culture and ideas

culture and ideas

1. early reformation

   • PAPACY
     • popes exercised greater power funded by larger donations and tax receipts.
     • built 54 new churches and other buildings in rome, which served to demonstrate the church's power and showcase the artistic renaissance.
     • construction of the st. Peters Basilica was meant to golrify God with all of its beauty and speendor, but rater caused scandal. Pope Leo X (r. 1513-1521), a member of the wealthy Medici family of florence, famous for its patronage of the arts., over saw its design and financing.
     • indulgences- the forgiveness of the punishment due for past sins, granted by the catholic church authorities as a reward for a pious act. Martin Luther's protest against the sale of indulgences is often seen as touching off the Protestant Reformation.
     • the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, of which the pope is head
   • MARTIN LUTHER
     • young professor of sacred scripture
     • objected the practice of buying indulgences
     • he had forsaken money and marriage for a monastic life of prayer, self-denial, and study.
     • wrote to Pope Leo to complain of this abuse and challenged the preachers to a debate on the theology of indulgences.
     • pope Leo saw Luther's letter as a challenge to papal power and moved to silence him. during a debate in 1519, a papal representative led Luther into open disagreement with church doctrines, for which the papacy condemned him. blocked in his effort to reform the church form within, Luther burned the papal bull (document) of condemnation, rejected the pope's authority, and began the movement known as the PROTESTANT REFORMATION.
     • insisted that the only way to salvation was through faith in Jesus Christ. He further declared that Christian belief should be based on the word of God in the bible and on Christian tradition, not on the authority of the pope.
     • Luther's use of the printing press to spread his ideas won him the support of powerful Germans, who responded to his nationalist portrayal of an Italian pope seeking to beautify Rome with German funds.
   • PROTESTANT REFORMATION
     • Religious reform movement within the Latin Christian Church beginning in 1519. It resulted in the "protesters" forming several new Christian denominations, including the Lutheran and Reformed Churches and the Church of England.
     • reformers appealed to genuine religious sentiments, but their successes and failures were also due to local political and economic conditions.
     • protestants were no more inclined than Roman Catholics to question male dominance in the church and the family, but most Protestant s rejected the medieval tradition of celibate priesnts and nuns and advocated Christian marriage for all adults.
   • JOHN CALVIN
     • a well-educated Frenchman who left the study of law for theology after experiencing a religious conversion, became an influential Protestant leader.
     • as a young man, Calvin published a synthesis of christian teachings in 1535, THE INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Although calvin agreed with Luther's emphasis on faith over works, he denied that human faith alone could merit salvation. calvin believed that salvation was a gift God gave to those He "predestined". calvin went farther than Luther in curtianing the power of clerical hierarchy and in simplifying religious rituals.
     • calvinist congregations elected their own governing committies and created regional and national synods(councils) to regulate doctrinal issues
     • calvinists also displayed simplicity in dress, life, and worship, avoiding ostentatious living and stripping churches of statues, most musical instruments, stained-glass windows, incense and vestments

2. the counter reformation and the politics of religion

   • CATHOLIC REFORMATION
     • Religious reform movement within the Latin Christian Church, begun in response to the Protestant Reformation. it clarified Catholic theology and reformed clerical training and discipline
     • council met at the city of Trent in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563, they sought to distinguish catholic doctrines from Protestant "errors' and reaffirmed the supremacy of the pope.
     • society of Jesus, Jesuits, a new religious order, was among the most important events of the catholic reformation. helped to stem the Protestant tide by their teaching and preaching, and they gained converts through overseas missions.
   • RELIGION AND AMBITIONS OF KINGS
     • Spain and France actively defended the catholic tradition against Protestant challenges.
       • king Philip II of Spain used the Inquisition to enforce religious orthodoxy.
       • suspected Protestants, as well as critics of the king, were accused of heresy, some were punished to death, and even those acquitted learned not to challenge the church or the king again.
       • in France the Calvinist opponents of the Valois dynasty gained the military advantage in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). in the intersest of national unity, thier leader Prince Henry of Navarre ultamately embraced the catholic faith of the majority of his suspects when he ruled as Henry IV of France. in their embrace of a union of church and state, Henry VI, his son King Louis XIII, and his grandson King Louis XIV supported the Catholic Church, ultimately, LOuis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes by which his grandfather had granted religious freedom to his Protestant supporters in 1598.
     • in england King Henry VII had initially been a stronger defender of the papacy against Lutheran criticism. but when Henry failed to obtain a papal annultment of his mariage to Catherine of Aragon, who had not furnished him with a male heir, he challenged the papacy's authority over the English church. First the English archbishop of Canterbury annulled Henry's marriage in 1533 and then Parliament made the king head of an autonomous church of England.
       • Henry used his authority to disband monasteries and convents ans seize their lands.

3. local religion, tradition culture, and witch hunts

   • LOCAL RELIGIONS
     • Both in the Protestant North and the Catholic south the institutions of religious orthodoxy were weakest in villages and small towns. in these settings, local religion commonly blended the rituals and beliefs of the established churches with local folk customs, pre-Christian beliefs, ancient curing practices, love magic, and the casting of spells.
     • the vigor and power of these local religious traditions ebbed and flowed in response to the strength of national and regional religious institutuions everywhere in europe.
   • WITCH HUNTS
     • the pursuit of people suspected of witch craft, especially in northern Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries
     • secular and church authorities tried over a hundred thousand people for practicing witch craft
     • believed that it was possible for angry and jealous individuals to use evil magic and the power of the devil to cause people and domestic animals to sicken and die or to cause crops to wither in the fields
   • MAGIC AND SPIRITS
     • FOLKLORE ABOUT MAGIC AND FOREST SPIRITS PASSED DOWN ORALLY FROM PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES
     • believed that natural events could have supernatural causes
     • believed that intermediaries had the power to solve romantic problems, fix disputes with masters or employers, or satisfy a desire for revenge.
     • saw natural events as acts of god.

4. scientific revolution

   • SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
     • the intellectual movement in Europe, initially associated with planetary motion and other aspects of physics, that by the 17th century had laid the groundwork for modern science
     • the greatest authority on physics was Aristotle, a Greek philosopher who taught that everything on earth was reducible to four elements. (water, earth, air and fire)
     • pythagoras proved the famous theorem (pythagoreans theorem) that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides
     • copernicus placed the sun in the center of the solar system not the earth.
     • Galileo Galilei built the telescope

5. the early enlightenment

   • ENLIGHTENMENT
     • a philosophical movement in 18th century Europe that fostered the belief that one could reform society by discovering rational laws that governed social behavior and were just as scientific as the law of physics.
     • many books were burned or banned and many early enlightenment thinkers were exiled or persecuted
     • more of a frame of mind than a movement