The first ruler of the principality of Moscow, Daniel
I (d. 1303), was the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky of Vladimir-Suzdal. He started to expand
his principality by seizing Kolomna and securing the bequest of Pereslavl-Zalessky to his family.
Daniel's son Yuriy (also known as Georgiy) controlled the entire basin of the Moskva River and
expanded westward by conquering Mozhaisk. He then forged an alliance with the overlord of the
Rus' principalities, Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde, and married the khan's sister. He was
allowed by the khan to claim the title of Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, a position which allowed
him to interfere in the affairs of the Novgorod Republic to the north-west. Yuriy's successor, Ivan
I (r. 1325–40), managed to retain the title of Grand Duke by cooperating closely with the Mongols
and collecting tribute and taxes from other Rus' principalities on their behalf. This relationship
enabled Ivan to gain regional ascendancy, particularly over Moscow's chief rival, the northern city
of Tver, which rebelled against the Horde in 1327. The uprising was subdued by the joint forces
of Mongols and Muscovites. Ivan was reputed to be the richest person in Rus', as his moniker
Kalita (literally, the moneybag) testifies. He used his treasures to purchase land in other
principalities and to finance construction of stone churches in the Kremlin. In 1327, the Orthodox
Metropolitan Peter transferred his residence from Kiev to Vladimir and then to Moscow, further
enhancing the prestige of the new principality.”234
Ivan II (1353-59): “The son of Ivan I, he succeeded his brother Semen on the throne of
Moscow in 1353 and was granted the patent to that principality by the Khan of the Golden Horde
in spite of the vigorous claim laid by Konstantin Vasilyevich of Suzdal. At first the principalities
of Suzdal, Ryazan, and the republic of Novgorod refused to recognize Ivan as grand duke, and
they waged war against him until 1354. Ivan was dominated by his aristocratic advisors (boyars),
prominent among whom was the military commander in Moscow, Aleksey Khvost, and the
metropolitan Aleksei. As grand prince Ivan II continued the policies of his father, which were
aimed at uniting the Russian lands.” 235 His son Dmitry Donskoy (1359-89) “became ruler of
Muscovy when he was only nine years old; three years later he convinced his suzerain, the great
khan of the Golden Horde, to transfer the title grand prince of Vladimir (which had been held by
Muscovite princes from 1328 to 1359) from Dmitry of Suzdal to him. In addition to gaining the
title grand prince of Vladimir for himself, Dmitry strengthened his position by increasing the
territory of the principality of Muscovy, by subduing the princes of Rostov and Ryazan, and by
deposing the princes of Galich and Starodub. While the Golden Horde was suffering from internal
conflicts, Dmitry stopped making regular tribute payments and encouraged the Russian princes to
resist the Mongols’ raids. In 1378 the Russians defeated an army of the Horde on the Vozha River.
Subsequently, Mamai, the Mongol general who was the effective ruler of the western portion of
the Golden Horde, formed a military alliance with neighboring rulers for the purpose of subduing
the Russians. Confronting the Mongols on the Don River, however, in the bloody battle on
Kulikovo Pole, Dmitry routed Mamai’s forces; for his victory Dmitry was honored with the
surname Donskoy. Shortly afterward, however, his lands were re-subjected to Mongol domination
when the Mongol leader Tokhtamysh overthrew Mamai (1381), sacked Moscow (1382), and
restored Mongol rule over the Russian lands.”236 Upon his death in 1389, Dimitry was the first
Grand Duke to bequeath his titles to his son Vasiliy without consulting the Khan.
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Vasily I (r. 1389–1425) continued the policies of his father. After the Horde was attacked by
Tamerlane, he desisted from paying tribute to the Khan, but was forced to pursue a more
conciliatory policy after Edigu's incursion on Moscow in 1408. Married to the only daughter of
the Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania, he attempted to avoid open conflicts with his powerful
father-in-law, even when the latter annexed Smolensk. The peaceful years of his long reign were
marked by the continuing expansion to the east and to the north. Nizhny Novgorod was given by
the Khan as a reward for Muscovite help against a rival. The reforms of St. Sergius triggered a
cultural revival, exemplified by the icons and frescoes of the monk Andrei Rublev. Hundreds of
monasteries were founded by St. Sergius's disciples in distant and inhospitable locations, including
Beloozero and Solovki. Apart from their cultural function, these monasteries were major landowners. They could control the economy of an adjacent region. In fact they served as outposts of
Moscow influence in the neighboring principalities and republics. Another factor responsible for
the expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow was its favorable dynastic situation, when each
sovereign was succeeded by his son, while rival principalities were plagued by dynastic strife and
splintered into ever smaller polities. The only lateral branch of the House of Moscow, represented
by Vladimir of Serpukhov and his descendants, was firmly anchored to the Moscow Duchy.”237
The situation changed with his successor: a bitter family conflict erupted and rocked the country
during the whole reign of Vasily II (r. 1425–62). After uncle Yuri's death in 1432, the claims were
taken up by his sons, Vasily Kosoy and Dmitry Shemyaka, who pursued the Great Feudal War
well into the 1450s. “Although he was ousted from Moscow on several occasions, taken prisoner
by Olug Moxammat of Kazan, and blinded in 1446, Vasily II (r. 1425–62) eventually managed to
triumph over his enemies and pass the throne to his son. At his urging, a native bishop was elected
as Metropolitan of Moscow, which was tantamount to declaration of independence of the Russian
Orthodox Church from the Patriarch of Constantinople.”238
Ivan III (r. 1462-1505) was grand prince of Moscow, subduing most of the Russian lands.
“Ivan was born at the height of the civil war that raged between supporters of his father, Grand
Prince Vasily II of Muscovy, and those of his rebellious uncles. His early life was dramatic and
tumultuous: when his father was arrested and blinded by his cousin in 1446, Ivan was first hidden
in a monastery and then smuggled to safety, only to be treacherously handed over to his father’s
captors later in the year; shortly after his father’s release in the same year Ivan was solemnly
affianced—for purely political reasons—to the daughter of the Grand Prince of Tver, whom he
married in 1452. During the last years of his father’s reign, he gained experience in the arts of war
and government. At the age of 12 he was placed nominally in command of a military expedition
dispatched to deal with the remnants of his father’s internal enemies in the far north; and at 18 he
led a successful campaign against the Tatars in the south. Vasily II died on March 27, 1462, and
was succeeded by Ivan as grand prince of Moscow. Little is known of Ivan’s activities during the
early part of his reign. Apart from a series of sporadic and largely successful campaigns against
his eastern neighbors, the Tatars of Kazan, there was evidently not much beyond the routine
business of ruling to occupy him. But his private life soon changed radically. In 1467 his childhood
bride died (perhaps poisoned), leaving him with only one son. In view of the primitive state of
Muscovite medicine and the demonstrable reluctance of Ivan’s brothers to see the royal line
continued longer than was necessary, the likelihood of the son predeceasing his father and thus
robbing him of an heir appeared only too real, and another wife had to be sought. Curiously, the
initiative seems to have come from outside; in 1469 Cardinal Bessarion wrote from Rome offering
Ivan the hand of his ward and pupil, Zoë Palaeologus, niece of the last emperor of Byzantium. It
took three years before the fat and unattractive Zoë, who, on entering Moscow, changed her name
to Sofia (and perhaps her faith to Orthodoxy), was married to Ivan in the Kremlin.”239
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“At Ivan’s accession many Great Russian lands were not yet under Muscovite control; the
entire Ukraine and the upper Oka districts were part of the Polish–Lithuanian union and Ivan
himself, in name at least, was a tributary of the Khan of the Golden Horde. He set himself the task
of reconquering from Poland–Lithuania the Ukrainian possessions of his forefathers. But first the
independent Great Russian lands had to be annexed or subdued and subservience to the Tatars had
to be repudiated. After rendering the Kazan Horde on his eastern flank temporarily impotent by
a series of campaigns (1467–69), Ivan attempted to subdue Novgorod and its huge northern empire.
He repeatedly invaded Novgorod, formally forced it to accept his sovereignty (1478), stripped it
of the last vestiges of political freedom, secularized large tracts of its church lands, annexed its
colonies, and replaced many of its citizens with reliable elements from his own domains. By 1489
Novgorod could offer no more resistance to Ivan. Of the remaining Russian lands still technically
independent in 1462, Yaroslavl and Rostov were annexed by treaty (1463 and 1474, respectively).
Tver offered little resistance and meekly yielded to Moscow in 1485… Freedom from subjection
to Khan Ahmed of the Golden Horde came in 1480. To counterbalance Ahmed’s friendship with
Poland–Lithuania, Ivan concluded an invaluable alliance with Khan Mengli Girei of Crimea. After
a victorious campaign by Ivan in 1480, Ahmed withdrew his forces from Ivan’s dominions, and
although Ahmed’s sons continued to worry Moscow and Crimea until their final defeat in 1502,
Ivan from 1480 no longer considered himself a vassal of the Khan and entered the field of
European diplomacy as an independent sovereign. By tact and diplomacy he managed to maintain
his friendship with Mengli and to avoid serious trouble in Kazan for the rest of his reign. In 1480
Ivan also had to cope with the danger of rebellion by his two brothers Andrey and Boris, who had
been incensed by his high-handed appropriation of their deceased elder brother’s estates. They
defected with their armies to the western frontiers but eventually returned.”240
“In 1490 Ivan’s eldest son by his first wife died of gout. He had been ineptly treated by a
Jewish doctor who had been brought to Russia by Sofia’s brother, and Ivan suspected foul play.
He now had to solve the problem of who was to be his heir—his eldest son’s son Dmitry (born
1483) or his eldest son by Sofia, Vasily (born 1479). For seven years he vacillated. Then, in 1497,
he nominated Dmitry as heir. Sofia, anxious to see her son assured of the throne, planned rebellion
against her husband, but the plot was uncovered. Ivan disgraced Sofia and Vasily and had Dmitry
crowned grand prince (1498). However, in 1500 Vasily rebelled again and defected to the Lithuanians. Ivan was forced to compromise. At that stage of his war with Lithuania he could not risk the
total alienation of his son and wife. And so, in 1502, he gave the title to Vasily and imprisoned
Dmitry and his mother, Yelena. At home Ivan’s policy was to centralize the administration by
stripping the appanage princes of land and authority. As for the boyars, they were stripped of much
of their authority and swiftly executed or imprisoned if suspected of treason. Ivan’s reign saw the
beginning of the pomestie system, whereby the servants of the grand prince were granted estates
on a basis of life tenure and on condition of loyal service. Ivan’s last years were years of
disappointment. The war against Lithuania had not ended as conclusively and satisfactorily as he
had expected—much of Ukraine was still in the hands of a strangely buoyant enemy; his
ecclesiastical plans for secularizing church lands had been thwarted at the Council of 1503, and
the Khanate of Kazan, which had been so carefully neutralized during Ivan’s reign, was beginning
to rid itself of Muscovite tutelage. Ivan died in the autumn of 1505. In terms of political success,
the 15th-century grand prince Ivan III was easily the greatest of all the descendants of Rurik, the
reputed founder of Russia. No ruler of Muscovy until Peter I the Great, two centuries later, did
more to consolidate and develop the achievements of his predecessors, to strengthen the authority
of the monarch, or to lay the foundations for a centralized state…Ivan not only established
Muscovy as a great power to be reckoned with by the rulers and diplomats of Europe.”241
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Vasly III (r. 1505-33): “Vasili III continued the policies of his father Ivan III and spent most
of his reign consolidating Ivan's gains. Vasili annexed the last surviving autonomous provinces:
Pskov in 1510, appanage of Volokolamsk in 1513, principalities of Ryazan in 1521 and NovgorodSeversky in 1522. Vasili also took advantage of the difficult position of Sigismund of Poland to
capture Smolensk, the great eastern fortress of Lithuania (siege started 1512, ended in 1514),
chiefly through the aid of the rebel Lithuanian, Prince Mikhail Glinski, who provided him with
artillery and engineers. The loss of Smolensk was an important injury inflicted by Russia on
Lithuania in the course of the Russo-Lithuanian Wars and only the exigencies of Sigismund
compelled him to acquiesce in its surrender (1522). In 1521 Vasili received an emissary of the
neighboring Iranian Safavid Empire, sent by Shah Ismail I whose ambitions were to construct an
Irano-Russian alliance against the common enemy, namely Ottoman Turkey. Equally successful
were Vasili's actions against the Crimean Khanate. Although in 1519 he was obliged to buy off
the khan of the Crimea, Mehmed I Giray, under the very walls of Moscow, towards the end of his
reign he established Russian influence on the Volga. In 1531–32 he placed the pretender Cangali
khan on the throne of Kazan. In his internal policy, Vasili III enjoyed the support of the Church
in his struggle with the feudal opposition. In 1521, metropolitan Varlaam was banished for
refusing to participate in Vasili's fight against an appanage prince Vasili Ivanovich Shemyachich.
Rurikid princes Vasili Shuisky and Ivan Vorotynsky were also sent into exile. The diplomat and
statesman, Ivan Bersen-Beklemishev, was executed in 1525 for criticizing Vasili's policies.
Maximus the Greek (publicist), Vassian Patrikeyev (statesman) and others were sentenced for the
same reason in 1525 and 1531. During the reign of Vasili III, the gentry's landownership increased;
authorities were actively trying to limit immunities and privileges of boyars and nobility.”242
Ivan IV (r. 1533-84), known as Ivan the Terrible, the son of Vasily III of Moscow, became
the penultimate representative of the Rurik dynasty. “On December 4, 1533, immediately after his
father’s death, the three-year-old Ivan was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow. His mother ruled
in Ivan’s name until her death (allegedly by poison) in 1538. The deaths of both of Ivan’s parents
served to reanimate the struggles of various factions of nobles for control of the person of the
young prince and for power. The years 1538–47 were thus a period of murderous strife among the
clans of the warrior caste commonly termed “boyars.” Their continual struggles for the reins of
government to the detriment of the realm made a profound impression on Ivan and imbued him
with a lifelong dislike of the boyars. On January 16, 1547, Ivan was crowned “tsar and grand
prince of all Russia.” The title tsar was derived from the Latin title “caesar” and was translated by
Ivan’s contemporaries as “emperor.” In February 1547 Ivan married Anastasiya Romanovna, a
great-aunt of the future first tsar of the Romanov dynasty. Since 1542 Ivan had been greatly
influenced by the views of the metropolitan of Moscow, Makari, who encouraged the young tsar
in his desire to establish a Christian state based on the principles of justice. Ivan’s government
soon embarked on a wide program of reforms and of the reorganization of both central and local
administration. Church councils summoned in 1547 and 1549 strengthened and systematized the
church’s affairs, affirming its Orthodoxy and canonizing a large number of Russian saints. In 1549
the first zemski sobor was summoned to meet in an advisory capacity—this was a national
assembly composed of boyars, clergy, and some elected representatives of the new service gentry.
In 1550 a new, more detailed legal code was drawn up that replaced one dating from 1497.
Russia’s central administration was also reorganized into departments, each responsible for a
specific function of the state. The conditions of military service were improved, the armed forces
were reorganized, and the system of command altered so that commanders were appointed on
merit rather than simply by virtue of their noble birth. The government also introduced extensive
self-government, with district administrators elected by the local gentry.”243
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“One object of the reforms was to limit the powers of the hereditary aristocracy of princes
and boyars and promote the interests of the service gentry, who held their landed estates solely as
compensation for service to the government and who were thus dependent on the tsar. Ivan
apparently aimed at forming a class of landed gentry that would owe everything to the sovereign.
All the reforms took place under the aegis of the so-called “Chosen Council,” an informal advisory
body in which the leading figures were the tsar’s favourites Aleksey Adashev and the priest
Silvestr. The council’s influence waned and then disappeared in the early 1560s, however, after
the death of Ivan’s first wife and of Makari, by which time Ivan’s views and his entourage had
changed. Ivan’s first wife, Anastasiya, died in 1560, and only two male heirs by her, Ivan (b. 1554)
and Fyodor (b. 1557), survived the rigors of medieval childhood. Russia was at war for the greater
part of Ivan’s reign. Muscovite rulers had long feared incursions by the Tatars, and in 1547–48
and 1549–50 unsuccessful campaigns were undertaken against the hostile khanate of Kazan, on
the Volga River. In 1552, after lengthy preparations, the tsar set out for Kazan, and the Russian
army then succeeded in taking the town by assault. In 1556 the khanate of Astrakhan, located at
the mouth of the Volga, was annexed without a fight. From that moment onward, the Volga
became a Russian river, and the trade route to the Caspian Sea was rendered safe.”
The Livonian War: With both banks of the Volga now secured, Ivan prepared for a campaign
to force an exit to the sea, a traditional concern of landlocked Russia. “Ivan felt that trade with
Europe depended on free access to the Baltic and decided to turn his attention westward. In 1558
he went to war in an attempt to establish Russian rule over Livonia (in present-day Latvia and
Estonia). Russia was at first victorious and succeeded in destroying the Livonian knights, but their
ally Lithuania became an integral part of Poland in 1569. The war dragged on; while the Swedes
supported Poland against Russia, the Crimean Tatars attacked Astrakhan and even made an
extensive incursion into Russia in 1571; they burned Moscow, leaving only the Kremlin standing.
When Stephen Báthory of Transylvania became king of Poland in 1575, reorganized Polish armies
under his leadership were able to carry the war onto Russian territory while the Swedes recaptured
parts of Livonia. Ivan at last asked Pope Gregory XIII to intervene, and through the mediation of
his nuncio, Antonio Possevino, an armistice with Poland was concluded on January 15, 1582.
Under its terms Russia lost all its gains in Livonia, and an armistice with Sweden in 1583
compelled Russia to give up towns on the Gulf of Finland. The 24-year-long Livonian War had
proved fruitless for Russia, which was exhausted by the long struggle.”
In the later years of Ivan's reign, the southern borders of Muscovy were disturbed by Crimean
Tatars. “Their main purpose was the capture of slaves. Khan Devlet I Giray of Crimea repeatedly
raided the Moscow region. In 1571, the 40,000-strong Crimean and Turkish army launched a
large-scale raid. Due to the ongoing Livonian War, Moscow's garrison was as small as 6,000, and
could not even delay the Tatar approach. Unresisted, Devlet devastated unprotected towns and
villages around Moscow and set Moscow on fire. Historians estimate the number of casualties of
the fire from 10,000 to as many 80,000 people. To buy peace from Devlet Giray, Ivan was forced
to relinquish his rights on Astrakhan in favor of Crimean Khanate. This defeat angered Ivan…The
following year, Devlet launched another raid on Moscow, now with a 120,000-strong horde…The
Crimean horde was defeated so thoroughly that both the Ottoman Sultan and the Crimean khan,
his vassal, had to give up their ambitious plans of northward expansion into Russia.”244 On the
other hand, during Ivan's reign, Russia started a large-scale exploration and colonization of Siberia.
In 1580 Yermak started his conquest of Siberia. With some 540 Cossacks, he started to penetrate
territories that were tributary to Kuchum. Yermak pressured and persuaded the various familybased tribes to change their loyalties and become tributaries of Russia. His conquest expanded
Ivan's empire to the east and allowed him to style himself Tsar of Siberia.245
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Genius of Islam: “The Moslem world had sustained, from 1095 to 1291, a series of
assaults as violent and religious as those by which it latter subdued the Balkans and changed a
thousand churches into mosques. Eight Crusades, inspired by a dozen popes, had hurled the
royalty, chivalry, and rabble of Europe against Mohammedan citadels in Asia Minor, Syria,
Palestine, and Tunisia; and though these attacks had finally failed, they had gravely weakened the
order and resources of the Moslem states. In Spain the Crusades had succeeded; there Islam had
been beaten back while its survivors were crowded into a Granada whose doom was leisurely
delayed. Sicily had been taken from Islam by the virile Normans. But what were these wounds
and amputations compared with the wild and ruinous descent of the Mongols (1219-58) into
Transoxiana, Persian, and Iraq? City after city that had been a haven of Moslem civilization was
subjected to pillage, massacre, and fire…The spirit of Islam was broken for almost a century. It
slowly revived; and then Timur’s Tatars swept across western Asia in a fresh desolation, and the
Ottoman Turks cut their way through Asia Minor to the Bosporus. And yet the Mongols, Tatars,
and Turks brought their new blood to replace the human revers they had shed. Islam had grown
luxurious and supine; Baghdad, like Constantinople, had lost the will to live by its own arms; men
there were so in love with easefull life that they half invited death; that picturesque civilization,
too, as well as the Byzantine, was ripe to die.” But so rich had it been that – like ancient Greece
and Renaissance Italy – it was able, by its salvaged fragments and memories, to civilize its
conquerors. Persia under the Mongol Il-Khan developed an enlightened government, produced
good literature and majestic art…In Transoxiana Timur built almost as impressively as he had
destroyed; and his ravages he paused to honor Hafix. In Anatolia the Turks were already civilized,
and poets among them were as plentiful as concubines. In Egypt the Mamluks continued to build
like giants, and in West Africa Islam fathered a philosopher-historian…And meanwhile Islam was
spreading through India to the farthest reaches of the East.”246
(a) The Il-Khans of Persia (1265-1337): Mongol dynasty ruled in Iran from 1256 to 1335. Ilkhan is Persian for subordinate khan. “Hülegü, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was given the task
of capturing Iran by the paramount Mongol chieftain Möngke. Hülegü set out in about 1253 with
a Mongol army of about 130,000. He founded the Il-Khanid dynasty in 1256, and by 1258 he had
captured Baghdad and all of Iran. The Il-Khans consolidated their position in Iran and reunited the
region as a political and territorial entity after several centuries of fragmented rule by petty
dynasties. During the reign of the Il-Khanid Maḥmūd Ghāzān (reigned 1295–1304), the Il-Khans
lost all contact with the remaining Mongol chieftains of China. Maḥmūd Ghāzān himself
embraced Sunni Islam, and his reign was a period of Iranian cultural renaissance in which such
scholars as Rashīd al-Dīn flourished under his patronage. Ghāzān’s brother Öljeitü (reigned 1304–
16) converted to Shīʿite Islam in 1310. Öljeitü’s conversion gave rise to great unrest, and civil
war was imminent when he died in 1316. His son and successor, Abū Saʿīd (reigned 1317–35),
reconverted to Sunni Islam and thus averted war. However, during Abū Saʿīd’s reign, factional
disputes and internal disturbances continued and became rampant. Abū Saʿīd died without leaving
an heir, and with his death the unity of the dynasty was fractured. Thereafter various Il-Khanid
princes ruled portions of the dynasty’s former territory until 1353.”247 The Black Death ravaged
the Il-Khanid dynasty, the last Il-Khan Abu Sa’id and his son were killed by the plague. After his
death in 1335, the Ilkhanate began to disintegrate rapidly and split up into several rival successor
states. In 1357, the Golden Horde conquered the Tabriz for a year, putting an end to the last hope
for the return of the Ilkhanate. “The emergence of the Ilkhanate had an important historical impact
in the Middle Eastern region. The establishment of the unified Mongol Empire had significantly
eased trade and commerce across Asia. The communications between the Ilkhanate and the Yuan
Dynasty headquartered in China encouraged this development.”248
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(b) Timur (1336-1405): “Timur was a member of the Turkicized Barlas tribe, a Mongol
subgroup that had settled in Transoxania (now roughly Uzbekistan) after taking part in Genghis
Khan’s son Chagatai’s campaigns in that region. Timur thus grew up in what was known as the
Chagatai khanate. After the death in 1357 of Transoxania’s current ruler, Amir Kazgan, Timur
declared his fealty to the khan of nearby Kashgar, Tughluq Temür, who had overrun Transoxania’s
chief city, Samarkand, in 1361. Tughluq Temür appointed his son Ilyas Khoja as governor of
Transoxania, with Timur as his minister. But shortly afterward Timur fled and rejoined his brotherin-law Amir Husayn, the grandson of Amir Kazgan. They defeated Ilyas Khoja (1364) and set out
to conquer Transoxania, achieving firm possession of the region around 1366. About 1370 Timur
turned against Husayn, besieged him in Balkh, and, after Husayn’s assassination, proclaimed
himself at Samarkand sovereign of the Chagatai line of khans and restorer of the Mongol empire.
For the next 10 years Timur fought against the khans of Jatah and Khwārezm, finally occupying
Kashgar in 1380. He gave armed support to Tokhtamysh, who was the Mongol khan of Crimea
and a refugee at his court, against the Russians (who had risen against the khan of the Golden
Horde, Mamai); and his troops occupied Moscow and defeated the Lithuanians near Poltava.”249
“In 1383 Timur began his conquests in Persia with the capture of Herāt. The Persian political
and economic situation was extremely precarious. The signs of recovery visible under the later
Mongol rulers known as the Il-Khanid dynasty had been followed by a setback after the death of
the last Il-Khanid, Abu Said (1335). The vacuum of power was filled by rival dynasties, torn by
internal dissensions and unable to put up joint or effective resistance. Khorāsān and all eastern
Persia fell to him in 1383–85; Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia all fell
between 1386 and 1394. In the intervals, he was engaged with Tokhtamysh, then khan of the
Golden Horde, whose forces invaded Azerbaijan in 1385 and Transoxania in 1388, defeating
Timur’s generals. In 1391 Timur pursued Tokhtamysh into the Russian steppes and defeated and
dethroned him; but Tokhtamysh raised a new army and invaded the Caucasus in 1395. After his
final defeat on the Kur River, Tokhtamysh gave up the struggle; Timur occupied Moscow for a
year. The revolts that broke out all over Persia while Timur was away on these campaigns were
repressed with ruthless vigour; whole cities were destroyed, their populations massacred.”250
“In 1398 Timur invaded India on the pretext that the Muslim sultans of Delhi were showing
excessive tolerance to their Hindu subjects. He crossed the Indus River on September 24 and,
leaving a trail of carnage, marched on Delhi. The army of the Delhi sultan Mahmud Tughluq was
destroyed at Panipat on December 17, and Delhi was reduced to a mass of ruins, from which it
took more than a century to emerge. By April 1399 Timur was back in his own capital. An
immense quantity of spoil was conveyed away; according to Ruy González de Clavijo, 90 captured
elephants were employed to carry stones from quarries to erect a mosque at Samarkand. Timur set
out before the end of 1399 on his last great expedition, in order to punish the Mamlūk sultan of
Egypt and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I for their seizures of certain of his territories. After
restoring his control over Azerbaijan, he marched on Syria; Aleppo was stormed and sacked, the
Mamlūk army defeated, and Damascus occupied (1401), the deportation of its artisans to
Samarkand being a fatal blow to its prosperity. In 1401 Baghdad was also taken by storm, 20,000
of its citizens were massacred, and all its monuments were destroyed. After wintering in Georgia,
Timur invaded Anatolia, destroyed Bayezid’s army near Ankara (July 20, 1402; see Battle of
Ankara), and captured Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes. Having received offers of submission
from the sultan of Egypt and from John VII, Timur returned to Samarkand (1404) and prepared
for an expedition to China. He set out at the end of December, fell ill at Otrar on the Syr Darya
west of Chimkent, and died in February 1405. His body was embalmed, laid in an ebony coffin,
and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried in the sumptuous tomb called Gūr-e Amīr.”251
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(c) The Mamluk Dynasty: The Mamlūk dynasty ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517 and
whose descendants survived in Egypt as an important political force during the Ottoman
occupation (1517–1798). “The Kurdish general Saladin, who gained control of Egypt in 1169,
followed what by then constituted a tradition in Muslim military practice by including a slave
corps in his army in addition to Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen, and other free elements. This practice
was also followed by his successors. Al-Malik aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb (1240–49) is reputed to have been
the largest purchaser of slaves, chiefly Turkish, as a means of protecting his sultanate both from
Ayyūbid rivals and from the crusaders. Upon his death in 1249 a struggle for his throne ensued,
in the course of which the Mamlūk generals murdered his heir and eventually succeeded in
establishing one of their own number as sultan. Thenceforth, for more than 250 years, Egypt and
Syria were ruled by Mamlūks or sons of Mamlūks. Historians have traditionally broken the era
of Mamlūk rule into two periods - one covering 1250-1382, the other, 1382-1517. To consolidate
their position in the Islāmic world, the Mamlūks revived the caliphate, which the Mongols had
destroyed in 1258, and installed under their surveillance in Cairo.”252
Among the most outstanding Mamlūk sultans were Baybars I (1260–77) and al-Malik anNāṣir (1293–1341). The Mamlūks’ failure to find an able successor after the latter’s death
weakened the strength and stability of their realm…In such conditions the Mamlūks were unable
to defend Syria against the Turkic conqueror Timur (Timur Lenk) in 1400. Under the rule of Sultan
Barsbay (1422–38) internal stability was restored briefly and Mamlūk glory resuscitated by the
conquest of Cyprus in 1426. Yet the increasingly higher taxes demanded to finance such ventures
enlarged the Mamlūks’ financial difficulties. The final economic blow fell with the Portuguese
assault on trade in the Red Sea (c. 1500), which was accompanied by Ottoman expansion into
Mamlūk territory in Syria. Having failed to adopt field artillery as a weapon in any but siege
warfare, the Mamlūks were decisively defeated by the Ottomans both in Syria and in Egypt and
from 1517 onward constituted only one of the several components.”253
“With the Ottoman victories over the Mamlūks in 1516–17, Egypt and Syria reverted to the
status of provinces within an empire. Although the Mamlūk sultanate was destroyed, the Mamlūks
remained intact as a class in Egypt and continued to exercise considerable influence in the state.
As had been the case during the Mamlūk dynasty, the Mamlūk elite continued to be replenished
by purchases from slave markets. The slaves, after a period of apprenticeship, still formed the core
of the army and were soon being appointed to offices in the Ottoman government. Thus, gradually
the Mamlūks infiltrated the Ottoman ruling class and eventually were able to dominate it. One
major innovation changed the character of the Mamlūks. Earlier, during the era of the Mamlūk
sultanate, the sons of Mamlūks had been excluded from serving in any but the nonslave regiments
and from holding offices reserved for Mamlūks in the state. But under Ottoman rule the sons were
no longer denied these privileges, so that the principles of Mamlūk loyalty and solidarity were
undermined by ties of kinship. Consequently, rather than grouping themselves into military
factions that lasted no longer than the lifetime of their individual members, the Ottoman Mamlūks
formed “houses” that perpetuated themselves through their sons. The importance of these houses
arose from the attempts of each house to dominate the others; thereby a new element of instability,
perpetuated by heredity, was introduced into the Mamlūk institution. To the degree that the
Ottoman governors were able to exploit Mamlūk divisiveness, they were able to retain some
degree of influence in the government of Egypt. But near the end of the 17th century, when
Ottoman power was in decline throughout the empire, the Mamlūks once again held virtual control
over the army, the revenues, and the government. Eventually, Istanbul was reduced to recognizing
the autonomy of that faction of Mamlūks that would guarantee annual payment of certain sums to
the Ottomans.”254 When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 he met Mamlūk armies there.
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(d) Safavid Persia (1502-76): Iranian dynasty whose establishment of Shīʿite Islam as the
state religion of Iran was a major factor in the emergence of a unified national consciousness
among the various ethnic and linguistic elements of the country. The Ṣafavids were descended
from Sheykh Ṣafī al-Dīn (1253–1334) of Ardabīl, head of the Sufi order of Ṣafavīyeh
(Ṣafawiyyah), but about 1399 exchanged their Sunni affiliation for Shīʿism. The founder of the
dynasty, Ismāʿīl I, as head of the Sufis of Ardabīl, won enough support from the local Turkmens
and other disaffected heterodox tribes to enable him to capture Tabrīz from the Ak Koyunlu
(Turkish: “White Sheep”), an Uzbek Turkmen confederation, and in July 1501 Ismāʿīl was
enthroned as shah, although his area of control was initially limited to Azerbaijan. In the next 10
years he subjugated the greater part of Iran and annexed the Iraqi provinces of Baghdad and Mosul.
Despite the predominantly Sunni character of this territory, he proclaimed Shīʿism the state
religion. In August 1514 Ismāʿīl was seriously defeated at Chāldirān by his Sunni rival, the
Ottoman sultan Selim I. Thereafter, the continuing struggle against the Sunnis—the Ottomans in
the west and the Uzbeks in the northeast—cost the Ṣafavids Kurdistan, Diyarbakır, and Baghdad;
the Ṣafavid capital had to be relocated at Eṣfahān temporarily—permanently by about the early
17th century. Iran weakened appreciably during the reign of Ismāʿīl’s eldest son, Shah Ṭahmāsp I
(1524–76), and persistent and unopposed Turkmen forays into the country increased under his
incompetent successors. In 1588 ʿAbbās I was brought to the throne. Realizing the limits of his
military strength, ʿAbbās made peace with the Ottomans on unfavourable terms in 1590 and
directed his onslaughts against the Uzbeks. Meeting with little success, ʿAbbās engaged (1599)
the Englishman Sir Robert Sherley to direct a major army reform. Three bodies of troops were
formed, all trained and armed in the European manner and paid out of the royal treasury: the
ghulāms (slaves), the tofangchīs (musketeers), and the topchīs (artillerymen). With his new army,
ʿAbbās defeated the Turks in 1603, forcing them to relinquish all the territory they had seized, and
captured Baghdad. He also expelled (1602, 1622) the Portuguese traders.” 255
(e) Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66): Selim I (r. 1512-20) was Ottoman sultan who
extended the empire to Syria, the Hejaz, and Egypt and raised the Ottomans to leadership of the
Muslim world.256 Süleyman was the only son of Sultan Selim I. “He became governor of Kaffa
in Crimea during the reign of his grandfather Bayezid II and of Manisa in western Asia Minor in
the reign of Selim I. “Süleyman succeeded his father as sultan in September 1520 and began his
reign with campaigns against the Christian powers in central Europe and the Mediterranean.
Belgrade fell to him in 1521 and Rhodes, long under the rule of the Knights of St. John, in 1522–
23. At Mohács, in August 1526, Süleyman broke the military strength of Hungary, the Hungarian
king, Louis II, losing his life in the battle (see Battle of Mohács). The vacant throne of Hungary
was now claimed by Ferdinand I, the Habsburg archduke of Austria, and by John (János Zápolya),
who was voivode (lord) of Transylvania, and the candidates of the “native” party opposed to the
prospect of Habsburg rule. Süleyman agreed to recognize John as a vassal king of Hungary, and
in 1529, hoping to remove at one blow all further intervention by the Habsburgs, he laid siege to
Vienna. Difficulties of time and distance and of bad weather and lack of supplies, no less than the
resistance of the Christians, forced the sultan to raise the siege. The campaign was successful,
however…for John was to rule thereafter over most of Hungary until his death, in 1540. A second
great campaign in 1532, notable for the brilliant Christian defense of Güns, ended as a mere foray
into Austrian border territories. The sultan, preoccupied with affairs in the East and convinced that
Austria was not to be overcome at one stroke, granted a truce to the archduke Ferdinand in 1533.
The death of John in 1540 and the prompt advance of Austrian forces once more into central
Hungary drove Süleyman to modify profoundly the solution that he had imposed in the time of
John. His campaigns of 1541 and 1543 led to the emergence of three distinct Hungarys.”257
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Between 1543 and 1562 the war in Hungary continued, broken by truces and with few notable
changes on either side; the most important was the Ottoman capture of the Banat of Temesvár
(Timișoara) in 1532. “After long negotiations a peace recognizing the status quo in Hungary was
signed in 1562. Süleyman waged three major campaigns against Persia. The first (1534–35) gave
the Ottomans control over the region of Erzurum in eastern Asia Minor and also witnessed the
Ottoman conquest of Iraq, a success that rounded off the achievements of Selim I. The second
campaign (1548–49) brought much of the area around Lake Van under Ottoman rule, but the third
(1554–55) served rather as a warning to the Ottomans of the difficulty of subduing the Ṣafavid
state in Persia. The first formal peace between the Ottomans and the Ṣafavids was signed in 1555,
but it offered no clear solution to the problems confronting the Ottoman sultan on his eastern
frontier. The naval strength of the Ottomans became formidable in the reign of Süleyman. Khayr
al-Dīn, known in the West as Barbarossa, became kapudan (admiral) of the Ottoman fleet and won
a sea fight off Preveza, Greece (1538), against the combined fleets of Venice and Spain, which
gave to the Ottomans the naval initiative in the Mediterranean until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
Tripoli in North Africa fell to the Ottomans in 1551. A strong Spanish expedition against Tripoli
was crushed at Jarbah (Djerba) in 1560, but the Ottomans failed to capture Malta from the Knights
of St. John in 1565. Ottoman naval power was felt at this time even as far afield as India, where a
fleet sent out from Egypt made an unsuccessful attempt in 1538 to take the town of Diu from the
Portuguese. The later years of Süleyman were troubled by conflict between his sons. Mustafa had
become by 1553 a focus of disaffection in Asia Minor and was executed in that year on the order
of the sultan. There followed during 1559–61 a conflict between the princes Selim and Bayezid
over the succession to the throne, which ended with the defeat and execution of Bayezid. Süleyman
himself died while besieging the fortress of Szigetvár in Hungary.” Generally speaking, Süleyman
completed the task of transforming the previously Byzantine city of Constantinople into Istanbul,
a worth center for a great Turkish and Islamic empire.258
Map I-2-4. The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent 1520-66
Source: http://mapshop.com/media/classroom/hist/ottoman-empire-EM.W56.OTTO.gif
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The Jews 1300-1564: Jewish populations have existed in Europe, especially in the area of
the former Roman Empire, from very early times. As Jewish males had emigrated, some-times
took wives from local populations. These groups were joined by traders and later on by members
of the diaspora. Before the Church was fully organized, early medieval society was tolerant, and
around 1.5 million Jews lived in Christian Europe. “As the Roman Catholic Church strengthened
as an institution, the Franciscan and Dominican preaching orders were founded, and there was a
rise of competitive middle-class, town-dwelling Christians. By 1300, the friars and local priests
staged the Passion Plays during Holy Week, which depicted Jews killing Christ, according to
Gospel accounts. From this period, persecution of Jews and deportations became endemic…After
1300, Jews suffered more discrimination and persecution in Christian Europe. As Catholics were
forbidden by the church to loan money for interest, some Jews became prominent moneylenders.
Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having such a class of people who could supply
capital for their use without being liable to excommunication. As a result, the money trade of
Western Europe became a specialty of the Jews. But, in almost every instance when Jews acquired
large amounts through banking transactions, during their lives or upon their deaths, the king would
take it over. Jews became…the property of the King, who might present them and their possessions
to princes or cities. Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European countries.
The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing
Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed…In the Second Crusade
(1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. They were subjected to attacks by
the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320.” The Crusades caused massive expulsions.”259
Why did Christians and Jews hate each other? Will Durant introduces following reasons. (i)
The religious hostility led to a racial segregation at first voluntary, later compulsory, issuing in the
establishment of the first ghetto in 1516. The segregation accentuated differences of dress, ways,
features, worship, and speech; these differences encouraged mutual distrust and fear; this fear
generated hate. The Jews turned into a glory their usual exclusion from marriage with Christians;
their pride of race boasted of descent from kings having ruled Israel a thousand years before Christ
under own laws and customs. The Christians scorned the Jews as outlandish and unprepossessing
infidels. The theory of the Eucharist became a tragedy for the Jews. (ii) Economic rivalries hid
behind religious hostility. “While the papal prohibition of interest was respected among Christians,
the Jews acquired almost a monopoly of money lending in Christendom…Both Christians and
Jewish bankers charged high interest rates, reflecting the risks of lending money in an unstable
economy rendered more unstable by rising prices and debased currencies. Jewish lender ran
greater risks than their competitors; the collection of debts owed by Christians to Jews was
uncertain and hazardous; ecclesiastical authorities might declared a moratorium on debts as in the
Crusades.” (iii) Nationalism causes another reason of hate. “Each nation thought it needed ethnic
and religious unity, and demanded the absorption or conversion of its Jews. Several Church
councils, and some popes, were aggressively hostile. The Council of Venice (1311) forbade all
intercourse between Christians and Jews…The Council of Basel renewed canonical decree
forbidding Christians to associate with Jews, to serve them, or to sue them as physicians, and
instructed secular authorities to confine the Jews in separate quarters, compel them to wear a
distinguishing bade, and ensure their attendance at sermons aimed to convert them.” (iv) The
Black Death was a special tragedy for the Jews of Christendom. The same plague had slain
Mongols, Moslems, and Jews in Asia, where no one thought of blaming the Jews; but in Western
Europe a populace maddened by the ravages of the pestilence accused the Jews of poisoning the
wells in an attempt to wipe out all Christians. In Strasburg, the bishop joined in the false
accusation, and persuaded the reluctant municipal council to banish all Jews. 260
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Map I-2-5. Expulsion of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Expulsion_judios-en.svg/570px-Expulsion
In 1218 England became the first European nation to require Jews to wear a marking badge.
