Chapter 15
Religious Reform and State Building in Europe
Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians in Europe by 1550
1. Wittenberg was the home to Martin Luther where he taught at the local university. In 1517 Luther posted on the door of the local church ninetyfive theses against the sale of indulgences. Luther presented his views in 1521 to the imperial diet at Worms called by Emperor Charles V (15191556). Refusing to recant his criticism or beliefs, Luther was placed under imperial ban.
2. One of the primary tools for diffusing the ideas of Luther were the students who attended the University of Wittenberg. Between 1520 and 1560
some 16,000 students were graduated. As they returned to their homes throughout Germany they spread the ideas of Luther.
3. In the 1520s as the Union of Kalmar collapsed, Lutheranism appeared in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
4. Ulrich Zwingli who preached in Zurich guided the Reformation in Switzerland. Divided between Catholics and Protestants, the Swiss fell into civil
war between 1529 and 1531. Zwingli's forces were routed and he was killed in 1531.
5. The teachings of the Anabaptists spread into southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Seen by both Catholics and Lutherans as a threat, the
Anabaptists were virtually stamped out in Germany. Some of the survivors went to Münster and proclaimed it the New Jerusalem. As they became
radical millenarianist, Lutherans and Catholics increasingly became distrustful and a coalition recaptured the city in 1535. Not only were the
Anabaptists exterminated here but also tens of thousands were killed in Germany and the Low Countries.
6. In 1519 Huldrych Zwingli was named the people's priest by the Zurich city council. From this post he was able to guide religious reform in the city.
Zwingli saw no distinction between government of the Church and the state. The laws of God should guide both. Efforts by Zurich to export to the
rest of Switzerland its reform resulted in conflict featuring the defeat and death of Zwingli in 1529 at Kappel.
7. In England the Reformation was political in nature as the Anglican Church was created for the purpose of Henry VIII (1509-1547) giving himself a
divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Henry became the head of the church but made few doctrinal changes. Under Henry's sickly son Edward VI
(1547-1553) the church drifted to Protestantism. Edward's successor, Mary (1553-1558), tried to move back to Catholicism and persecuted the
Protestants. Elizabeth I (1598-1603) who chose a middle course between Catholicism and Protestantism followed Mary.
8. John Calvin converted to Protestantism in 1533. By 1536 he was in Geneva and would influence that city until his death in 1564. The central
location of Geneva allowed easy dissemination of Calvinism. In southern and western France, the Huguenots received Calvinism and it penetrated
England as persecuted Protestants returned after the death of Mary. In Scotland John Knox established it. By the 1550s Calvinism had eclipsed
Lutheranism among the Polish, Hungarian, and Bohemian nobility thereby facilitating its growth.
9. The Council of Trent, convened by the Church, met from 1545 to 1563 but failed to reconcile Protestant and Catholic differences.
Questions:
1. Why did Protestantism grow so rapidly in the sixteenth century?
2. Why were radical sects such as the Anabaptists disliked by both Catholics and Protestants?
Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians in Europe by 1550
 The Protestant Reformation
 Italian Renaissance humanism
 Christian humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
 Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471)
 Martin Luther
Justification by faith
Ninety-five Theses, 1517
Three pamphlets, 1520
 Excommunication, 1521
 Edict of Worms
 Peasants’ War, 1524-1525
 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1519-1556)
Wars
Peace of Augsburg, 1555
 Spread of the Protestant Reformation
 Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
Zürich, 1518
 John Calvin (1509-1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536
Predestination
 King Henry VIII of England (1509-1574)
Catherine of Aragon
Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, 1533
Act of Supremacy, 1534
 King Edward VI of England (1547-1553)
 Queen Mary of England (1553-1558)
 Anabaptists
 Impact of the Protestant Reformation
 Family
Role of husband and wife
Wife’s obedience
 Religious practices
 Catholic Reformation
 Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
Jesuits
 Pope Paul III (1534-1549)
 Roman Inquisition (Holy Office), 1542
 Council of Trent, 1545-1563
Europe in the Seventeenth Century
1. As part of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, France gained Artois, parts of Alsace and Lorraine, and the cities of Verdun and Metz. In 1678 the
Peace of Nimwegen, ending the war against the Dutch, Brandenburg, Spain, and the Holy Roman Fmpire, resulted in France gaining FrancheComte from Spain. From 1689 to 1697 France engaged in war against the League of Augsburg as Louis moved east against the Holy Roman
Hmpire. Louis consolidated control over Alsace and Lorraine and then occupied Strasbourg. By the Treaty of Ryswich in 1697 France kept
Strasbourg and part of Alsace.
