GLOBAL ENCOUNTERS AND RELIGIOUS REFORMS – CH. 14
OVERARCHING QUESTION FOR CH.14
Why did Christian unity break up in Europe just when Europeans began to expand their influence overseas
in such a dramatic fashion?
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The Reformation permanently fragmented western Christianity and many religious confrontations
between Catholics and Protestants that complicated political rivalries between states.
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Catholic Leaders in France and the Holy Roman Empire faced many challenges by Protestants.
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England’s rulers became Protestant and severed their countries’ loyalty to the papacy.
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Portugal and Spain, the first western European kingdoms to expand overseas were motivated with the
desire to expand Roman Catholic Christianity, pursuit gold, personal glory and the ambition to chart the
unknown.
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New religious orders such as Jesuits, that were a product of Catholic renewal, played a central role in
attempts to convert indigenous peoples in Americas and Asia. This order was founded by the Spaniard,
Ignatius Loyola became an important element in overseas territories where Jesuits played a central role
in attempts to convert indigenous peoples in the Americas and Asia.
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While some missionaries, such as the Jesuits in Brazil, brought a repressive and coercive message, other
Catholics such as the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas were among the strongest voices to condemn
the brutal aspects of colonialism.

As Europeans involved in overseas colonization expanded to include the English and the Dutch, they
exported their own, Protestants varieties of Christianity, extending the divisions within Christendom
around the globe.
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Monarchs enhanced the power of theirs states by claiming overseas colonies, enriching their treasuries
through colonial trade by including slavery. Competition between states and empires was cultural, as
well as political because of the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants.
MAIN CHAPTER TOPICS
1. The Portuguese were the first to undertake long-distance voyages of exploration, rounding the Cape of
Good Hope and settled forts along the African, Sri Lankan, and Indian coasts. Columbus persuaded the
Spanish that a new route to India lay across the Atlantic, but instead he discovered the Bahamas and
Spain began a long exploitation of the native population and sugarcane industry. Spain conquered the
Aztec, Incans, and Mayan and took advantage of the metals they found in Mexico and Bolivia. The slave
trade began to be concentrated in West Africa.
2.
The established church was unable to meet the needs of individuals and society in the sixteenth century
because of internal corruption. Focus on money, sale indulgences, overemphasis on veneration of relics,
nepotism, simony, and lack of clerical professionalism and integrity weakened the church at a time when
socioeconomic and political changes caused a great demand for explanation and consolation.
3. Christian humanists believed that the corruption of the church and the ignorance of the people could be
ameliorated through education. Men such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More encouraged reform
within the Catholic Church.
4. When Martin Luther made his complains concerning the church public in 1517, the church’s hierarchy
underestimated Luther as a mere discipline problem, whereas people saw an opportunity to break free of
Rome’s monetary demands and other deficiencies.
5. Luther’s break from the Catholic church encouraged other reformers to take stands of their beliefs,
creating multiple strains of Protestantism, such and Calvinism and Anabaptism.
6. Frustration with the dire socioeconomic conditions common in the sixteenth century merged with the
calls for church reform to produce social unrest, rebellion, and severe retaliation by the governments of
Europe. Politics and religion became inseparable as catholic regimes faced protestant oppositions.
CHAPTER REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Which European counties led the way in Maritimes exploration and what were their motives?
 Portugal and Spain led the Maritimes explorations that took Europeans to what the came to call the
Americas.
2.
How did Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII challenge the Roman Catholic Church?

3.
Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII challenged the authority of the church and in
consequence church control over society.
How did the forces for radical change unleashed by the Protestant Reformation interact with the urge for
social order and stability?

4.
The new religious ideas of Protestantism provided vehicles for the unrest and protest of the
discontent in society, but also spoke of conformity and moral behaviour.
How did religious divisions complicate the efforts of rulers to maintain political stability and build
stronger states?
 In a world where the authority of secular leaders and church leaders had long been entwined, linking
religious values to state values, division in the church threatened to divide society.
5.
Why was Charles V ultimately unable to prevent religious division in his lands?
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6.
The Protestant Princes who brought religious disunity to Charles V’s lands controlled lands that
were the chief source of the empire’s wealth.
Charles V’s victories undermined by …
Empire was never a centralized power … and
How did the different religious groups respond to the opportunity presented by the Printing Press?
 Provided a new weapon for religious reformers such as …
 Printed copies of …
 Circulation enabled …
 Printing press made reading of the ….