Taxation grew increasingly intense. In the duchy of Gascony in 1287, King Edward ordered the
local Jews expelled, and their property was seized by the crown and all outstanding debts payable
to Jew were transferred to the King’s name, when perhaps 2,000 Jews lived in England. Many
Jews emigrated, besides France and the Netherlands, to countries such as Poland. Since then, as
anti-Semitism increased in Spain, many Jews immigrated from Castile and from Aragon. Henry
II became king of Castile and Leon in 1369 by defeating his half-brother, King Peer, who was
favorable for the Jews. “The inhabitants of Valladolid, who paid homage to his half-brother Henry,
robbed the Jews, destroyed their houses and synagogues, and tore their Torah scrolls to
pieces. Paredes, Palencia, and several other communities met with a like fate, and 300 Jewish
families from Jaén were taken prisoners to Granada…The violence reached a climax in the bloody
massacre of 1391 in Seville and spread from there into the rest of Castile and Aragon. Following
this carnage, tens of thousands of Spanish Jews abandoned their ancient religion and accepted
baptism. These new Christians, or conversos, played an increasingly active role in Spanish civil
service and the legal profession, and in finance. They also intermarried with Christians now,
especially those of wealthy noble families, and rose to positions of power and wealth. Yet all did
not go well with the conversos. Their former Jewish brothers considered them traitors and
cowards; their new Christian colleagues suspected them of deceit, using their nominal Christianity
for personal safety and as a cover to undermine the Catholic Church. Many of these crypto-Jews.”
The Inquisition was established to counteract marrano cunning.261
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After the bloody excesses of 1391, the popular hatred of the Jews continued unabated. “The
Cortes of Madrid and that of Valladolid (1405) mainly busied themselves with complaints against
the Jews, so that Henry III found it necessary to prohibit the latter from practicing usury and to
limit the commercial intercourse between Jews and Catholics; he also reduced by one-half the
claims held by Jewish creditors against Catholics. Indeed, the feeble and suffering king, the son
of Leonora, who hated the Jews so deeply that she even refused to accept their money, showed no
feelings of friendship toward them. Though on account of the taxes of which he was thereby
deprived he regretted that many Jews had left the country and settled in Málaga, Almería, and
Granada, where they were well treated by the Moors, and though shortly before his death he
inflicted a fine of 24,000 doubloons on the city of Cordoba.”262 The problem of the unconverted
Jews in Spain was solved in 1492 by the Edict of Expulsion from Spain ordering their expulsion
within four months. A few accepted baptism and joined the converso ranks, but the majority of
the estimated 150,000 Spanish Jews opted for exile. Most of them went to Portugal, where a few
years later they were subjected to forced conversion by King Manoel. Others stopped in Naples
or moved to other parts of Italy, while many settled in Moslem lands of the southern Mediterranean
and the Ottoman Empire. Some found their way into Eastern Europe, especially Poland.” 263
Jews in Italy: As elsewhere in Christian Europe, the Jews were seen as a dangerous religious
element corrupting Christian society; and they were a valuable economic asset. “Immediately after
the Expulsion, the flourishing port cities of the kingdom of Naples, especially Naples itself,
became destinations of choice for the exiles from Castile and Aragon, as well as for the exiles
from the nearby Spanish-held islands of Sardinia and Sicily. The king of Naples had been
favorable to Jewish settlement even before the expulsion. But the settlement in Naples was not
long-lived. When the French army invaded in 1495, the Jews were among those who fell victim
to the invading army, and those of them who could do so, fled. Any Jews who originally arrived
in Naples eventually gravitated to Ferrara, whose duke granted favorable terms of settlement, or
to Rome, with its ancient Jewish community that still enjoyed the permissive rule of the
Renaissance popes. But many exiles were unwilling to re-settle permanently in a Catholic country,
and preferred to make Italy a way-station en route to the Ottoman Empire. Eventually, certain
Italian cities – Venice, Ancona, Livorno – became places of settlement for “Levantine” merchants,
that is, descendants of Spanish exiles who had settled in the Ottoman Empire and who continued
to maintain their status as Turkish subjects,” becoming semi-transient.
Italy also became a place of settlement for conversos who fled the Spanish and Portuguese
dominions after the Expulsion. “Settling in the communities of the exiles, where they reverted to
Judaism, it was fairly easy to conceal the fact that they had been baptized in the Peninsula…
Conversos who came directly from the Peninsula, known as “Ponentine” Jews, settled in Venice,
Ferrara, Ancona, and the Papal States, integrating themselves with relative ease into the Sephardic
communities there. In Venice they generally went unmolested over the entire early modern period,
during which they continued to settle there in small numbers. This was not the case in the Papal
States. While at first the popes turned a blind eye to their status as baptized Catholics (which
technically rendered their reversion to Judaism heresy), in 1556, under the momentum of the
Counter-Reformation pope Paul IV, this policy was abandoned. In May of that year, a new policy
was ushered in with events that reverberated throughout the Sephardic world: in Ancona, twentyfour conversos were arrested, tried, and burned at the stake. Conditions for Jews in Italy were
generally deteriorating by this time, so that Italy was in any case a less attractive destination for
conversos fleeing Spain and Portugal. Italy’s Sephardic communities continued to maintain
themselves, but it was only Livorno, where Jews were allowed to settle on excellent terms from
1593 onwards, that attracted large numbers of émigrés from the Peninsula.” 264
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The Counter Reformation: In the mid-sixteenth century, Lutheranism had gained roots in
parts of Germany and Scandinavia; Calvinism gained in parts of Switzerland, France, the
Netherlands, and Eastern Europe; and England created a protestant church of Anglicanism by
splitting with Rome. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church had been challenged by internal
and external demand for reformation. Catholicism was reinvigorated by a series of efforts of
monasticism, the Jesuits, the papacy, and a council. In its reformation through monasticism, the
old orders were required to take reform measures by tightening disciplines: benefits were
distributed only to the deserving and its monasteries no longer supported absentee officials.
Moreover, new monastic orders were founded by reform movements to adjust to changing
environments. The Camaldolese was refounded in 1522, embraced hermits and cenobites, and
emphasized the ascetic life in which the participant withdrew from the world. The Theatines was
founded in Italy in 1524 to live in poverty and to assist the secular clergy in its mission of service,
while the Ursulines, a new order of nuns, was founded in 1535 with emphasis on female education.
Teresa of Avila (1515-82), a nun of the Carmelite order, who experienced various mystical visions
in 1555, founded the Convent of St. Joseph at Avila, Spain and established a new order with 16
foundations for men and 14 for women. The Oratory of Divine Love was founded originally in
Genoa in 1497 and Rome in 1517. In the 1520s, about sixty members of the Roman fraternity
such as Philip Neri (1515-95) advocating the reform of the Catholic Church attracted more
supporters to revive the order. The Oratory emphasized prayer, singing, and acts of mercy, and
gained broad influence at all levels of society. Matteo da Bascio (1495-1552) founded the
Capuchins at Montefalco in Umbria in 1528 to restore the simplicity and austerity of Franciscan
sprit. They worked for the sick and the poor with emphasis on preaching. All movements reformed
the clergy and their morals, but the Catholic doctrines remained intact.
The Society of Jesus known as the Jesuits was the most important instrument of the Catholic
Reformation. The Society was founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), a Spanish nobleman,
who was wound at battle of Pamplona in 1521, which ended his military career. On the way to
Barcelona in 1522, Ignatius stopped at Manresa intending to stay for a few days, but remained for
ten months with hours in prayer each day. Receiving the vision that enabled him to find God in
all things, he developed his idea by writing notes, which became a framework for his Spiritual
Exercises completed in Rome during 1539-41. Returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in
1523, Ignatius determined to study for the priesthood. He learned Latin at school in Barcelona,
and moved to the University of Alcala but the Inquisition sent him into prison. He moved to the
University of Salamanca but the same happened. He finally entered the University of Paris in
1528 and began to study Latin, philosophy, and theology; and he greatly influenced six students
at the university. In 1534, Ignatius and six followers decided to devote themselves to the work of
the church and took vows of chastity and poverty, and to go to the Holy Land as missionaries.
Soon three others joined the group, and in 1537, all they were in Venice to go Palestine, while
Ignatius with five of the group was ordained a priest. The Venice-Turkish war forced them to
offer their services to the pope. Ignatius with Peter Faber and James Lainez met the pope who put
them to work teaching scripture and theology and preaching. In 1539, Ignatius asked all his
companions to come to Rome to discuss their future. They decided to form a community with the
Pope’s approval in which they would vow obedience to a superior general for life to be elected by
members. In September 1540, Paul III issued a bull by which the Society of Jesus was formally
founded, and Ignatius was elected to the first superior general. The Society established highly
disciplined schools around the world in Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and Far
East; propagated the Catholic faith among non-Christians, and fought against Protestantism.
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“The society introduced several innovations in the form of the religious life…Particular
emphasis was laid upon the virtue of obedience, including special obedience to the pope. Emphasis
was also placed upon flexibility, a condition that allowed Jesuits to become involved in a great
variety of ministries in all parts of the world. The society grew rapidly, and it quickly assumed a
prominent role in the Counter-Reformation defense and revival of Catholicism. Almost from the
beginning, education and scholarship became the society’s principal work. The early Jesuits,
however, also produced preachers and catechists who devoted themselves to the care of the young,
the sick, prisoners, prostitutes, and soldiers; they also were often called upon to undertake the
controversial task of confessor to many of the royal and ruling families of Europe. The society
entered the foreign mission field within months of its founding as Ignatius sent Saint Francis
Xavier, his most gifted companion, and three others to the East. More Jesuits were to be involved
in missionary work than in any other activity, save education. By the time of Ignatius’s death in
1556, about 1,000 Jesuits were already working throughout Europe and in Asia, Africa, and the
New World. By 1626 the number of Jesuits was 15,544, and in 1749 the total was 22,589.”
“The preeminent position of the Jesuits among the religious orders and their championship of
the pope exposed them to hostility. By the middle of the 18th century a variety of adversaries, both
lay and clerical, were seeking to destroy the order. The opposition can be traced to several reasons,
primarily, perhaps, to the anticlerical and antipapal spirit of the times. In 1773 Pope Clement XIV,
under pressure especially from the governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, issued a decree
abolishing the order. The society’s corporate existence was maintained in Russia, where political
circumstances—notably the opposition of Catherine II the Great—prevented the canonical
execution of the suppression. The demand that the Jesuits take up their former work, especially in
the field of education and in the missions, became so insistent that in 1814 Pope Pius VII
reestablished the society. After it was restored, the order grew to be the largest order of male
religious. Work in education on all levels continued to involve more Jesuits than any other activity;
however, the number of Jesuits working in the mission fields, especially in Asia and Africa,
exceeded that of any other religious order. They were also involved in a broad and complex list of
activities, including work in the field of communications, in social work, in ecumenism, and even
in politics. In 2013 Francis I became the first Jesuit to be elected pope.”
Protestantism in Italy: “In the 1520s, soon after publication of the first letters of Martin Luther,
the first few Italian Lutherans appeared. However, the effect of Lutheranism was minimal because
Luther wrote in German and directed his mission mainly at Germans, and the Church censorship
in Italy was very effective. Bartolomeo Fonzio probably first translated Luther tract An den
christlichen Adel into Italian. Later he was active promoter of Lutheranism in Italy, but in 1558
was sentenced to death and drowned. Other notable reformers were Baldo Lupetino of Albona in
Istria and Baldassare Altieri of Aquila in Neapolitan territory. All mentions of Lutheranism were
immediately destroyed: in 1530 Antonio Bruccioli was expelled from Florence because he had
cited works of Luther and Martin Bucer. Later he rendered the Reformation great service by
elucidating and printing Biblical writings in the Italian language. He was repeatedly brought to
trial, and died in prison in 1566. In 1531 Luther’s theses were discussed at the University of Padua.
It was the only known case of such an academic discussion in Italy. Italian Lutherans quickly
radicalized their views under the influence of religious persecutions, and started propagating
Calvinism, Anabaptism or Nontrinitarianism.” Its followers acted mainly amongst higher social
classes, frequently in princes' courts thus protecting themselves to some extent from the Inquisition.
In 1550, Pope Julius III affirmed that 1,000 Venetians might be counted as belonging to the
Anabaptist sect…About 1528 many French radical Protestants gathered around the prince Ercole
d'Este in Ferrara…For this reason the princess was accused by the Inquisition of heresy.”265
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The Renaissance papacy involved in political, military, and financial affairs with European
states, which caused numerous sources of corruption. Being intellectually and morally one of the
best popes, Clement VII (1523-34) could not take an initiative to reform the morals and doctrines
of the church, when Protestantism challenged Catholicism. The papal alliance with France made
Charles V sack Rome and imprison the pope, who lost freedom to make peace with Henry VIII.
Continuing Renaissance papal practices, Paul III (1534-49) appointed his nephews as cardinals
despite their disqualification, involved himself in politics by negotiating the Treaty of Nice and
excommunicating Henry VIII in 1538, and patronized arts by commissioning the work such as of
Sistine Chapel to Michelangelo. Nevertheless, Paul provided a turning point for the papal
reformation. In 1535, he created a Reform Commission to investigate the conditions of the church,
which Commission reported in 1537 that the church’s problems were based on the corrupt policies
of popes and cardinals. In 1540, Paul authorized the foundation of the Society of Jesus, which
became a driving force of the reformation. Paul sent Cardinal Contarini to a conference at
Ratisbon in 1541 to settle religious division peacefully. He reached a compromise with the
Protestants on a number of doctrinal issues and returned to Rome, but Cardinal Caraffa and other
hard liners criticized him and refused any compromise with Lutheranism. In 1541 he persuaded
the pope to establish a Roman Inquisition to drive out doctrinal errors. In 1545, the pope called
the Council of Trent. Although he vitalized and restored the papacy by his political maneuver,
Paul III neither stopped Protestantism nor affected any substantial reforms. Cardinal Caraffa
became Paul IV (1555-59) at his age of seventy-nine. Being so immovable in his views, he
increased the power of Inquisition, which made even liberal cardinals silenced. He was the first
true pope of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, but his conservative position gave no hope in
restoring Christian unity by compromise with Protestantism.
The Council of Trent (1545-63) was created in 1542 by Paul III to resolve the religious
differences with the Protestants, held in Trento and Bologna in Italy. In 1545, the council of
cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and theologians began to convene in the city of Trent at
the border between Germany and Italy. Paul III and his Italian supporters desired to discuss first
on doctrinal issues, while Charles V wanted to discuss church reform first to avoid the permanent
split of the church. There was also conflict between moderates and conservatives in the Catholic
participants, but the Council was controlled by the pope and conservatives who did not want any
compromise with Protestantism. In the first period (1545-47), the Council discussed on doctrinal
issues and affirmed that the Scripture should be understood within the tradition of the church, not
by “Scripture alone” of the Protestant principle. The Protestants were invited to attend the council,
but refused to join the Council dominated by the pope. In the second period (1551-52), the Council,
under the leadership of Julius III, discussed on the Sacraments and Eucharist. But the session was
boycotted by Henry II of France, while a few Lutheran representatives joined and submitted a
statement of Lutheran doctrine to the Council. The Protestants proposed that the decree of the
Councils of Constance and Basel on “the superior authority of councils over the pope” should be
confirmed, and all decisions hitherto reached by the Council of Trent without the Protestants
should be annulled. Julius III forbade consideration of this proposal, and the Council was formally
suspended. The military victory and religious freedom of the Protestants slowly dissolved the
meeting. In the third period (1561-63), Pius IV invited all Christian princes to the Council but no
Protestants attended. The pope published the Profession of the Tridentine Faith in 1564,
summarizing the doctrinal decrees of the council. Both faith and good works were declared
necessary for salvation; belief in purgatory with indulgences was affirmed; and seven sacraments,
transubstantiation, and clerical celibacy remained intact. Reestablishing Catholic doctrines, the
Council of Trent unified the Catholic Church under the papal supremacy. 266
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3. Geographic Discovery and Religious Wars
Starting in the 1520s, international relations between major powers in Europe were dominated by
conflicts which were primarily religious in character: wars in central and southern Europe between
Christians and Muslims; and the confessional wars in central and northwestern Europe for the fruit
of the Reformation.267 In France, Calvinism and Catholicism had become highly militant religions,
which ignited a civil war between them. In Spain, Philip II consolidated his inherited lands, but
rising Calvinism in the Netherlands opposed Spanish rule. In England, Elizabeth established
Anglicanism, but the Catholics and Puritans opposed the new religious settlement. In Germany,
although the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 brought a temporary peace with the Lutherans, the
religious division caused a civil war between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League. That
was the Thirty Years’ War which finally became a war between the Bourbon dynasty of France
and the Habsburg dynasties of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire for European leadership. The
wars caused crises in Europe: rebellions, economic depression, social disintegration, a witchcraft
craze, and a demographic crisis. Meanwhile, geographical discoveries gave opportunities for
Portugal and Spain to expand their sovereign power to new lands and to exploit their material gain
by colonization, followed by the Dutch, English, and French in the coming century.
The Portuguese began exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1418, under the sponsorship
of Prince Henry. “In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean by this route. In 1492 the
Spanish monarchs funded Christopher Columbus's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing
the Atlantic. He landed on a continent uncharted by Europeans and seen as a new world, the
Americas. To prevent conflict between Portugal and Spain, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed
dividing the world into two regions of exploration, where each had exclusive rights to claim newly
discovered lands. In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India
by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. Soon, the Portuguese sailed further
eastward, to the valuable Spice Islands in 1512, landing in China one year later. Thus, Europe first
received news of the eastern and western Pacific within a one-year span around 1512. East and
west exploration overlapped in 1522, when Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan led a
Spanish expedition West, achieving the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish
conquistadors explored the inland of the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands.
Since 1495, the French and English and, much later, the Dutch entered the race.” 268 The
Portuguese sailed around Africa into the Indian Ocean, discovered Australia in 1606, New Zealand
in 1642, and Hawaii in 1778; meanwhile, Russians explored Siberia from the 1580s to the 1640s.
The wars between Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire developed into a
more general conflict involving of most of the great powers of Europe. “The war began when the
Holy Roman Empire tried to impose religious uniformity on its domains. The northern Protestant
states, angered by the violation of their rights, banded together to form the League of Evangelical
Union. The Empire soon crushed this perceived rebellion. But reactions around the Protestant
world condemned the Emperor's action. Sweden soon intervened in 1630 and began the full scale
great war on the continent. Spain, wishing to crush the Dutch rebels, intervened under the pretext
of helping their dynastical ally, Austria. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major
Habsburg powers on its border, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants
to counter the Habsburgs. The Thirty Years' War saw the devastation of entire regions, with famine
and disease significantly decreasing the population of the German and Italian states, the Kingdom
of Bohemia, and the Low Countries. The war also bankrupted most of the combatant powers.”
The war ended by the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, resulting in the rise of Bourbon France, the
curtailing of Habsburg ambition, and ascendancy of Sweden as a new great power in Europe. 269
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Map I-3-1. Main Travels of the Age of Discoveries
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Explorations_english.png/500px-Explorations_english.png
Map I-3-2. The Thirty Years War, 1618-48
Source: https://mrcaseyhistory.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/map-of-30-years-war-1.jpg
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3-1. Geographical Discovery and Expansion
A prelude to the Age of Geographical Discovery was “a series of European expeditions crossing
Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage
and destruction, Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the Pax Mongolica
allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A
series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. Most were Italians, as trade
between Europe and the Middle East was controlled mainly by the Maritime republics. The close
Italian links to the Levant raised great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay
further east. Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum during the Mongol invasions of
Syria, from which they gained a greater understanding of the world. The first of these travelers
was Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, dispatched by Pope Innocent IV to the Great Khan, who
journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241 to 1247…Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated
an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295, describing being a guest at the Yuan
Dynasty court of Kublai Khan in Travels, and it was read throughout Europe.”270
In 1291, in a first Atlantic exploration attempt, merchant brothers Vadino and Ugolino Vivaldi
sailed from Genoa with two galleys but disappeared off the Moroccan coast, feeding the fears of
oceanic travel. “From 1325 to 1354, a Moroccan scholar from Tangier, Ibn Battuta, journeyed
through North Africa, the Sahara desert, West Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the corner
of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, having reached China. After returning, he dictated an account
of his journeys to a scholar he met in Granada, the Rihla (The Journey), the unheralded source on
his adventures. Between 1357 and 1371 a book of supposed travels compiled by John Mandeville
acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the unreliable and often fantastical nature of its
accounts it was used as a reference for the East, Egypt, and the Levant in general, asserting the old
belief that Jerusalem was the center of the world. Following the period of Timurid relations with
Europe, in 1439 Niccolò de' Conti published an account of his travels as a Muslim merchant to
India and Southeast Asia and, later in 1466–1472, Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver
travelled to India, which he described in his book A Journey Beyond the Three Seas.” The rise of
the Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.
Venice and Genoa mostly monopolized European trade with the Middle East. “Muslim traders
dominated maritime routes throughout the Indian Ocean “tapping source regions in the Far East
and shipping for trading emporiums in India, mainly Kozhikode, westward to Ormus in the Persian
Gulf and Jeddah in the Red Sea. From there, overland routes led to the Mediterranean coasts.
Venetian merchants distributed the goods through Europe until the rise of the Ottoman Empire
that eventually led to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, barring Europeans from important
combined-land-sea routes. Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, and at war with
Venice, the Genoese had turned to North African trade of wheat, olive oil and a search for silver
and gold. Europeans had a constant deficit in silver and gold, as coin only went one way: out,
spent on eastern trade that was now cut off. Several European mines were exhausted, the lack of
bullion leading to the development of a complex banking system to manage the risks in trade.
Sailing also into the ports of Bruges (Flanders) and England, Genoese communities were then
established in Portugal, who profited from their enterprise and financial expertise. European
sailing had been primarily close to land cabotage, guided by portolan charts. These charts specified
proven ocean routes guided by coastal landmarks: sailors departed from a known point, followed
a compass heading, and tried to identify their location by its landmarks. For the first oceanic
exploration Western Europeans used the compass…progressive new advances in cartography and
astronomy.” Arab tools like the astrolabe and quadrant were used for celestial navigation.271
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Map I-3-3 Genoese (red) and Venetian (green) Maritime Trade Routes in the Mediterranean
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Republik_Venedig_Handelswege01.png/220pxRepublik_Venedig_Handelswege01.png
Map I-3-4. The Silk Road and Spice Trade Route
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Silk_route_copy.jpg/1280px-Silk_route_copy.jpg
Map I-3-5. Saharan Trade Route, 1400 (Modern Niger Highland)
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Niger_saharan_medieval_trade_routes.PNG
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Conditions for Discovery: (a) Attitudes and Motives: The motives of the geographical
discovery or exploration can be considered in economic gains, religious zeal, social recognition,
and curiosity or adventure. First, the desire of material gain was the fundamental motive of the
discovery of lands through the overseas voyage. The Ottoman Turks closed the overland route to
the east, and Arab middlemen monopolized the spice trade with Asia so that their prices were
outrageously expensive. In order to reach the direct sources of spices and precious items in the
east, Europeans were eager to discover the possibility of reaching Asia by sea. “The Portuguese
voyages of exploration started with Prince Henry the Navigator’s exploration of the west coast of
Africa. In addition to exporting African slaves to Europe, the Portuguese found large deposits of
gold which enriched their nation. This success spurred further exploration, this time to India when
Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope allowing the Portuguese access to the east coast
of Africa and India and the highly profitable spice trade.” The Spanish also sought access to the
Asian spice trade by sailing west instead of around Africa. This discovery inspired many other
European voyages, including the Portuguese. While the Portuguese did not colonize Africa or
India, the Spanish did colonize the Americas. Land and the labor of natives were the principal
sources of wealth. After the conquest of Granada, Spanish kings and noblemen turned their eyes
outside Europe; and the exploration and seizure of new land became more attractive. New land
could be colonized by adventurous farmers or by small owners of flocks and herds. Madeira and
parts of the Canaries were occupied respectively by Portuguese and Spanish settlers in the fifteenth
century. They brought in revenues to the princes and noblemen. Since the Mediterranean trade
was blocked by the Turks, merchant capitalists in Portugal and western Spain had strong motives
for seeking by sea alternative sources of gold, ivory and pepper and the gold mines like in West
Africa. “Fishing took them to Icelandic waters, well on the way to America; and fishing was one
of the principal reasons for their interest in the north-west coast of Africa.”272
Second, the rulers and explorers had religious zeal to introduce Christian faith into the natives
of the new lands. Within the Iberian Peninsula, Christian and Muslim kingdoms had existed side
by side for centuries, but after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, religious fever of crusade revived
in Europe particularly in Spain. Isabella, inspired not only by intense religious conviction, but
also by apprehension of the danger threatening from the East, was determined to press ahead
immediately with preparations against Granada. Capturing Granada was to the Spaniards what
Constantinople had been to the Turks in the Byzantine Empire. “The expulsion of the Jews, the
violent baptism of the Moors of Granada, and the new Inquisition trusted by many powers were
all radical departures from medieval tradition in Spain. They represented both a reaction against
the intensified Muslim pressure on Christendom since the fall of Constantinople, and an intensification of religious fever, and so of religious intolerance, in Spain.” Third, social recognitions were
another motive of the overseas discovery. The new discovery gave great titles like admiral,
general, or governor, and the discoverers became the first ruler of the land like Columbus. The
overseas discovery, in addition, gave the social fame as a hero, and their journals or reports were
widely circulated throughout Europe. “Spaniards absorbed Renaissance attitudes of mind: the cult
of the individual, and the passion for personal reputation. This passion was vital in the mental
make-up of the conquistadores, and goes far to explain their prickly pride, their dislike of
discipline and regimentation, their insistence on being consulted about every decision.” Finally,
curiosity, adventure, and the desire to know about unknown new lands must be an important
motive of the discovery for a certain group of people. One of the essential motives of Prince Henry
was a desire to know what lay beyond the Canaries and Cape Bojador. In the course of the later
fifteenth century, the movement gained speed and power from a series of vital technical progress,
which was further accelerated and modified by ideas associated with the Renaissance. 273
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(b) Commercial Experience and Financial Backing: Most of shipping of north Italy and of the
western Mediterranean was engaged in the carriage of necessities. Grain was transported by sea
to feed major cities. Salt and food preserved in salt were considerable articles of trade such as salt
fish. Other chief articles were oil, wine and cheese. Southern Italy and southern Spain exported
oil in exchange for grain; and the sweet heavy wines of Cyprus and of Crete were sold at high
prices all over the Mediterranean from Constantinople to Genoa, and beyond Gibraltar to England.
The cloth industry of Florence, depended heavily on English wool, but now most of its wool came
from Spain, and its transport was virtually monopolized by Genoese shippers. Lombard towns
specialized in linens which were exported to Germany over the passes, to North Africa, and to the
Levant. Milan was the center of metallurgical industry, particularly the manufacture of arms and
armor. Iron deposits were so widespread that most Mediterranean iron-working towns could use
ore found near their doors; but copper, tin and lead were valuable objects of long-haul trade. The
trade in luxury goods were eastern origin: Chinese and Persian silks superior to Italian; Indian
cotton cloth; rhubarb, grown in China and much prized as a medicine; precious stone from India;
and above all, spices in addition to drugs, dyes, perfumes, unguents, cosmetics and sundry
expensive articles of good. The spices were pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. In
Constantinople, the Venetians were a dominant and privileged group until 1453; and in the Black
Sea, the Turks and Tatars took part in trade. Until the fifteenth century, in short, the Italian traders
was dominant in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.274
Since the trade balance of Europe with the east was usually unfavorable, so that they exported
bullion. To overcome the trade deficit, they developed local trade. “Caucasian slaves bought at
Caffa were sold by Genoese dealers in Alexandria, where they commanded high prices. From the
North Africa ports, Italian merchants shipped coral, prized almost as a precious stone in East
Africa and sent there through Alexandria. Italians participated in the inland trade of the Maghreb
with the south Saharan kingdoms, and derived from that trade part of the bullion with which they
paid for even more precious spices.” Italian shipping began to suffer from the relative scarcity,
and so the high price, of shipbuilding timber in the Mediterranean area. The fall of Constantinople
was a serious blow; but at the end of the century, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut and returned to
Lisbon with a cargo of spices. In 1501 the first consignment of eastern spices from Lisbon reached
the Portuguese factory in Antwerp, which became a major distribution center of their spices in the
north-western Europe. Portugal and Castile had the ships, seamen, motives and opportunity for
oceanic exploration; the major voyages of discovery started from Iberian harbors and the ships
were manned mostly by themselves. However, they lacked the capital, the commercial experience
and the financial organization to exploit commercially the discoveries which they made. The
Catalans had relatively advanced credit systems and business methods, but their capital was
limited. The Italian cities developed merchant guilds, craft guilds, and regulated companies. They
had two types of corporative organizations of creditors: one was the compere which were financial
corporations administering particular state revenues; and the other was the maone which were
associations of individuals undertaking particular enterprises like military expeditions on behalf
of the state. The family trading houses grew up in the cities of south Germany – Fuggers, Welsers,
Hochstetters, and others. The system of credit known as Verlag enabled miners to obtain advances
in money. In 1505, foreign investment was openly permitted by the Portuguese Crown: the great
fleet which sailed from Lisbon in that year was largely financed by foreigners. The Castilian
Crown handed the business over to a private monopoly - the exporting merchants of Seville: the
trade goods carried by Magellan’s expedition were supplied by the Fuggers. The spices of India,
the silver of America, flowed through Portugal and Spain, into the hands of the Italian and German
bankers who were the governments’ creditors, and thence throughout Europe.275
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(c) Ships and Shipbuilders: (i) Oared Ships: The Mediterranean war-galley was the oared
galley that was the traditional warship of the Mediterranean, but at the beginning of the sixteenth
century the type had changed considerably from the galley of classical times. “A typical galley as
built in Mediteranean dockyards was about 120 ft long on deck by 15 ft beam amid-ships. The
warship was lightly built with a framework of keel and ribs covered by planking placed edge to
edge, called in the north carvel-built. The deck was only 5 or 6 ft above the keel. From 12901540 the popular war-galley was called a trireme. There were 25 to 30 benches a side and three
oarsmen sad on each bench, every man pulling a separate oar. The thole-pins were on the same
level in groups of three.” The Mediterranean trading-galley was the finest merchant-ships in the
world, used by Venetians around 1500. It could carry about 250 tons of merchandise below deck.
“These ships were built with a length six times their beam, as compared with the eight-to-one ratio
of the war galleys. They had three masts and lateen sails. They were rowed only with difficulty,
reserving their oars for emergencies or for entering or leaving port. Their oars were arranged
trieme-fashion and a trading-galley mustered a crew of 200 oarsmen and gunners. Such galleys
carried costly wares, which paid high freights. They were powerful vessels and could be defended
against pirates, so that some merchants thought it unnecessary to insure goods carried in them.” 276
The rising cost of large crews enforced the abandonment of the galley for general purpose.
(ii) The Caravel was a sailing-ship in the Atlantic in 1400 that had been the one-masted cog
with one square-sail. About 1451, the caravel was developed, based on existing fishing boats under
the sponsorship of Henty the Navigator, and soon became the preferred vessel for Portuguese
explorers like Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama or Ferdinand Magellan. They were agile and
easier to navigate than the barca and barinel, with 50 to 160 tons and 1 to 3 masts, and with lateen
triangular sails allowing beating. Being smaller and having a shallow keel, the caravel could sail
upriver in shallow coastal water and highly maneuverable. The caravel was occasionally modified
“by giving it the same rig as a nau with a foresail, square mainsail and lateen mizzen.” In such
ship, Christopher Columbus set out on his expedition in 1492: Santa Maria was a ̴ 100 ton nau
which served as the flagship and the Pinta and Nina were smaller caravels of around 15-20 m with
a beam of 6 m and displacing around 60-75 tons. “In the transition to the 16th century, the
Portuguese created a specialized fighting ship also called the caravela redonda or square-rigged
caravel (also caravela de armada) to act as an escort in Brazil and in the Indies route. It had a
foremast with square sails and three other masts with a lateen each, for a total of 4 masts. The hull
was galleon-shaped, and it is considered a forerunner of the fighting galleon.” 277
(iii) The Carrack was a three- or four-masted sailing ship developed in the fifteenth century
by the Genoese for commercial use. The Portuguese and Spanish used the carracks for oceanic
travel and to explore the world. “As the Portuguese gradually extended their explorations and
trade ever further south along Africa's Atlantic coast during the 15th century they needed a larger
and more advanced ship for their long oceanic adventures. Gradually, they developed their own
models of oceanic carracks, generalizing their use in the end of the century for inter-oceanic travel.
In addition to the average tonnage naus, were also built some large naus (carracks) in the reign of
John II, but being only widespread after the turn of the century. The Portuguese carracks were
usually very large ships for their time (often over 1000 tons), and having the future large naus of
the India run and of the China and Japan trade, also other new types of design…From around 1515,
Portugal had trade exchanges with Goa in Portuguese India, consisting of 3 to 4 carracks leaving
Lisbon with silver to purchase cotton and spices in India. Out of these, only one carrack went on
to Ming China in order to purchase silk, also in exchange for Portuguese silver. From the time of
the acquisition of Macau in 1557, and their formal recognition as trade partners by the Chinese,
the Portuguese Crown started to regulate trade to Japan, by selling to the highest bidder.” 278
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Photo I-3-1. A lateen-rigged Caravel, Caravela Latina (Left)
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Caravel_Boa_Esperanca_Portugal.jpg/220pxCaravel_Boa_Esperanca_Portugal.jpg
Photo I-3-2. Ships – Carrack: They often reached 1,200 tons (Right)
Source: https://encryptedtbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOmtnJ0N1CfKWWfVuULAKpdaNUAJEnQalgRoJLekjLEt0rRlL4sA
Photo Ii-3-3. Lisbon and the Tagus (1572)
Galleon in the center, carracks, galley, round caravels, and caravels among other vessels.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Lisbon_-_Lisbonne_-_Lisboa_1572.png/1280px-Lisbon__Lisbonne_-_Lisboa_1572.png
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(iv) The Galleon was a new type of sailing ship built in early sixteenth century Venice, which
was used by the Venetians against pirates. “The galleon differed from the older types primarily
by being longer, lower and narrower, with a square tuck stern instead of a round tuck, and by
having a snout or head projecting forward from the bows below the level of the forecastle. In
Portugal at least, carracks were usually very large ships for their time (often over 1000 tons), while
galleons were mostly under 500 tons, although the Manila galleons were to reach up to 2000 tons.
With the introduction of the galleon in Portuguese India Armadas during the first quarter of the
16th century, carracks gradually began to be less armed and became almost exclusively cargo
ships (which is why the Portuguese Carracks were pushed to such large sizes), leaving any fighting
to be done to the galleons. One of the largest and most famous of Portuguese galleons was the São
João Baptista, a 1,000-ton galleon built in 1534, said to have carried 366 guns. Carracks also
tended to be lightly armed and used for transporting cargo in all the fleets of other Western
European states, while galleons were purpose-built warships, and were stronger, more heavily
armed, and also cheaper to build (5 galleons could cost around the same as 3 carracks) and were
therefore a much better investment for use as warships or transports. There are disputes about its
origins and development but each Atlantic sea power built types suited to its needs, while
constantly learning from their rivals. The galleon was powered entirely by wind, using sails
carried on three or four masts, with a lateen sail continuing to be used on the last (usually third
and fourth) masts. They were used in both military and trade applications, most famously in the
Spanish treasure fleet, and the Manila Galleons. While carracks played the leading role in early
global explorations, galleons also played a part in the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact, galleons
were so versatile that a single vessel may have been refitted for wartime and peacetime roles
several times during its lifespan. The galleon was the prototype of all square rigged ships with
three or more masts for over two and a half centuries, including the later full rigged ship.”279
(v) The Fluyt is a Dutch type of sailing vessel originally designed as a dedicated cargo vessel.
“Originating in the Netherlands in the 16th century, the vessel was designed to facilitate transoceanic delivery with the maximum of space and crew efficiency. Unlike rivals, it was not built
for conversion in wartime to a warship, so it was cheaper to build and carried twice the cargo, and
could be handled by a smaller crew. Construction by specialized shipyards using new tools made
it half the cost of rival ships. These factors combined to sharply lower the cost of transportation
for Dutch merchants, giving them a major competitive advantage. The fluyt was a significant
factor in the 17th century rise of the Dutch seaborne empire. In 1670 the Dutch merchant marine
totaled 568,000 tons of shipping - about half the European total. The standard fluyt design
minimized or completely eliminated its armaments to maximize available cargo space, and used
block and tackle extensively to facilitate ship operations. Another advantage of its pear-shape was
a shallow draft which allowed the vessel to bring cargo in and out of ports and down rivers that
other vessels couldn't reach. This ship class was credited in enhancing Dutch competitiveness in
international trade, and was widely employed by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th and
18th centuries. However, its usefulness caused the fluyt to gain such popularity that similar designs
were soon developed by seagoing competitors of the Dutch. For example, the English shipbuilding
industry began to adapt the design of the fluyt during the later part of the 17th century as English
merchants, seeing how much cheaper the Dutch shipping was, acquired Dutch-built ships that
were captured during Anglo-Dutch wars. The design of fluyts was largely similar to that of the
early galleons. These ships typically weighed 200-300 tons and were approximately 80 feet in
length. The pear-shaped vessel had a large cargo bay near the waterline and a relatively narrow
deck above. In part, this design was a method used to avoid high taxes collected by Denmark in
the Øresund, which was assessed based on area of the main deck.” 280
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Photo I-3-4. Dutch Fluyt, 1677
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Wenceslas_Hollar__A_Flute_%28State_2%29.jpg/220px-Wenceslas_Hollar_-_A_Flute_%28State_2%29.jpg
Photo I-3-5. A Spanish Galleon (left) firing its cannons at a Dutch warship (right)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Cornelis_Verbeeck%2C_A_Naval_Encounter_between_D
utch_and_Spanish_Warships%2C_156252_original.jpg/400pxCornelis_Verbeeck%2C_A_Naval_Encounter_between_Dutch_and_Spanish_Warships%2C_156252_original.jpg
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(d) Seamen and Seamanship: Columbus sailed with ninety men - about forty in the Santa
Maria, and the remaining fifty being divided into the two caravels - being paid by the Castilian
Crown. Except for one or two clerk and officials, most of them were seamen by trade. A handful
Northerners were probably part of the original crew of the Santa Maria; but most of the rest came
from Andalusia; either from the small harbors of the Condado de Niebla or else seaboard towns
or from Seville. They were selected because of any specialized experience in exploring work, but
probably many of them already had experience of fairly long passages. The region provided many
seamen for subsequent Atlantic expeditions. In the fifteenth century, forecastle had not yet
become the traditional shelter for the crew; so the crew slept on the deck. If is believed that “the
hatch cover was a favorite place; since the deck was cambered to enable water to run into the
scuppers, it would be the only level place. In bad weather, the crew would have to sleep below,
on the ballast.” The ship’s officers usually the master and the pilot in Columbus’ time. “In the
big ship, especially a ship armed for war or employed on some special service, or a merchantman
on a long passage with a valuable cargo, there would usually be a captain in general command,
not necessarily a seaman. He might be a soldier or a merchant, according to the work on which
the ship was employed. In a small ship, however, and in most ships in ordinary trades, the master
served as captain also. The master was necessarily a seaman; he commanded the ship and the
stowage of cargo and ballast. The pilot was responsible for navigation, and was also the mate.