2. The last war for Louis XIV was the War of the Spanish Succession. When Charles II of Spain (1665-1700) died in 1700 he left the throne to Louis'
grandson Philip. This bequeath created concern among the European states which feared that the thrones of Spain and France might one day
merge. Fears became reality when Louis sent French troops into the Spanish Netherlands supposedly to guarantee the territory for his grandson.
Facing a coalition of the European states, war dragged on from 1702 to 1713. When peace came, France gained only the acceptance of Philip as the
Bourbon king of Spain providing that he renounce his claim to the French throne and that the two crowns never be united.
3. The traditional Austrian hereditary possessions of the Habsburgs consisted of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Tyrol. Bohemia was
reclaimed during the Thirty years' War. Although the crown of Hungary had been worn by the Austrian emperor since 1526, in truth, he exercised
authority only over northwest Hungary. In the south, the revival of Ottoman power resulted in their pushing west up the Danube into Hungary,
Slovenia, Croatia, and north into Transylvania. By 1683 Vienna was under siege but after two months it was lifted. In 1687 the Turks were defeated;
Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slovenia were regained by Austria.
4. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, Austria gained the Spanish Netherlands (Austrian Netherlands) and occupied the
Spanish possessions of Milan, Mantua, Sardinia, and Naples.
5. The Hohenzollerns began ruling the insignificant lands of Brandenburg in 1417. The family inherited territories along the Rhine River in western
Germany in 1609. The duchy of Prussia (East Prussia) was added by inheritance in 1618 as a fief from Poland. Thus, by the seventeenth century
Brandenburg-Prussia consisted of three disconnected territories. Frederick William (1640-1688), the Great Elector, realized the weakness of these
lands without any natural frontiers and pursued policies to correct the situation. As a result of Frederick William's siding with Poland in a war against
Sweden in the late 1650s, Poland's overlordship in East Prussia was surrendered. By the time Frederick William died in 1688 a single state of
Brandenburg-Prussia had been created.
Questions:
1. Why was Louis XIV at war with the various European states?
2. What were the consequences of the wars of Europe in the seventeenth century?
Europe in the Seventeenth Century
 War, Revolution, and Social Disintegration, 1560-1650
 French Wars of Religion, 1562-1598
Huguenots
Ultra-Catholics
Politiques
Henry of Navarre
 Edict of Nantes, 1598
 Militant Spanish Catholicism
Philip II of Spain (1556-1598)
 Battle of Lepanto, 1571
 Spanish Netherlands
 Peace of Westphalia, 1648
 Elizabethan England
 Elizabeth (1558-1603)
Act of Supremacy
Act of Uniformityh
Spanish Armada, 1588
 The Witchcraft Craze
 100,000 + prosecuted
 Old women
 Revolution and War
 Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648
Rivalry between France, Spain, and Holy Roman
Empire
Peace of Westphalia, 1648
 The Practice of Absolutism
 France under Louis XIV
Louis XIII (1610-1643)
 Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister 1624-1642
Louis XIV (1643-1715), The Sun King
 Cardinal Mazarin
 Revoked Edict of Nantes, 1685
 Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683)
 mercantilism
 Brandenburg-Prussia
Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-1688)
 From Muscovy to Russia
 Ivan IV the Terrible (1533-1584)
Duma, council of boyars
Zemsky Sobor
 Peter the Great (1689-1725)
Trip west, 1697-1698
Reorganize army and navy
Senate, 1711
Mercantilism
Westernization
St. Petersburg, “window to the west”
 Constitutional Monarchy, England
 James I (1603-1625) of England, James VI of Scotland
Puritans
 Charles I (1625-1649)
Civil war, 1642-48
 Republic, 1648-1660
Oliver Cromwell
 Charles II (1660-1685)
Declaration of Indulgence, 1672
Test Act, 1673
 James II (1685-1688)
Glorious Revolution
Toleration Act, 1689
 Intellectual responses to the English Revolutions
Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679)
John Locke (1632-1704)
 European Culture
 Art
El Greco (1541-1614)
Peter Paul R ubens (1577-1640)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
 Literature
William Shakespeare(1564-1614)
Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
 Theater
Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673)