Master and pilot commanded the two watches into which the ships’ company was divided. In
Columbus’s ships they each received the same wage: twice that of an able seaman.” The ratings
of petty officers and tradesmen varied to some extent in different parts of Europe, but some of
them were probably universal. In later years, many tasks left to dockyard experts, which were
carried out by ships’ companies. The cook was important to feed all crews on the ship though was
absent from Columbus’ companies. Drinking water was a constant problem. 281
While at sea, seamen were exposed to cold and wet, often with inadequate clothing. “All these
discomforts, together with the perils of the sea and the violence of the enemy, were accepted as
unavoidable hazards, to be forgotten when ashore. In the late fifteenth century, however, ships
began to make much longer passages in the open sea, and as a result a hazard of a different kind
became dangerously frequent. This was scurvy, the deficiency disease chiefly responsible for the
high morality in ocean-going ships in the Age of Reconnaissance. Columbus, in his 1492 voyage
at least, was unusually fortunate in this respect; the health of the ships’ companies was good
throughout…Vasco da Gama’s experience, on a far longer voyage, was far worse and much more
typical. Of Magellan’s fleet only fifteen men tot back to Spain, and many more died of scurvy
than of wounds or drowning.” Disease confronted sea commanders was more serious. Mosquitoborne diseases, such as yellow fever and malaria, attacked men in tropical harbors; and the many
diseases encouraged by insanitary conditions had a cumulative effect at sea among crowded ships’
companies on long voyages – dirt and squalor, and garbage and filth of all kinds. On the other
hand, under the command of the master and the pilot respectively, ships can only be deduced from
contemporary pictures; the earliest detailed descriptions are in seventeenth-century seamen’s
manuals. The set of the sails was controlled by tacks, sheets and bowlines. “Steering presented
difficult problems in the rapidly developing ships of the Age of the Reconnaissance; and in this
respect also the size and complexity of ships tended to outrun mechanical efficiency…The
eventual solution of all these steering problems in sailing ships was to fit a yoke to the head of the
rudder, and to lead the lines through a series of leading blocks to a horizontal drum, mounted on
the quarter-deck, which could be rotated by means of a wheel; but the ships; wheel did not appear
until the eighteenth century.” Moreover, it was necessary for seamen to acquire correct knowledge
and to use navigational instruments in order to reach safely at the destination.282
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(e) Pilotage and Navigation: Navigation is the art of taking ships from one place to another
out of sight of land; and pilotage, the art of taking ships from one place to another when land or
navigational marks are in sight. “The principal qualifications of the late medieval navigator were
experience, detailed knowledge of the coasts where his business lay, and acute powers of
observation. To assist him in applying his knowledge he had the simple instruments already
described: the magnetic compass and the lead.” Pilot-books came into use considerably later in
northern Europe, and there were known as routiers or rutters. It gives sailing directions such as
for the English coasts, and for a passage between the Strait of Gibraltar and the Channel. Most
rutters gave remarkably full and detailed accounts of soundings, both depths and bottoms, not only
in the immediate approaches to harbors, but along whole stretches of coast. They also devoted a
good deal of space to information about tides. “Rutters usually included the establishment of
various ports in the course of sailing directions; and when, in the sixteenth century, such aids to
pilotage came to be printed in large numbers, they were supplemented by almanacs, and by
ingenious diagrammatic tide tables and tide charts, which enabled the establishment of a port to
be picked out at a glance.” A passage in the open sea might not be made on a single direct course.
A ship might be caught by a gale and blown off its course; or the master might deliberately sail
far out into the Atlantic – on passage, for example, from Lisbon to the Channel, or to West Africa
– in order to find a favorable wind for his destination. “In northern Europe, the marine chart was
almost unknown until the middle of the sixteenth century; a plausible tradition attributes to
Sebastian Cabot its introduction into England. In the Mediterranean area, the use of charts went
back at least to the thirteenth century and their development shows a close parallel with that of
tables and of sailing directions. All three sprang from the invention of the mariner’s compass; and
the very word compass was used to describe not only pilot-books, as we have seen, but chart also.”
The seamen of the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century were the heirs
to two distinct traditions of finding a way through the sea. From the Mediterranean, they inherited
relatively sophisticated methods based upon the compass; and from the Atlantic, tradition was
more primitive, with rougher sailing directions, no charts, and limited skill in rule-of-thumb deadreckoning. In 1484 John II of Portugal convened a commission of mathematical experts to work
out a method of finding latitude by solar observation. His commission summarized a manual for
practical navigators in Portugal - Regimento do astrolabio e do quadrante - that was the first
manual of navigation and nautical almanac; containing, as a theoretical basis; a list of latitudes
from Lisbon to the equator, most of them correct to within half a degree, some of within ten minute;
a calendar; and a table of the nun’s declination for a leap year. In addition, it gave the Rule of the
North Stat and the Rule of the Sun, setting out the instructions summarized above for finding the
latitude; it also contained a Rule for Raising the Pole. It represented the best navigational
knowledge of the late fifteenth century; the knowledge and practice which was to take Vasco da
Gama to India and to bring him back. “Both in Portugal and in Spain, schools of navigation were
established in the early sixteenth century, one in connection with the Casa da India at Lisbon, the
other in the Casa de la Contratacion at Seville, to train and license navigators for the East and
West Indies trades respectively. The Spanish school became especially famous and was much
admired abroad. Amerigo Vespucci and Sebastian Cabo served in turn as Pilot Major or head of
the Seville school; and Cabot’s subsequent service in England did much to spread Spanish ideas
in northern Europe.” Although many fuller, more accurate and more up-to-date manuals appeared
in the course of the century, the rules set out in the Regimento supplied for many years the basis
of the navigator’s training. However, the two main problems remain unsolved: the problem of how
to relate celestial observations to the magnetic compass; and the problem of how to fix the position
of a ship or a new discovery in terms of longitude as well as latitude. 283
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(f) Charts and Maps: Map was designed and used primarily for navigation. “A nautical chart
presents most of the information used by the marine navigator, including latitude and longitude
scales, topographical features, navigation aids such as lighthouses and radio beacons, magnetic
information, indications of reefs and shoals, water depth, and warning notices. Such information
allows both plotting a safe course and checking progress while sailing. The first navigation charts
were made at the end of the 13th century. The appearance of the magnetic compass 100 years
earlier is considered to have been the catalyst for the development of charts. Earlier, seamen had
relied on the proximity of a familiar coast, on the position of celestial bodies, or on meteorological
phenomena such as, in the Indian Ocean, the monsoon winds.”284 From the middle of the fifteenth
century, as Portuguese explorers extended their knowledge of the West African coast and of the
Atlantic islands, a demand grew up for charts which might assist merchant vessels to find places
of commercial interest recently discovered. The earliest charts embodying the required information were drawn by Italians. In the reign of John II, a chart-making industry grew up in Lisbon
itself, partly originated by Genoese settled there – Christopher Columbus’ brother Bartholomew
was one of these Genoese cartographers who for a time plied his trade in Portugal – but carried on
also by native Portuguese. The Portuguese cartographers continued the tradition of their Italian
masters. They drew charts, covering an ever-increasing area, in the well-established portolan style.
Regional charts of newly-discovered areas must have been drawn in large numbers in the early
sixteenth century. The most important and influential of the world charts was the Spanish Padron
Real, the official record of discoveries, which was first drawn by royal order in 1508, kept in the
Casa de la Contratacion in Seville, and revised and amended by the cartographical experts of the
Casa as exploration progressed. Men with skill and knowledge to sell passed over information to
the needed, while Portuguese and Spanish cartographers worked on the Padron Real.285
The Catalan World Atlas (1375) was produced by the Majorcan cartographic school and is
attributed to Abraham Cresques, a Jewish cartographer. It has been enriched by incorporating
information reported by travelers, especially Marco Polo, and Nicolo Conti, the Venetian travelled
to India and the Indonesian islands, who possibly touched the coast of south China in about 1448.
The Fra Mauro map (1459), commissioned by the Portuguese Crown, was made by the Venetian
monk Fra Mauro at Murano near Venice. His map is generally regarded as the culmination of
medieval academic cartography. In 1500, Juan de la Cosa, a Spanish explorer and cartographer
made several maps, followed by Caverio map (1505), Ruysch World map (1507), Waldseemuller
and Ringmann map (1507), Piri Reis map (1513), and others. Serious editions, with maps, were
prepared by Sebastian Munster (Basel 1540), by Jacopo Gastaldi (Venice 1548), and by Mercator
(1578). Mercator possessed an unusual combination of theoretical and practical qualities. 286 He
was land surveyor, engraver, maker of mathematical and astronomical instruments, and cartographer. At the University of Louvain, as the pupil of Gemma Phrysius the cosmographer, he
himself acquired a profound knowledge of cosmography and of cartographical technique. The
basic principle of Mercator’s projection is simple. “It is constructed upon a graticule of latitude
and longitude in which the meridians, like the parallels, are drawn as parallel strait lines. The effect
of this upon the map is an exaggeration of the length of the degree of longitude increasing
progressively towards the Poles in exact proportion to the scant of the latitude…By this means,
the correct relationships of angles, and so correct direction, are preserved.” Edward Wright in
1599 drew up a table of meridional parts for the correct spacing of lines of latitude by the
continuous addition of scants at one-minute intervals and in other ways refined and improved the
projection. “On the Wright-Mercator projection, the navigator, for the first time, could draw a
nautical triangle which showed latitude and longitude, course and distance in their correct relation;
and could measure distance with a close approximation to accuracy at the mid-latitude point.”287
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(g) The Fighting Capacity of Men and of Ships: Vasco da Gama’s first voyage confirmed the
hostile presence of Muslim rulers or traders in all the harbors which he visited. His first fleet
carried twenty guns in three ships; enough for defense and for ceremonial display. “His second
expedition, and the expedition of Cabral which preceded it, were made in powerful fleets carrying
large numbers of men and formidable armament. The Portuguese used their armed strength not
only in self-defense, but in reprisals for real or fancied injuries, in demonstrations to force their
Indian hosts to trade, and soon in outright aggression. They were not always and everywhere
successful; they received a severe mauling, for instance, from an Egyptian and Gujerati fleet of
Chaul in 1508; but in general, when competently led they could defeat at sea any fleet which the
eastern rulers could sent against them.” Sea fighting in the later Middle Ages was chiefly a matter
of boarding and entering. “The attacker sought to bring his ship into direct contact with the enemy,
and to seize and hold fast with grappling hooks and lines, in such a position that his men could
leap over the side at its lowest point, in the waist, and overpower resistance by hand-to-hand
fighting.” Fighting galleys represented an extension and a modification of these ideas. Outside
the Mediterranean, pitch battles at sea were rare in the later Middle Ages; but any merchant ship
of any size, in whatever trade engaged, might have to defend itself on occasion. First ship-borne
artillery was introduced probably by the Venetians in the fourteenth century in their quarrels with
the Genoese. By the middle of the fifteenth century, most big European fighting ships carried guns.
Artillery revolutionized sea-fighting; but the revolution was relatively slow. All guns used in ships
in the fifteenth century were of the forged or built-up type. The method of manufacture and
mounting could obviously be used only for small guns: the shot usually of stone, probably weighed
ounces rather than pounds; the effective range was perhaps two hundred yards. Small guns could
be mounted on the gunwales of caravels, becoming effective commerce raiders.288
The disadvantages of ship-borne gun lay in the weakness of the barrel and the insecurity of
the detachable breech-block, which together kept the gun small. In the first two decades of the
sixteenth century, a growing metallurgical industry, chiefly in Flanders and Germany, later in
England, found an answer to this difficulty. “Experimenting gun-founders discovered ways of
casting guns which were more manageable but of equal or greater force. The overall length was
cut down, in the early stone-throwers or perriers to as little as eight calibres. The outer circumference of the barrel was tapered, the metal being cast thick at the breech to withstand the explosion
of the charge, but much thinner towards the muzzle. By these means, a gun was produce which
could be moved about on land on horse or ox-drawn carriages and which could also be mounted
– though with some difficulty – in the ship.” It was the cast guns of the sixteenth century, not the
built-up guns of the fifteenth, which wrought a revolution in the design of fighting ships and in
the tactics of their employment. “Such guns might be anything from five to twelve feet or more
in length, throwing balls weighing from five to as much as sixty pounds, with a formidable recoil.
The longer ones weighed several tons.” The introduction of heavy guns necessitated major
changes in tactics; not immediately, but gradually as the power of the guns and the quality of the
ammunition improved and gained recognition. The battle of Lepanto engaged in 1571 was an
action on traditional lines between two opposing fleets of galleys. The Armada battle was an
action between two opposing fleets of sailing ships; both which were heavily armed and their firepower was roughly comparable. The development of nautical gunnery made European ships
physically more formidable, and therefore better fitted for long voyages. Fighting ships carried
two distinct bodies of men: the seamen, under seamen officers – the master and his mates – who
worked the ship; and the soldiers under their won officers, who did the fighting. The lessons of
homogeneous manning and unified command became gradually acceptable. The Portuguese
fortified their commercial bases overseas, and manned them partly with trained soldiers. 289
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The West Coast of Africa: (a) Portuguese Exploration: “In 1297, with the Portuguese part
of the reconquista completed, King Dinis of Portugal took personal interest in exports and in 1317
he made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pesagno), appointing him
first admiral of the Portuguese navy, with the goal of defending the country against Muslim pirate
raids. Outbreaks of bubonic plague led to severe depopulation in the second half of the 14th
century: only the sea offered alternatives, with most population settling in fishing and trading
coastal areas. Between 1325 and 1357 Afonso IV of Portugal encouraged maritime commerce and
ordered the first explorations. The Canary Islands, already known to the Genoese, were claimed
as officially discovered under patronage of the Portuguese but in 1344 Castile disputed them,
expanding their rivalry into the sea. In 1415, Ceuta was conquered by the Portuguese aiming to
control navigation of the African coast. Young prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) was there
and became aware of profit possibilities in the Trans-Saharan trade routes. For centuries slave and
gold trade routes linking West Africa with the Mediterranean passed over the Western Sahara
Desert, controlled by the Moors of North Africa. Henry wished to know how far Muslim territories
in Africa extended, hoping to bypass them and trade directly with West Africa by sea, find allies
in legendary Christian lands to the south like the long-lost Christian kingdom of Prester John and
to probe whether it was possible to reach the Indies by sea, the source of the lucrative spice trade.
He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania, gathering a group of merchants,
shipowners and stakeholders interested in new sea lanes. Soon the Atlantic islands of Madeira
(1419) and the Azores (1427) were reached. In particular, they were discovered by voyages
launched by the command of Prince Henry the Navigator. The expedition leader himself, who
established settlements on the island of Madeira, was João Gonçalves Zarco.”290
At the time, “Europeans did not know what lay beyond Cape Non (Cape Chaunar) on the
African coast, and whether it was possible to return once it was crossed. Nautical myths warned
of oceanic monsters or an edge of the world, but Prince Henry's navigation challenged such beliefs:
starting in 1421, systematic sailing overcame it…A major advance was the introduction of the
caravel in the mid-15th century, a small ship able to sail windward more than any other in Europe
at the time. Evolved from fishing ships designs, they were the first that could leave the coastal
cabotage navigation and sail safely on the open Atlantic. For celestial navigation the Portuguese
used the Ephemerides, which experienced a remarkable diffusion in the 15th century. These were
astronomical charts plotting the location of the stars over a distinct period of time. Published in
1496 by the Jewish astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician Abraham Zacuto, the Almanach
Perpetuum included some of these tables for the movements of stars. These tables revolutionized
navigation, allowing the calculation of latitude. Exact longitude, however, remained elusive, and
mariners struggled to determine it for centuries. Using the caravel, systematic exploration
continued ever more southerly, advancing on average one degree a year. Senegal and Cape Verde
Peninsula were reached in 1445 and in 1446, Álvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as presentday Sierra Leone. In 1453 the fall of Constantinople to the hands of the Ottomans was a blow to
Christendom and the established business relations linking with the east. In 1455 Pope Nicholas
V issued the bull Romanus Pontifex reinforcing the previous Dum Diversas (1452), granting all
lands and seas discovered beyond Cape Bojador to King Afonso V of Portugal and his successors,
as well as trade and conquest against Muslims and pagans, initiating a mare clausum policy in the
Atlantic. The king, who had been inquiring of Genoese experts about a seaway to India,
commissioned the Fra Mauro world map, which arrived in Lisbon in 1459. In 1456 Diogo Gomes
reached the Cape Verde archipelago. In the next decade several captains at the service of Prince
Henry - including the Genoese Antonio da Noli…discovered the remaining islands which were
occupied during the 15th century. The Gulf of Guinea would be reached in the 1460s.” 291
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(b) Portuguese Exploration after Prince Henry: “In 1460 Pedro de Sintra reached Sierra Leone.
Prince Henry died in November that year after which, given the meager revenues, exploration was
granted to Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes in 1469, who in exchange for the monopoly of trade
in the Gulf of Guinea had to explore 100 miles each year for five years…They reached the
Southern Hemisphere and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé and Príncipe and
Elmina on the Gold Coast in 1471. There, in what came to be called the "Gold Coast" in what is
today Ghana, a thriving alluvial gold trade was found among the natives and Arab and Berber
traders. In 1478 near the coast at Elmina was fought a large battle between a Castilian armada of
35 caravels and a Portuguese fleet for hegemony of the Guinea trade (gold, slaves, ivory and
melegueta pepper). The war ended with a Portuguese naval victory followed by the official
recognition by the Catholic Monarchs of Portuguese sovereignty over most of the disputed West
African territories embodied in the Treaty of Alcáçovas, 1479. This was the first colonial war
among European powers. In 1481 the recently crowned João II decided to build São Jorge da
Mina factory. In 1482 the Congo River was explored by Diogo Cão, who in 1486 continued to
Cape Cross. The next crucial breakthrough was in 1488, when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the
southern tip of Africa, which he named Cape of Storms, anchoring at Mossel Bay and then sailing
east as far as the mouth of the Great Fish River, proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible from
the Atlantic. Simultaneously Pêro da Covilhã, sent out traveling secretly overland, had reached
Ethiopia having collected important information about the Red Sea and Quenia coast, suggesting
that a sea route to the Indies would soon be forthcoming. Soon the cape was renamed by King
John II of Portugal the Cape of Good Hope because of the great optimism.” 292
In sum, the age of discovery was the period in which global exploration “started with the
Portuguese discovery of the Atlantic archipelago of the Azores, the western coast of Africa, and
discovery of the ocean route to the East in 1498, and the trans-Atlantic Ocean discovery of the
Americas on behalf of the Crown of Castile in 1492. These expeditions led to numerous naval
expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas,
Asia, Africa, and Australia that continued into the late 19th century, ended with the exploration of
the polar regions in the 20th century: a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human populations,
communicable diseases and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres,” allowing the
global mapping of the world and resulting in a new world-view and distant civilizations coming
into contact.293 Portuguese and Castilians acquired ships, seamen, navigation, maps, guns but not
capital for the expedition. The caravels were relatively small ships carrying sixty to seventy tons,
which might seem unsuitable for the task of exploration, but Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da
Gama used this class. The average size of ships increased, while the cargo-carriers and fighting
ships improved in design throughout the century. They had experienced seamen including the
captain, master, pilot, boatswain, steward, carpenter, caulker, tallow, and tradesmen. The captain
tried to preserve drinking water, fresh food, and health against disease and insanitary conditions.
For navigation, a commission of John II of Portugal convened in 1484 and published Regimento
the first European manual of navigation and nautical almanac, giving the rule of the North Star
and of the Sun. Portugal founded the school of navigation in 1419 followed by Spain, and educated
how to find the latitude and longitude in the voyage. The Portuguese explorers extended their
knowledge of the West African coast and of the Atlantic islands, added newly discovered areas
on the charts and compiled the Cantino chart in 1502. The Mercator edition of 1578 possessed
theoretical and practical qualities. A revolutionary design of fighting ships with artillery guns
changed the military tactics to open trade relations and to conquer new lands. Portugal and Castile
lacked the capital, so that they permitted foreign merchants and shippers to join the expedition as
business partners by providing ships and trade goods in expeditions.
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The Atlantic Ocean: (a) Spanish Exploration: Castile had established its rule over the Canary
Islands, located off the West African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal politics
and the repelling of Islamic invasion attempts and raids. After the unification of Castile and
Aragon with the completion of the Reconquista, Spain become fully committed to the search for
new trade routes overseas. “The Crown of Aragon had been an important maritime potentate in
the Mediterranean, controlling territories in eastern Spain, southwestern France, major islands like
Sicily, Malta, and the Kingdom of Naples and Sardinia, with mainland possessions as far as Greece.
In 1492 the joint rulers conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing
Castile with African goods through tribute, and decided to fund Christopher Columbus's
expedition in the hope of bypassing Portugal's monopoly on West African sea routes, to reach the
Indie by travelling west.” In April 1492, Spain approved Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) to
discover and acquire certain islands and mainlands in the Ocean Sea, and promised him to be
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of lands that he may discover. In August, he
left Palos with 90 seamen on the three ships, crossed the Atlantic, and landed at San Salvador in
October. Exploring the Bahamas, the coastline of Cuba, and the northern shore of present Haiti
and the Dominican Republic, he returned to Barcelona in April 1493. Columbus misunderstood
that he reached an eastern part of China, but his first voyage had been successful enough for Spain
to compete with Portugal in the discovery. His report on the first voyage was printed and circulated
throughout Europe and Latin translation reached Rome. In the second voyage, Columbus left the
port of Cadiz in September 1493, with a fleet of 17 ships carrying 1,200 men and the supplies to
establish permanent colonies in the New World. They settled in the islands of Hispaniola as a
farming colony, but little had been achieved by 1496 when he returned to Spain to report. His
subsequent two voyages in 1498 and 1502 were not successful. Though he reached all the major
islands of the Caribbean and the mainland of Central America. 294
(b) Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): “Shortly after Columbus arrival from the West Indies, a
division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese. On
4 May 1493, two months after Columbus's arrival, the Catholic Monarchs received a bull (Inter
caetera) from Pope Alexander VI stating that all lands west and south of a pole-to-pole line 100
leagues west and south of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Castile and, later,
all mainlands and islands then belonging to India. It did not mention Portugal, which could not
claim newly discovered lands east of the line. King John II of Portugal was not pleased with the
arrangement, feeling that it gave him far too little land - preventing him from reaching India, his
main goal. He then negotiated directly with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to move
the line west, allowing him to claim newly discovered lands east of it. An agreement was reached
in 1494, with the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between the two powers. In this
treaty the Portuguese received everything outside Europe east of a line that ran 370 leagues west
of the Cape Verde islands (already Portuguese), and the islands discovered by Christopher
Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Spain), named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antilia
(Cuba and Hispaniola). This gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America
(Brazil). The Spanish (Castile) received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost
completely unknown, and proved to be mostly the western part of the Americas plus the Pacific
Ocean islands.”295 However, it quickly became obsolete in North America, and later in Asia and
Africa, where it affected colonization. Other European nations ignored the treaty with the decline
of Spanish and Portuguese power. With the fall of Malacca to the Dutch, the Dutch East India
Company (VOC) took control of Portuguese possessions in Indonesia, claiming Western New
Guinea and Western Australia, as New Holland. Eastern Australia remained in the Spanish half
of the world until claimed for Britain by James Cook in 1770. 296
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Map I-3-6. Tordesillas Treaty
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Spain_and_Portugal.png/200px-Spain_and_Portugal.png
Map I-3-7. The European Exploration of Americas, 1500-1550
http://www.classzone.com/cz/books/amer_hist_survey/resources/htmls/chapter_maps/ah02_europeanexplorersm.jpg
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(c) North America: John Cabot (1450-1500) was a Venetian Italian navigator and explorer,
who worked as a merchant in the spice trade of the Levant or eastern Mediterranean, and may
have travelled as far as Mecca, then an important trading center of Oriental and Western goods.
He studies navigation and map-making during this period. Henry VII of England authorized him
to make a voyage of discovery and to return with goods for sale on the English market. Sailing
from Bristol on the small ship Matthew in May 1497, Cabot crossed the Atlantic from a northerly
latitude hoping the voyage to the West Indies would be shorter and made a landfall somewhere in
North America, possibly Newfoundland. He returned to Bristol in August of the same year with
extremely favorable reports of exploration. In February 1498, his second voyage was set out with
five ships and 200 men. “The exact fate of the expedition has not been established, but by July
one of the ships had been damaged and sought anchorage in Ireland. It was believed that the ships
had been caught in a severe storm, and by 1499, Cabot himself was presumed to have perished at
sea. In addition to laying the groundwork for British land claims in Canada, his expeditions proved
the existence of a shorter route across the northern Atlantic Ocean, which would later facilitate the
establishment of other British colonies in North America.” 297 A research suggested that Cabot and
his expedition successfully returned to England in the Spring of 1500.298 “In 1499 João Fernandes
Lavrador was licensed by the King of Portugal and together with Pêro de Barcelos they first
sighted Labrador, which was granted and named after him. After returning he possibly went to
Bristol to sail in the name of England. Nearly at the same time, between 1499 and 1502 brothers
Gaspar and Miguel Corte Real explored and named the coasts of Greenland and also Newfoundland. Both explorations are noted in the 1502 Cantino planisphere.” 299
(d) The West Indies and South America: In 1497, Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory
fleet eastwards, fulfilling his predecessor's project of finding a route to the Indies… As shipping
between Seville and the West Indies grew, knowledge of the Caribbean islands, Central America
and the northern coast of South America grew. One of these Spanish fleets, that of Alonso de
Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in 1499–1500, reached land at the coast of what is now Guyana,
when the two explorers seem to have separated in opposite directions. Vespucci sailed southward,
discovering the mouth of the Amazon River in July 1499, and reaching 6°S, in present-day north
east Brazil, before turning around. In the beginning of 1500 Vicente Yáñez Pinzon was blown off
course by a storm and reached what is now the north east coast of Brazil in 26 January 1500,
exploring as far south as the present-day state of Pernambuco. His fleet was the first to fully enter
the Amazon River estuary which he named Río Santa María de la Mar Dulce. However, the land
was too far east for the Spanish to claim under the Treaty of Tordesillas, but the discovery created
Spanish interest, with a second voyage by Pinzon in 1508 and a voyage in 1515–16 by a navigator
of the 1508 expedition, Juan Díaz de Solís. The 1515–16 expedition was spurred on by reports of
Portuguese exploration of the region. It ended when de Solís and some of his crew disappeared
when exploring a River Plate river in a boat, but what it found re-ignited Spanish interest, and
colonization began in 1531. In April 1500, the second Portuguese India Armada, headed by Pedro
Álvares Cabral, with a crew of expert captains, including Bartolomeu Dias and Nicolau Coelho,
encountered the Brazilian coast as it swung westward in the Atlantic while performing a large
volta do mar (turn of the sea) to avoid becalming in the Gulf of Guinea. On 21 April 1500 a
mountain was seen and was named Monte Pascoal, and on the 22nd of April Cabral landed on the
coast. On 25 April the entire fleet sailed into the harbor they named Porto Seguro (Port Secure).
Cabral perceived that the new land lay east of the line of Tordesillas, and sent an envoy to Portugal
with the discovery in letters, including the letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha. Believing the land to
be an island, he named it Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross). Some historians have
suggested that the Portuguese may have encountered the South American bulge earlier.” 300
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At the invitation of King Manuel I of Portugal, Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1542) participated
as observer in these exploratory voyages to the east coast of South America. “The expeditions
became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him…It was soon understood
that Columbus had not reached Asia but had found a new continent, the Americas….In 1501–
1502, one of these Portuguese expeditions, led by Gonçalo Coelho sailed south along the coast of
South America to the bay of present-day Rio de Janeiro. Amerigo Vespucci's account states that
the expedition reached the latitude South Pole elevation 52° S, in the cold latitudes of what is now
southern Patagonia, before turning back.” On the other hand, “In 1503, Binot Paulmier de
Gonneville, challenging the Portuguese policy of mare clausum, led one of the earliest French
Normand and Breton expeditions to Brazil. He intended to sail to the East Indies, but near the
Cape of Good Hope his ship was diverted to west by a storm, and landed in the present day state
of Santa Catarina (southern Brazil), in 5 January 1504. In 1511–1512, Portuguese captains João
de Lisboa and Estevão de Fróis reached the River Plate estuary in present-day Uruguay and
Argentina, and went as far south as the present-day Gulf of San Matias at 42°S. The expedition
reached a cape extending north to south which they called Cape of Santa Maria; and after 40°S
they found a Cape or a point or place extending into the sea, and a Gulf...In 1519, an expedition
sent by the Spanish Crown to find a way to Asia was led by the experienced Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet explored the rivers and bays as it charted the South American coast
until it found a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan. In 1524–1525, Aleixo
Garcia, a Portuguese conquistador, led a private expedition of a few shipwrecked Spanish and
Portuguese adventurers that recruited about 2000 Guaraní Indians. They explored the territories
of present-day southern Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, using the native trail network, the Peabiru.
They were also the first Europeans to cross the Chaco and reach the…the Inca Empire.”301
The first two decades of the sixteenth century were the age of the professional explorer, and
the next three decades were that of the conquistador. Before 1520, most of the larger islands of
the West Indies had been explored and a considerable number of Spaniards had settled in Cuba
and Hispaniola. Christopher Columbus sent Diego Velazquez to conquer Cuba in 1514 who
became the governor of the island. Velazquez sent small expeditions from Cuba during 1517-18
to reconnoiter the coast of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico. In 1519, he sent Hernan Cortes (14851547) with 600 soldiers to Mexico. They landed at Veracruz and founded a new civil community,
and elected Cortez to Captain General and Chief Justice, who destroyed all their ships. Allied
with the Tlaxcalans, a rival tribe of Montezuma, Cortez conquered the Aztec and established a
Spanish colony in 1521, which was confirmed by the crown. Cortez sent Pedro de Alvarado to
Guatemala and Christobal de Olid to Honduras in 1523, and founded the Guatemala City in 1524.
When Cortez visited Spain in 1529, Charles V confirmed his encomienda creating him marquis of
the valley of Oajaca, and he returned to Spain in 1539 for retirement. Vasco de Balboa led an
expedition across Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1513. Pedrarias Davila
founded Panama City on the Pacific coast in 1519. After two reconnaissances to the west coast
of South America in the 1520s, Francisco Pizarro (1476-1541) saw rich golden ornaments of
natives. He returned to Spain and secured his expedition to Peru with favorable conditions
approved by the crown in 1529. Returning to Panama, Pizarro renewed partnership with Diego
Almagro and Luque for permanent Spanish settlements and political control over the conquered
land. In 1530, they sailed to the south: Pizarro conquered the Inca in Peru and founded colonial
order, while Almagro suffered great hardship in expedition of Bolivia and Chile and returned to
Cuzco in 1537. Unfortunately, the power struggle between two factions led to the War of Las
Salinas in 1538, when Almagro was killed. The followers of Almagro murdered Pizarro in Lima
in 1541, which closed the age of invasion and conquest in Peru.
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The Indian Ocean (1497-1513): Gama’s Route to India: “Twice, in 1485 and 1488, Portugal
officially rejected Christopher Columbus's idea of reaching India by sailing westwards. King John
II of Portugal's experts rejected it, for they held the opinion that Columbus's estimation of a travel
distance of 2,400 miles was undervalued, and in part because Bartolomeu Dias departed in 1487
trying the rounding of the southern tip of Africa, therefore they believed that sailing east would
require a far shorter journey. Dias's return from the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Pêro da
Covilhã's travel to Ethiopia overland indicated that the richness of the Indian Sea was accessible
from the Atlantic. A long-overdue expedition was prepared. Under new king Manuel I of Portugal,
on July 1497 a small exploratory fleet of four ships and about 170 well-armed men left Lisbon
under command of Vasco da Gama (1460-1524). They were all well-armed and some of them had
been with Dias. By December the fleet passed the Great Fish River…sailed into unknown waters.
On 20 May 1498, they arrived at Calicut. The efforts of Vasco da Gama to get favorable trading
conditions were hampered by the low value of their goods, compared with the valuable goods
traded there. Two years and two days after departure, Gama and a survivor crew of 55 men
returned in glory to Portugal as the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. Muslim traders
were spreading their religion through the East Indies and establishing principalities. “On the
Malabar coast south of Goa, the rulers of the port towns and the main populations were Hindu;
but their oversea trade was mostly handled by Arabs and Muslim Gujertis.” In 1500, a second,
larger fleet of thirteen ships and about 1500 men was sent to India. Under command of Pedro
Álvares Cabral they made a first landfall on the Brazilian coast; later, in the Indian Ocean, one of
Cabral's ships reached Madagascar (1501), which was explored by Tristão da Cunha in 1507;
Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506. The third Indies fleet, commanded
again by Vasco da Gama, sailed in 1502 with a powerfully equipped force in fourteen ships. On
the Asiatic mainland the first factories were established at Kochi and Calicut and Goa (1510). 302
The Spice Islands and China: Afonso de Albuquerque (c. 1453-1515) was a Portuguese
general, a great conqueror, a statesman, and an empire builder. He was born to a noble family
holding high position at court, where he was educated and befriended Prince John, the future King
John II of Portugal. Albuquerque served 10 years in North Africa, where he gained military
experience in fierce campaigns against Muslim powers and Ottoman Turks. He made his mark
under the stern John II, and won military campaigns in Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
Albuquerque advanced the three-fold Portuguese grand scheme of combating Islam, spreading
Christianity and securing the trade of spices and the establishment of a Portuguese Asian empire.
(i) First Expedition to India (1503): King Manuel I (reigned 1495-1521) sent Albuquerque on his
first expedition to India in 1503 along with his cousin Francisco de Albuquerque with three ships
to each of them. They engaged in several battles against the forces of the Zamorin of Calicut and
succeeded in establishing the King of Cohin securely on his throne. In return, the King gave them
permission to build the Portuguese fort Immanuel (Fort Cochi) and establish trade relations with
Quilon. This laid the foundation for the Portuguese eastern Empire. (ii) Second Expedition to India
(1506): “Albuquerque returned home in July 1504, and was well received by King Manuel I. After
Albuquerque assisted with the creation of a strategy for the Portuguese efforts in the east, King
Manuel entrusted him with the command of a squadron of five vessels in the fleet of sixteen sailing
for India in early 1506 headed by Tristão da Cunha. Their aim was to conquer Socotra and build
a fortress there, hoping to close the trade in the Red Sea. Albuquerque went as ‘chief-captain for
the Coast of Arabia’, sailing under da Cunha's orders until reaching Mozambique. He carried a
sealed letter with a secret mission ordered by the King: after fulfilling the first mission, he was to
replace the first viceroy of India, Francisco de Almeida, whose term ended two years later. Before
departing, he legitimated a natural son born in 1500 and made his will.”303
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Map I-3-8. Vasco da Gama Route Map, 1498
Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/71/aa/4b/71aa4bfc4ca010cb379cd7e89fa68f60.gif
Map I-3-9. The Portuguese Colonial Dominations: India and the East Indies, 1498-1580
Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/images/map-east-indies-1580.jpg.
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The fleet left Lisbon in April 1506, (i) Albuquerque conquered Socotra and built a fortress at
Suq, hoping to establish a base to stop the Red Sea commerce to the Indian Ocean. Socotra is
rocky and almost waterless, and its approaches difficult and dangerous (it was abandoned after
first few years). In September, capturing Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, one the commercial centers,
Albuquerque began building the Fort of Our Lady of Victory. He arrived at Cannanore on the
Malabar coast in December 1508 with the king’s letter appointing him to the governor, but the
viceroy Almeida declined to yield. In February 1509, Almeida fought the naval Battle of Diu
against a joint fleet of Mamluks, Ottomans, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat,
regarding it as personal revenge for the death of his son. His victory was decisive: they abandoned
the Indian Ocean, easing the way for Portuguese rule there for over 100 years. The Portuguese
armada was fifteen ships with 3,000 men. In November 1509, Albuquerque, released from threemonth confinement, became the second Governor of the East Indies, who intended to dominate
the Muslim world and controlling the Spice trade. (ii) As his first maneuver, Albuquerque
assembled a powerful fleet of 23 ships and 1,200 men, and conquered Goa from Ismail Adil Shah
and his Ottoman allies, who surrendered in December 1510. Around 6,000 of the 9,000 Muslim
defenders of the city died. Albuquerque regained the support of the Hindu population: he
rewarded Timoji, who supported him, by appointing him chief Aguazil of the city, an administrator
and representative of the Hindu and Muslim people, as a knowledgeable interpreter of the local
customs. He started the Portuguese mint – gold, silver, and bronze - in the East, after complaints
from merchants and Timoja about the scarcity of currency, taking it as an opportunity to announce
the territorial conquest. He used Goa to secure the Spice trade in favor of Portugal and sell Persian
Horses to Vijaynagara and Hindu princes in return for their assistance. 304
(iii) Albuquerque took Malacca in 1511, risking his hold upon Goa in order to control Muslin
trade across the Bay of Bengal. “All sailing in the archipelago is governed by the monsoons, and
the wind which took him to Malacca made it impossible for him to return until five months later.
The siege strained his resources in men and ships to the utmost and Goa all but fell in his absence.
The gamble succeeded; with Malacca, the western terminus of Chinese trade, in their hands, the
way to the Far East lay open to the Portuguese. The first Portuguese ship to reach a Chinese port
put into Canton in 1513; this was the first recorded European visit to China for more than a hundred
and fifty years. It was not an immediate success, for the Chinese authorities were suspicious of the
strangers and contemptuous of the goods they carried; but eventually, in 1556, the Portuguese
secured the right to establish a warehouse and settlement at Macao, a little downstream from
Canton, and began to take a direct part in the trade from China to Malacca.” (iv) In 1513, the first
Portuguese ships reached the Moluccas, the Spice islands which had been the ultimate goal of
almost all their endeavors. “The pilot, Francisco Rodrigues, who had already been mentioned as
a cartographer, took part in the first expedition to the Moluccas. The explorers were greatly
assisted by a large-scale Javanese map which fell into their hands about 1510 or 1511…In the
Malacca, the Portuguese entered into treaty relations with the Sultan of Ternate, the principal
clove-producing island, and built a fortified warehouse there for collecting the cloves. No doubt
they intended to turn the place into an outright possession like Goa and Malacca as soon as their
strength allowed.” (v) Albuquerque calculated accurately the necessary proportion of escorts to
merchant packets, neither wasting cargo space nor leaving valuable cargoes unprotected. “In order
to assert the Portuguese Crown monopoly of the spice trade, he established a systematic blackmail,
whereby only those ships carrying certificates from the captain of a Portuguese port were free
from molestation. His depredations against Arab spice shipments raised the prices which the
Venetians had to pay at Alexandria; and for a few years, spices and other valuable cargoes destined
for Europe by sea were almost confined to Portuguese bottoms and carried via the Cape.” 305
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The Pacific Ocean (1513-29): (i) Discovery of the Pacific Ocean: “In 1513, about 40 miles
south of Acandí, in present-day Colombia, Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa heard unexpected
news of an ‘other sea’ rich in gold, which he received with great interest. With few resources and
using information given by caciques, he journeyed across the Isthmus of Panama with 190
Spaniards, a few native guides, and a pack of dogs. Using a small brigantine and ten native canoes,
they sailed along the coast and made landfalls. On September 6, the expedition was reinforced
with 1,000 men, fought several battles, entered a dense jungle and climbed the mountain range
along the Chucunaque River from where this ‘other sea’ could be seen. Balboa went ahead and,
before noon September 25, he saw in the horizon an undiscovered sea, becoming the first European
to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World. The expedition descended towards the
shore for a short reconnaissance trip, thus becoming the first Europeans to navigate the Pacific
Ocean off the coast of the New World. After traveling more than 110 km, Balboa named the bay
where they ended up San Miguel. He named the
new sea Mar del Sur, since they had traveled south
to reach it. Balboa's main purpose in the expedition
was the search for gold-rich kingdoms. To this end,
he crossed through the lands of caciques to the
islands, naming the largest one Isla Rica. He
named the entire group Archipiélago de las Perlas.”
Map I-3-10. Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s Travel to the South Sea, 1513
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Balboa_Voyage_1513.PNG/200pxBalboa_Voyage_1513.PNG
Map I-3-11. Route of Magellan-Elcano World Circumnavigation, 1519-22
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Magellan_Elcano_Circumnavigation-en.svg/1280pxMagellan_Elcano_Circumnavigation-en.svg.png
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(ii) In 1515–1516, the Spanish fleet led by Juan Díaz de Solís sailed down the east coast of
South America as far as Río de la Plata, which Solís named shortly before he died, while trying to
find a passage to the South Sea. Meantime, the Portuguese in Southeast Asia made the first
European report on the western Pacific, having identified Luzon east of Borneo and named its
inhabitants the Luções, in the modern Philippines. 306 (iii) Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521),307
knowing the efforts of the Spanish to find a route to India by sailing west, presented his plan to
Charles I of Spain. The king and Christopher de Haro financed Magellan's expedition. A fleet was
put together, and Spanish navigators such as Juan Sebastián Elcano joined the enterprise. On
August 10, 1519, they departed from Seville with a fleet of five ships and a crew of about 237
men from several nations, with the goal of reaching the Maluku Islands by traveling west, trying
to reclaim it under Spain's economic and political sphere. The fleet sailed further and further south,
avoiding the Portuguese territories in Brazil, and become the first to reach Tierra del Fuego at the
tip of the Americas. On October 21, starting in Cape Virgenes, they began an arduous trip through
a 373-mile long strait - the modern Strait of Magellan. On November 28, three ships entered the
Pacific Ocean - then named Mar Pacífico because of its apparent stillness. Crossing the Pacific,
Magellan died in the battle of Mactan in the Philippines, leaving Juan Sebastián Elcano the task
of completing the voyage, reaching the Spice Islands in 1521. On September 6, 1522 Victoria
returned to Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Of the men who set
out on five ships, only 18 completed the circumnavigation and managed to return to Spain in this
single vessel led by Elcano. Seventeen others arrived later in Spain: twelve captured by the
Portuguese in Cape Verde some weeks earlier, and between 1525 and 1527, and five survivors of
the Trinidad. Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar and traveler who had had assisted Magellan,
kept an accurate journal that become the source for much of what we know about this voyage. 308
(iv) Westward and Eastward Exploration Meet: “Soon after Magellan's expedition, the
Portuguese rushed to seize the surviving crew and built a fort in Ternate. In 1525, Charles I of
Spain sent another expedition westward to colonize the Maluku Islands, claiming that they were
in his zone of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The fleet of seven ships and 450 men was led by García
Jofre de Loaísa and included the most notable Spanish navigators…Near the Strait of Magellan
one of the ships was pushed south by a storm, reaching 56° S, where they thought seeing earth's
end: so Cape Horn was crossed for the first time…The issue was settled only in 1529, after a long
negotiation, with the signing of Treaty of Zaragoza that attributed the Maluku Islands to Portugal
and the Philippines to Spain. Between 1525 and 1528 Portugal sent several expeditions around
the Maluku Islands. Gomes de Sequeira and Diogo da Rocha were sent north by the governor of
Ternate Jorge de Menezes, being the first Europeans to reach the Caroline Islands, which they
named Islands de Sequeira. In 1526, Jorge de Meneses docked on Biak and Waigeo islands, Papua
New Guinea. Based on these explorations stands the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia,
one among several competing theories about the early discovery of Australia, supported by
Australian historian Kenneth McIntyre, stating it was discovered by Cristóvão de Mendonça and
Gomes de Sequeira. In 1527 Hernán Cortés fitted out a fleet to find new lands in the South Sea
(Pacific Ocean), asking his cousin Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón to take charge. On October 31 of
1527 Saavedra sailed from New Spain, crossing the Pacific and touring the north of New Guinea,
then named Isla de Oro. In October 1528 one of the vessels reached the Maluku Islands. In his
attempt to return to New Spain he was diverted by the northeast trade winds, which threw him
back, so he tried sailing back down, to the south. He returned to New Guinea and sailed northeast,
where he sighted the Marshall Islands and the Admiralty Islands, but again was surprised by the
winds, which brought him a third time to the Moluccas. This westbound return route was hard to
find, but was eventually discovered by Andrés de Urdaneta in 1565.”309
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(v) Inland Spanish Conquistadores (1519-32): “While Portuguese were making huge gains
in the Indian Ocean, the Spanish invested in exploring inland in search of gold and valuable
resources. The members of these expeditions, the conquistadors, came from a variety of
backgrounds including artisans, merchants, clergy, lesser nobility and freed slaves. They usually
supplied their own equipment in exchange for a share in profits, having no direct connection with
the royal army, and often no professional military training or experience. In the Americas the
Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. However,
small bodies of conquistadors, with large armies of Indigenous Americans groups, managed to
conquer these states. During this time, pandemics of European disease such as smallpox devastated
the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, the Spanish focused on
the extraction and export of gold and silver. In 1512, to reward Juan Ponce de León for exploring
Puerto Rico in 1508, King Ferdinand urged him to seek these new lands. He would become
governor of discovered lands, but was to finance himself all exploration. With three ships and
about 200 men, Léon set out from Puerto Rico in March 1513. In April they sighted land and
named it La Florida - because it was Easter (Florida) season - believing it was an island, becoming
credited as the first European to land in the continent. The arrival location has been disputed
between St. Augustine, Ponce de León Inlet and Melbourne Beach. They headed south for further
exploration and on April 8 encountered a current so strong that it pushed them backwards: this
was the first encounter with the Gulf Stream that would soon become the primary route for
eastbound ships leaving the Spanish Indies bound for Europe. They explored down the coast
reaching Biscayne Bay, Dry Tortugas and then sailing southwest in an attempt to circle Cuba to
return, reaching Grand Bahama on July.” 310 Cortes’ Mexico, the Aztec Empire, Pizarro’s Peru
and the Inca Empire were conquered by in the sixteenth century.
The Spanish conquistadors searched for gold and silver and exploited Indians as sources of
free labor in plantations and mines. The Spanish crown instituted a system of ecomienda that
allowed their conquerors to collect tribute from the natives and to use them as laborers, while the
system intended to protect the Indians, to pay wages, and to provide spiritual needs. But in reality,
the Spanish settlers brutally used the Indians for their economic interests. Many of them died from
forced labor, starvation, and diseases of smallpox, measles, and typhus. Spain created two major
administrative units: New Spain with Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands
centered in Mexico; and Peru governed by a viceroy in Lima. Spain had extensive rights over
ecclesiastical affairs in America: the Catholic missionaries massively converted the Indians into
Christianity; the churches, schools, and hospitals were founded; and the Spanish Inquisition was
established in Peru in 1570 and Mexico in 1571. The civilizations of native Americans were
destroyed and replaced by European institutions, but those of native Asians were much less
influenced by Portuguese trading posts in Asia. In trade, after the discovery of silver mine in Peru,
annual imports of silver and gold from Peru and Mexico remained over 200 tons from 1581 to
1630 in average. Spain imported new agricultural products from America such as sugar, dyes,
vanilla, hides, potatoes, coffee, corn, and tobacco. The Portuguese carried European goods from
the trading post at Goa; sailed to Macao and loaded silk, silk goods and porcelain of Canton; and
sailed further to Nagasaki and sold them for silver, which was sold at Macao on the returning trip.
The Portuguese imported spices, jewels, silk, carpets, ivory, leather, and perfumes from the east,
and distributed them throughout Europe with huge profits. Spain had dominated the trade with
Latin America, and Portugal with the Far East due to privileges from their first discoveries of
unknown lands. Nevertheless, their monopolies were challenged by the Dutch first in the East
Indies, and later the English and French in the West Indies in the seventeenth century. The fruit
of discovery will be further discussed in Chapter II in this book.
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3-2. Religious Wars and the Thirty Years’ War
The reign of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire was dominated by three major simultaneous
conflicts: the Habsburg-Valois Wars in France, mainly in Italy; the struggle to halt the Ottoman
advance; and the Protestant Reformation resulting in conflict with German princes. When he died
in 1558, his title of Holy Roman Emperor passed to his younger brother Ferdinand, who had
already given Austrian lands in 1521; and his son Philip II inherited the Spanish empires, including
the possessions in the Netherland and Italy. The Peace of Cateau-Cambresis of 1559 ended the
65-year struggle between France and Spain for the control of Italy, leaving Habsburg Spain the
dominant power there for 150 years. During the reign of Philip II, Spain reached the height of its
influence and power – called the Golden Age, but there were separate state-bankruptcies several
times, which were partly because of the declaration of independence, creating the Dutch Republic
in 1581. Philip took over the kingdom of Portugal by force in 1580 and hold the Iberian Peninsula
as King of Spain until 1640, aiming Spain to be an Atlantic imperial power. In France, Henry II
died in 1559, and was succeeded in turn by his three sons, whose ineffective reigns helped to spur
the terrible consequences of the French War of Religion between Protestants and Catholics, as
appeared in the St. Bartholomew’s Day’s Massacre in 1572 that killed from 5,000 to 30,000
Huguenots. Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that allowed religious co-existence in
France, but it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. In England, Henry VIII was succeeded by his
son Edward VI who reigned six years during 1547-53; he was succeeded by Mary I, who married
Philip II of Spain. Mary was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I in 1558, who ruled England
44 years until 1603. Settling the religious problem based on a moderate Protestantism, Elizabeth
was cautious in foreign affairs, but was successful in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588; and
aided French Huguenots and Dutch Calvinists to weaken France and Spain.
While the Spanish Habsburgs under Philip II was busy to save the Netherlands from rebellions,
the Austrian Hapsburgs had badly ruled the present state of Germany and others after the death of
Ferdinand I until 1612. The peace of Augsburg gave legal basis for the practice of the Lutheran
confession, but left religious matters in the hands of the German princes. Therefore, Lutherans and
Catholics competitively tried to control various principalities. Since the treaty did not recognized
the rights of Calvinists, the Calvinist ruler of the Palatinate, the Elector Frederick IV, assumed the
leadership forming the Protestant Union in 1608 supported by the Dutch, English, and French. In
response, the Catholic League was formed in the following year, headed by Duke Maximilian of
Bavaria, aided by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. So Germany was divided into the two armed
camps: the Bourbon vs. the Habsburg rather than the Protestants vs. the Catholics, which ignited
the Thirty Years’ War, when Frederick V of Palatine refused to accept Ferdinand II as Emperor.
At the final stage Louis XIII entered the war under the direction of Cardinal Richelieu. The
Swedes fought in northern Germany and the French fought in the Netherlands and along the Rhine
in western Germany. As the French defeated the imperial army, the war in Germany ended by the
Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, though the war between France and Spain continued until the Peace
of Pyrenees was settled in 1659. As a result, Spain became a second-class nation and France had
emerged as a dominant power in Europe. The territorial rulers of the empire became powerful by
regulating common taxation, defense, laws and public affairs without imperial intervention.
Considering that the Catholic French supported the Protestant Swedes against the Catholic
Habsburgs and that the pope was completely ignored in all decisions at Westphalia, it was clear
that religion and politics were in separate worlds with toleration. Some areas of Germany were
completely devastated (see Map I-3-15), while others remained relatively untouched or showed
an increasing trend of the population through an internal migration and redistribution.
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
England – Elizabeth I (1158-1603): Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister Mary and set out to
rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil,
who served as secretary for fourteen years, then as Lord Treasurer for twenty-six years more, till
his death. He had some Machiavellian ways, rarely cruel, but relentless against opposition, and
he had eyes and spies for everything. “He was acquisitive and thrifty, but Elizabeth pardoned his
wealth for his wisdom and loved the parsimony that accumulated the means for defeating the
Armada.” In 1571, she made him Lord Burghley, head of the new aristocracy that upheld her
throne and made her kingdom great. “The secret weapon of the diplomacy was her virginity.” The
queen’s marriage was critical not only for the question of succession but also for the tangled web
of international diplomacy. England, isolated and militarily weak, was sorely in need of the major
alliances that an advantageous marriage could forge. Important suitors came forward, but something went wrong because of “probably the misfortunes of Catherine of Aragon in childbirth were
due to Henry VIII’s Syphilis; his so Edward died in youth of some of ill-described disease; his
daughter Mary tires fervently to have a child, only to mistake dropsy for pregnancy; and Elizabeth,
though she flirted as long as she could walk, never ventured on marriage.” 311
(a) Religion: She was a Protestant. Protestantism in the sixteenth century had the feverish
energy of a new idea fighting for the future, while Catholicism had the strength of traditional
beliefs and ways deeply rooted in the past. “Many force urged her to complete the Reformation.
Continental reformers wrote to thank her in advance for restoring the new worship, and their letters
touched her. Holders of formerly Church property prayed for a Protestant settlement. Cecil urged
Elizabeth to make herself the leader of all Protestant Europe.” Her first Parliament overwhelmingly passed a new Act of Uniformity in April 1559, making Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer,
revised, the law of English liturgy, and forbade all other religious ritual. “The Mass was abolished.
All Englishmen were required to attend the Sunday service of the Anglican Church or forfeit a
shilling for the succor of the poor. A new Act of Supremacy declared Queen to be the Supreme
Governor of England in all matters, spiritual or temporal. An oath of supremacy acknowledging
the religious sovereignty of the Queen was required of all clergymen, lawyers, teachers, university
graduates, and magistrates, and all employees of the Church or the Crown. All major ecclesiastical
appointments and decisions were to be made by an ecclesiastical Court of High Commission
chosen by the government. Any defense of papal authority over England was to be punished by
life imprisonment for the first offence, be death for the second.”312
Puritanism in England was founded by some of the returning clergy exiled under Mary I as
an active movement within in the Church of England. The Puritan attack on Elizabeth took form
in 1569 when the lectures of Thomas Cartwright, professor of theology at Cambridge, stressed the
contrast between the Presbyterian organization of the early Christian Church and the Episcopalian
structure of the Anglican Establishment. Cartwright was dismissed from the college and
immigrated to Geneva, where he imbibed the full ardor of Calvinist theocracy. Returning to
England, he formulated the Puritan conception of the Church. The first English parish organized
on these principles was set up at Wandsworth in 1572, and similar presbyteries sprang up in the
eastern and middle counties. By this time, the majority of the London Protestants, and of the House
of Commons, were Puritans. But Elizabeth felt that the Puritan movement threatened the whole
settlement by which she had planned to ease the religious strife. Archbishop Parker suppressed
their publications, silenced them in the churches, and obstructed their assemblies. The Puritan
rebellion was intensified. In 1581 Robert Browne and Separatists crossed over to Holland and
published two tracts outlining a democratic constitution for Christianity. Two of their followers
were arrested in England and hanged. Suppressing Parliamentary voices, she gave John Whitgift
a free hand to check the Puritans in order to enforce her ecclesiastical policy.313
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(b) Ireland had been conquered by English in 1169-71. Elizabeth thought that a Catholic
Ireland would be a peril to a Protestant England. She ordered a full enforcement of Protestantism
throughout island. Irish leaders appealed to the popes and Philip II for protection or aid. Philip
feared to invade Ireland, lest the English should invade and help the rebellious Netherlands, but
he established centers and colleges for Irish refugees in Spain. In 1565 Elizabeth replaced
Radcliffe as Lord Deputy with Henry Sidney, whose policies were assertive of English authority:
he aimed to destroy Gaelic power in Leinster and Scottish power in Ulster. The Sidney’s scheme
to colonize Munster with English settlers caused a major rebellion led by Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl
of Desmond. When a small force of Italian and Spanish troops landed in Ireland in July 1579,
Fitzgerald joined the rebellion. It took four years to suppress the revolts in Munster and the Pale.
After the death of Shane O’Neill, Turlough O’Neill became Lord of Tyrone, who attempted to
establish an independent power-base in Ulster. The English governor supported Hugh O’Neill as
a rival leader, and helped him assert control over part of the Tyrone territory: in 1585 Elizabeth
made him Earl of Tyrone. During late 1580s, Hugh O’Neill began to make contacts with Rome,
Spain and his Irish rivals; in February 1595, Tyrone openly joined the rebellion and moved against
the English garrison at Blackwater Fort. The English were preoccupied with the continued threat
of Spanish invasion, so sent only limited forces to Ireland; that gave Tyrone’s victories, provoking
uprisings all over Ireland, while English settlers were driven out from their dwellings. In 1599 the
Spanish tried to send troops by sea, but bad weather stopped their fleet from reaching Ireland.
Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy replaced Essex as Lord Deputy in 1600: he defeated both the
Irish and the Spanish with very few casualties, forcing Tyrone to retreat north and the Spanish to
conclude a truce and withdraw. Mountjoy pursued Tyrone and his army to the north, and
eventually forced him to surrender unconditionally in March 1603.314
(c) Spain: Meantime, bold men like John Hawkins and Francis Drake fitted out substantial
privateers and tool all the oceans for their province. Elizabeth disowned them but did not disturb
them, for she saw in the privateers the making of a navy, and in these buccaneers her future
admirals. The Huguenot port of La Rochelle became a favorite rendezvous of English, Dutch, and
Huguenot vessels, which preyed on Catholic commerce under whatever flag it sailed, and, in need,
on Protestant commerce too. From such piracy the buccaneers passed to that lucrative trade in
slaves which the Portuguese had opened up a century before. In the Spanish colonies of America
the natives were dying out from toil too arduous for their climate and constitutions….Philip II
condemned the trade and instructed the Spanish-America governors to prevent the importation of
slaves except under license – costly and rare – by the home administration. Aware that some
governors were evading these restrictions, Hawkins led three ships to Africa (1562), captured three
hundred Negroes, took them to the West Indies, and sold them to Spanish settlers in exchange for
sugar, spices, and drugs. Back in England, he induced Lord Pembroke and others to invest in a
second venture, and persuaded Elizabeth to put one of her best vessels at his disposal. In 1564 he
headed south with four ships, seized four hundred African Negroes, sailed for the West Indies,
sold htem to Spaniards under threat of his guns if they refused to buy, and returned home to be
hailed as a hero and share his spoils with his backers and the Queen, who made 60 percent on her
investment. In 1567 she lent him he ship the Jesus; with this and four other vessels he sailed to
Africa, captured all the Negroes his holds could stow, sold them in Spanish America at £ 160 a
head, and was homeward bound with root valued at £ 100,000 when a Spanish fleet caught him
off the Mexican coast at San Juan de Ulua, and destroyed all of his fleet but two small tenders, in
which Hawkins, after a thousand perils, returned empty-handed to England (1569).” Among the
survivors of this voyage, his young kinsman Francis Drake (1540-96) vowed vengeance against
Spain. Educated at Hawkins’ expense, Drake became a native of the sea. 315
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In 1573 at aged twenty-eight, Drake captured a convoy of silver bullion off the coast of
Panama and returned to England rich and revenged. Philip II was said to have offered a reward of
20,000 ducats, about £4 million by modern standard. With the success of the Panama isthmus raid,
in 1577 Elizabeth I of England sent Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the
Pacific coast of the Americas.316 He set out from Plymouth on 15 November 1577, but after major
setback he set sail again on 13 December, aboard Pelican, with four other ships and 164 men, and
soon added a sixth ship, Mary (formerly Santa Maria). “As his fleet issued from the Straits of
Magellan into the Pacific, it ran into a heavy storm; the ships were scattered and never reunited;
Drake alone, in the Pelican, moved up the west coast of the Americas to San Francisco, raiding
Spanish vessels on the way. Then he turned boldly westward to the Philippines, sailed through
the Molucas to Java, across the Indian Ocean to Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up
the Atlantic to reach Plymouth on September 16, 1580, thirty-four months after leaving it. He
brought with him £600,000 of booty, of which £275,000 were handed over to the Queen. England
hailed him as the greatest seaman and pirate of the age.”317
The Spanish Armada: In December 1568 several Spanish vessels, carrying £150,000 to pay
Alva’s troops in the Netherlands, were driven by English privateers into Channel ports. In response,
Alva seized all English nationals and good that he could lay hands upon in the Nether-lands; and
Elizabeth arrested all Spaniards in England. But the necessities of trade gradually restored normal
relations, though Elizabeth kept the money. “The uneasy peace dragged on until continued English
raid on Spanish shipping, and the appeals of the imprisoned Mary Stuart’s friends, involved Philip
in a plot to assassinate the Queen. Convinced of his participation, Elizabeth expelled the Spanish
ambassador in 1584 and gave open aid to the Netherlands.” English troops entered the Netherlands,
but were defeated by the Spaniards at Zutphen in 1586. Both Philip and Elizabeth prepared with
all resources for the war that would decide the mastery of the seas and the religion of Europe. In
1585, with thirty vessels, Drake sailed forth against the Spanish Empire. “He entered the Estuary
of Vigo in northwest Spain, plundered the port of Vigo, disrobed the statue of the Virgin, and
carried away the precious metals and costly vestments of the churches. He sailed on to the Canary
and Cape Verde islands, pillaged the largest of them, crossed the Atlantic, raided Santo Domingo,
took £30,000 as a douceur not to destroy the Colombian city of Cartagena, plundered and burned
the town of St. Augustine in Florida, and returned to England (1586). 318
In February 1587, English government put to death the Scottish Queen. Philip informed
Sixtus V that he was now ready to invade England and dethrone Elizabeth. He asked the Pope to
contribute 2,000,000 gold Crowns; Sixtus offered 600,000, to be paid to Spain only if the invasion
actually occurred. Philip bade his best admiral, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, to prepare the largest
armada so far known in history. Ships were gathered or built at Lisbon, stores were assembled at
Cadiz. Drake urged Elizabeth to give him a fleet to destroy the Armada before it could take irresistible form. Upon approval, Drake ran his fleet of thirty ships into Cadiz harbor, maneuvered out
of range of the batteries on the shore, sank a Spanish man-of-war, raided the transports and storeships, captured their cargoes, set all enemy vessels on fire, and departed unharmed. He anchored
off Lisbon and challenged Santa Cruz to come out and fight. The Marquis refused, for his ships
were not yet armed. Drake moved north to La Coruna and seized great stores collected there; then
to the Azores, where he took a Spanish galleon. With it in to he returned to England. Philip
patiently rebuilt his fleet. The Marquis of Santa Cruz died in January 1588; Philip replaced him
with the Duke of Medina-Siconia, who set 130 vessels of 445 tons in average, half the ships were
cargo carriers, half were men-of-war, 8,050 sailors manned them with 19,000 soldiers. Drake was
not a vice-admiral with 82 sips under the command of Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham; that
gathered at Plymouth to greet the advancing Spanish naval forces. 319
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Map I-3-12. Spanish Armada, 1588 (Left)
http://www.ohwy.com/history%20pictures/maps/armada.jpg
“Philip and his admirals thought of naval
warfare in ancient terms – to grapple and board
the enemy and fight man to man; the English plan
was to sink the enemy’s ships, with their crowded
crews, by broadside fire. Philip instructed his fleet
not to seek out and attach the English squadrons,
but to seize some English beachhead, cross to
Flanders, and take on board the 30,000 troops that
the Duke of Parma had ready there; so reinforced,
the Spanish were to march on London. Meanwhile, a letter composed by Cardinal Allen was
smuggled into England, bidding the Catholics join
the Spanish in deposing their usurping, heretic,
prostitute Queen. To help restore Catholicism in
England, hundreds of monks accompanied the
Armada, under the vicar general of the Inquisition.
A devout religious spirit moved the Spanish
sailors and their masters; they sincerely believed
they were on a sacred mission…”
On July 19 the vanguard of the Armada was
sighted in the mouth of the Channel. The defending fleet sailed out of Plymouth; on the twentyfirst the action began. The Spaniards waited for
the English to come close enough for grappling.
On the twenty-fifth, the English flagship sailed
into the center of the Armada, exchanging broadsides with every galleon that it passed; and the
superior accuracy of the English fire broke the Spanish morale. “On the twenty-seventh, the
Armada anchored in Calais roads. On the twenty-eighth, Drake set fire to eight small and
dispensable vessels and placed them in the wind to sail amid the Spanish fleet. Fearing them,
Medina-Sidonia ordered his ships to put out to sea. On the twenty-ninth Drake attacked them off
the French coast at Gravelines, in the main action of the war. The Spaniards fought bravely, but
with poor seamanship and gunnery. At noon Howard’s squadron came up, and the full English
fleet poured such fire into the Armada that many of its ships were disabled and some were
sunk….thousands of Spaniards were killed; blood could be seen flowing from the decks into the
sea….Medina-Sidonia gave orders to withdraw. On the thirtieth the wind carried the broken fleet
into the North Sea.” The English followed them, but they returned to port due to lacking food and
ammunition. For the remnant of the Armada, there was no haven nearer than Spain itself. Scotland
was hostile, and Irish ports were held by English troops. Desperately the injured ships and starving
men made their way around the British Isles: of the 130 vessels that had left Spain, 54 returned;
of 27,000 men, 10,000, most of them wounded or sick.” Many more died in Spain. The naval
war continued till Philip’s death in 1598. The defeat of the Armada affected almost everything in
modern European civilization: particularly, the weakening of Spain helped the Dutch to win their
independence, and Protestantism was preserved and strengthened. 320
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(d) Mary, Queen of Scots (reigned 1542-87): “Mary, the only surviving legitimate child of
King James V of Scotland, was six days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne.
She spent most of her childhood in France while Scotland was ruled by regents, and in 1558, she
married the Dauphin of France, Francis. He ascended the French throne as King Francis II in 1559,
and Mary briefly became queen consort of France, until his death in December 1560. Widowed,
Mary returned to Scotland, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. Four years later, she married her
first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, but their union was unhappy. In February 1567, his
residence was destroyed by an explosion, and Darnley was found murdered in the garden. James
Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was generally believed to have orchestrated Darnley's death, but
he was acquitted of the charge in April 1567, and the following month he married Mary. Following
an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. On 24 July 1567, she
was forced to abdicate in favor of James, her one-year-old son by Darnley. After an unsuccessful
attempt to regain the throne, she fled southwards seeking the protection of her first cousin once
removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary had previously claimed Elizabeth's throne as her
own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics, including
participants in a rebellion known as the Rising of the North. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth
had her confined in various castles and manor houses in the interior of England. After eighteen
and a half years in custody, Mary was found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth, and was
subsequently executed.”321 “Unfortunately for her survival, Mary as a Catholic was the natural
focus for the hopes of those English Catholics who wished to replace the Protestant queen
Elizabeth on the throne. It was the discovery in 1586 of a plot to assassinate Elizabeth and bring
about a Roman Catholic uprising that convinced Queen Elizabeth that, while she lived, Mary
would always constitute too dangerous a threat to her own position.”322
(e) James VI and I (1566-1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and
King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24
March 1603 until his death. “The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign
states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in
personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry
VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, uniquely positioning him to eventually accede to all
three thrones. James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother
Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favor. Four different regents governed during his minority,
which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583.
In 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died
without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the
Jacobean era after him, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he
based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617, and styled himself
King of Great Britain and Ireland. He was a major advocate of a single parliament for both England
and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began.
At 57 years and 246 days, James's reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his
predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced great difficulties in England,
including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the English Parliament. Under
James, the Golden Age of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as
William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a
flourishing literary culture....He sponsored the translation of the Bible that was named after him:
the Authorized King James Version. Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed the
wisest fool in Christendom, an epithet associated with his character ever since.”323
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Spain (1558-1648): (a) Philip II (reigned 1558-98) was the son of the Holy roman emperor
Charles V and Isabella of Porgutal. “From 1543 Charles V conferred on his son the regency of
Spain whenever he himself was abroad. From 1548 until 1551, Philip traveled in Italy, Germany,
and the Netherlands, but his great reserve and his inability to speak fluently any language except
Castilian made him unpopular with the German and Flemish nobility. Philip contracted four
marriages. The first was with his cousin Maria of Portugal in 1543. She died in 1545, giving birth
to the ill-fated Don Carlos. In 1554 Philip married Mary I of England and became joint sovereign
of England until Mary’s death, without issue, in 1558. Philip’s third marriage, with Elizabeth of
Valois, daughter of Henry II of France, in 1559, was the result of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis
(1559), which, for a generation, ended the open wars between Spain and France. Elizabeth bore
Philip two daughters, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catherine Micaela. Elizabeth died in 1568, and
in 1570 Philip married Anna of Austria, daughter of his first cousin the emperor Maximilian II.
She died in 1580. Her only surviving son became Philip III. Philip had received the duchy of
Milan from Charles V in 1540 and the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in 1554 on the occasion of
his marriage to Mary of England. On October 25, 1555, Charles resigned the Netherlands in
Philip’s favor and on January 16, 1556, the kingdoms of Spain and the Spanish overseas empire.
Shortly afterward Philip also received the Franche-Comté. The Habsburg dominions in Germany
and the imperial title went to his uncle Ferdinand I. At this time Philip was in the Netherlands.
After the victory over the French at Saint-Quentin (1557), the sight of the battlefield gave him a
permanent distaste for war, though he did not shrink from it when he judged it necessary. After
his return to Spain from the Netherlands in 1559, Philip never again left the Iberian Peninsula.
From Madrid he ruled his empire through his personal control of official appointments and all
forms of patronage. Philip’s subjects outside Castile, thus, never saw him, and they gradually
turned not only against his ministers but also against him.” 324
Map I-3-13. The Spanish Empire, 1600
Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KmvY4oNOtFk/UwEzuUPiIzI/AAAAAAAAB2k/Mk7Lq49mLk/s1600/Captura+de+pantalla+2014-02-11+a+la%2528s%2529+22.26.58.png
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(i) Economy: Charles V had left Philip with a debt of about 36 million ducats and an annual
deficit of 1 million ducats. This debt caused Phillip II to default on loans. These defaults were just
the beginning of Spain's economic troubles as Spain's kings would default six more times in the
next 65 years. Aside from reducing state revenues for overseas expeditions, the domestic policies
of Philip II further burdened Spain, and would, in the following century, contribute to its decline.
“Spain was subject to different assemblies: the Cortes in Castile along with the assembly in
Navarre and one each for the three regions of Aragon, which preserved traditional rights and laws
from the time when they were separate kingdoms. This made Spain and its possessions difficult
to rule, unlike France which, while divided into regional states, had a single Estates-General. The
lack of a viable supreme assembly led to power defaulting into Philip's hands, especially as
manager and final arbiter of the constant conflict between different authorities. To deal with the
difficulties arising from this situation, authority was administered by local agents appointed by the
crown and viceroys carrying out crown instructions. Philip felt it necessary to be involved in the
detail and presided over specialized councils for state affairs, finance, war, and the Inquisition.
He played groups against each other, leading to a system of checks and balances that managed
affairs inefficiently, even to the extent of damaging state business, as in the Perez affair. Following
a fire in Valladolid in 1561, he resisted calls to move his Court to Lisbon, an act that could have
curbed centralization and bureaucracy domestically as well as relaxed rule in the Empire. Instead,
with the traditional Royal and Primacy seat of Toledo now essentially obsolete, Philip moved his
Court to the Castilian stronghold of Madrid. Except for a brief period under Philip III, Madrid has
remained the capital of Spain to the present day. Whereas his father had been forced to an itinerant
rule as a medieval king, Philip ruled at a critical turning point in European history toward
modernity. He mainly directed state affairs, even when not at Court.”325
(ii) Foreign Policy: Philip II intended to consolidate and secure inherited lands of Spain, the
Netherlands, the possessions of Italy, and the new world through faith of Catholicism, justice by
Inquisition, and peace by monarchical authority. Marrying Mary Tudor in 1555 when the Italian
wars against France were at the final stage, Philip ended the wars by signing the treaty of CateauCambresis with France and England in 1559. The treaty reaffirmed the Spanish control over the
most part of the Italian peninsula. After the death of Mary, Philip remarried Elizabeth of Valois
in 1560. When the Ottomans threatened Spain in the Mediterranean, Philip launched a military
expedition to recapture Tripoli in 1560, but lost 28 galleys with 10,000 troops, although this
experience was helpful for Spain to defend Malta from their attack in 1565. In Granada, the
Moriscos had been oppressed by Christians for two generations, which tension exploded finally
into revolts in 1568. The royal armies led by Don Juan of Austria suppressed 25,000 insurgents,
and Philip expelled 50,000 Moriscos from their homeland who dispersed into Castile. As the
Turkish threat to Cyprus was intensified, Spain formed a Holy League with Venice and Rome in
1571 and won the war in the Gulf of Lepanto by destroying most of 230 Turkish warships, but the
Turks redeployed a similar size of the fleet within a year. In Portugal, after the death of King
Sebastian, Philip took over the kingdom by force in 1580 by claiming the throne of his nephew,
which made Philip II hold the Iberian Peninsula (including overseas possessions) as King of Spain
until 1640. In Aragon, local independence of feudal society impeded political changes, restricted
the royal ability to raise money and troops, and weekend legal authority of the crown. In 1591,
the revolt in Saragossa destroyed law and order, and threatened national security. Philip sent his
army and executed the rebel leaders, and forced the Aragonese Cortes to change their constitution:
the Justiciar would be removable by the king. As total confrontation of Christian-Muslim faded
away, Philip aimed Spain to be an Atlantic imperial power by protecting the bullion routes,
restraining the English ambitions, and containing Dutch rebels to obedience. 326
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The Low Countries had been part of the Holy Roman Empire since 800, and was frequently
invaded by Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries. After Burgundian rule, the Netherlands was
ruled by Charles V, and Philip II harshly oppressed the Protestant movement in the region, which
ignited anti-Spanish revolts of the Calvinists in 1566. Philip II sent Alva with 10,000 troops to
the Spanish Netherlands in order to protect religion, to participate in trade, and to secure her
strategic purposes from which she could keep Germany at bay, constrain France, and bind England.
In 1572, the Protestant forces gained power in the northern provinces, elected William of Orange
as their leader, and opened the second phase of the revolt of the Netherlands. Alb was replaced by
Requesens, and later by Don Juan of Austria. When the Spanish bankruptcy in 1575 accelerated
social disorder in the provinces; the troops sacked Antwerp, killed people, and robbed properties.
In 1577, the leaders of northern provinces assembled at Ghent and negotiated a general peace with
Don Juan, who issued a Perpetual Edict and withdrew his army from the scene. In 1579, the
southern provinces formed a Catholic union (the Union of Arras) accepting Spanish rule, while
the northern provinces organized a Protestant union (the Union of Utrecht) continuously opposing
Spanish rule. In 1585, the royal army recovered social order in Brussels and Antwerp, and took
all major cities back in Spanish control. Meanwhile, Spain seized English ships in her ports to
retaliate English piracies, which advanced an open war between two countries. The English sent
6,000 troops to Holland to split Spanish efforts, and Drake attacked Vigo in Spain and sacked
Santo Domingo and Cartagena of the West Indies. Philip II sent the Spanish Armada of 130 ships
to invade England, which was defeated by the English Navy at near Calais in 1588. As the
Flanders army crossed into France and other Spanish troops marched into Brittany and Languedoc
in 1595; Henry IV of France declared war against Spain; and the English and Dutch joined the
alliance with France. Though the Spanish bankruptcy forced peace in 1596, the struggle went on
until a twelve-year truce of 1609 that recognized the independence of the United Provinces.
France and Spain waged war in northern Italy that ended by Spanish victory, recognizing
Spanish sovereignty over the Franche-Comte. During the war of Portuguese Succession, the
Spanish navy defeated the combined Anglo-French fleet at the naval battle of Ponta Delgada in
July 1582 that had sailed to preserve control of the Azores under Antonio. Philip financed the
Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion, and his intervention - sending the Duke of
Parma, to end Henry IV’s siege of Paris in 1590 - and the siege of Rouen in 1592 contributed in
saving the French Catholic Leagues’ cause against a Protestant monarchy. “In 1593, Henry agreed
to convert to Catholicism; weary of war, most French Catholics switched to his side against the
hardline core of the Catholic League, who were portrayed by Henry's propagandists as puppets of
a foreign monarch, Philip. By the end of 1594 certain League members were still working against
Henry across the country, but all relied on the support of Spain. In January 1595, therefore, Henry
officially declared war on Spain, to show Catholics, that Philip was using religion as a cover for
an attack on the French state, and Protestants, that he had not become a puppet of Spain through
his conversion, while hoping to take the war to Spain and make territorial gain. French victory at
the Battle of Fontaine-Française marked an end to the Catholic League in France. Spain launched
a concerted offensive in 1595, taking Doullens, Cambrai and Le Catelet and in the spring of 1596
capturing Calais by April. Following the Spanish capture of Amiens in March 1597 the French
crown laid siege to it until it managed to reconquer Amiens from the overstretched Spanish forces
in September 1597. Henry then negotiated a peace with Spain. The war was only drawn to an
official close, however, after the Edict of Nantes, with the Peace of Vervins in May 1598. The
1598 Treaty of Vervins was largely a restatement of the 1559 Peace of Câteau-Cambrésis and
Spanish forces and subsidies were withdrawn; meanwhile, Henry issued the Edict of Nantes,
which offered a high degree of religious toleration for French Protestants.”327
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(b) Philip III (1598-1621) was the son of Philip II of Spain by his fourth consort, his Habsburg
cousin Anna of Austria. “Philip III's approach to government appears to have stemmed from three
main drivers. Firstly, he was heavily influenced by the eirenic ideas being circulated in Italian
circles in reaction to the new Humanist theories of governance, typified by Machiavelli. Writers
such as Girolamo Frachetta, who became a particular favourite of Philip, had propagated a
conservative definition of 'reason of state' which centred on exercising a princely prudence and a
strict obedience to the laws and customs of the country that one ruled. Secondly, Philip may have
shared Lerma's view that the governmental system of Philip II was fast proving impractical and
unnecessarily excluded the great nobles of the kingdoms – it had been creaking badly in the last
decades of his father's life. Lastly, Philip's own personality and his friendship with Lerma heavily
shaped his approach to policy-making. The result was a radical shift in the role of the crown in
government from the model of Philip II.”328 “Philip’s government continued a policy of hostility
toward the Turks, and in Italy it faced the rivalry of the Republic of Venice and the duchy of Savoy.
In the rest of western Europe, however, a Spanish policy of conciliation ruled. Peace in the West
enabled the government to deal with the internal problem of the Moriscos, and on April 9, 1609,
the decision was made for their expulsion, which caused serious economic and demographic
difficulties in certain areas. The peace was brought to an end by the outbreak (1618) of the Thirty
Years’ War, in which Philip gave his unconditional support to the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand
II and the Catholic German princes. Remote from his subjects, Philip spent huge sums on court
entertainments and neglected Spain’s growing economic problems, which were to reach crisis
proportions in the following reign. Having resided in Valladolid in the first years of his reign, he
eventually fixed his court in Madrid. After a visit to Portugal (1619), he suffered the first attack
of an illness that two years later brought about his death.”329
(c) Philip IV (1621-65), son of Philip III, ruled over Spain during the challenging period of
the Thirty Years’ War. His chief minister was the Conde-Duque de Olivares, who took the spread
of war as an opportunity not only for resuming hostilities against the Dutch at the end of the
Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609-1621 but also for an ambitious attempt to restore Spanish hegemony
in Europe, in close alliance with the imperial branch of the Habsburg dynasty. “The Spanish armies
won some conspicuous victories - for instance, the capture of Breda from the Dutch (1626) and
the defeat of the Swedes and Weimarians at Nördlingen (1634) - but France declared open war in
1635, and Spain’s early successes were offset, from 1640, by the separatist rebellions of Catalonia
and of Portugal (Portugal becoming independent in 1640 under John IV of the House of Bragança).
Philip dismissed Olivares in 1643 and replaced him with Don Luis Méndez de Haro, who remained
in office until his death in 1661. Thereafter the King had no valido, but frequently relied on the
advice of a nun and mystic, María de Ágreda, who corresponded with him on both spiritual matters
and affairs of state. By the end of his reign Spain, weakened by military reverses and economic
and social distress, had become a second-class power. Philip’s first wife was Elizabeth (Spanish,
Isabel), daughter of Henry IV of France; after her death in 1644, he married Maria Anna (Mariana),
daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III. A poet and patron of the arts, Philip was the
friend and patron of the painter Velázquez, many of whose works portray Philip and members of
his court.”330 His reign was characterized by political and military decay and adversity. He has
been held responsible for the decline of Spain, which was mainly “due to organic causes largely
beyond the control of any one ruler.” Philip IV died broken-hearted, expressing the pious hope
that his surviving son, Charles II, who was only 4 years old at the time, would be more fortunate
than himself. In his will, Philip left political power as regent on behalf of the young Charles II to
his wife Mariana, with instructions that she heed the advice of a small junta committee established
for this purpose, resulting in a chaotic power-play between Mariana and Juan José.331
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The French Wars of Religion (1562-1629): (a) Gallicanism and Reform in the Sixteenth
Century: Gallicanism (the opposite from Ultramontanism supporting papal authority in French
political affairs) 332 defines the relationship between monarch and pope that had largely shaped the
king’s ability to govern the Gallican church in France. “The term Gallican itself was used by
contemporaries to denote just such a peculiar (or rather independent) relationship between the
French church and Rome; and the sacerdotal king of France stood as a prophylactic barrier to
protect the Gallican liberties from papal intervention. By the sixteenth century, however, royal
domination of the French church had become so strong that the Parlement of Paris, the supreme
sovereign court in the realm, found itself faced with the prospect of protecting and guaranteeing
the Gallican liberties of the French church from the grasp of royal rather than papal interference.”
In this regard, Gallicanism and Anglicanism were in line with the growth of royal power in the
ecclesiastical realm in France and England. “One of the unfortunate by-products of increased
royal control of ecclesiastical patronage in the early sixteenth century, however, was the explicit
growth of corruption and decline of spirituality among the episcopate as a whole within the
Gallican church. In short, Francis I and his son Henry II used their unprecedented powers of
appointment to fill the ranks of the episcopacy with their clients, relatives, and political allies. In
Francis’s reign (1515-47), for example, of the total of 129 bishops he appointed, 102 were either
princes of the blood or members of the nobility of the sword, that is, members of the most powerful
as well as oldest noble families in France….In the reign of Henry II (1547-59), of the 80 bishops
appointed by the king only 3 had theology degree while 15 had studied cannon law – a total of
only 23 percent – despite the requirements of the Concordat.” Moreover, over one-fourth of
Henry’s appointments to vacant sees indicates political patronage rather than spirituality.” 333
(b) The Edict of Saint-Germain of 1562: In the decade 1560-70, there were roughly 1,200
Protestant churches in France; Protestant strength at most would have reached about 1.8 million
members – or roughly 10 percent of the total population of the kingdom. Their Calvinism was not
solely against doctrinal corruptions and against ecclesiastical abuses, but also against misery and
iniquity that the lower classes rebelled. “They sought in the Bible not only for the doctrine of
salvation by grace, but for proofs of the primitive quality of all men.” The middle classes found
Calvinism attractive: “The whole of the merchant bourgeoisie…bourgeoisie composed of lawyers
and officers of the Crown…in short, all those who in exercising precise trades and minute
techniques developed within themselves a temperament inclined to seek practical solutions…all
has equal need of a clear, reasonably human and gently fraternal religion which would serve as
their light support.” Initially, French Protestantism was largely an urban movement composed of
adherents who, for the most part, were literate: on the list of Huguenots in 1560, nearly 85 percent
of those whose professions recorded were either artisans or learned professionals, while fewer
than 5 percent were peasants, day-laborers, or farmers. Francis I (1515-47) and Henry II (154759) of the Valois had been strong rulers: both kings prosecuted the Protestants, and Henry forced
a comprehensive ban on Protestantism. Henry died by accident, Francis II (1559-60) lived shortly;
and his brother Charles IX (1560-74) succeeded the throne under the regency of his mother
Catherine de’ Medici. “When Francis, duke of Guise, along with the constable, Anne de
Montmorency, and an army marshal, the sieur de St-Andre, formed a military triumvirate in late
1561 to seek aid from Philip II of Spain in order to derive out all Protestant from France, a Catholic
conspiracy of Amboise was a distinct possibility.” In January 1562, Catherine issued the Edict of
Saint-Germain, proclaiming the limited recognition of the Huguenots to meditate a religious
settlement without civil war. The Huguenots could now at last meet openly and peacefully, which
was a radical departure from the past. The conservative magistrates of the Parlement of Paris
refused to register the edict, which process was required by law. 334
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(b) The Early Wars of Religion, 1562-70: Only after receiving two forma letters of jussion,
did the Parlement of Paris reluctantly register the Edict of January on 6 March 1562. “The first
shots were fired by troops of the duke of Guise, as he encountered a group of unarmed Protestants
worshipping inside of the town of Vassy.” The resulting massacre marked the beginning of the
religious wars lasting for three generations in France. “The Protestant churches of France held a
national synod the following month at Orleans and requested that Louis de Bourbon, prince of
Conde, raise troops to protect them from further persecution. When Conde issued a manifesto
calling on Protestants to raise arms to oppose Guise and the Triumvirate, the kingdom of France
was divided against itself.” Having taken over the city of Orleans as the Protestant base of
operations, Conde and other nobles had already decided on a strategy of seizing the towns along
the main waterways, bridgeheads, and land routes of the kingdom. Catherine de Medici now had
no option but to the Catholic triumvirate to put down the Huguenot insurrection: she became to
support the war. The first civil war came to a climax when Guise himself was fatally wounded
during the siege of Orleans two months later. Three of the four principal Catholic leaders were
dead, but the bulk of Protestant communities in the south virtually untouched. Catherine arranged
a comprehensive peace settlement with the Edict of Amboise of March 1563. “As the edict did
not allow for the establishment of any new Huguenot churches, this gave Protestant nobles a
decided advantage over ministers and townspeople in maintaining their leadership of the movement. Thus, the toleration clause of the edict were heavily weighted toward the nobility, while
the really militant tensions lay in the towns.” The first civil war ended by this edict, but similar
military campaign would repeated seven times over next four decades, followed by a compromise
peace that the crown could neither administer nor enforce. Another aspect of the first civil war
was that both sides sought foreign aids to their respective causes, so that the French Wars of
Religion quickly became politicized as an international conflict. 335
Map I-3-14. Religious and Political Division of France, 1585-1598 (Left)
http://www.ccis.edu/courses/HIST102mtmcinneshin1/week03/images/GuiseHuguenotBourbons1580sMAP.gif
Photo I-3-6. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres, 1572 (Right)
Source: https://s.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/670/media/images/t2/French_Wars_of_Religion_1199959.jpg
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(c) The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres of 1572 was plotted by Catherine de Medici and
carried out by Roman Catholic nobles and other citizens. Catherine feared Admiral Coligny’s
growing influence over her son Charles IX. She accordingly gave her approval to a plot that the
Catholic house of Guise had been hatching to assassinate Coligny, whom it held responsible for
the murder of Francois de Guise in 1563. “On Aug. 18, 1572, Catherine’s daughter, Margaret of
France, was married to the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, and a large part of the Huguenot nobility
came to Paris for the wedding. The attempt on Admiral Coligny’s life four days later failed; he
was only wounded. To placate the angry Huguenots, the government agreed to investigate the
assassination attempt. Fearing discovery of her complicity, Catherine met secretly with a group of
nobles at the Tuileries Palace to plot the complete extermination of the Huguenot leaders, who
were still in Paris for the wedding festivities. Charles was persuaded to approve of the scheme,
and, on the night of August 23, members of the Paris municipality were called to the Louvre and
given their orders. Shortly before dawn on August 24…the massacre began. One of the first
victims was Coligny, who was killed under the supervision of Henry de Guise himself. Even
within the Louvre, Navarre’s attendants were slaughtered, though Navarre and Henry I de Bourbon,
2nd Prince de Conde, were spared. The homes and shops of Huguenots were pillaged, and their
occupants brutally murdered; many bodies were thrown into the Seine…Estimates of the number
that perished in the disturbances, which lasted to the beginning of October, have varied from 2,000
by a Roman Catholic apologist to 70,000 by the contemporary…Modern writers put the number
at 3,000 in Paris alone. The news of the massacre was welcomed by Philip II of Spain, and Pope
Gregory XIII had a medal struck to celebrate the event. Protestant nations were horrified.” Charles,
claimed that there had been a Huguenot plot against the crown. 336
(d) The Crisis of the League and Henry III: The Huguenots became much more alienated from
the crown, but Protestants and Catholics were further polarized. When Charles IX suddenly died,
his brother Henry III (1574-89) succeeded the throne. The Huguenots rebuilt their strength and
the Catholics formed a Holy League in 1576. The Estates-General pressured the King to conduct
a war against the Huguenots; the Treaty of Nemours between the Catholic League and Henry III
in July 1585 for a renewal of the old French Wars of Religion. The treaty cancelled all previous
edicts, dismissed all Huguenots from state offices, and forced the King to capitulate to the demands
of the Catholic League. As the League managed to purge most of northern and eastern France of
Protestantism, many Huguenots either abjured or fled like refugees, as the only alternatives for
many of them were arrest, confiscation of property, or death. Armed with the subsidy from Philip
II of Spain, the League led by Henry, Duke of Guise, appeared to be trying to win the Wars of
Religion. The other Henry, king of Navarre did his best to maintain control of the Huguenot
fortifications still occupied by his force and those of the prince of Conde in the south. In 1587,
the Huguenots now held half the major towns of France, but Paris was passionately for the League.
“Dissatisfied with Henry III’s halfhearted support, the League set up in the capital a revolutionary
government composed of representatives from the sixteen wards; the Sixteen negotiated with
Spain for a Spanish invasion of England and France and planned to seize the person of the King.
Henry sent for Swiss guards; the Sixteen called upon the Duke of Guise to take control of Paris;
the King forbade it; the Duke came and was hailed by the populace as head of the Catholic cause
in France. Henry III fled to Chartres. Then again losing his nerve, he disowned Henry of Navarre,
appointed Henry of Guise commander in chief of the royal armies, and summoned the StatesGeneral to meet at Blois.” On December 24, 1588, Henry III invited the Duke of Guise to his
private conference, and let his guardsmen stabbed him in the heart, and ordered the imprisonment
of the League leaders and the death of the Duke’s brother, cardinal of Guise. On 1 August 1589,
a Dominican monk named Jqcques Celement assassinated Henry III in the royal camp. 337
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(e) Henry IV and the Edict of Nantes: Henry IV (1589-1610) was raised in the Protestant
faith by his mother, Queen of Navarre, and inherited the throne of Navarre in 1572. “Henry, as
Head of the House of Bourbon, was a direct male-line descendant of Louis IX of France, and first
prince of the blood. Upon the death of his brother-in-law and distant cousin Henry III of France
in 1589, Henry was called to the French succession by the Salic law. He initially kept the Protestant
faith and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear France's crown
as a Protestant. To obtain mastery over his kingdom, after four years of stalemate, he found it
prudent to abjure the Calvinist faith. As a pragmatic politician, he displayed an unusual religious
tolerance for the era.” Henry IV was faced with the task of rebuilding a shattered and impoverished
kingdom and uniting it under a single authority. “Henry and his advisor, the Duke of Sully saw
that the essential first step in this was negotiation of the Edict of Nantes - which, rather than being
a sign of genuine toleration, was in fact a kind of grudging truce between the religions, with
guarantees for both sides. The Edict can be said to mark the end of the Wars of Religion, though
its apparent success was not assured at the time of its publication. Indeed, in January 1599, Henry
had to visit the Parliament in person to have the Edict passed.” He promulgated the Edict of Nantes
in 1598, which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants, thereby effectively ending the Wars
of Religion. Religious tensions continued to affect politics for many years to come, though never
to the same degree, and Henry IV faced many attempts on his life; the last succeeding in May
1610. “He was assassinated by François Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic, and was succeeded by his
son Louis XIII. Considered a usurper by some Catholics and a traitor by some Protestants, Henry
became target of at least 12 assassination attempts. An unpopular king immediately after his
accession, Henry's popularity greatly improved after his death, in light of repeated victories over
his enemies and his conversion to Catholicism. The Good King Henry was remembered for his
geniality and his great concern about the welfare of his subjects.”338
The reign of Henry IV saw “the continuation of the rivalry among France, the Habsburg rulers
of Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire for the mastery of Western Europe, a conflict that would
only be resolved after the end of the Thirty Years’ War.” With Spain and Italy, “During Henry's
struggle for the crown, Spain had been the principal backer of the Catholic League, and it tried to
thwart Henry. Under Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma an army from the Spanish Netherlands
intervened in 1590 against Henry and foiled his siege of Paris. Another Spanish army helped the
nobles opposing Henry to win the Battle of Craon against his troops in 1592. After Henry's
coronation, the war continued as an official tug-of-war between the French and Spanish states that
was terminated by the Peace of Vervins in 1598. This enabled Henry to turn his attention to Savoy,
with which he also had been fighting. Their conflicts were settled in the Treaty of Lyon of 1601,
which mandated territorial exchanges between France and the Duchy of Savoy.” With Germany,
“In 1609 Henry's intervention helped to settle the War of the Jülich succession through diplomatic
means. It was widely believed that in 1610 Henry was preparing to go to war against the Holy
Roman Empire. The preparations were terminated by his assassination, however, and the subsequent rapprochement with Spain under the regency of Marie de' Medici.” With the Ottoman
Empire, Henry continued the policy of a Franco-Ottoman alliance, received an embassy from
Sultan Mehmed III in 1601. In 1604, a Peace treaty and Capitulation was signed between Henry
IV and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmet I, which granted numerous advantages to France in the Ottoman
Empire. With the Far-East Asia, during his reign, various enterprises were set up to develop trade.
From 1604 to 1609, Henry developed a strong enthusiasm for travel to Asia and attempted to set
up a French East India Company on the model of England and the Netherlands. In 1609, adventurer,
“Pierre-Olivier Malherbe, returned from a circumnavigation of the globe and informed Henry of
his adventures. He had visited China and in India, had an encounter with Akbar.”339
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The Thirty Years’ War (1618-48): After the abdication of Charles V, the Spanish Habsburg
reigned over Spain and its dependencies, and the Austrian Habsburg reigned over the Holy Roman
Empire. When Ferdinand I (brother of Charles V) died in 1564, the electors transmitted the
Imperial crown to his son Maximilian II, who had ruled Bohemia and Hungary. He had endangered
his accession in politics and religion. He preferred Lutheran to Catholic preachers; condemned
the Massacres of St. Bartholomew’s Day as mass murder; and allowed William of Orange to levy
troops in Germany to fight Alva in the Netherlands. His son Rudolf II (1576-1612), rulling
Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, and Austria, was elected to succeed his father, but he has traditionally
viewed in three ways: “an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years' War;
a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and a devotee of occult arts and learning
which helped seed the scientific revolution.” He preferred to be a servant rather than an emperor:
after 1594, he attended no meeting of the Diet; after 1598 he refused to sign official papers, and
delegated his authority to incompetent favorites. His younger brother Matthias was elected to
succeed the throne, reigning less than five years until 1619. Ferdinand II (1619-37) succeeded his
childless cousin Matthias: his rule coincide with the Thirty Years’ War. As a jealous Catholic, he
was to restore Catholicism as the only religion in the Empire and suppress Protestantism.
Although the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) took place in Germany, it was largely a struggle
between the Bourbon dynasty of France and the Habsburg dynasties of Spain with the Holy Roman
Empire for European leadership. As the power and the temper of the Catholics rose, a number of
protestant princes formed a Union of Evangelical Estates in 1608, or Protestant Union, for mutual
protection. “Elector of Saxony held aloof, but Henry IV of France seemed ready to help in any
enterprise against the Habsburg Emperor. In 1609 several Catholic rulers, led by Duke Maximilian
I of Bavaria, formed a Catholic Union, which came to be known as the Catholic League; by August
1610 nearly all the Catholic states of the Empire had joined, and Spain offered military aid.”
Despite the Peace of Augusburg of 1555, religion was divisive in German life since Lutherans and
Catholics tried to control over various principalities. Since the treaty did not recognized the rights
of Calvinists, the Calvinist ruler of the Palatinate, the Elector Frederick IV, assumed the leadership
forming the Protestant Union in 1608 supported by the Dutch, English, and French. As a counteract, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria organized the Catholic League in 1609 aided by Spain and the
Holy Roman Empire. Germany then was divided into the two armed camps: the Bourbon vs. the
Habsburg rather than the Protestants vs. the Catholics towards the Thirty Years’ War.
(a) The Bohemian phase (1618-25): The Bohemian Estates accepted Archduke Ferdinand II
as their king in 1617, but the Protestant nobles mostly Calvinists rebelled against him in 1618 by
electing the Protestant ruler of Palatinate, the Elector Frederick V for replacement. Meantime,
Ferdinand II was elected to Holy Roman Emperor and supported by the forces of Maximilian of
Bavaria with the Catholic League. Ferdinand defeated Frederick and the Bohemian nobles at the
battle of White Mountain outside of Prague in 1620. “Had the Bohemian rebellion remained a
local conflict, the war could have been over in fewer than thirty months. However, the death of
Emperor Matthias emboldened the rebellious Protestant leaders, who had been on the verge of a
settlement. The weaknesses of both Ferdinand and of the Bohemians themselves led to the spread
of the war to western Germany. Ferdinand was compelled to call on his nephew, King Philip IV
of Spain, for assistance.” In the opening phase this saw an Anglo-Dutch regiment head to the
Palatinate, and a Scots-Dutch Regiment move into Bohemia, as parts of the Protestant allies
joining the war. In 1622, the Spanish troops conquered the Palatinate. Ferdinand II reestablished
Bohemia, confiscated the land of the Protestant nobles, and established Catholicism. Frederick
lost both Bohemia and Palatinate, and fled into exile in Holland. While the forces of Catholicism
were victorious, the Spanish renewed their attack on the Dutch. 340
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(i) Ottoman Support: In the east, the Protestant Hungarian Prince led a spirited campaign into
Hungary with the support of the Ottoman Sultan, Osman II. “Fearful of the Catholic policies of
Ferdinand II, Gabriel Bethlen requested a protectorate by Osman II, so the Ottoman Empire
became the one and only ally of great-power status which the rebellious Bohemian states could
muster after they had shaken off Habsburg rule and had elected Frederick V as a Protestant king.
Ambassadors were exchanged, with Heinrich Bitter visiting Constantinople in January 1620, and
Mehmed Aga visiting Prague in July 1620. The Ottomans offered a force of 60,000 cavalry to
Frederick and plans were made for an invasion of Poland with 400,000 troops in exchange for the
payment of an annual tribute to the Sultan. These negotiations triggered the Polish-Ottoman War
of 1620–21. The Ottomans defeated the Poles, who were supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty
Years' War, at the Battle of Cecora in September-October 1620, but were not able to further
intervene efficiently before the Bohemian defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain in November
1620. Later Poles defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Chocim and the war ended with a statusquo. The emperor, who had been preoccupied with the Uskok War, hurried to muster an army to
stop the Bohemians and their allies from overwhelming his country. Count Bucquoy, the
commander of the Imperial army, defeated the forces of the Protestant Union led by Count
Mansfeld at the Battle of Sablat, on 10 June 1619. This cut off Count Thurn's communications
with Prague, and he was forced to abandon his siege of Vienna. The Battle of Sablat also cost the
Protestants an important ally - Savoy, long an opponent of Habsburg expansion. Savoy had already
sent considerable sums of money to the Protestants and even troops to garrison fortresses in the
Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld's field chancery revealed the Savoyards' involvement.”341
(ii) The Spanish sent an army from Brussels under Ambrosio Spinola to support the Emperor.
In addition, the Spanish ambassador to Vienna, Don Íñigo Vélez de Oñate, persuaded Protestant
Saxony to intervene against Bohemia in exchange for control over Lusatia. “The Saxons invaded,
and the Spanish army in the west prevented the Protestant Union's forces from assisting. Oñate
conspired to transfer the electoral title from the Palatinate to the Duke of Bavaria in exchange for
his support and that of the Catholic League. The Catholic League's army (which included René
Descartes in its ranks as an observer) pacified Upper Austria, while Imperial forces under Johan
Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly, pacified Lower Austria. The two armies united and moved north into
Bohemia. Ferdinand II decisively defeated Frederick V at the Battle of White Mountain, near
Prague, on 8 November 1620. In addition to becoming Catholic, Bohemia would remain in
Habsburg hands for nearly three hundred years. This defeat led to the dissolution of the League of
Evangelical Union and the loss of Frederick V's holdings despite the tenacious defence of Trebon,
Bohemia (under Colonel Seton) until 1622 and Frankenthal (under Colonel Vere) the following
year. Frederick was outlawed from the Holy Roman Empire, and his territories, the Rhenish
Palatinate, were given to Catholic nobles. His title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his
distant cousin, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Frederick, now landless, made himself a prominent
exile abroad and tried to curry support for his cause in Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.
This was a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. As the rebellion collapsed, the
widespread confiscation of property and suppression of the Bohemian nobility ensured the country
would return to the Catholic side after more than two centuries of Hussite and other religious
dissent. The Spanish, seeking to outflank the Dutch in preparation for renewal of the Eighty Years'
War, took Frederick's lands, the Electorate of the Palatinate. The first phase of the war in eastern
Germany ended 31 December 1621, when the Prince of Transylvania and the Emperor signed the
Peace of Nikolsburg, which gave Transylvania a number of territories in Royal Hungary.” The
remnants of the Protestant armies withdrew into Dutch service. Although their arrival in the
Netherlands did help to lift the siege, they could not provide permanent shelter for them. 342
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(b) The Danish phase (1625-29): Christian IV (1588-1648), a Lutheran king of Denmark,
intervened in the conflict on behalf of the Protestants. “Peace following the Imperial victory at
Stadtlohn (1623) proved short-lived, with conflict resuming at the initiation of Denmark. Danish
involvement, referred to as the Low Saxon War or Kejserkrigen (the Emperor's War), began when
Christian IV of Denmark, a Lutheran who also ruled as Duke of Holstein, a duchy within the Holy
Roman Empire, helped the Lutheran rulers of neighbouring Lower Saxony by leading an army
against the Imperial forces in 1625. Denmark had feared that the recent Catholic successes
threatened its sovereignty as a Protestant nation. Christian IV had also profited greatly from his
policies in northern Germany. For instance, in 1621, Hamburg had been forced to accept Danish
sovereignty. Denmark's King Christian IV had obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and
wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. Denmark was funded by tolls on the
Oresund and also by extensive war-reparations from Sweden. Denmark's cause was aided by
France which, together with Charles I, had agreed to help subsidize the war, not least because
Christian was a blood uncle to both the Stuart king and his sister Elizabeth of Bohemia through
their mother, Anna of Denmark. Some 13,700 Scottish soldiers were to be sent as allies to help
Christian IV under the command of General Robert Maxwell…Moreover, some 6,000 English
troops under Charles Morgan also eventually arrived to bolster the defence of Denmark though it
took longer for these to arrive than Christian hoped, not least due to the ongoing British campaigns
against France and Spain. Thus Christian, as war-leader of the Lower Saxon Circle, entered the
war with an army of only 20,000 mercenaries, some of his allies from Britain and a national army
15,000 strong, leading them as Duke of Holstein rather than as King of Denmark.”
“To fight Christian, Ferdinand II employed the military help of Albrecht von Wallenstein, a
Bohemian nobleman who had made himself rich from the confiscated estates of his countrymen.
Wallenstein pledged his army, which numbered between 30,000 and 100,000 soldiers, to
Ferdinand II in return for the right to plunder the captured territories. Christian, who knew nothing
of Wallenstein's forces when he invaded, was forced to retire before the combined forces of
Wallenstein and Tilly. Christian's poor luck continued when all of the allies he thought he had
were forced aside: France was in the midst of a civil war, Sweden was at war with the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony were interested in changes to
the tenuous peace in eastern Germany…Wallenstein's army marched north, occupying Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Jutland itself, but proved unable to take the Danish capital Copenhagen on
the island of Zealand. Wallenstein lacked a fleet, and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles
would allow the building of an Imperial fleet on the Baltic coast. He then laid siege to Stralsund,
the only belligerent Baltic port with sufficient facilities to build a large fleet; it soon became clear,
however, that the cost of continuing the war would far outweigh any gains from conquering the
rest of Denmark. Wallenstein feared losing his North German gains to a Danish-Swedish alliance,
while Christian IV had suffered another defeat in the Battle of Wolgast (1628); both were ready
to negotiate. Negotiations concluded with the Treaty of Lübeck in 1629, which stated that
Christian IV could retain control over Denmark if he would abandon his support for the Protestant
German states. Thus in the following two years the Catholic powers subjugated more land. At this
point the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to take back the Lutheran holdings that were,
according to the Peace of Augsburg, rightfully the possession of the Catholic Church. Enumerated
in the Edict of Restitution (1629), these possessions included two Archbishoprics, sixteen
bishoprics, and hundreds of monasteries. In the same year Gabriel Bethlen, the Calvinist Prince of
Transylvania, died. Only the port of Stralsund continued to hold out against Wallenstein and the
Emperor, having been bolstered by Scottish 'volunteers' who arrived from the Swedish army to
support their countrymen already there in the service of Denmark.”343
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Photo I-3-7. The Victory of Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Breitenfeld, 1631
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Strasbourg_walter_gustave_adolphe.JPG
Map I-3-15. Reduction in Population of Holy Roman Empire, 1618-1648
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Bev%C3%B6lkerkungsr%C3%BCckgang_im_HRRDN_nach_d
em_Drei%C3%9Figj%C3%A4hrigen_Krieg.PNG
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
(c) The Swedish phase (1630-35): Like Christian IV, “Gustavus Adolphus came to aid the
German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic suzerainty in his back yard, and to obtain economic
influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea; he was also concerned about the growing
power of the Holy Roman Empire, and, like Christian IV before him, was heavily subsidized by
Cardinal Richelieu, the Chief Minister of Louis XIII of France, and by the Dutch. From 1630 to
1634, Swedish-led armies drove the Catholic forces back, regaining much of the lost Protestant
territory. During his campaign he managed to conquer half of the Imperial kingdoms, making
Sweden the continental leader of Protestantism until the Swedish Empire ended in 1721. Swedish
forces entered the Holy Roman Empire via the Duchy of Pomerania, which served as the Swedish
bridgehead since the Treaty of Stettin (1630). After dismissing Wallenstein in 1630, Ferdinand II
became dependent on the Catholic League. Gustavus Adolphus allied with France in the Treaty of
Bärwalde (January 1631). France and Bavaria signed the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau (1631),
but this was rendered irrelevant by Swedish attacks against Bavaria. At the Battle of Breitenfeld
(1631), Gustavus Adolphus's forces defeated the Catholic League led by Tilly. A year later they
met again in another Protestant victory, this time accompanied by the death of Tilly. The upper
hand had now switched from the league to the union, led by Sweden. In 1630, Sweden had paid
at least 2,368,022 daler for its army of 42,000 men. In 1632, it contributed only one-fifth of that
(476,439 daler) towards the cost of an army more than three times as large (149,000 men). This
was possible due to subsidies from France, and the recruitment of prisoners (most of them taken
at the Battle of Breitenfeld) into the Swedish army. Before that time Sweden waged war with the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and couldn't support the Protestant States properly. For that
reason the king Gustav II enlisted support of the Russian tsar Michael I who also fought the Polish–
Lithuanian Commonwealth in hopes of getting back Smolensk. While a separate conflict, the
Smolensk War became an integral part of Thirty Years' confrontation.”344
“The majority of mercenaries recruited by Gustavus II Adolphus were German but Scottish
soldiers were also very numerous. These were composed of some 12,000 Scots already in service
before the Swedes entered the war under the command of General Sir James Spens and colonels
such as Sir Alexander Leslie, Sir Patrick Ruthven and Sir John Hepburn. These were joined by a
further 8,000 men under the command of James Marquis Hamilton. The total number of Scots in
Swedish service by the end of the war is estimated at some 30,000 men, no less than 15 of whom
served with the rank of major-general or above. With Tilly dead, Ferdinand II returned to the aid
of Wallenstein and his large army. Wallenstein marched up to the south, threatening Gustavus
Adolphus's supply chain. Gustavus Adolphus knew that Wallenstein was waiting for the attack
and was prepared, but found no other option. Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus clashed in the
Battle of Lützen (1632), where the Swedes prevailed, but Gustavus Adolphus was killed.
Ferdinand II's suspicion of Wallenstein resumed in 1633, when Wallenstein attempted to arbitrate
the differences between the Catholic and Protestant sides. Ferdinand II may have feared that
Wallenstein would switch sides, and arranged for his arrest after removing him from command.
One of Wallenstein's soldiers, Captain Devereux, killed him when he attempted to contact the
Swedes in the town hall of Eger (Cheb) on 25 February 1634. The same year, the Protestant forces,
lacking Gustav's leadership, were defeated at the First Battle of Nördlingen by the SpanishImperial forces commanded by Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand. By the Spring of 1635, all Swedish
resistance in the south of Germany had ended. After that, the Imperialist and the Protestant German
sides met for negotiations, producing the Peace of Prague (1635), which entailed a delay in the
enforcement of the Edict of Restitution for 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain
secularized bishoprics held by them in 1627. This protected the Lutheran rulers of northeastern
Germany, but not those of the south and west.”345
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(d) The Franco-Swedish phase (1635-48): Louis XIII entered the war under the direction of
Cardinal Richelieu. The Swedes fought in northern Germany and the French fought in the Netherlands and along the Rhine in western Germany. “Richelieu had already begun intervening
indirectly in the war in January 1631, when the French diplomat Hercule de Charnacé signed the
Treaty of Bärwalde with Gustavus Adolphus, by which France agreed to support the Swedes with
1,000,000 livres each year in return for a Swedish promise to maintain an army in Germany against
the Habsburgs. The treaty also stipulated that Sweden would not conclude a peace with the Holy
Roman Emperor without first receiving France's approval. After the Swedish rout at Nördlingen
in September 1634 and the Peace of Prague in 1635, in which the Protestant German princes sued
for peace with the German emperor, Sweden's ability to continue the war alone appeared doubtful,
and Richelieu made the decision to enter into direct war against the Habsburgs. France declared
war on Spain in May 1635 and the Holy Roman Empire in August 1636, opening offensives
against the Habsburgs in Germany and the Low Countries. France aligned her strategy with the
allied Swedes in Wismar (1636) and Hamburg (1638). After the Peace of Prague, the Swedes
reorganised the Royal Army under Johan Banér and created a new one, the Army of the Weser
under the command of Alexander Leslie. The two army groups moved south from spring 1636,
re-establishing alliances on the way including a revitalised one with Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel.
The two Swedish armies combined and confronted the Imperialists at the Battle of Wittstock.
Despite the odds being stacked against them, the Swedish army won. This success largely reversed
many of the effects of their defeat at Nördlingen, albeit not without creating some tensions
between Banér and Leslie. “Emperor Ferdinand II died in 1637 and was succeeded by his son
Ferdinand III, who was strongly inclined toward ending the war through negotiations. His army
did however win an important success at the battle of Vlotho in 1638 against a combined SwedishEnglish-Palatine force…ended the involvement of the Palatinate in the war.”346
“French military efforts met with disaster, and the Spanish counter-attacked, invading French
territory. The Imperial general Johann von Werth and Spanish commander Cardinal-Infante
Ferdinand of Spain ravaged the French provinces of Champagne, Burgundy and Picardy, and even
threatened Paris in 1636. Then the tide began to turn for the French. The Spanish army was
repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Compiègne pushed the
Habsburg armies back towards the borders of France. Then, for a time, widespread fighting ensued
until 1640, with neither side gaining an advantage. However, the war reached a climax and the
tide of the war turned clearly toward the French and against Spain in 1640 starting with the siege
and capture of the fort at Arras. The French conquered Arras from the Spanish following a siege
that lasted from 16 June to 9 August 1640. When Arras fell, the way was opened to the French to
take all of Flanders. The ensuing French campaign against the Spanish forces in Flanders
culminated with a decisive French victory at Rocroi in May 1643. News of these French victories
provided strong encouragement to separatist movements in the Spanish province of Catalonia and
in Portugal. The Catalonian revolt had sprung up spontaneously in May 1640. Since that time it
had been the conscious goal of Cardinal Richelieu to promote a war by diversion against the
Spanish. Richelieu wanted to create difficulties for the Spanish at home which might encourage
them to withdraw from the war. To fight this war by diversion Cardinal Richelieu had been
supplying aid to the Catalonians. In December 1640, the Portuguese rose up against Spanish rule
and once again Richelieu supplied aid to the insurgents. The war by diversion had its intended
effect. Philip IV of Spain was reluctantly forced to divert his attention from the war in northern
Europe to deal with his problems at home.” As the French defeated the imperial army, the war in
Germany ended by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 through five years of peace negotiations,
though the war between France and Spain continued until the Peace of Pyrenees in 1659. 347
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(e) The Peace of Westphalia of 1648: “The territorial clauses all favoured Sweden, France,
and their allies. Sweden obtained western Pomerania, the port of Wismar, the archbishopric of
Bremen, and the bishopric of Verden. These gains gave Sweden control of the Baltic Sea and the
estuaries of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers. France obtained sovereignty over Alsace and was
confirmed in its possession of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which it had seized a century before;
France thus gained a firm frontier west of the Rhine River. Brandenburg obtained eastern
Pomerania and several other smaller territories. Bavaria was able to keep the Upper Palatinate,
while the Rhenish Palatinate was restored to Charles Louis, the son of the elector palatine
Frederick V. Two other important results of the territorial settlement were the confirmation of the
United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Swiss Confederation as independent republics, thus
formally recognizing a status which those two states had actually held for many decades. Apart
from these territorial changes, a universal and unconditional amnesty to all those who had been
deprived of their possessions was declared, and it was decreed that all secular lands (with specified
exceptions) should be restored to those who had held them in 1618. Even more important than the
territorial redistribution was the ecclesiastical settlement. The Peace of Westphalia confirmed the
Peace of Augsburg (1555), which had granted Lutherans religious tolerance in the empire and
which had been rescinded by the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II in his Edict of Restitution
(1629). Moreover, the peace settlement extended the Peace of Augsburg’s provisions for religious
toleration to the Reformed church…securing toleration for the three great religious communities
of the empire - Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist. Within these limits the member states
of the empire were bound to allow at least private worship, liberty of conscience, and the right of
emigration to all religious minorities and dissidents within their domains. These measures of
toleration did not extend to non-Catholics in the hereditary lands of the house of Habsburg.”348
“The year 1624 was declared the standard year according to which territories should be
deemed to be in Roman Catholic or Protestant possession. By the important provision that a prince
should forfeit his lands if he changed his religion, an obstacle was placed in the way of a further
spread of both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. The declaration that all protests or
vetoes of the Peace of Westphalia by whomsoever pronounced should be null and void dealt a
blow at the intervention of the Roman Curia in German affairs. The constitutional changes made
by the treaty had far-reaching effects. For Germany, the settlement ended the century-long struggle
between the monarchical tendencies of the Holy Roman emperors and the federalistic aspirations
of the empire’s German princes. The Peace of Westphalia recognized the full territorial
sovereignty of the member states of the empire. They were empowered to contract treaties with
one another and with foreign powers, provided that the emperor and the empire suffered no
prejudice. By this and other changes the princes of the empire became absolute sovereigns in their
own dominions. The Holy Roman emperor and the Diet were left with a mere shadow of their
former power. Not only was the central authority of the empire replaced almost entirely by the
sovereignty of about 300 princes, but the power of the empire was materially weakened in other
ways. It lost about 40,000 square miles of territory and obtained a frontier against France that was
incapable of defense. Sweden and France as guarantors of the peace acquired the right of
interference in the affairs of the empire, and Sweden also gained a voice in its councils. For many
years Germany thus became the principal theatre of European diplomacy and war, and the natural
development of German national unity was delayed. But if the Treaty of Westphalia pronounced
the dissolution of the old order in the empire, it facilitated the growth of new powers in its
component parts, especially Austria, Bavaria, and Brandenburg. The treaty was recognized as a
fundamental law of the German constitution and formed the basis of all subsequent treaties until
the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.”349 (See Map I-3-2)
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(f) The science of warfare made revolutionary progress during 1560-1650. Warfare in early
modern Europe was transformed by five related developments: a new use of firepower, a new type
of fortifications, an increase in army size, the development of professionalism, and new tactics.
The musket was introduced in the 1550s to the Spanish regiments in Italy. Since then, its accuracy
was improved, and its volley technique was developed by the Dutch to maximize its combat power.
In 1616, John of Nassau opened a military academy at his capital Siegen to educate young men in
the art of war, and the academy published several manuals of warfare based on Dutch practice. In
the 1620s, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden developed the standing army of conscripts, and his
infantry brigade was composed of equal numbers of musketeers and pike men. He improved
reloading speed of musketeers with offensive deployment tactics, and increased firepower of field
artillery with flexible use of the cavalry. The guns were standardized on three calibers with 24-,
12-, and 3-pounders; and some were even supplied with cartridges already attached for speedier
loading. The improvement of artillery eventually transformed fortress design and increased the
army size. In 1494, Charles VIII of France invaded Italy with 18,000 men and Francis I attacked
with 32,000. By the 1630s, the leading European states maintained 150,000 men each, and France
had almost 400,000 soldiers by the end of the century. The classic conflicts in the age of military
revolution were all long wars with numerous separate campaigns and actions: the Italian wars
lasted from 1494 to 1559, the French Religious Wars dragged from 1562 to 1598, and the Thirty
Years’ War lasted from 1618 to 1648. Thus, the larger size of armies with the longer period of
wars demanded more expenditure: the artillery, cavalry, officers, and logistic wagons with camp
followers who were equal to or exceeding combatants. The military revolution prepared better
trained and disciplined armies with greater flexibility and mobility. At sea in the 1580s, the
Spaniards were operating far from their bases, but the English could locally replace and reinforce,
and their warships were in good shape and sailed faster and carried more guns than their enemy.
“The most common tactic used was the caracole - a combined cavalry charge assisted by
firearms. Eventually this was replaced by a full scale cavalry charge. Such tactics needed well
trained and disciplined troops. The Thirty Years War saw the development of professionalism
within certain armies such as the Swedes. Successful attacks were sustained and offensive tactics
became the norm leaving soldiers little time to pillage as had happened in previous centuries.
Those armies that still had such an approach to warfare proved unsuccessful in this war. A quick
offensive campaign gave the enemy little time to prepare its defences. Therefore, the Thirty Years
War saw a move to campaigns based on professionalism, speed and offensive in nature. Gustavus
ensured that his men were regularly paid and that locals were treated well. If Swedish soldiers
needed local produce they had to pay for it rather than simply stealing it as had happened all too
often in the past. He (Gustavus) had a wider strategic vision; he took Maurice’s methods, added
to them and improved them, and in so doing was to impose upon the art of war a pattern which it
retained almost unmodified until the advent of the revolutionary armies of France.” On the other
hand, “The cost of the Thirty Years War for the Imperial treasury has been estimated at 250 million
gulden. Spain’s contribution to her Habsburg’s cousin was a mere 1.9 million gulden while the
pope, who saw the Emperor as the defender of Catholicism, provided just 900,000 gulden.
Therefore, the people of the Holy Roman Empire had to foot the bill. One of the major
developments of the Thirty Years War was the sheer cost of warfare itself and the implications
this would have on nations within Europe…The counter-argument to this is the fact that no single
army or combination of armies had the ability to deliver a knockout blow that lead to victory. The
Peace of Westphalia is also known as the Peace of Exhaustion – all sides in the war were exhausted
by the mid-1640s…armies were capable of fighting a series of ad hoc campaigns but of not being
able to defeat the other side to such an extent that it had to surrender.”350
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Economic and Social Crises: The impacts of the Renaissance, Reformation, and discovery
were different. The Renaissance was a process of rationalization and of economic emancipation
from the medieval structure. It was a closer approach to nature and enrichment of civilization
through activities of arts and literature, but did not bring any complete break with the economic
past. The Reformation mainly meant the switch from Catholicism to Protestantism which caused
the dissolution of monasteries and confiscation of church property in favor of the crown, the
nobility, or a city. The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496 jeopardized
their economies by pushing out their capital and skilled labor. The religious wars between
Catholics and Protestants devastated the economies of the European states. The Protestant ethic
influenced the individual attitude to economic activities in the countries that became Protestant.
However, the discovery of the new trade routes through the Oceans was more significant: it caused
the Europeans reach the new lands and resources, and created new patterns of trade with the newly
discovered lands and people. While the Portuguese dominated the spice trade with the East Indies,
the Spanish monopolized all trade with America particularly for precious metals. The Atlantic
seaboard integrated European commercial activities by connecting various regions in Europe; and
the Dutch, English, and French joined the tide of overseas trade expansion. The Europeans
imported coffee from Africa, Cocoa from America, and tea from Asia as staple beverages. From
America, they imported cotton, sugar, tobacco, tropical fruits and nuts, furs, hides, exotic woods,
and new fibers; introduced the cultivation of potatoes, tomatoes, string beans, squash, red peppers,
pumpkins, and corn; and raised domesticated turkey. The European states sent emigrants to the
New World to expand their economies and to spread Christianity, and colonized the conquered
lands by developing the ideas of colonization with mercantilism in this period. The Europeans
had experienced dramatic challenges in economy and society in the century of 1550-1650.
In the century of 1550-1650, the Europeans experienced economic and social challenges. As
discussed previously, both population growth and monetary expansion caused inflation, which
suppressed consumption and economic growth, and resulted in depression. Spanish imports of
silver from South America rapidly declined since the 1630s. During the period of 1581-1630,
Spain imported silver over 2 million kilograms each decade, which declined to 1.4 million
kilograms during 1631-40, to 0.4 million kilograms during 1651-60, and rapidly fell in the later
decades. The aftermath of inflation with the rapid decline of silver imports intensified economic
recession in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean area in the decade of the 1640s. The
Europeans had developed three trade areas: the Mediterranean region, the Low Countries and the
Baltic region, and central Europe connected by the Rhine and Danube rivers. As overseas trade
was rapidly expanded, the Atlantic seaboard connected trading regions. Being successful in the
testing voyage to Java in 1595, the Netherlands established the Dutch East India Company at
modern Jakarta, Indonesia in 1602 with the protection of warships. The Dutch concentrated on
the Spice Islands of Indonesia, controlled the ports of Ceylon, and founded the first European
settlement in South Africa. They gradually took control over the Portuguese bases in the Far East
and opened trade with China and Japan. After the experimental voyages in 1591, Elizabeth
granted a charter to establish the English East India Company in 1600, which built factories and
trading posts in mainland India and monopolized all trade with them. The English founded
colonies in Virginia in 1607, New England in 1620, and Maryland in 1632. As a late comer, the
French established the French East India Company in 1664, built its first trading post at Surat,
Bombay in 1675, and extended its operations to China and Iran. The French established a
permanent settlement in Quebec in 1608 and claimed the entire Great Lakes area as New France.
As the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch declined consecutively, the English and French began to
rise and competed each other for hegemony in the coming centuries.
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
The main problem to finance the European states in the sixteenth century was budget deficit
because of wars which employed mercenaries requiring compensation beyond the tax revenues.
Jacob Fugger had built wealth by returning favors for arranging of political loans for Maximilian
I and Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, but went bankrupt when the Hapsburgs defaulted on
their loans. The Spanish Habsburgs borrowed money from the Fuggers to finance wars. Philip II
faced the first bankruptcy in 1557 that was resolved by economic recovery after a peace treaty
with France. The bankruptcy in 1575 was fortunately resolved by rising imports of bullion from
Spanish America, but his third bankruptcy in 1596 resulted in financial panic. After his death, the
bankruptcy in 1607 brought a peace with the Dutch in 1609 by losing Spanish hegemony in the
world affairs. The financial difficulties of Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany brought the
Netherlands into the center of world affairs: Antwerp was replaced by Amsterdam. The United
Provinces was an assembly of seven small independent states, which population increased from
one million in 1500 to two million in 1650. Immigrants came to Holland to seek a fortune, and
refugees like French Huguenots, Antwerpers, and Jews brought substantial capital with skilled
labor. As a result, Amsterdam grew from 50,000 inhabitants in 1600 to 200,000 in 1700, and
became a melting-pot of nations. Their fishermen had sailed the Northern Sea and neighboring
waters by specializing in fishing for whales, while the Dutch fleet was equivalent to the all the
other European fleets put together. The Bank of Amsterdam was established in 1609 as a deposit
and transfer institution, and the Amsterdam Exchange was transformed from exchanges of goods
into the trading of stocks. Amsterdam emerged as the hub of the European business and the largest
commercial and financial center of Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century, but its
golden age began to tarnish with the failure of its business in East Indies and America by the end
of the century, while the English and the French were ascending.
In the sixteenth century, the population grew and rapidly increased in major cities of Europe.
In 1500, Paris, Constantinople, and Italian cities of Naples, Venice, Milan, and Genoa were with
over 100,000 people. By 1600, Naples became the largest port in Italy with 300,000 people, while
Seville in Spain and Lisbon in Portugal were with over 100,000 people. About that time, the
population of London reached 250,000 and of Paris 500,000 but stopped to grow by the 1630s and
even declined by 1650 with different patterns by region. The decline of the population was mainly
caused by famine, epidemics, and war. Europe experienced a “little ice age” with unusual wet
summers and cold winters in the seventeenth century. Harvest failure, famine, and malnutrition
endangered the health of the people, postponed their marriage, and encouraged celibacy. Improper
health conditions - air and water pollutions, lack of hygiene, and incomplete medical knowledge
helped the spread of epidemics. The French province of Anju, for example, suffered from plague
in 1583, 1605, and 1625. There appeared other diseases: typhus, dysentery, smallpox, leprosy,
cholera, and syphilis. Wars invited the decline of the population: some regions in Germany lost
about 30 to 40 percent of the population in the Thirty Years’ War. Even witchcraft might cause
to kill perhaps 10,000 souls. The decline of the population and economic depression created social
problems in the century. On the other hand, the rise of price created social problems in Europe.
The influx of precious metals reduced the purchasing power of silver: one could purchase five
times more goods with the same amount of silver in 1500 than in 1600, although price rises were
different by place and time. As a result of inflation, wages failed to keep up with price increases.
Wage earners of agricultural laborers and salaried workers in the urban areas experienced a lower
living standard; the landed nobility gained profit by raising rent; and industrial and commercial
entrepreneurs did the same from lower labor costs. The income disparity between capitalists and
laborers, therefore, increased social tension between the classes, which intensified anxiety and
dissatisfaction of the people with increased violation of laws in everyday life.
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Rebellions and Civil Wars: After the Thirty Years War, a series of rebellions and civil wars
ruined domestic stability of many European states. The nobility resisted against monarchical
centralization, and common people rose against high taxes and hardships imposed by the landed
nobility. Peasant and lower-class revolts appeared in many European states from the 1590s to the
1650s. In France during 1593-95, the assemblies of the Trad Avises in Limousin and Perigord
rose against the garrisons stationed in the district by the Catholic League, which soldiers were
raiding their villages. The assemblies sent their delegates to the king whose council responded
favorably to their requests: a tax exemption for their region and the removal of soldier’s plundering.
But the parish captains organized their peasants into disciplined companies as a military force and
prepared for war. They challenged the troubled garrisons and succeeded in driving out them. As
they threatened the authorities, the provincial governor crushed the uprising of peasants by killing
over 1,500 men. In 1637, a special tax was imposed in addition to the regular tax, but the
communes of Perigord opposed against rising taxes. The province levied corn to the communities,
which quantity depended on the size and importance of each place taxed. The grain was loaded in
sacks and transported in carts and barges to the warehouses of the army at Bayonne. When the
Duke of Epernon levied a special tax for his army, the people believed that it was being raised
without the authorization of a royal warrant, so that the king was cheated and his people were
robbed. The peasants reacted so violently to this tax that they lynched and murdered tax collectors.
The rebel communities elected their leaders and organized a peasant army of about 8,000 mostly
veteran soldiers. As they occupied the strongholds, the king ordered the duke to crush them. The
Duke of La Valette organized 3,000 infantry with a troop of 400 cavalry, fought bloody battles,
and forced them to disperse. Outbreaks of peasant resistance continued during 1637-48, which
were particularly serious in Rouergue in 1643 and Gascony between 1642 and 1645.
Huguenot Rebellions (1620-28): “Following the Wars of Religion of 1562–1598, the
Protestant Huguenots of France (mainly located in the southwestern provinces) had enjoyed two
decades of internal peace under Henry IV, who, originally a Huguenot before converting to
Catholicism, had protected Protestants through the Edict of Nantes. His successor, Louis XIII,
under the regency of his Italian Catholic mother, Marie de' Medici, was much less tolerant. The
Huguenots responded to increasing persecution by arming themselves, forming independent
political and military structures, establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and finally,
openly revolting against the central power. The revolt became an international conflict with the
involvement of England in the Anglo-French War (1627-1629). The House of Stuart in England
had been involved in attempts to secure peace in Europe (through the Spanish Match), and had
intervened in the war against both Spain and France. However, defeat by the French (which
indirectly led to the assassination of the English leader the Duke of Buckingham), lack of funds
for war, and internal conflict between Charles I and his Parliament led to a redirection of English
involvement in European affairs – much to the dismay of Protestant forces on the continent. This
saw the continued reliance on the Anglo-Dutch brigade as the main agency of English military
participation against the Habsburgs, though regiments also fought for Sweden thereafter. France
remained the largest Catholic kingdom unaligned with the Habsburg powers, and would later
actively wage war against Spain. The French Crown's response to the Huguenot rebellion was not
so much a representation of the typical religious polarization of the Thirty Years' War, but rather
of an attempt at achieving national hegemony by an absolutist monarchy.”351 Their rebellions
were implacably suppressed by the French Crown. The Huguenots lost their political power, and
ultimately their religious freedom in the Kingdom of France with the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685. These events were one of the factors affecting an unusually strong Absolutist
central government in France, which would have a decisive influence on French history.352
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Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Witchcraft Trials and Cultural Changes: Another social disorder appeared in hysteria over
witchcraft in England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, France, the Low Countries, and even New
England in America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early in this period, the charges
were directed against heretics, homosexuals, Jews, and magicians. Witchcraft was not new, but
had been part of village culture for centuries. Christians believed that the dammed person would
go to hell by the Last Judgment at the end of the days, which increased the fear of death. The
dying man tempted by demons to renounce God for the devil’s promises of material reward, while
religious leaders conveyed the messages that the power of Christianity against the devil could save
him and avoid potential misfortune. When the clergy was highly neglectful in the period of preReformation, the psychological protective role was performed by magicians like medicine men
who countered the evil power, so that the populace was in effect rejecting institutional religion.
But clerical and lay elites denounced magicians as libertinage, atheism, and heresy: Thomas
Aquinas viewed that the conjuring of demons was a kind of heresy since the magician was serving
the forces of Satan. The judges of papal Inquisition connected maleficent sorcery to demonic
heresy, and the magicians appeared as the witches facing criminal charges. In 1484, Pope Innocent
VIII issued a papal bull sending two Dominican monks, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, to
Germany to investigate and root out the witches. Based on findings, they wrote Malleus
Maleficarum or The Hammer of the Witches that became the standard hand-books on the practices
of witchcraft. The book consists of three parts: the first part begins with definitions explaining
the nature of witchcraft (heresy), outlining its effects (malefice), and identifying of its practitioners
(mostly female); the second part describes in detail of what witches do; and the third part sets out
the legal procedures bringing them to the stake. They viewed that many cases of witchcraft were
attributed by such misfortunes as disease, death, impotence, and crop failure which disasters could
stem from natural origins. The Catholic Church condemned it as false in 1490.353
After 1550, witch trials were against criminals who were not only Satan’s worshipers but also
his sexual slaves. About 7,500 witch trials in diverse regions of Europe and North America during
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shows that nearly 80 percent of accused witches were female:
most of them were single or widowed and many over fifty years old, and most victims belonged
to the lower classes, the poor and property-less. Poverty and the social reactions to it were
fundamental to the dynamics of witch trials. When charity recipients became a burden of society,
property owners were more fearful of the growing number of the poor. While persons who refused
charity were predominately prosecuted to witchcraft trials in England, beggar women and old poor
midwives were easily charged as witches elsewhere. Society was cleansing itself of dangerous
pollution by executing witches. Since torture forced confession, witchcraft trials were often used
as political means. A verdict of the witchcraft trial in France in 1652 was vague and unacceptable
by modern reasons, which shows that “seeing by her own confessions that she is said to have made
a pact with the devil, received the mark from him,...and that following this, she had renounced
God, Lent, and baptism and had let herself be known carnally by him, in which she received
satisfaction.” The persecution of witches declined about 1700 and banished by the Age of
Enlightenment. A new progress in astronomy, physics, and mathematics with direct experiments
ended witch trials, and scientific reasoning made religious ideologies cease to be the main axis of
elite identity and political action. In general, most educated people believed that witchcraft was
“a dubious concept encountered most often in the folk beliefs of the ignorant” despite previous
justification. After numerous studies about witchcraft, it is becoming apparent that “there is no
reliable evidence of the existence of devil-worshiping witch cults and that the relatively few
individuals who sincerely believed themselves to be devotees of Satan typically acquired such
beliefs by suggestion from preachers or prosecutors.”
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4. State Building: Absolute Monarchy and Republic
In the seventeenth century, Europe experienced a great progress in theory and practice. In politics,
passing the age of crises, the nobility regained political control. In France, Louis XIV established
absolute monarchy; In England, the representative assemblies of the people founded limited
monarchy; and the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands formed a republic of the United
Provinces. Russia established absolute monarchy, while Austria defeated the Ottoman Turks and
removed further threat to the European countries. In economy, foreign trade was rapidly expanded:
the English and the Dutch founded the East India Companies in 1600 and 1602. The Portuguese,
the Spanish, and the Dutch rose and fell chronologically in foreign trade; then, the English and the
French began to compete with each other for hegemony both in politics and economy in the
coming centuries (to be discussed in Chapter II in this book). In political philosophy, the scholars
developed the theory of natural law (see Chapter III). In economic thought, European countries
favored mercantilism that is a kind of state-controlled monopoly to keep trade surplus based on
economic nationalism. Mercantilism is contradictory to the philosophy of natural law based on
liberalism or competition in the free market (see Chapter IV). In science and technology, the
Copernican revolution changed the views of universe from an earth-centered to a sun-centered
cosmos. While the Ptolemaic system proved to be wrong and the Church doctrine became incorrect,
the concept of Biblical heaven turned out to be vague with no credibility. The papacy confined
Galileo in his residence for nine years of his remaining life under the name of heresy, however,
Inquisition could not stop the spread of the new ideas of science. Finally, a century of religious
wars from Augsburg of 1555 to Westphalia of 1648 changed Europe from a united Christendom
to a system of secular states of absolute monarchy, limited monarchy, or republic; and more
Europeans thought of politics in a secular terms without religious consideration.
Absolute monarchy or absolutism meant that the king had sovereign power in the states to
rule the people by divine right, which included all of executive, legislative, and judicial powers of
the nation. Absolute monarchy appeared in France, Spain, Germany, and eastern and northern
Europe; limited monarchy in England and Poland; and the republic in the United Provinces. In
the past century, religious wars, rebellions, and crises weakened the credibility of Christianity,
expedited secularization, and centralized political power in European states. As revolts and
rebellions were suppressed by the 1650s, the privileged classes regained political control. In
responses to the crises with the rising demand for law and order, Louis XIV in France solidified
and extended his political power and established absolute monarchy. While Spain continuously
declined, Prussia and Austria emerged as two European states. In Russia, Peter the Great reformed
the structure of politics, military, economy, and society; and established the foundation of modern
Russia. Being defeated by Austria, the Ottoman Turks retreated to the Balkan by the end of the
century; and the Russians derived them further to the east by land and to the south by sea; and the
Turks became no more threat to the European states. In England, the representative assemblies
reduced king’s power and established limited monarchy through the Glorious Revolution, while
the United Provinces exceptionally formed a republic by the seven northern provinces of the
Netherlands. Absolute and limited monarchs were two different models of the political development in state-building and search for order in Europe. Accordingly, new political thoughts were
developed by the theorists of natural law, whose publications became influential in political
changes. A significant impact of politics on economy in this period lies in that the merchantmanufacturers monopolized production and trade, and secured their favorite trade policies by close
ties with political power which founded mercantilism though the positive balance of trade was not
sustainable but caused a series of trade wars, coining the idea of imperialism.
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Photo I-4-1. Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England
Source: http://www.landofthebrave.info/images/william-mary-1689.jpg
Photo I-4-2. The Age of Louis XIV of France, 1660-1715
Source: http://www.getty.edu/360/event_images/kingdom_images.jpg
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4.1. The Age of Louis XIV of France, 1643-1715
After the Wars of Religion, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that accepted limited
religious toleration as a last resort, so that its enforcement was difficult at the local level. Henry
raised taxes and collected sales of more offices to pay back the public debt accumulated by the
wars. He tried to restore central authority of the monarchical government by taking numerous
visits throughout provinces and exercising more control over the appointment of officials at the
local level. He maintained his foreign policy against the Habsburgs by cultivating good relations
with the Dutch republic, the Protestant princes in Germany, and England. However, his sudden
death renewed disorder in France, “many-rooted in the struggle of the nobles against the monarchy,
of the middle classes against the aristocracy, of the Catholic against the Huguenots, of the clergy
against the state, of the young King Louis XIII against the mother, and of France against Austria
and Spain. The fascinating and demonic genius who resolved all this chaos into order, defeated
the feudal reaction, pacified the Huguenots, subordinated the Church to the state, saved Protestant
Germany from collapse, broke the power of the encompassing Hapsburgs, and raised the French
monarchy to domestic omnipotence and European supremacy was a Catholic priest, the greatest,
subtlest, and most ruthless statesman in the history of France.”354 Louis XIII (1610-43) succeeded
his father’s throne, and his mother Merie de Medici acted as regent during Louis’s minority.
Taking power in 1617, Louis sent his mother exiled and executed her Italian followers at the
French court. The King relied heavily on first the Duke of Luynes then Cardinal Richelieu.
Richelieu (1585-42) was appointed to foreign secretary in 1616, and soon rose in both the Church
and the government, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and his chief minister in 1624. When the
Huguenot city of La Rochelle rebelled against the crown in 1629, Richelieu took most of their
remaining fortresses, and made the Peace of Alais, which allowed their religious freedom based
on the Edict of Nantes subject to removal of their private armies and fortification of the cities.
The French policy aimed to restore a balance between Protestants and Catholics in Germany,
but the Spanish intention to reconquer the Netherlands made France declare war against the
Habsburgs in 1635. With revolts of Catalonia and Portugal in 1640, Spain fell in a decisive turning
point of the war. The wide-spread hostility to centralization of political power and the popular
resistance to tax-collection caused conspiracies and rebellions in France. Richelieu developed a
patronage system, a network of spies, which uncovered plots by nobles and eliminated major
threats to the crown. He sent out royal officials called intendants to the provinces as “the means
of controlling troops, sources of information for the government, watchdogs over the officials, and
repressors of rebellion.” He brought Mazarin to France who persuaded Louis to make Anne regent.
The French Academy was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu; who put an end to
the revolt of the French nobility, while France was in the struggle against Huguenots and Habsburg
Spain. France decisively won the battle of Rocroi in 1643, which marked the beginning of the
Spain’s military decline and that of French dominance in Europe under his son Louis XIV who
ruled France over 72 years, the longest in European history. “Louis began his personal rule of
France in 1661 after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of
the concept of the divine right of kings, which advocates the divine origin of monarchical rule,
Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from the capital.
He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling
many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying
the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis's
minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated
a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.”355
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Politics of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Louis XIV succeeded his throne under the regency of his
mother Anne of Austria: Cardinal Mazarin led his ministry by continuously carrying Richelieu’s
policies until his death in 1661. In around 1660, France had a population of 20 million, while
Spain and England had 5 million each, Italy 6 million, and the Dutch Republic 2 million. The Holy
Roman Empire including Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, had 21 million, but was
impoverished by the Thirty Years’ War, and was divided into over four hundred sovereign states
jealously confronting each other; none of them had more than 2 million inhabitants. Foreigners
came to Paris to finish their studies, and thousands of Italians, Germans, and Englishmen preferred
Paris to their native lands. Hapsburg Spain surrendered her leadership at Rocroi in 1643 and the
Peace of Pyrenees in 1659. Thereafter, the French state was the strongest in Christendom,
“confident in its natural resources, the skills and loyalty of its people, the strategy of tis generals,
the destiny of its King.” However, in 1643 when the power of the minority king with his mother
seemed to be weak, the nobles hoped to restore their former feudal privileges, while the
parliaments aspired to make the government an oligarchy of lawyers. Mazarin remained in the
background while the Queen Mother took the regency for her son. He served her and his ambition
won her affection, perhaps her love. Mazarin was unpopular: “The peasant hated him because
they were bitterly burdened by the taxes with which he waged war. The merchants hated him
because his imports injured commerce. The nobles hated him because he did not agree with them
about the virtues of feudalism. The parlements hated him because he set himself and the King
above the law. The Queen heightened his unpopularity by forbidding criticism of his rule. She
supported him because she found herself challenged by two groups – the old aristocracy of the
sword and the younger aristocracy of magistrates – who challenged the infancy of the king and
the supposed weakness of woman opening to political power.
(a) The Fronde Parlementaire (1648–49): The Parlement of Paris sought to duplicate in
France the movement that in England had just raised Parliament above the king as the source and
judge of law. 356 “It felt that the time had come to make the French monarchy constitutional,
subject to the national will as expressed by some representative assembly. The twelve parlements
of France, however, were not legislative chambers chosen by the nation, like the Parliament of
England; they were judiciary and administrative bodies whose members inherited their seats or
magistracies from their fathers, or were appointed by the king. The success of the first Fronde
would have made the French government an aristocracy of lawyers. The States-General, composed
of delegates from the three estates – noble, clergy, and the remainder of the people – could have
been developed into a representative assembly checking the monarchy; but the States-General
could be summoned only by the king; no king had summoned it since 1614, not would summon it
till 1789; hence the Revolution.” On July 12 the Parlement addressed to the King and his mother
several demands: “All personal taxes were to be reduced by one quarter; no newe taxes were to be
levied without the freely voted consent of the Parlement; the royal commissioners (intendants),
who had been ruling the provinces over the head of the local governors and magistrates, were to
be dismissed; and no person was to be kept in prison beyond twenty-four hours without being
brought before the proper judges.” On August 26, Mazarin ordered the arrest of Pierre Broussel
and other leaders of Parlement but released soon and promised reforms. It evolved into armed
insurrection when great lords joined the rebellion. Queen mother Anne and the king fled to the
suburb Rueil at first, and later to St. Germain. The government forces led by Prince de Conde
stopped rebellion; she granted a general amnesty to all who would lay down their arms; and
Parlement dismissed its troops and informed people to obey to the king. Louis, Anne, and Mazarin
returned to Paris on 28 August 1649; the court reassembled, and the rebel nobles joined it as if
nothing occurred. All was forgiven, but nothing was forgotten. 357
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(b) The Fronde of nobles (1650-53): As Prince de Conde felt that his services entitled him to
subordinate Mazarin, other princes and nobles were also discontented. At this moment, Mazarin
had Conde, Conti, and Longueville imprisoned at Vincennes in January 1650. Hence, Mme. de
Longueville rushed up to Normandy, raised rebellion there, passed on to the Spanish Netherlands,
and charmed Turenne into treason; the great general agreed to lead a Spanish army against Mazarin.
The rebel and royal forces at a standstill in strong positions. While the battle was severe, the
Turenne’s Frondeurs gave way in the end; so Conde, Conti, and Longueville were released. By
April 1651 the rebellion had everywhere collapsed. The court returned to Paris; Mazarin, an object
of hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. In December 1651, Cardinal Mazarin
returned to France with a small army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Conde
were pitted against one another. After this campaign, the civil war ceased, but in the several other
campaigns of the Franco-Spanish War followed: Turenne as the defender of France, and Conde as
a Spanish invader. “The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of
the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston's daughter
persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Condé's army. She herself turned the guns
of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectionist government appeared in Paris and proclaimed
Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against
him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarreling with the princes, permitted the king
to enter the city on 21 October 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.”
(c) Franco-Spanish War (1635-59): “In 1653 France was so exhausted that neither invaders
nor defenders were able to gather supplies to enable them to take the field till July…In 1655
Turenne captured the fortresses of Landrecies, Condé and St Ghislain. In 1656 the prince of Condé
avenged the defeat of Arras by storming Turenne's circumvallation around Valenciennes (16 July),
but Turenne drew off his forces in good order. The campaign of 1657 was uneventful, and is only
to be remembered because a body of 6,000 English infantry, sent by Cromwell in pursuance of his
treaty of alliance with Mazarin, took part in it. The presence of the English contingent and its very
definite purpose of making Dunkirk a new Calais, to be held by England forever, gave the next
campaign a character of certainty and decision which was entirely wanting in the rest of the war.
Dunkirk was besieged promptly and in great force, and when Don Juan of Austria and Condé
appeared with the relieving army from Fumes, Turenne advanced boldly to meet them. The Battle
of the Dunes, fought on 14 June 1658, was the first real trial of strength since the battle of the
Faubourg St Antoine. Successes on one wing were compromised by failure on the other, but in the
end Condé drew off with heavy losses, the success of his own cavalry charges having entirely
failed to make good the defeat of the Spanish right wing amongst the Dunes. Here the red-coats
made their first appearance on a continental battlefield, under the leadership of Sir William
Lockhart, Cromwell's ambassador at Paris. They astonished both armies by the stubborn fierceness
of their assaults, for they were the products of the English Civil War, where passions ran higher
and the determination to win rested on deeper foundations than did the deteriorating feudal spirit
of the main parties who, after decades of war, had been sapped of all belief. Dunkirk fell, and was
handed over to the English Protectorate, as promised, so flying the St George's Cross until Charles
II sold it to the king of France in 1662. A last desultory campaign followed in 1659 - the twentyfifth year of a conflict between France and Spain which had begun during the Thirty Years' War and the peace of the Pyrenees was signed on 5 November. On 27 January 1660 the prince asked
and obtained at Aix-en-Provence the forgiveness of Louis XIV. The later careers of Turenne and
Condé were as obedient subjects of their sovereign.” The peace of Pyrenees significantly marked
the fulfillment of Richelieu’s program – the reduction of the Hapsburg power, and replacement of
Spain by France as the dominant nation in Europe. 358
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Photo I-4-3. Louis XIV
Source: http://geoffreyhistoire.pagesperso-orange.fr/louisxiv.jpg
Map I-4-1. France: Territorial Expansion from 1552 to 1798
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/France_1552-1798.png
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Wars and Military Strategies: Louis concerned about the land borders defined by the Treaty
of the Pyrenees, and pursued war to expand his kingdom to its natural frontiers: the Alps, Pyrenees,
and Rhine. He built up a professional army of 100,000 in peacetime and 400,000 in wartime by
voluntary and compulsory services. The growing army required more money: royal funds and
contributions were beyond the demand, so that French officers were expected to contribute their
own wealth and credit to maintain their units. In the first era (1661-75) of his military campaigns,
Louis chose offensive strategies by conquering new lands for the glory of France. “Having been
raised in a culture that expected young princes to seek "glory" on the battlefield, Louis was looking
for an opportunity to go to war.” After the death of Philip VI of Spain, Louis claimed parts of the
Spanish Netherlands for his wife, which ignited the War of Devolution (1667-68). However, the
Triple Alliance of the Netherlands, England, and Sweden forced Louis to end the war by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle in May: Louis received some towns. Again Louis started the Franco-Dutch
War (1672-78) by invading the United Provinces after isolating them; and his victories invited a
new coalition of Brandenburg, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire; which forced Louis to end the
war by the Peace of Nimwegen in 1678: France received Franche-Comte from Spain. In the
second era (1676-97), Louis pursued defensive strategies to secure the natural borders. The
gradual annexation of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and occupation of Strasbourg brought
the League of Augsburg (1689-97) that was formed by Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the United
Provinces, Sweden, and England. When the French forces captured strategic towns of the Rhine,
the alliance struck back and the Nine Years War ended by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697: France
lost most of conquered lands except Strasbourg and parts of Alsace. In the third era (1698-1714),
Louis pursued a policy of peace. When Charles II of Spain left his throne to a grandson of Louis
XIV, the coalition of England, Holland, Habsburg Austria, and German states opposed France and
Spain; which ignited the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13). The Peace of Utrecht in 1713
and the Peace of Rastatt in 1714 were confirmed by Philip V; and Austria, Brandenburg-Prussia,
and England gained lands: the cost was more than gains to France.
(a) The War of Devolution (1667-68): “Devolution was a local custom governing the
inheritance of land in certain provinces of the Spanish Netherlands, by which daughters of a first
marriage were preferred to sons of subsequent marriages; and Louis XIV of France began the war
on the pretext that this custom should apply to sovereign territories also, so that his wife, MarieThérèse, should succeed her father, Philip IV of Spain (d. 1665), in the majority of the Spanish
possessions in the Netherlands in preference to her younger half-brother, Charles II of Spain, a
sickly epileptic unlikely to live long or produce heirs. The French army under Marshal de Turenne
advanced into Flanders in May 1667 and easily secured its objectives. Louis then turned to
diplomacy and in January 1668 concluded a treaty with the Holy Roman emperor Leopold I
whereby they agreed to partition the Spanish dominions between themselves on the Spanish king’s
death and in which it was also stipulated how much territory in the meantime France was to annex
in the Netherlands. The French had also tried to win English support for their claims, but a new
ministry in England turned instead to an alliance with the Dutch and with Sweden. These allies
sought to contain the French advance by persuading Spain to agree to moderate terms and by
supporting Spain in war if this proved of no avail. The settlement envisaged was much the same
as that on which Louis XIV and the emperor had agreed, and so peace was soon concluded at Aixla-Chapelle in April 1668.”359 France gained some territory in Flanders, but nearly all of the
Spanish Netherlands, as well as the Franche-Comte, was returned to Spain. From a military
perspective, France had gained some advantages, by breaking through the ring of fortresses that
surrounded the Spanish Netherlands. In the following years, the French foreign policy became to
isolate the United Provinces in order to attack them at a convenient opportunity. 360
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(b) The Franco-Dutch War (1672-78): France and the United Provinces had been friends and
allies for a century since the 1560s but this was ended by the Triple Alliance of 1668, which the
Dutch signed with England and Sweden in support of Spain. “Louis now felt deeply betrayed by
the Dutch, and came to regard them as an obstacle to French expansion into the Spanish Netherlands. During the four years of peace following the War of Devolution, Louis prepared for war
against the United Provinces. Louis' first and primary objective was to gain the support of England.
England felt threatened by the growing naval power of the United Provinces.”361 After having
signed (1670) the secret Treaty of Dover with England against the Dutch, Louis mounted an
invasion of the Dutch Republic in May 1672 that was supported by the British navy. “The French
were able to quickly occupy three of the seven Dutch provinces, but then the Dutch opened the
dikes around Amsterdam, flooding a large area, and their army, under William III of Orange,
rallied behind this “Water Line.” By autumn William had begun land operations against the French
invaders. Meanwhile, the Dutch navy, under Admiral M.A. de Ruyter, managed to stave off
attacking English and French fleets in battles off Sole Bay in 1672 and off Ostend and Kijkduin
in 1673, each time frustrating an invasion of the republic. England then made peace with the Dutch
in the Treaty of Westminster of February 1674. In 1673 Spain, the Holy Roman emperor, and
Lorraine took the side of the Dutch against France, and so by the end of 1673 the French had been
driven out of the Dutch Republic. But from 1674 to 1678 the French armies, with Sweden as their
only effective ally, managed to advance steadily in the southern (Spanish) Netherlands and along
the Rhine, defeating the badly coordinated forces of the Grand Alliance with regularity. Eventually
the heavy financial burdens of the war, along with the imminent prospect of England’s reentry
into the conflict on the side of the Dutch, convinced Louis to make peace despite his advantageous
military position. The resulting Treaties of Nijmegen (1678–79) between France and the Grand
Alliance left the Dutch Republic intact and France aggrandized in the Spanish Netherlands.”362
(c) The War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97): The League was formed by Emperor
Leopold I to defend the Electorate of the Palatinate from France. After the Treaty of Den Haag
was signed on September 7, 1701, the war went into a second phase as the Alliance of the War of
Spanish Succession. “In this war, Bavaria and the Bourbon faction in Spain defected to the French
side. The War ended following the Tory political victory in 1710 in Britain which led to the Peace
of Utrecht - the peace with France which granted Spain's crown to the French candidate but divided
Spain's external territories. In Spain the war continued until it was decided by the Siege of
Barcelona, on September 11, 1714. The Grand Alliance gained cultural and political credibility
as an example of a possible European union. It was supported by (most of) the German territories,
Britain and the Netherlands, as well as by many French intellectuals who were disenchanted with
the absolutist rule of Louis XIV, as well as the eviction of the Huguenots in 1685 and the union
of Catholicism and the French crown at home. The end of the Grand Alliance was primarily due
to a growing dissatisfaction, amongst the British populace, with having to finance the wars abroad.
The Balance of Power doctrine eventually resulted, however, from the wars Britain proved to be
able to begin and to end on its own terms. The Grand Alliance also contributed to a new sense of
how wars would be fought in the future. After the War of the Spanish Succession, and arguably
War of the Austrian Succession, the old formulated system of alliance began to crumble. The rise
of Prussia, and the rise of British power, un-proportionally upset the balance of power.”363 The
Treaty of Ryswick ended the War in 1697; and Louis divided his enemies and broke their power
be manipulating their rivalries and suspicions. “Louis secured permanent French sovereignty over
all of Alsace, including Strasbourg, and established the Rhine as the Franco-German border to this
day. Pondichéry and Acadia were returned to France, and Louis's de facto possession of SaintDomingue was recognized as lawful. He returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions. 364
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(d) The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) was a major European conflict of the early
eighteenth century, triggered by the death in 1700 of the last Habsburg King of Spain, the infirm
and childless Charles II. “He had ruled over a large active empire which spanned the globe, and
the question of who would succeed him had long troubled ministers in capitals throughout Europe.
Attempts to solve the problem by partitioning the empire between the eligible candidates from the
royal Houses of France (Bourbon), Austria (Habsburg), and Bavaria (Wittelsbach) ultimately
failed, and on his deathbed Charles II fixed the entire Spanish inheritance on Philip, Duke of Anjou,
the second-eldest grandson of King Louis XIV of France. With Philip ruling in Spain, Louis XIV
would secure great advantages for his dynasty, but some statesmen regarded a dominant House of
Bourbon as a threat to European stability, jeopardizing the balance of power. Louis XIV had good
reasons for accepting his grandson on the Spanish thrones, but he subsequently made a series of
controversial moves: he sent troops to secure the Spanish Netherlands (the buffer zone between
France and the Dutch Republic); he sought to dominate the Spanish American trade at the expense
of English and Dutch merchants; and he refused to remove Philip from the French line of
succession, thereby opening the possibility of France and Spain uniting under a single powerful
monarch at a future date. To counter Louis XIV's growing dominance, England, the Dutch
Republic, and Austria – together with their allies in the Holy Roman Empire – re-formed the Grand
Alliance (1701) and supported Emperor Leopold I's claim to the whole Spanish inheritance for his
second son, Archduke Charles. By backing the Habsburg candidate (known to his supporters as
King Charles III of Spain) each member of the coalition sought to reduce the power of France,
ensure their own territorial and dynastic security, and restore and improve the trade opportunities
they had enjoyed under Charles II. The Russians, who were expected to help their Austrian allies,
were fighting another great war with Sweden that embroiled in Eastern Europe.”365
The war began with French successes, however the joint talents of John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy brought them a series of victories over France from 1704 to
1709. “A Franco-Bavarian offensive in Germany was smashed at Blenheim in 1704. The French
were then driven out of the Low Countries by the battles of Ramillies in 1706 and Oudenaarde in
1708. The French were also expelled from Italy after their attempted siege of Turin was broken
(September 7, 1706) by Eugene’s brilliant campaign. The only theatre of the land war in which
the alliance had no real success was Spain, where Philip V successfully maintained his position.
Louis XIV sought to end the war from 1708 and was willing to give up the Spanish inheritance to
the House of Habsburg. The British, however, insisted on the unrealistic demand that Louis use
his army to remove his own grandson from Spain. Louis refused, broke off negotiations, and
resumed the war. Two developments in 1711 altered the situation in favor of France. On April 17,
1711, Archduke Charles became heir to all the Austrian Habsburg possessions. Britain and the
Dutch had no intention of continuing the war in order to give him the Spanish inheritance as well
and thereby resurrect the old empire of Charles V. In Britain the enemies of Marlborough won
influence with the queen and had him removed from command on December 31, 1711. With the
collapse of the alliance, peace negotiations began in 1712. Because of the conflicts of interest
between the former allies, each dealt separately with France. The first group of treaties was signed
at Utrecht in April 1713. These and the later treaties of Rastatt and Baden ignored the will of
Charles II and divided his inheritance among the powers. Louis XIV’s grandson remained king
of Spain, but the treaties of Utrecht marked the rise of the power of Britain and the British colonial
empire at the expense of both France and Spain.”366 “With Germany and Italy providing the buffer
with France, the Austrian Habsburgs had maintained what was crucial to their security and
interests. Together with the recent Balkan conquests, Charles VI now ruled an extensive Habsburg
empire. Austria had confirmed its position as a major power.”367
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The Reforms of Jean Colbert: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) was Controller General of
Finance, successively took on nearly all the State functions. Regarded as a skillful administrator,
he was in charge of the development of trade, industry, the royal navy, the urban development of
Paris and the advance of science. In constant contact with the King, he remained one of his most
trusted advisors. “Born into a family involved in international relations since the 16th century, the
son of a textile merchant, Colbert entered the service of the State in 1640. A trusted friend of
Mazarin, he was appointed Minister by Louis XIV in 1661 and gradually took on nearly all the
State functions except for the Ministries of War and Foreign Affairs. Controller General of Finance,
then Secretary of State in the King’s House, Secretary of State for the Navy and Superintendent
of Buildings, Arts and Manufacture, he worked with the King five times per week and kept up a
regular correspondence with him. Colbert gave an unprecedented impetus to trade and developed
the kingdom’s influence around the world with the setting up of trading companies in the 1660s
and 1670s, such as the Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company). Two outstanding
results were the establishment of the trading post of Pondicherry in southern India and the French
presence in Nouvelle-France, the future Quebec. Also a builder, he worked on the embellishment
of Paris where he designed the laying out of numerous public squares and the Tuileries garden.
Attached to the sciences, Colbert was responsible for the establishment of the Academy of
Sciences and the Paris Observatory in 1667. In spite of a certain loss of influence at the end of his
career, Colbert never fell into disgrace. He was one of the rare men of whom Louis XIV was
always sure. He died in 1683 and was buried in the church of Saint-Eustache. His name lives on
in…colbertism, an economic theory involving strict state control and protectionism.”368
(a) Restructuring Royal Finance: Colbert had managed Mazarin’s affairs for the last decade;
he had been party to all the devices by which the minister had accumulated the largest personal
fortune ever seen in France. In 1661, Mazarin died; he made sure of the King's favor by revealing
the location of some of Mazarin's hidden wealth. He should accuse corruption of Nicolas Fouquet
who was the Superintendent of Finances during 1653-61; his corruption was punished by lifetime
imprisonment. He began to look into the ways of the financiers who collected taxes, supplied the
army with weapons, clothing, and food, advance loans to feudal lords or the national treasury.
“Sone of these bankers were as rich as kings; Samuel Bernard had 33 million livres. Many of
them infuriated the aristocracy by marrying into it. By buying or earning titles, and by living in
luxury unattainable mere pedigree. They charge up to eighteen percent for their loans, according
to the uncertainty of repayment. At Colbert’s request, the King set up a Chamber of Justice to
inquire into all financial malfeasance since 1635: as a matter of fact, it was a tribunal to clean up
the French government’s finances. “Colbert made the financial officials in France open their
records and provide a justification for all of the goods they owned, including their inheritances
and gifts given to their children. If the information were not given to the attorney general within
eight days, all of their goods and properties were to be confiscated. Informers were to be rewarded
with one-sixth of the fine given to anyone convicted of fraud, financial abuse, or embezzlement.
The disgrace of Foucquet was the signal for a major reckoning with the financiers he had
patronized, through the traditional means of a chamber de justice, which imposed fines to a total
of 156 million livres, besides confiscating the property of those found guilty of criminal offences.
In effect, much of the war debt was being written off, and the crown had to accept credits held
against its own future revenues as payment. Colbert wasn’t done. He then used the information
provided in those books to force the financiers to re-negotiate the lucrative loans they had provided
to the government. If the interest rates were excessively high, the interest already paid on the debts
was subtracted from the principal owed to them, and any remaining principal would be then paid
back by the government at much lower interest rates than before.”369
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“According to one of the justices on the Chamber of Justice, these financiers were forced to
write off 90 million livres of outstanding loans to the government, and paid another 20 million
livres in fines. Some 110 million livres was restored to the crown by these measures – some 4
years revenue. In addition, Colbert reduced the money that the government had to pay its creditors
every year. In addition, Colbert reduced the money that the government had to pay its creditors
every year, from more than 20 million livres in 1660 to about 7 million in 1670, and for a few
years (until wars with the Dutch broke out) he succeeded in balancing the budget.”
(b) Building up French Naval Power: “Between 1661 and 1677, the French navy grew from
6 or 8 old galleys and between 20 and 30 sailing vessels, which were mainly small and aged, to
199 ships, more than half of which carried from 24 to 120 guns each. In 1677 the navy boasted of
almost seven times more cannons than it had had in 1661. In the years 1689-97, the English
estimated that they had lost a total of 4,000 ships due to attacks by the French, including privateers.
The number of French sailors increased from 36,000 in 1670 to almost 78,000 in 1683. Colbert
was ruthless in the way he increased the number of French sailors. In the Mediterranean, the
French used galleys (large ships with many rowers). For the galleys, Colbert encouraged
magistrates to sentence common criminals to serve in them and had no scruple about making use
of other sources of manpower: political offenders, Protestants, and slaves seized from Africa and
Canada. He told local justices to make as many crimes as possible, punishable by service in the
galleys, and gave them the legal authorization to do this.”
(c) Five Great Farms and a Duty-Free Zone: “His famous tariff of 1664 reformed the customs
collected in the north-central portion of the country known as the Five Great Farms, and came
close to making this region a free-trade area. Before Colbert’s reforms, goods moving from Paris
to the English Channel, or from Switzerland to Paris, paid tolls at 16 places; goods moving from
Orléans to Nantes (a distance of 270 km/170 miles), paid tolls at 28 points. The numerous tolls
were a throwback to the Middle Ages, when each local region was ruled by its own duke or count,
and this was one of the ways that these aristocrats made money. Although the aristocracy profited
from these taxes, the nation itself was the loser as it made shipping goods out of one district, into
another, costly and time-consuming. Colbert, in 1664, substituted for this complicated system a
single import and export duty, making at the same time a considerable reduction in the overall
amount of duties to be paid. Yet, in spite of this reduction, the Treasury profited in the end. Trade
increased through the removal of vexatious restrictions, the tax-farmers made a larger profit, and
the State was the gainer by the natural increase in the amount offered for the farms.”
(d) Tariffs on Foreign Products: “And so prohibitive tariffs were raised, which were designed
to protect French industry by making foreign goods too expensive for French consumers to afford.
In 1664, Colbert increased protective tariffs (foreign merchants were charged 6% of the goods’
value, when importing them; French merchants the slightly lower rate of 3.5%). In 1667, he
doubled the tariffs on most imported goods. The Dutch, in the face of the massive tariffs of 1667,
decided to prohibit imports of French wine and cognac, and imposed 50% duties on French luxury
items, and 20% duties on French salt, although these measures were against treaty. War indeed
broke out between the French and the Dutch in 1672, and the 1678 Treaty of Nimwegen committed
the French to lowering their tariffs to their lower, 1664 levels. Even so, tariffs continued to be
raised through the years. An illustration of this is the fact that there were 22 items on all three tariff
schedules of 1664, 1698, and 1700. Averaging them into an index, with the tariffs of 1664 equaling
100, gives an index of 471 in 1698, and 177 in 1700 (after another long war was resolved). And
so we see that throughout the latter years of the 1600s, the French continued to raise tariffs.” In
1700, a council of commerce consisting of leading merchants in various cities almost all agreed
that the mercantilist system had ruined the markets for French products in other countries.370
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(e) Taxation: “Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. The principal
taxes included the aides and douanes (both customs duties), the gabelle (a tax on salt), and the
taille (a tax on land). The taille was reduced at first, financial officials were forced to keep regular
accounts, auctioning certain taxes instead of selling them privately to a favored few, revising
inventories and removing unauthorized exemptions (for example in 1661 only 10 per cent from
the royal domain reached the King). Reform proved difficult because the taille was levied by
officers of the Crown who had purchased their post at a high price: punishment of abuses
necessarily lowered the value of the post. Nevertheless excellent results were achieved, the deficit
of 1661 turned into a surplus in 1666.” For example, “Colbert insisted on putting the tax-collecting
contracts up for bid. The results were impressive. In 1661, under the administration of Fouquet,
the collectors of the salt tax gathered 14,750,000 livres from the taxpayers - and out of that, only
1,399,000 livres reached the government. The first lease of Colbert was for 13,500,000 (meaning
less was collected from the public), yet the treasury brought in 4,566,950 - quite a bit more than
under Fouquet. In 1664 (after the salt tax had been reduced), the government still brought in
7,830,000 livres.”371 Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to bolster French commerce
and trade. “Colbert's mercantilist administration established new industries and encouraged
manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Gobelins manufactory,
a producer of tapestries. He invited manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe to France,
such as Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers, and Dutch shipbuilders. In this way, he aimed
to decrease foreign imports while increasing French exports, hence reducing the net outflow of
precious metals from France.”372 However, since the nobles and the clerics were exempted from
the taille and the gabelle, the allotted sum of taxes to each district fell upon the third estate.
(f) The Cost of War: “The ultimate objection ot Louis XIV’s foreign policy is not just that it
was immoral, nor that it brought death or misery to millions of people, but that the potential gains
were never worth the risk involved, let alone the eventual cost…most of Louis’s wars seem almost
gratuitous; the partial exception is the War of the Spanish Succession, a conflict which more
supple diplomacy should have been able to prevent or limit. The financial consequences for the
monarchy were shattering, yet this did not mean the France as a whole was a ruined country at the
end of the reign. Great though the hardships had been, recovery was remarkably quick; not even
Louis XIV could impose sufferings on his people to compare with those of the great winner of
1708-9, or destroy agricultural wealth on the scale achieved by the great bovine epidemic of 1714.
The French peasantry somehow absorbed the savage blows of royal fiscality and natural disasters,
kept the land under cultivation, and maintained the flow of wealth which supported monarchy and
privileged orders alike. The tax demands of the 1700s may have led to the partial abandonment
of some villages, and to a resurgence of violent resistance, but they were probably less damaging
to the social order than the expedients used by the controleur general Pontchartrain in the 1690s.
Potentially, a great minister, he was forced to waste his talents on the introduction of a singular
range of abuses, including debasement of the currency and the wide spread sale of offices, titles
of nobility, and tax exemptions…All these devices, along with massive borrowing and periodic
defaulting on interest payments, were still insufficient to cover military expenditure; the harvest
crisis of 1693-4 made the position dramatically worse, compelling a new initiative. At last crown
taxed the rich, through the capitation tax of 1695; levied on a crude sliding scale…The issue of
paper money resulted in the predictable debacle…The gabelle and other indirect taxes rose to
unprecedented levels, accompanied by a massive increase in smuggling and other forms of
evasion.” From various forms of exaction, the most important resistance, one of popular revolts,
came from the Huguenots of the Cevernnes: the revolt of the Camisards (1702-5). Louis XIV
reflected the inevitable time-lag to the changing world – ideology of enlightenment.373
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The Growth of Religious and Political Opposition: (a) Gallicanism: Louis XIV inherited
the Gallican tradition – the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) and the Concordat of Francis I
(1516) – “which had established the right of French kings to appoint the bishops and abbots of
France, to determine their income, and to appoint to all benefices in a diocese between the death
of its bishop and the installation of his successor. Louis held that he was the vicar or representative
of God in France, that his submission to the pope (as also a divine viceroy) should be limited to
matters of faith and morals, and that the French clergy should obey that king in all matters affecting
the French state. A part of the French clergy – the Ultramontanes – repudiated these claims, and
upheld the absolute authority of the popes over kings, councils, and episcopal nominations; but
the majority – the Gallicans – defended the full independence of the king in temporal affairs,
denied the infallibility of the pope except in agreement with an ecumenical council, and saw an
advantage to the French clergy in evading the dominance of Rome.” The King convoked an
assembly of clergy, nearly all chosen by him. In March 1682, it reaffirmed the Six Articles of the
Sorbonne, and drew up for the assembly the famous Four Articles that almost divorced the French
Church from Rome. (i) The pope has jurisdiction in spiritual concerns, and has no authority to
depose princes or release their subjects from obedience. (ii) Ecumenical councils are above the
pope in authority. (iii) The traditional liberties of the French Church are inviolable. (iv) The pope
is infallible only when in accord with the council of bishops. In 1693 Pope Innocent XII
recognized the royal right over episcopal nominations.374
(b) The Jansenists and the Jesuits: Jansenism was a religious movement appeared in France,
the Low Countries, and Italy. In France it became connected with the struggle against the papacy
by proponents of Gallicanism and with opposition to the monarchical absolutism. The chief
initiator, Cornelis Jansen (1585-4638), was a Dutchman, entered the Catholic University of
Louvain in 1602, where he found a violent controversy between the Jesuit and a faction following
the Augustinian views on predestination and divine grace. Inclining to the studies of St. Paul and
St. Augustine, Jansen agreed “that the best way of defending Catholicism against the Dutch
Calvinists and the French Huguenots was to follow the Augustinian emphasis on grace and
predestination, and to establish in the Catholoic clergy and laity a rigorous moral code that would
shame current laxity in court and convent, and the easygoing ethic of the Jesuits.” In 1616 Jansen,
as head of Dutch students at Louvain, attacked the Jesuit theology of free will, and preached a
mystical puritanism akin to the Pietism that was taking from in Holland, England, and Germany.
He continued the war as professor of Scriptural exegesis at Louvain, and as bishop of Ypres.
“Jansen’s views were published posthumously in 1640 in his Augustinus, a vast treatise defending
the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and attacking certain teachings and practices
associated especially with the Jesuit order.” “Like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, Jansen fully
accepted predestinarianism: God, even before the creation of the world, had chosen those men and
women who should be saved, and had determined who should be damned; the good works of men,
though precious, could never earn salvation without the aid of divine grace; and even among the
good minority only a few would be saved…But man’s will is not free, said Jansen; it lost its
freedom by Adam’s sin; man’s nature is now corrupt beyond self-redemption; and only God’s
grace, earned by Christ’s death, can save him.” His Augustinus was accused by the Jesuits, but
was “defended by such disciples as Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint-Cyran; the nuns
of the celebrated Cistercian convent of Port-Royal des Champs; Antoine Arnauld, who became
leader of the Jansenist movement; and Pasquier Quesnel, who organized the Jansenist group into
a political party at the end of the 17th century. It also attracted such influential figures in French
society as the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal and the dramatist Jean Racine.”375 Up
until the French Revolution, Jansenism would live on has a political force in France. 376
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(c) The King and the Huguenots: Historically, Huguenots were French Protestants inspired
by the writings of John Calvin in the 1530s, and their majority endorsed the Reformed tradition of
Protestantism. “Huguenot numbers peaked near an estimated two million by 1562, concentrated
mainly in the southern and central parts of France, about one-eighth the number of French
Catholics. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility
grew, in spite of increasingly liberal political concessions and edicts of toleration from the French
crown. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the Wars of Religion, fought
intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The wars finally ended with the granting of the Edict of Nantes,
which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy. Renewed
religious warfare in the 1620s caused the political and military privileges of the Huguenots to be
abolished following their defeat. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until
the rule of Louis XIV, who progressively increased persecution of them until he issued the Edict
of Fontainebleau (1685), which abolished all legal recognition of Protestantism in France, and
forced the Huguenots to convert. While nearly three-quarters eventually were killed or submitted,
roughly 500,000 Huguenots had fled France by the early 18th century. The bulk of Huguenot
émigrés relocated to Protestant European nations such as England, Wales, Scotland, Denmark,
Sweden, Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Brandenburg and Electorate of the
Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Prussia, the Channel Islands, and Ireland.
They also spread beyond the Old World to the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa, the Dutch East
Indies, the Caribbean, and several of the English colonies of North America, where they were
accepted and allowed to worship freely. Persecution of Protestants diminished in France after the
death of Louis XIV in 1715, and officially ended with the Edict of Versailles” in 1787.377
Exodus: Most French Huguenots were either unable or unwilling to emigrate to avoid forced
conversion to Catholicism. More than three-quarters of the Protestant population accepted the
change in faith; some 500,000 fled in exodus. (i) The Netherlands: The first Huguenots to leave
France sought freedom from persecution in Switzerland and the Netherlands. “The Dutch Republic
rapidly became a destination for Huguenot exiles. The ties between Huguenots and the Dutch
Republic's military and political leadership, the House of Orange-Nassau, which existed since the
early days of the Dutch Revolt, helped support the many early settlements of Huguenots in the
Dutch Republic's colonies” such as in the Cape of Good Hope. (ii) England: Both before and after
the 1708 passage of the Foreign Protestants Naturalization Act, nearly 50,000 Protestant Walloons
and Huguenots fled to England, with many moving on to Ireland and elsewhere. (iii) Germany and
Scandinavia: “Around 1685, Huguenot refugees found a safe haven in the Lutheran and Reformed
states in Germany and Scandinavia. Nearly 50,000 Huguenots established them-selves in
Germany, 20,000 of whom were welcomed in Brandenburg-Prussia.” (iv) South America: “A
group of Huguenots was part of the French colonizers who arrived in Brazil in 1555 to found
France Antarctique. A couple of ships with around 500 people arrived at the Guanabara Bay,
present-day Rio de Janeiro, and settled in a small island…Fort Coligny was built to protect them
from attack from the Portuguese troops and Brazilian Native Americans. It was an attempt to
establish a French colony in South America. The fort was destroyed in 1560 by the Portuguese,
who captured part of the Huguenots.” (v) North America: “In 1562, naval officer Jean Ribault led
an expedition that explored Florida and the present-day Southeastern U.S., and founded the
outpost of Charlesfort on Parris Island, South Carolina. The Wars of Religion precluded a return
voyage, and the outpost was abandoned. In 1564, Ribault's former lieutenant René Goulaine de
Laudonnière launched a second voyage to build a colony; he established Fort Caroline in what is
now Jacksonville, Florida.” In 1565 the Spanish established the settlement of St. Augustine near
Fort Caroline, and routed the French and executed most of the Protestant captives. 378
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The Netherlands, Spain, Prussia, and Austria: (a) The Spanish Netherlands (1579-1713):
included the Spanish-held provinces located in the southern part of the Low Countries (roughly
corresponding to present Belgium and Luxembourg). (i) Charles V: “Philip as well as his son and
successor Charles V retained the title of a Duke of Burgundy referring to their Burgundian
inheritance, notably the Low Countries and the Free County of Burgundy in the Holy Roman
Empire. The Habsburgs often used the term Burgundy to refer to their hereditary lands, actually
until 1795, when the Austrian Netherlands were lost to the French Republic. In 1522 Emperor
Charles V concluded a partition treaty with his younger brother Archduke Ferdinand I of Habsburg,
whereby the House of Habsburg split into an Austrian and a Spanish branch. By the Pragmatic
Sanction of 1549, Charles declared the Seventeen Provinces a united and un-divisible Habsburg
dominion. The division was consummated when he resignedly announced his abdication and left
the Spanish branch heritage to his only surviving son Philip II of Spain, while his brother
Ferdinand succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor. The Seventeen Provinces, de jure still fiefs of
the Holy Roman Empire, from that time on de facto were ruled by the Spanish branch of the
Habsburgs as part of the Burgundian heritage.”379
(ii) “Philip's despotism and his stern Counter-Reformation measures sparked the Dutch Revolt
in the mainly Calvinist Netherlandish provinces, which led to the outbreak of the Eighty Years'
War in 1568. In January 1579 the seven northern provinces formed the Protestant Union of Utrecht,
which declared independence from the so called Spanish branch of the Habsburgs as the Republic
of the Seven United Netherlands by the 1581 Act of Abjuration. The Spanish branch of the
Habsburgs could only retain the rule over the partly Catholic Southern Netherlands, completed
after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585. Better times came, when in 1598 the Spanish Netherlands passed
to Philip's daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia and her husband Archduke Albert VII of
Austria…Under Isabella and Albert, the Spanish Netherlands actually had formal independence
from Spain, but always remained unofficially within the Spanish sphere of influence, and with
Albert's death in 1621 they returned to formal Spanish control, although childless Isabella
remained on as Governor until her death in 1633. The failing wars intended to regain the 'heretical'
northern Netherlands meant significant loss of (still mainly Catholic) territories in the north, which
was consolidated in 1648 in the Peace of Westphalia, and given the peculiar, inferior status of
Generality Lands (jointly ruled by the United Republic, not admitted as member provinces):
Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, the present Dutch province of Noord-Brabant and Maastricht.”380
(iii) French Conquest: “As Spanish branch of the Habsburg power waned in the latter decades
of the 17th century, the territory of the Netherlands under Habsburg rule was repeatedly invaded
by the French and an increasing portion of the territory came under French control in successive
wars. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659 the French annexed Artois and Cambrai, and Dunkirk
was ceded to the English. By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (ending the War of Devolution in 1668)
and Nijmegen (ending the Franco-Dutch War in 1678), further territory up to the current FrancoBelgian border was ceded, including Lilloise Flanders (around the city of Lille), as well as half of
the county of Hainaut (including Valenciennes). Later, in the War of the Reunions and the Nine
Years' War, France annexed other parts of the region. During the War of the Spanish Succession,
in 1706 the Habsburg Netherlands became an Anglo-Dutch condominium for the remainder of the
conflict. By the peace treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713/14 ending the war, the Southern
Netherlands fell back to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy forming the Austrian Netherlands.”
Despite the warfare and confusion, the Spanish Netherlands experienced a resurgence of economic
and intellectual growth in the early 17th century. “The linen industry quickly recovered from the
Spanish reconquest and soon surpassed its former production levels…Agriculture advanced
through the digging of canals and the introduction of new crops and harvesting methods.”381
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(iv) The Republic: The United Provinces was formed by the seven northern provinces of the
Netherlands in 1581 as a result of revolt against Spanish rule under the leadership of William I of
Orange. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 recognized the Dutch Republic as a new state. While
the house of Orange occupied the stadholderate in most of seven provinces, the State General was
formed as an assembly by representatives from every province. Among all provinces, Holland
was the largest and richest one, and exercised the greatest influence in the assembly, which was
actually controlled by oligarchy of wealthy merchants and financiers. In 1650, William II of
Orange established his supreme authority as stadholder and captain general by a coup de-tat, but
died of smallpox in the same year. A week later, William III of Orange (1672-1702) was born by
his widow, Mary Stuart. On the other hand, the expansion of rich trades restructured industry and
commerce for exports to overseas markets. Amsterdam was prosperous because its merchants
possessed vast fleets of ships for fishing and transportation; it was a major manufacturing basis,
chief trading center and a principal supplier of military goods; and it became a largest financial
center providing necessary capital for investment. The population of the principal cities rose
during 1648-72, and urban industrial work forces increased until early eighteenth century. The
influx of Huguenots and migration from the southern Netherlands were the additional sources of
labor. Wages were extremely high by comparing with neighboring countries. The Republic did
not require the noble status in politics, and new nobles were not created, so that the number of
noble families declined. Regarding religion, thought, or life-style, the Dutch Republic was a freer
and more flexible society after 1630. Although the Calvinist church remained official one, other
religions were tolerated if they worshiped in private, so Catholics, other Protestants, and even
Jewish communities felt free in the Republic. The United Provinces was safe for refugees: the
royalists sought safety under Cromwell, and republicans did the same under Charles II.
(b) Spain: Philip III (1598-1621) succeeded his father’s throne with empty treasury. He was
not interested in daily business of politics by leaving it to his chief council, the duke of Lerma,
whose primary interest was in accumulating power and wealth for himself and his family. Philip
was against England and arranged double marriages with France. In 1609, Spain expelled all
remaining Moriscos of 300,000 to North Africa, which caused immediate economic catastrophe.
Many problems remained in the inefficient government, outdated military, suppressed peasants
with weak industry and commerce, luxurious nobles, and oversupply of priests and monks. As the
income gap between rich and poor extremely widened, the middle class disappeared. Philip IV
(1621-65) gave hope for reformation led by his chief council Gaspar de Guzman, a count of
Olibares, who aimed at curtailing power of the church and landed aristocracy toward absolute
monarchy. But he was little successful because of the number and power of nobles. A series of
revolts in the 1630s brought the downfall of Olibares and a victory of conservatism. As Spain
involved in the Thirty Years’ War, the revolts exploded in Catalonia and Portugal in 1640 and
Naples in 1647, which forced Spain to accept the peace treaties of Westphalia and Pyrenees: the
United Provinces became the Dutch Republic, and Artois and the Catalan province went to France.
Charles II (1665-1700) succeeded the throne at age four under the regency of Queen Mariana.
Though Spain restricted itself to the Mediterranean, both the Dutch War and the Nine Years War
started by France forced Spain to commit and consequently to lose her lands. The Portuguese
acquired independence from Spain by 1668. In 1700, Charles II left his throne to the grandson of
Louis XIV, which caused the War of the Spanish Succession. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713
confirmed the succession of Philip V as the king of Spain, but ceded the Netherlands to the
emperor, Sicily to Savoy, Gibraltar and Minorca to England; and by the Peace of Rastatt in 1714,
Spain gave all possession in Italy to the emperor. Ferdinand and Isabella opened the golden age
of Spain, but their successors failed to maintain the rich inheritance.
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(c) Prussia: The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 left German states free from the Holy Roman
Empire. The House of Hohenzollern had ruled the principality of Brandenburg since 1417. In
1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet branch of the House of
Hohenzollern, became a Lutheran Protestant and secularized the Order's remaining Prussian
territories into the Duchy of Prussia. Brandenburg and Prussia were unified two generations later.
Anna, granddaughter of Albert I and daughter of Duke Albert Frederick (reigned 1568–1618),
married her cousin Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg…The resulting state, known as
Brandenburg-Prussia, consisted of geographically disconnected territories in Prussia, Brandenburg, and the Rhineland lands of Cleves and Mark. During the Thirty Years' War, the disconnected
Hohenzollern lands were repeatedly marched across by various armies, especially the occupying
Swedes. The ineffective and militarily weak Margrave George William (1619–1640) fled from
Berlin to Königsberg, the historic capital of the Duchy of Prussia, in 1637. His successor,
Frederick William I (1640–1688), reformed the army to defend the lands. Frederick William I
went to Warsaw in 1641 to render homage to King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland for the Duchy
of Prussia, which was still held in fief from the Polish crown. Receiving eastern Pomerania by the
Peace of Westphalia, Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-88) built the first standing army
in Europe with 18,000 men by 1656 which was increased up to 40,000 by 1678 for war. He
established the General War Commissariat for recruiting, provisioning, and quartering of the army;
exempted the nobles from direct taxation, and required their sons to serve him as Junker in the
high rank of the army as well as the civil administration. Giving religious freedom, he invited
20,000 of refugees of French Huguenots. He improved the postal system, promoted agriculture,
and controlled exports and imports with mercantilistic policies: he made the solid foundation for
the Prussian state. His son Frederick III (1688-1713) aided the emperor in the War of the Spanish
Succession, and in return received the title of the king from him, as King Frederick I of Prussia.382
(d) Austria: Leopold I (1658-1705) of Austria extended the Habsburg possessions, created an
imperial standing army, and consolidated the Austrian administration. “In the course of the long
struggle with France, the empire scored several military successes; but in the end French
diplomacy remained victorious, always dividing the enemy at the decisive moment. The Emperor
was accused of a wavering attitude and lack of initiative, and these character traits were indeed
partly responsible for the failure of his policies. The war ended in the unfavorable Treaty of
Rijswijk (1697), under the terms of which Strasbourg had to be ceded to France, a great discredit
to Leopold. Leopold no longer regarded the empire as his primary responsibility; rather, in his
view, concern for the power and prestige of the Habsburg dynasty and lands took the first place.
From the outset the Spanish succession formed the central aim of his politics. What lay behind
this was the idea of the unity of the House of Habsburg, the two lines being considered only as
parts of the same entail. At the death (1700) of the childless Charles II of Spain, his throne and the
vast Spanish holdings passed by bequest to Philippe, duc d’Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV of
France. There could be no question for Emperor Leopold that the Spanish heritage had to be
defended by force of arms. In the middle of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), Leopold
died.”383 Meanwhile, as the Turks seized Vienna in 1683, the combined forces of the Austrians,
Saxons, Bavarians, and Poles rescued the city. Defeating the Turks, Austria controlled Hungary,
Transylvania, Croatia, and Slovenia by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The Austrian empire
remained strong, while the Habsburg emperor secured hereditary archduke of Austria, king of
Bohemia, and king of Hungary. Although Spain had dominated Italy since 1559 except Florence,
the Papal States, and Venice; the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 rewarded Austria, as a victor of the
War of the Spanish Succession, gaining most of Spanish possessions in Italy including Milan,
Mantua, Sardinia, and Naples; becoming a new rising power in Europe.
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4-2. England: The Great Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution
The Changing Economy: The medieval economy was based on the feudal system. In England,
two economic developments cut the roots of feudalism: one was the growth of the gentry, the
untitled owners of minor estates, who, on the land, ranked between the titled nobility and the
yeomanry, or peasant proprietors; and the other was the growing wealth of the bourgeoisie bankers, merchants, manufactures, lawyers, physicians – and its demand for political representtation commensurate with its economic power. “These revolutionary factors had no common
interest; they collaborated only in the attempt to check the pedigreed landlords, the snobbish court,
and a king who considered a hereditary aristocracy the necessary source of economic and political
order and stability.” War with France raised taxes and disrupted exports, bad harvest in1629-30
inflated prices to the verge of starvation, resulting in depression in economy. Those problems
with religious problems drove many English families to America, and plunged England into a civil
war that changed the destiny of the nation. “The class war became also a conflict of regions and
moral codes. The north was overwhelmingly agricultural and largely Catholic, however, however
clandestinely; London and the south were increasingly industrial and Protestant. The new business
class, while cherishing its monopolies and protective tariffs, demanded a free economy, in which
wages and prices would be determined by the supply of labor and goods; in which there would be
no feudal or government control of production, distribution, profit, or property; and in which no
stigma would be attached to commercial occupations, the charging of interest, or the manipulation
of wealth…The barons protested that the new mercantile economy, producing for a national or
international market, was disrupting class relations and social stability. They felt their won
solvency threatened by the effects of inflation on the value of the traditional dues, rents, or taxes
upon which they depended.” They dreaded the power of mercantile London, which was able to
finance an army and a revolution with a population of 300,000 out of 5 million. 384
The Religious Caldron: The tension of Protestants was divided into Anglicans, Presbyterians,
and Puritans; and of Puritans into Independents who dreamed of a republic, Quakers who opposed
war, violence, and oaths, Millenarians who believed that Jesus would soon come to establish His
personal rule on earth, Antinomians who argued that the elect of God were exempt from human
laws, and more sects. It was said that multitudes had changed their faith either to Skepticism or
Atheism, to believe nothing. A large number of doubters denied hell and the divinity of Christ.
“A growing number of thinkers, who came to be called deists, sought a compromise between
skepticism and religion by proposing a Christianity confined to the belief in God and immortality.”
Parliament was more worried about Catholicism than about heresy. “In 1634, the Catholics in
England were probably a quarter of the population, and, despite all laws and perils, there were still
some 335 Jesuits there. Prominent nobles accepted the old faith.” The Anglican creed and worship
were legally compulsory; even the Thirty-nine Articles were made law of the land in 1628.
“Puritans were blocked from changing the established church from within and were severely
restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion.” Politically, the Puritans aspired
to a democratic theocracy in which there would be none but moral and religious distinctions among
men, no ruler but Christ, no law but God’s Word. They resented the heavy taxes that supported
the Anglican Church; their businessmen felt themselves milked by that expensive and superior
Establishment…The Puritans defended wealth, but scorned the idle luxury of the nobility. They
carried morality to excess, as later ages carried liberty; but perhaps their inhuman code was a
necessary corrective to the loose moral of Elizabethan England. They produced some of the
strongest characters in history – Cromwell and Milton, and the men who conquered the American
wilderness,” transferring parliamentary government and trial by jury. 385
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The Great Rebellion: Charles I (1625-49) was born in 1600 as the second surviving son of
James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, and king of England in March 1603. He became
lonely when his elder brother Henry died (1612) and his sister left England in 1613 to marry
Frederick V, elector of the Rhine Palatinate. From his father, he acquired a stubborn belief that
kings are intended by God to rule so unable to understand political deceits. “In March 1625,
Charles I became king and married Henrietta Maria soon afterward. When his first Parliament met
in June, trouble immediately arose because of the general distrust of Buckingham, who had
retained his ascendancy over the new king. The Spanish war was proving a failure and Charles
offered Parliament no explanations of his foreign policy or its costs. Moreover, the Puritans,
advocating extemporaneous prayer and preaching in the Church of England, predominated in the
House of Commons, whereas the sympathies of the king were with what came to be known as the
High Church Party, which stressed the value of the prayer book and the maintenance of ritual. As
thus antagonism soon arose between the new king and the Commons, Parliament refused to vote
him the right to levy tonnage and poundage (customs duties) except on conditions that increased
its powers, though this right had been granted to previous monarchs for life.”386
In fact, as the population increased, the economy became prosperous, and the numbers of
wealthy families increased. They were able to purchase huge quantities of landed properties
through a series of massive sales of the confiscated church lands from the crown. They formed
the gentry class ranked between the nobility and the yeomanry, while the nobility declined by
selling lands to keep their life-style. The new rich families sent their children for higher education
at the universities and the Inns of Court, which produced professional leaders of society: lawyers,
physicians, manufacturers, merchants, and bankers. The landed wealth and professional capacity
expedited social mobility, and the descendants of the gentry became to hold the major professional
positions of society. Many of the gentry became the Puritans as a self-conscious political force,
following Calvinism within the Anglican Church, who wanted James to eliminate the Episcopal
system of the church supporting monarchical authority, but the king refused. In 1625 the House
of Commons consisted of five hundred men, among which the three fourths were from the Puritans,
who were against the Catholic and absolute authority. The opposition forces were amplified by
an ideology of the common law giving a belief that Parliament was the guardian of the constitution,
and an ideology of the country gave in increased sense of national identity.
His third Parliament met in March 1628, when Buckingham’s expedition to aid the French
Protestants at La Rochelle had been decisively repelled and the king’s government was thoroughly
discredited. “The House of Commons at once passed resolutions condemning arbitrary taxation
and arbitrary imprisonment and then set out its complaints in the Petition of Right, which sought
recognition of four principles - no taxes without consent of Parliament; no imprisonment without
cause; no quartering of soldiers on subjects; no martial law in peacetime. The king, despite his
efforts to avoid approving this petition, was compelled to give his formal consent. By the time the
fourth Parliament met in January 1629, Buckingham had been assassinated. The House of
Commons now objected both to what it called the revival of popish practices in the churches and
to the levying of tonnage and poundage by the king’s officers without its consent. The king ordered
the adjournment of Parliament on March 2, 1629, but before that the speaker was held down in his
chair and three resolutions were passed condemning the king’s conduct. Charles realized that such
behavior was revolutionary. For the next 11 years he ruled…without calling a Parliament. In order
that he might no longer be dependent upon parliamentary grants, he now made peace with both
France and Spain, for, although the royal debt amounted to more than £1,000,000, the proceeds of
the customs duties at a time of expanding trade and the exaction of traditional crown dues
combined to produce a revenue that was just adequate in time of peace.”387
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Charles misunderstood the environmental changes. The king had no instruments to enforce
his will without standing army and local bureaucracy. The decline of the aristocracy and the
corresponding rise of the gentry class created political self-confidence in the House of Commons
as the representatives of a country ideology. The diffusion of Puritanism demanded change for
church and eventually for the state to protect the rights of the people. When the Scots rose up
against Charles’ pro-Catholic policies by taking possession of northern England in 1640, the king
summoned the Long Parliament which lasted until 1660. By the summer 1641, the united
opposition of Parliament had achieved all objectives of removing authority from the crown of the
powers of taxation without consent and of arrest without trial; and abolished the main organs of
central government, so that the king became powerless. In September 1641, the outbreak of Irish
revolts threatened Parliament. As Parliament split into mild and radical opposition groups in early
1642, Charles sent three hundred soldiers to arrest five leading members of the radical group,
although armed invasion of Parliament was illegal. This intensified the untrustworthy of the king
who might kill the opposite if he recovered his power. The Parliament reorganized all armed
forces to be ready for the Civil War (1642-46), created a Committee of Public Safety, and ordered
Oliver Cromwell to organize the New Model Army, while the Scots joined the war on Parliament’s
side. The Civil War involved three nations with four faiths. When the Parliamental army won the
war, Charles surrendered himself to the Scots, who transferred the captured king to the English
Parliament in 1646. Now the Parliament split into two camps: a Presbyterian majority wanted to
restore Charles by disbanding the army, but the radical Independents opposed to them, and
marched to London to negotiate with the king. As Charles escaped and prepared for another
rebellion, Cromwell crushed the royalist army, and captured the king. The Parliament purged its
Presbyterian members and tried Charles I who was finally beheaded in January 1649, which
destroyed the monarchy and ended the first great revolution in English history.
The Social Revolt: On May 1649. The Commons officially established the English republic:
“England shall hereafter be governed as a Common wealth, or Free State, by the supreme authority
of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint
and constitute as ministers under them for the good of the people.” The new government had
faced three revolts. To meet the expenses of the government, the Rump Parliament levied taxes
lavishly as the late King. It proposed to confiscate the property of all who had borne arms for
Charles, but it compromised by taking a fine equal to a part of the capital value of the estate (from
one-tenth to one-half). Many young nobles facing impoverishment migrated to America and
founded aristocratic families. Some royalist leaders were executed, some were imprisoned. The
Council of State met the movement with widespread and efficient espionage, and arrested their
leaders organizing the revolt. There were numerous radical pamphlets: Colonel John Lilburne
attacked Cromwell as a tyrant, an apostate, a hypocrite; another pamphleteer asked: “We were
ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by a General, Court Martial, and Commons; and
we pray you, what is the difference?” Some went beyond democracy to call for a more equal
distribution of goods. Gerrard Winstanley388 wrote in The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced of
1649 that “In the beginning the great Creator Reason made the earth a common treasury for beasts
and men, but then man, falling into blindness, became a greater salve to his own kind than the
beasts of the field to him; the earth was bought and sold and hedged in by rulers, and was kept in
the possession of a few. All landlords are thieves. Only when common ownership is restored,
will crime and hatred ceased.” In The Law of Freedom, “Winstanley begged the Commonwealth
to establish a society in which there would be no buying or selling, no lawyers, no rich or poor;
all to be compelled to work till forty, then to be absolved from toil; the franchise to be open to all
adult males; marriage to be a civil ceremony, and divorce to be free.”389
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Oliver Cromwell (1649-1658): “Born into the middle gentry, albeit to a family descended
from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell, Cromwell was relatively obscure
for the first 40 years of his life. After undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, he became
an independent puritan, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his
period. An intensely religious man - a self-styled Puritan Moses - he fervently believed that God
was guiding his victories. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for
Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640–49) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil
War on the side of the Roundheads or Parliamentarians…he was quickly promoted from leading
a single cavalry troop to become one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army,
playing an important role in the defeat of the royalist forces. Cromwell was one of the signatories
of King Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and, as a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–53),
he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England. He was selected to take command of
the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–50. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and
Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country – bringing to an end the Irish Confederate
Wars. During this period a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics, and a
substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the
Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. On 20 April 1653, he dismissed the Rump Parliament by
force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, before being
invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
from 16 December 1653. As a ruler he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. After
his death from natural causes in 1658 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, but after the Royalists
returned to power in 1660 they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.”390
(a) The Irish Campaign (1949-50): “Since the Irish Rebellion of 1641, most of Ireland had
been under the control of the Irish Catholic Confederation. In early 1649 the Confederates allied
with the English Royalists, who had been defeated by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil
War. By May 1652, Cromwell's Parliamentarian army had defeated the Confederate and Royalist
coalition in Ireland and occupied the country - bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars (or
Eleven Years' War). However, guerrilla warfare continued for a further year. Cromwell passed a
series of Penal Laws against Roman Catholics (the vast majority of the population) and confiscated
large amounts of their land. The Parliamentarian reconquest of Ireland was brutal, and Cromwell
is still a hated figure in Ireland. The extent to which Cromwell, who was in direct command for
the first year of the campaign, was responsible for the atrocities is debated to this day. Some
historians argue that the actions of Cromwell were within the then-accepted rules of war, or were
exaggerated or distorted by later propagandists; these claims have been challenged by others. The
impact of the war on the Irish population was unquestionably severe, although there is no
consensus as to the magnitude of the loss of life. The war resulted in famine, which was worsened
by an outbreak of bubonic plague.”391 William Petty calculated that out of a total population of
1,466,000 in Ireland in 1641; 616,000 (42%) had perished by 1652, by war, starvation or plague.
An English officer said that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature,
either man or beast or bird. Another said that the sun never shines upon a nation so completely
miserable. “The Catholic religion was outlawed; all Catholic clergymen were ordered to leave
Ireland within twenty days; to harbor a priest was made punishable by death; severe penalties were
decreed for absence from Protestant services on Sunday; magistrates were authorized to take away
the children of Catholics and send them to England for education in the Protestant faith.” “All the
inhumanity visited by the Catholics upon the Protestants of France in 1680-90 was visited by
Protestants upon the Catholics of Ireland in 1650-60.” Catholicism became an inseparable part of
Irish patriotism because of common suffering, which memory remained forever. 392
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(b) Scottish Campaign (1650-51): “The Scots mobilized an army to press his claims, but in
June 1650 Cromwell decided on a preemptive strike and led the army of the English Republic
toward Edinburgh. He soon laid siege to the city, but in August torrential rain, shortage of food,
and the proximity of the Scottish army under David Leslie in a strongly fortified camp forced the
English to retreat eastward to the port city of Dunbar. There, Cromwell found an English flotilla
that supplied his troops with tents and provisions; Leslie, meanwhile, moved his troops to a
commanding position on a hill overlooking Dunbar, pinning Cromwell down. On September 2,
the Scots moved down the hill in preparation for an all-out attack. Cromwell’s practiced eye
immediately spotted two weaknesses in the Scottish troop deployment. First, the Scottish left wing
was crowded against a steep slope that prevented maneuvering; second, a slight depression created
some dead ground, or a natural trench, in front of Leslie’s position that enabled Cromwell’s troops
to redeploy under cover…Cromwell launched his attack. The battle was over in an hour—fewer
than 100 Englishmen perished, against some 3,000 Scots killed and about 10,000 made prisoners.
Southern Scotland now surrendered to the English, who abolished all native institutions of
government and created a new administration at Dalkeith, just outside Edinburgh, to rule the
conquered territory. Within two years, the Scottish Highlands and Islands had also been brought
under English control. For the first time, England, Scotland, and Ireland became part of a single
state, a republic ruled by a single government (in London) that sent elected representatives to a
single parliament (in Westminster). This integration depended entirely on force, however - 10,000
English troops occupied Scotland. The return of Charles II in 1660, two years after Cromwell’s
death and 10 years after Dunbar, led to the demobilization of the Republican Army and the
restoration of separate governments in Edinburgh and Dublin.”393
(c) The Three Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-74): In 1651, the English Parliament passed the
Navigation Act, and her navy and privateers interfered Dutch shipping on the high seas. (i) The
first Anglo-Dutch War (1652-54) started when the English seized seventy Dutch merchants found
in English waters. The war resulted in heavy loss of merchant vessels and caused catastrophic
slump in the Republic, but the Dutch blocked English trade in the Baltic and trapped English fleet
in the Mediterranean, East Indies, and North Sea; which forced the English to settle peace without
any gains. (ii) The second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-67) arose by conflicting interests in foreign
trade. The English navy decisively defeated the Dutch at Lowestoft in 1665, and the Dutch
destroyed sixteen English ships at the Thames in 1667. Both sides reached peace at Breda: English
kept New York, but ceded Surinam to the Dutch Republic, and modified the Navigation Act in
favor of Dutch trade. The War of Devolution (1667-68) started when Louis XIV invaded the
Spanish Netherlands to claim an unpaid dowry from Spain. The Republic formed a Triple Alliance
with England and Sweden against France, while the Spanish made no effort to resist France.
France gained a small part of Spanish Netherlands by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. (iii) When
William III was restored to the stadholderate in 1672, the third Dutch War (1672-74) began. The
English navy attacked the Dutch and the French army invaded the Dutch Republic with 130,000
men, by capturing cities and provinces except Amsterdam and Hague. The Dutch navy defeated
the combined English and French fleet at Southwold Bay, while Dutch privateering campaigns
deteriorated English commerce, so that the English navy helplessly retreated. When Dutch opened
the dykes and waters were pouring over the land, the French armies unprepared and retreated, and
a peace was settled at Nimwegen in 1674. Fourteen years later, ironically, William III invaded
England in 1688 with 14,352 regular Dutch troops and 5,000 Huguenots, launching the Glorious
Revolution, which strengthened his position domestically as well as internationally. In the War
of the Spanish Succession, the Dutch Republic supported England against France, which imposed
heavy burden of finance and manpower on the United Provinces.
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The Glorious Revolution of 1688: Abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, the
Rump Parliament of fifty-six active members proclaimed England a republic (1649-53). Crushing
revolts in Ireland and Scotland, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) established his government in 1653
with an elected Parliament and an executive council, based on a written constitution. He became
the “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” In 1655, Cromwell
dismissed the Parliament, divided England into twelve military districts, and appointed a major
general as a governor. After his death in 1658, the monarchy was restored with Charles II (166085). As the king was sympathetic to the Catholics, the Parliament passed a Test Act in 1673 that
only Anglicans could hold military and civilian offices. While Whigs and Tories were quarreling,
Charles dismissed the Parliament in 1681 by depending on French subsidies. Succeeding the
throne, James II (1685-88) issued a Declaration of Indulgence in 1687 suspending all laws against
the Catholics and Dissenters from office. Since James had a son from his second wife, a Catholic,
a group of English nobles - including one bishop and six prominent politicians of both Whig and
Tory persuasions, invited William III of Orange, husband of James’ daughter, to invade England.
William was both James’s nephew and his son-in-law, and, until the birth of James’s son, his wife,
Mary, was heir apparent. William won the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, and the
Parliament declared that the throne was vacant “by breaking the original contract between king
and people,” and offered the throne to William and Mary who accepted the Declaration of Rights
enacted into law as the Bill of Rights in 1689. The Parliament destroyed the divine-right theory of
kingship, and confirmed England to be constitutional monarchy based on social contract, so that
the people participated in state affairs by sending representatives to the House of Commons.
“The main purpose of the act was unequivocally to declare illegal various practices of James
II. Among such practices proscribed were the royal prerogative of dispensing with the law in
certain cases, the complete suspension of laws without the consent of Parliament, and the levying
of taxes and the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime without specific parliamentary
authorization. A number of clauses sought to eliminate royal interference in parliamentary matters,
stressing that elections must be free and that members must have complete freedom of speech.
Certain forms of interference in the course of justice were also proscribed. The act also dealt with
the proximate succession to the throne, settling it on Mary’s heirs, then on those of her sister,
afterward Queen Anne, and then on those of William, provided they were Protestants.”394
“The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is considered by some as being one of the most important
events in the long evolution of the respective powers of Parliament and the Crown in England.
With the passage of the Bill of Rights, it stamped out once and for all any possibility of a Catholic
monarchy, and ended moves towards absolute monarchy in the British kingdoms by circumscribing the monarch's powers. These powers were greatly restricted; he or she could no longer
suspend laws, levy taxes, make royal appointments, or maintain a standing army during peacetime
without Parliament's permission – to this day the Army is known as the British Army not the Royal
Army as it is, in some sense, Parliament's Army and not that of the King. Since 1689, government
under a system of constitutional monarchy in England, and later the United Kingdom, has been
uninterrupted. Since then, Parliament's power has steadily increased while the Crown's has steadily
declined. Unlike in the English civil war of the mid-seventeenth century, the Glorious Revolution
did not involve the masses of ordinary people in England. This fact has led many historians,
including Stephen Webb, to suggest that, in England at least, the events more closely resemble a
coup d'état than a social revolution. This view of events does not contradict what was originally
meant by revolution: the coming round of an old system of values in a circular motion, back to its
original position, as Britain's constitution was reasserted, rather than formed anew.”395 After the
death of Mary and William, her sister Anne (1702-14) succeeded the throne.
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Photo I-4-4. Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Source: https://www.artifex.nu/edit/upload/peterdg.png
Map I-4-2. The Expansion of Russia under Peter the Great
Source: https://worldhistoryleverett.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/expansion-of-russia-under-peter-the-great.gif
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4-3. The Periphery: Eastern and Northern Europe, 1648-1715
Sweden and Denmark: (a) Sweden was relatively a poor country compared to Denmark.
Gustavus I Vasa (1523-60) freed Sweden from Denmark, and achieved economic independence
from the Hanseatic League. John III (1568-92) made peace with Denmark and his nobles, but
renewed the religious conflict. In 1587, his Catholic son was elected to the Polish throne as
Sigismund III who should rule both Poland and Sweden. After John’s death, the Swedish Riksdag
led by Duke Charles declared ‘no religion but Lutheranism’ to be crowned in Sweden. As
Sigismund returned to Poland, Vasa’s youngest son Charles IX (1604-11) ascended the throne,
and Gustavus Adolphus (1611-32) succeeded his father at age sixteen. He appointed Oxenstierna
to his chief minister who persuaded the king to adopt a new policy that the nobility, as the first
estate, served as military and civil officers in the government. This created a stable monarchy and
made the king possible to build a strong army bringing victory in the Thirty Years’ War.
“After the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, the empire was, over lengthy periods,
controlled by part of the high nobility, most prominently the Oxenstierna family, acting as tutors
for minor regents. The interests of the high nobility contrasted with the uniformity policy, i.e., the
upholding of the traditional equality in status of the Swedish estates favored by the kings and
peasantry. In territories acquired during the periods of de facto noble rule, serfdom was not
abolished, and there was also a trend to set up respective estates in Sweden proper. The Great
Reduction of 1680 put an end to these efforts of the nobility and required them to return estates
once gained from the crown to the king. Serfdom, however, remained in force in the dominions
acquired in the Holy Roman Empire and in Swedish Estonia, where a consequent application of
the uniformity policy was hindered by the treaties by which they were gained.”396
His daughter Christina (1633-54) was more interested in philosophy and religion than politics.
Being tired of ruling and wishing to become a Catholic, she abdicated in favor of her cousin
Charles X (1654-60), whose son Charles XI (1660-97) reestablished Sweden as an absolute
monarchy. His son Charles XII (1697-1718) was brilliant general having strategic mind. In the
Great Northern War, he led the Swedish army against the alliance, and forced all of his foes into
submission except Russia. His subsequent march on Moscow ended with the dismemberment of
the Swedish army at Poltava and Perevolochna, and he spent the following years in exile in the
Ottoman Empire before returning to lead an assault on Norway, trying to evict the Danish king
from the war once more to aim all his forces at the Russians.” 397
(b) Denmark was one of the strongest states in Europe when Frederick II (1559-88) ascended
the throne whose rule extended to Norway. Political power resided in the nobles, who owned half
the land with the peasants in serfdom, elected the king and ruled the country through the National
Diet and the Council of State. Absorbing most of the property of the Catholic Church by
Reformation, the nobles were expected to lead their peasants in war. The Protestant clergy had
little political influence, but controlled education and held a censorship over literature. Christian
IV (1588-1648) reformed the government, built up the Danish navy, promoted industry and
commerce, and established a regular postal service, and founded colleges and towns. His first war
with Sweden during 1611-13 halted Swedish expansion to northern Norway. The Danes took the
Protestant side in the Thirty Years’ War. Christian lost his second war with Sweden during 164345, and ceded Gotland, Osel, and three provinces on the Scandinavian Peninsula. Since the Danes
had been suffered from destructive wars, they lost ascendancy and began to decline. Christian V
(1670-99) centralized administration with the nobility, and Frederick IV (1699-1730) joined antiSwedish coalition with Poland and Russia, but his weakness made peace in the beginning of the
Great Northern War in 1699 when the Swedish invaded.
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Poland and Turkey: (a) Duke Mieszko I (966-92), who converted to Christianity, founded
the Piast dynasty of Poland. Casimir the Great (1333-70) achieved political and cultural unity by
making good relations with the Teutonic Knights and others. He codified Polish law, alleviated
the burden of peasants, and founded the University of Krakow. His crown was passed to Jadwiga,
who married Jagiello of Lithuania being Wladyslaw II Jagiello (1386-1434) opening the
Jagiellonian dynasty, which alliance lasted for four centuries. He was engaged in many wars with
Teutonic Knights, Tartars, Russia, and the Ottoman Turks; but the country was prosperous. In
1569, the Polish Parliament, Sejm, unified Poland and Lithuania into one state, and the king was
elected by the Sejm in 1572, so that the royal republic of Poland shared power with the nobles. In
1652, the Sejm passed the “liberum veto” allowing a single dissenting member could use veto
power against the majority vote. Hence Poland became a confederation of semi-independent
estates of landed nobles, being a battle ground of foreign powers. The Cossacks in the Ukraine,
supported by the Tatars of the Crimea, revolted against Poland, and submitted the Ukraine to
Russia in 1654. The war with Russia forced Poland to cede the eastern Ukraine to Russia in 1667,
and the war with the Turks forced Poland to cede the western Ukraine to Turkey in 1672. After
his victory over the Turks at Khotin of the Ukraine in 1673, Jan III Sobieski (1674-96) expelled
the Turks from the western Ukraine by 1676. Abandoning his alliance with Louis XIV who was
friendly to the Turks, Jan signed an alliance with Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire in 1683,
and participated in the campaigns for Austria for few years. “In domestic policy Sobieski was
least successful. All his endeavors to strengthen the position of the crown and stabilize the army
failed completely, and his own sons opposed him. The nobles showed little interest in defending
the country after the great victory of 1683 had been won, and the Lithuanian magnates fought each
other rather than the Turks.” Despite his triumph, the Sejm refused him a standing army. After
his death, Poland continuously declined and fell under Russian influence.
(b) The Ottoman Empire advanced up to the Danube by 1520, and seized Hungary by 1526
by the Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent (1520-66), but failed in conquering Vienna in 1529.
When the Turkish power extended to the western Mediterranean, the Spanish navy destroyed their
fleet at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, but they rebuilt a similar size of another fleet within a year.
The Turks established highly efficient government when the Sultans or prime ministers were
strong and capable. But the empire had declined by corruption and disorder with factional struggle
until the mid-seventeenth century. In 1669 under Kopurulu Fazil Ahmed, the Ottomans captured
much of Ukraine from Poland and conquered Crete. In 1683 under Kara Mustafa Pasha, the
Ottoman army once again advanced through the Hungarian plain and seized Vienna, but was
defeated by the combined forces of Europe. Retreating from the war, the Ottomans fell back into
their earlier state of corruption and disorder. In 1697, the Austrian army decisively defeated the
Ottomans at Senta in northern Serbia, and forced them to relinquish most of the lands previously
obtained by the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699. “In the eighteenth century, the Ottomans fought a
series of wars with European powers. Between 1714 and 1718, they fought with the small country
of Venice; between 1736 and 1739, they fought with Austria and Russia in order to stop the
expansion of these powers into Muslim territories. The Russians in particular continued to
aggressively expand their state into Muslim territories in Central Asia; these small Muslim states
had no place to turn to except the Ottomans. War with Russia, in fact, dominates the Ottoman
scene from much of the eighteenth century; the two states clashed between 1768 and 1774, and
again between 1787 and 1792. In all these wars of the eighteenth century, there were no clear
victors or losers.”398 While the Austria and Russia were continuously growing in the north in the
eighteenth century, the Ottoman Turks began to retreat from the Balkan Peninsula and became no
more threat to the European countries, while its geopolitical location remained important.
212
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Russia and Peter the Great: A new Russian state had emerged under the leadership of the
principality of Muscovy and its grand dukes in the fifteenth century. Ivan IV the Terrible (153384), beginning to use the title of tzar, expanded the Russian territories eastward, but the westward
efforts were blocked by powerful Sweden and Poland. By 1598, Ivan’s dynasty came to an end
without an heir, which was followed by a rise of aristocracy in the period of anarchy, called “the
Time of Troubles.” In 1611 when the Poles held Smolensk, burned Moscow, took the Kremlin,
and the Swedes occupied Novgorod; the country lost the center and began to disintegrate.
However, religious and national forces awakened: the Troitsky Monastery roused the citizens of
Nizhni Novgorod. A citizen army was formed, moved to and encamped with a Cossack detachment near Moscow, and drove back the invaders. In 1613, citizen leaders, Cossack armies, and
the princes called ecclesiastical authorities and representatives of all ranks to Moscow to form a
general council which was the first Zemsky Sober, representing men of all classes. The Zemsky
Sobor elected Michael Romanov (1613-45) to a new tzar because he was second cousin of the last
tzar of the old dynasty. The tzar’s power was hereditary and elective in origin, and was limited
by a secret contract with the upper ruling class governed by the Boyars’ Council though it was
publicly and officially autocratic. The Boyars’ Council was also counter-balanced by the Zemsky
Sobor. Russian society was dominated by landed aristocrats, who benefited from serfdom
attaching peasants to the land. The serfs could be bought and sold like commodities until the end
of the seventeenth century. Urban taxpayers were strictly attached to their towns, and threatened
by the death penalty for moving from one township to another even for marriage. The mobility
between social classes was restricted, though movement within the class was possible, which
restrictions on peasants and merchants caused a series of insurrections. Patriarch Nikon tried to
reform the Russian Orthodox Church by the support of Tzar Alexis (1645-76), but the Old
Believers opposed reforms, which resulted in schism between them.
Meanwhile, Polish nobles bought lands in western Ukraine and sought to establish feudal
conditions. The Ukraine Cossacks with complex interests revolted against Poland by the support
of the Moslem Tatars of the Crimea. The Cossacks offered the Ukraine to Russia and Tzar Alexis
accepted and ruled them since 1654, which caused a war with Poland. The war attracted Sweden
to invade western Poland and take Warsaw in 1655. The Tatars turned against Russia, and Russia
preferred Poland to Sweden as a neighbor; so Russia and Poland reached a peace in 1660. By the
Peace of Andrusovo of 1667, Russia gained Smolensk, Kiev, and the Ukraine east of the Dnieper.
Poland engaged a war with the Turks in 1672 which forced Poland to cede the western Ukraine to
the Turks, but John III of Poland expelled the Turks from the land by 1676. The wars of Russia
with Poland and Sweden gave them frequent contacts with the west, and western ideas penetrated
Russian society. Their reform movement continued in the seventeenth century. The most
important points of the reform program included “(1) peace and even alliance with Poland; (2)
struggle against Sweden for the eastern shores of the Baltic and against Turkey and the Crimea
for south Russia; (3) final reorganization of the military forces as a regular army; (4) replacement
of the old complicated system of direct taxation by two taxes – poll tax and land tax; (5)
development of the export trade and of home industries; (6) introduction of municipal selfgovernment with the object of improving the productivity and welfare of the commercial and
industrial class; (emancipation of the serfs with their land); (7) establishing schools for general
and religious education, and technical schools adapted to the requirements of the state.” All these
were to be done in accordance with foreign patterns and even with the help of foreign instructors.
Foreign technicians, officers, soldiers, physicians, craftsmen, merchants, factory owners were
allowed to form a “German Settlement” nearby Moscow. The Russians pursued reforms, but it
was a preparatory stage for major reforms of Peter the Great.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
213
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Peter the Great (1689-1725) was intelligent and threw with strong mind and body. He gained
his initial knowledge of western ideas from the German Settlement where he met his valuable
foreign friends like Patrick Gordon and Franz Lefort, who served Peter in their lifetime. Peter
regarded the Don and Dnieper as the vital outlets, like Neva to the Baltic, to the rest of the world
for both trade and war. Taking Azov from Ottoman hands in early 1697, he renewed the Russian
alliance with Austria and Venice against the Turks. Peter organized so called a Great Embassy
with fifty-five nobles and two hundred attendants, visited Europe, and learned the west for
eighteen months during 1697-98. The tzar saw the advanced western civilization by his own eyes,
and met Augustus II of Poland, Frederick III of Brandenburg, William III of England, Leopold I
in Vienna, and many kinds of individuals. Returning from the trip, Peter created the regular army
and navy; and reorganized the central government by creating a Senate of nine (later twenty) and
boards of administration including taxation and revenue, expenditure, audit and control, commerce,
industry, foreign affairs, war, navy, and law and by dividing provincial and municipal government
into eight (later fifteen) districts. Peter demanded all members of the landholding class to serve
in either military or civil services, and instituted a Table of Ranks by which non-nobles could
acquire the noble status by performances. For industrialization, Peter encouraged mining and
metallurgy, invited foreign artisans and managers, converted peasants into industrial workers like
an industrial serfdom, raised the social status of the merchant class, and abolished government
monopoly immediately after the peace with Sweden. Peter abolished the position of patriarch and
created the Holy Synod to make decisions for the church as well as interests of the tzar. He
introduced western customs and culture: no spit, no beard, short coat, and no traditional veils for
women. Peter started the first Russian newspaper in 1703, organized the Academy of St.
Petersburg in 1724, and licensed a theater on the Red Square for the public.
Peter dissolved the old streltsy and built a new standing army of 210,000 by conscription. He
built the Russian navy with ships on lakes, rivers, and seas with 28,000 men by 1705. Russia
joined an anti-Swedish coalition with Denmark and Poland in 1699, and signed peace with Turkey
in 1700. The Great Northern War began in 1700 when Charles XII of Sweden attacked Denmark.
Frederick IV of Denmark dreaded the capture of his capital, so signed a peace treaty. Augustus II
of Poland tried to take Riga but was defeated by the Swedish army, and appealed Russia to relieve
him. The Russian army of 40,000 besieged Narva but was defeated by 8,000 of the Swedish army
and Peter fled to Novgorod and Moscow. In 1702, Charles invaded Poland and occupied Warsaw
without fight. In 1708, the Swedish army crossed the Vistula on surface ice with 40,000 men, but
Peter ordered his army to retreat according to his “scorched-earth” strategy. They found nothing
but wilderness in their path to the south, and began to die of hunger or cold. At Poltava in 1709,
the Swedish army was massacred by the Russian artillery, and Peter won the war with 18,670
prisoners. Augustus remounted the Polish throne, Denmark rejoined the alliance against Sweden,
and Russia gained the Baltic principalities and all of the Ukraine. Charles escaped into Turkish
territory, and convinced the Turks that Russia would soon be a serious threat to them, so that in
1711 the Sultan declared war against Russia with 200,000 men. To avoid mass suicide, Peter
began to negotiate peace with the Turks. He withdrew his army and equipment unhindered from
Poland, by giving up Azov with Russian forts and ships, allowing Charles a safe passage to
Sweden, and not interfering Polish affairs. In 1718, Charles invaded Norway with 20,000 men,
but died by a stray bullet. The Russian armies invaded Sweden and devastated their costal lands
and cities. By the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, Russia obtained Libonia, Esthonia, Ingria, and part
of Finland, which transformed the Baltic from a Swedish lake to a Russian one. In 1703, Peter
began to build St. Petersburg, as a symbol of his westward policy of modernization, which had
been the capital city of Russia from his time of 1712 to the Russian Revolution in 1917.
214
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
Endnotes
1
Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor on November 8, 2015.
Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1979), 8.
3 Ibid., 14.
4 Ibid., 26.
5 Ibid., 30.
6 Accessed to http://goeurope.about.com/od/italy/a/medieval_towers.htm on November 9, 2015.
7 Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy, 34-44.
8 Ibid., 67.
9 Ibid., 68-9.
10 Ibid., 97-8.
11 Ibid., 102-10.
12 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 2nd (Lexington, MA: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1992), 51-2.
13 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Naples on November 13, 2015.
14 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 54.
15 Ibid., 61-2.
16 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Venice on November 13, 2015.
17 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri on November 13, 2015.
18 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri#Decline on November 13, 2015.
19 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 65-6.
20 Access to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian%E2%80%93Genoese_Wars on November 13, 2015.
21 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian%E2%80%93Genoese_Wars#Disengagement on
November 13, 2015.
22 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Milan#History on November 12, 2015.
23 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Milan#French_rule on November 13, 2015.
24 Ibid., 48.
25
Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 68-9.
26 Ibid., 70-2.
27 Ibid., 73-4.
28 Ibid., 74-5.
29 Ibid., 76-7.
30 Ibid., 77-8.
31 Ibid., 79-80.
32 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coluccio_Salutati on November 15, 2015.
33 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 81-3.
34 Ibid., 84.
35 Ibid., 85-6.
36 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 112.
37 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_de%27_Medici#Politics on November 16, 2015.
38 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 115-6.
39 Ibid., 117.
40 Ibid., 119.
41 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsilio_Ficino on November 16, 2015.
42 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 120-1.
43 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Politian on November 16, 2015.
44 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 125.
45 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola#Friar on November 16, 2015.
46 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola on November 16, 2015.
47 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 161-2.
2
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
215
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
48
Ibid., 162-3. For further, see De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe, 302.
Accessed to http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/renaissance1/section5.rhtml on November 23,
2015.
50 Ibid., the same.
51 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 173-4.
52 Ibid., 174-6.
53 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Visconti#Visconti_of_Milan on November 23,
2015.
54 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 180.
55 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facino_Cane on November 23, 2015.
56 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 181-2.
57 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_I_Sforza on November 23, 2015.
58 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Galeazzo_Sforza on November 24, 2015.
59 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ludovico-Sforza on November 24, 2015.
60 Ibid., the same
61 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#High_Middle_Ages on November 24,
2015.
62 Ibid., the same.
63 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#15th_century on November 24, 2015.
64 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#Government on November 24, 2015.
65 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Naples#Angevin_Kingdom_of_Naples on
November 24, 2015.
66 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Naples#Aragonese_Kingdom_of_Naples on
November 24, 2015.
67 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 262.
68 Ibid., 263.
69 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 264-5.
70 Ibid., 265.
71 Ibid., 267-8.
72 Ibid., 268.
73 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XII_of_France on November 17, 2015.
74 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_I_of_France on November 17, 2015.
75 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_II_of_France on November 17, 2015.
76 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cade on November 17, 2015.
77 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 272-3.
78 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VII_of_England on November 17, 2015.
79 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 275-6.
80 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England on November 18, 2015.
81 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Government on November 18, 2015.
82 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 285-6.
83 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_III,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Emperor on November
18, 2015.
84 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_I_of_Castile on November 18, 2015
85https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Reign_in_the_Holy_Roman_Empir
e accessed on November 19, 2015.
86
Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor on November 19, 2015.
87 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 289.
88 Ibid., 291.
89 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia on November 19, 2015.
90 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Ottoman_Empire on November 19, 2015.
91 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murad_I on November 19, 2015.
92 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror on November 19, 2015.
216
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
49
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
93
De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 293.
Ibid., 299-300.
95 Ibid., 300.
96 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fornovo on November 20, 2015.
97 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Visconti,_Duchess_of_Orl%C3%A9ans on
November 20, 2015.
98 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_War_of_1499%E2%80%931504 on November 21,
2015.
99 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 616-9. For further, visit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#League_of_Cambrai.2C_the_loss_of_Cyprus.2C_and_
Battle_of_Lepanto accessed on November 24, 2015.
100 Ibid., the same.
101 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Wars#Italian_War_of_1521.E2.80.9326 on November
21, 2015.
102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Wars#War_of_the_League_of_Cognac_.281526.E2.80.931530.29
accessed on November 21, 2015.
103 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Wars#Italian_War_of_1536.E2.80.9338 on November
21, 2015.
104 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Wars#Italian_War_of_1542.E2.80.9346 on November
21, 2015.
105 Accessed to http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Treaty_of_Cateau-Cambresis.aspx on November 26,
2015.
106 J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe 1450-1620 (London, UK: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1998), 28.
107 Ibid., 134-5.
108 Ibid., 179.
109 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 687.
110 Ibid., 688-9.
111 Accessed on November 21, 2015 to
http://everything2.com/title/Abuses+of+the+Catholic+Church+in+the+Early+Modern+Period.
112 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 231-2.
113 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conciliarism#Background on November 21, 2015.
114 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Constance on November 22, 2015.
115 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/event/Council-of-Constance on November 22, 2015.
116 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/event/Council-of-Basel on November 21, 2015.
117 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execrabilis on November 21, 2015.
118 Accessed to http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum18.htm on November 22, 2015.
119 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conciliarism#Opposition_to_conciliarism on November 21,
2015.
120 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 376.
121 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 250.
122 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Nicholas_V on November 22, 2015.
123 Will Durant, The Renaissance, The Story of Civilization 5, 382.
124 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Pius-II on November 22, 2015.
125 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sixtus-IV on November 22, 2015.
126
Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Innocent_VIII on November 22, 2015.
127 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VI on November 22, 2015.
128 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-VI on November 22, 2015.
129 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-II on November 23, 2015.
130 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Julius_II#Character on November 23, 2015.
131 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-X on November 23, 2015.
132 Accessed to http://www.bartleby.com/36/6/1.html on November 23, 2015, Letter of Martin Luther.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
217
94
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
133
Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States#History on November 26, 2015.
Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5 (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1992), 15-6.
135 Ibid., 17.
136 Ibid., 18-9.
137 Ibid., 20-1.
138 Ibid., 22-3.
139 Ibid., 23-4.
140 Ibid., 24.
141 Ibid., 25.
142 Ibid., 30.
143 Ibid., 31-2.
144 Ibid., 33-7.
145 Ibid., 40.
146 Accessed to http://www.britannia.com/history/articles/peasantsrevolt.html on November 30, 2015.
147 Ibid., 41.
148 Ibid., 45.
149https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_in_the_Middle_Ages#Late_Middle_Ages_.281272.E2.80.931485.
29_2 accessed on November 30, 2015.
150 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 108.
151 Ibid., 71-4.
152 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_C%C5%93ur on November 30, 2015.
153 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 87-8.
154 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Hus on December 1, 2015.
155 Ibid., the same.
156 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 167-8.
157 Ibid., 169.
158 Ibid., 170-1.
159 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Groote on December 2, 2015.
160 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Groote#The_Brethren_of_the_Common_Life on
December 2, 2015.
161 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_of_Christ on December 2, 2015.
162 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Desiderius-Erasmus on December 2, 2015.
163 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus on December 2, 2015.
164 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus#Religious_toleration on December 2,
2015.
165 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus#Legacy on December 2, 2015.
166 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 293.
167 Ibid., 294.
168 Ibid., 295.
169 Ibid., 297-9.
170 Ibid., 299-301.
171 Ibid., 302-5.
172 Ibid., 320-5.
173 Ibid., 328-9.
174 Ibid., 330-1.
175
Ibid., 332.
176 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation on December 9, 2015.
177 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Reformation_outside_Germany on
December 9, 2015.
178 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 338.
179 Ibid., 338-40.
180 Ibid., 340-1.
218
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
134
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
181
Ibid., 351.
Ibid., 352-3.
183 Ibid., 354-62.
184 Ibid., 363-7.
185 Ibid., 379.
186 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 382.
187 Ibid., 385.
188 Ibid., 393.
189 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion on December 4, 2015.
190 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menno_Simons on December 4, 2015.
191 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Huldrych-Zwingli on December 5, 2015.
192 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 411-2.
193 Ibid., 413.
194 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin#Calvin_and_the_Jews on December 5, 2015.
195 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin#Political_thought on December 5, 2015.
196 Accessed t o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin#Legacy on December 5, 2015.
197 Accessed to http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Charles_V_(Holy_Roman_Empire).aspx on December
5, 2015.
198 Ibid., the same.
199 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 438-40.
200 Ibid., 441-7.
201 Ibid., 447-52.
202 Ibid., 453-8.
203 Accessed to https://europeanhistory.boisestate.edu/reformation/france/16thc.shtml on December 5,
2015.
204 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 497-500.
205 Ibid., 521.
206 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Cardinal-Wolsey on December 5, 2015.
207 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 526-42.
208 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-More-English-humanist-and-statesman on
December 5, 2015
209 Ibid., the same.
210 Ibid., 543.
211 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wives_of_Henry_VIII on December 6, 2015.
212 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries#Complaints on December 6,
2015.
213 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell on December 6, 2015.
214 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 564-8.
215 Ibid., 568.
216 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-VI on December 7, 2015.
217 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Seymour-1st-Duke-of-Somerset on
December 7, 2015.
218 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dudley-duke-of-Northumberland on December
7, 2015.
219 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-I on December 7, 2015.
220
Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Reginald-Pole on December 7, 2015.
221 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Knox on December 7, 2015.
222 Ibid., the same.
223 Ibid., the same.
224 Ibid., the same.
225 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-Sweden on December 7, 2015.
182
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
219
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
226
Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Evangelical-Lutheran-Church-of-Denmark on December
7, 2015.
227 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Polish_.E2.80.93_Lithuanian_Commonwealth
accessed on December 7, 2015.
228 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Netherlands on December 7, 2015.
229 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Spain on December 7, 2015.
230 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 643.
231 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Moscow on December 9, 2015.
232 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_dynasty on December 9, 2015.
233 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Reformation on December 9, 2015.
234 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Moscow#Origin on December 7, 2015.
235 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ivan-II on December 8, 2015.
236 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Dmitry-II-Donskoy on December 8, 2015.
237 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_I_of_Moscow on December 8, 2015.
238 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_II_of_Moscow on December 8, 2015.
239 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ivan-III on December 8, 2015.
240 Ibid., the same.
241 Ibid., the same.
242 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_III_of_Russia on December 8, 2015.
243 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ivan-the-Terrible on December 8, 2015.
244 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Crimean_raids on December 8, 2015.
245 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Conquest_of_Siberia on December 8,
2015.
246 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 663.
247 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Il-Khanid-dynasty on December 8, 2015.
248 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate#Legacy on December 8, 2015.
249 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Timur on December 8, 2015.
250 Ibid., the same.
251 Ibid., the same.
252 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Mamluk on December 8, 2015.
253 Ibid., the same.
254 Ibid., the same.
255 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Safavid-dynasty on December 8, 2015.
256 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Selim-I on December 8, 2015.
257 Accessed to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Suleyman-I on December 8, 2015.
258 Ibid., the same.
259 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_history#Europe on December 9, 2015.
260 Will Durant, The Reformation, The Story of Civilization 5, 727-33.
261 De Lamar Jensen, Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, 242.
262 Accessed on November 23, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#1391.E2.80.931492.
263 Accessed on November 23, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#1300.E2.80.931391.
264 Accessed on November 23, 2015 to http://jewishhistory.research.wesleyan.edu/i-jewish-population/1sephardic-diaspora-regional-trends/c-italy/.
265
Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation_in_Italy on December 7, 2015.
266 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent on December 7, 2015.
267 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
http://www.libertymagazine.org/article/the-reformation-and-wars-of-religion.
268 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Overview on December 12, 2015.
269 Accessed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War on December 12, 2015.
220
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
270
Accessed on December 12, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_travel_.281241.E2.80.931438.29.
271 Accessed on December 12, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Atlantic_Ocean_.281419.E2.80.931507.29.
272 J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), 19-20
273 Ibid., 19-37.
274 Ibid., 38-43.
275 Ibid., 43-52.
276 G. P. B. Naish, “Ships and Shipbuilding,” in A History of Technology, ed. Charles Singer, E. J.
Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and Trevor I. Williams (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1957), 472-3.
277 Accessed on December 18, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel.
278 Accepted on December 18, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrack#Origins.
279 Accessed on December 19, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleon.
280 Accessed on December 19, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluyt.
281 J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 69-72.
282 Ibid., 73-82.
283 Ibid., 94-9.
284 Accessed on December 19, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/technology/navigation-chart.
285 J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 100-6.
286 Accessed on December 19, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mercator_world_map_.281569.29.
287 J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 112-3.
288 Ibid., 114-7.
289 Ibid., 118-27.
290 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Portuguese_exploration
291 Ibid., the same.
292 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Portuguese_exploration_after_Prince_Henry.
293 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery.
294 Accessed on December 14, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus.
295 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Treaty_of_Tordesillas_.281494.29.
296 Accessed on December 20, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas.
297 Accessed on December 15, 2015 to http://www.history.com/topics/exploration/john-cabot.
298 Accessed on December 15, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cabot#Final_voyage.
299 Accessed on December 15, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#North_America.
300 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#The_.22True_Indies.22_and_Brazil.
301 Ibid, the same.
302 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Gama.27s_route_to_India.
303 Accessed on December 20, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_de_Albuquerque#Second_expedition_to_India.2C_1506.
304 Accessed on December 20, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_de_Albuquerque#Arrest_at_Cannanore.2C_1509.
305 J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 144-5.
306 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Discovery_of_the_Pacific_Ocean.
307 Accessed on December 15, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan.
308 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#First_circumnavigation.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
221
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
309
Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Westward_and_eastward_exploration_meet.
310 Accessed on December 13, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Inland_Spanish_conquistadores_.281519.E2.80.931532.
311 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7 (Norwalk, CT: Easton
Press, 1992), 9-10.
312 Ibid., 17-8.
313 Ibid., 23-7.
314 Accessed on December 22, 2015 to
http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20256%20irish%20policy.htm.
315 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7, 31-2.
316 Accessed on December 23, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake#Circumnavigation_of_the_earth_.281577.E2.80.931580.29.
317 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7, 32.
318 Ibid., 33.
319 Ibid., 34-5.
320 Ibid., 36-7.
321 Accessed on December 23, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots.
322 Accessed on December 23, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-queen-of-Scotland.
323 Accessed on December 23, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I.
324 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Philip-II-king-of-Spain-and-Portugal.
325 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain#Economy.
326 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain#Foreign_policy.
327 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain#France.
328 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_III_of_Spain#Style_of_government.
329 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Philip-III-king-of-Spain-and-Portugal.
330 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Philip-IV-king-of-Spain-and-Portugal.
331 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_Spain#Legacy.
332 Accessed on December 24, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramontanism.
333 Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 13.
334 Ibid., 46-7.
335 Ibid., 55-6.
336 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/event/Massacre-of-Saint-Bartholomews-Day.
337 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7, 359-61.
338 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France.
339 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France#International_relations_under_Henry_IV.
340 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#The_Bohemian_Revolt.
341 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#Ottoman_support.
342 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#1621.E2.80.931625.
343 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#Danish_intervention_.281625.E2.80.931629.29.
344 Accessed on December 25, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#Swedish_intervention_.281630.E2.80.931635.29.
222
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
345
Ibid., the same.
346https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#French_intervention_and_continued_Swedish_part
icipation_.281635.E2.80.931648.29 accessed on December 25, 2015.
347 Ibid., the same.
348 Accessed on December 26, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia.
349 Ibid., the same.
350 Accessed on December 26, 2015 to http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-thirty-years-war/militarydevelopments-in-the-thirty-years-war/.
351 Accessed on December 26, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#Huguenot_rebellions_.281620.E2.80.931628.29.
352 Accessed on December 26, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot_rebellions#Aftermath.
353 Accessed on December 26, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum#Consequences.
354 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7, 374.
355 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France.
356https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fronde#First_Fronde.2C_the_Fronde_Parlementaire_.281648.E2.80.93164
9.29 o Accessed on December 27, 2015.
357 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, The Story of Civilization 8 (Norwalk, CT: The Easton
Press, 1992), 5-8.
358 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fronde#Franco-Spanish_War_.281635.E2.80.931659.29.
359 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-Devolution.
360 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Devolution#Aftermath.
361 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Dutch_War.
362 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/event/Dutch-War.
363 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Alliance_(League_of_Augsburg).
364 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France#Treaty_of_Ryswick.
365 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession.
366 Accessed on December 27, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-the-Spanish-Succession.
367 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession#Aftermath.
368 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to
http://en.chateauversailles.fr/history/court-people/louis-xiv-time/jean-baptiste-colbert.
369 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to http://www.paulrittman.com/ColbertsReforms.pdf.
370 Ibid., the same.
371 Ibid., the same.
372 Accessed on December 28, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France#Personal_reign_and_reforms.
373 Robin Briggs, Early Modern France, 1560-1715 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 150-3.
374 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, The Story of Civilization 8, 48-9.
375 Accessed on December 29, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Jansenism.
376 Accessed on December 29, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Jansen.
377 Accessed on December 29, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot.
378 Accessed on December 29, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot#Exodus.
379
Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Netherlands#Charles_V.
380 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Netherlands#Eighty_Years.27_War.
381 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/place/Spanish-Netherlands.
382 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia#Brandenburg-Prussia.
383 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-I-Holy-Roman-emperor.
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715
223
Chapter I. Politics and Religion
384
Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, the Story of Civilization 7, 184-5.
Ibid., 186-92.
386 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-I-king-of-Great-Britain-and-Ireland.
387 Ibid., the same.
388 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrard_Winstanley.
389 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, The Story of Civilization 8, 184-5.
390 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell.
391 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland.
392 Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, The Story of Civilization 8, 187.
393 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Dunbar.
394 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to http://www.britannica.com/topic/Bill-of-Rights-British-history.
395 Accessed on December 30, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution#Legacy.
396 Accessed on December 31, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Empire.
397 Accessed on December 31, 2015 to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XII_of_Sweden.
398 Accessed on December 31, 2015 to
http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/OTTOMAN/17TH.HTM.
385
Map I-4-3. The Expansion of Europe, 1715
Source: http://faculty.etsu.edu/kortumr/HUMT2320/baroque2/htmdescriptionpages/11mapdesc.jpg
224
Book III. From the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution, 1400-1715