3.3 Empires: Belief Systems

3.3 Empires: Belief Systems

How did different belief systems endure or change during the period from 1450-1750?

"Out of all 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 123, or 6.98%, had religion as their primary cause."

Source: Axelrod, Alan; Phillips, Charles, eds. (2004). Encyclopedia of Wars (Vol.3)

Open Ended

Share your thoughts about this idea: "Religion is a divisive force as much as it is a unifying one."

Protestant Reformation

16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe

Reformation

• In the late 14th century, John Wycliffe and the Lollards in England argued that priests were unnecessary for salvation.

• Wycliffe translated parts of the Bible into English vernacular for the mass of believers who couldn't read nor understood Latin.

• Babylonian Captivity (1309-1377) - France had great influence over the Church

• Jan Hus in Bohemia and the Hussites were declared heretics. Hus was burned at the stake in early 14th century.

Lutheranism

• A monk from Wittenburg (Holy Roman Empire) concluded that several traditional Church practices violated biblical teachings.

• Indulgence - granting of absolution from punishments for sins

• Simony - selling of church offices

95 Theses

• Luther nailed his charges to a church door and advocated for the theological stance of "sola fide" faith alone for the basis of salvation for the Christian believer.

• In 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther and several German political leaders saw it as an opportunity to free themselves from the power of the Pope so they sided with Luther.

• Luther taught that women could have direct access to God, but did not organize convents.

Calvinism

• John Calvin - French theologian broke with the Catholic Church in the 16th century

• The elect, those predestined to go to heaven, ran the community, which was based on plain living, simple church buildings, and governance by the elders of the church.

• Calvin's followers called Huguenots were encouraged to work hard and reinvest their profits; prosperity, they believed showed that God favored their obedience and hard work.

Anglicanism

• England's King Henry VIII (rules 1509-1547) wanted a male heir to succeed him so he asked the pope to annul his marriage.

• The pope refuse out of worry over the reaction of Charles V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

• Henry, with the approval of the English Parliament, set himself up a the head of the new Church of England, or the Anglican Church.

Religious Reforms in Russia

The Orthodox Church

• Peter the Great asserted his authority as he moved against the Orthodox Church.

• He abolished the position of patriarch, incorporated the Church into the government, and established the Holy Synod (clergymen overseen by a secular official answerable to the tsar.

Counter-Reformation

• Inquisition - established in the late 12th century to root out and punish nonbelievers

• Society of Jesus - a religious order founded in 1540 undertook missionary activities throughout the Spanish Empire as well as in Japan and India

• Council of Trent (1545-1563) - corrected some of the worst of Church's abuses; reaffirming the rituals such as marriage and other sacraments; improvement of education of priests; Index of Prohibited Books

Multiple Choice

The Protestant Reformation

• began with the pope trying to rid the Catholic Church of corrupt practices.

• sparked wars of religion throughout Europe for more than hundred years.

• pushed most European monarchs to reject Catholicism outright.

• resulted in the eradication of Catholicism in most of Europe.

ANSWER: B

While Henry VIII of England rejected papal authority several years after Martin Luther began the Reformation, many European monarchs actively promoted Catholicism in their lands in the ensuing years. This led to many years of warfare.

Multiple Choice

The Protestant Reformation

• began with the pope trying to rid the Catholic Church of corrupt practices.

• sparked wars of religion throughout Europe for more than hundred years.

• pushed most European monarchs to reject Catholicism outright.

• resulted in the eradication of Catholicism in most of Europe.

Historical Development (context)

The Protestant Reformation marked a break

with existing Christian traditions and both the Protestant and Catholic reformations contributed to the growth of Christianity. 

Wars of Religion

Holy Roman Empire vs Lutherans

• In 1546-47, forces of Charles V fought with German Lutherans.

• Peace of Augsburg (1555) - allowed German states to choose whether their ruler would be Catholic or Lutheran

• Impact: churches and inhabitant were forced to practice the state religion.

France

• Catholics, and Huguenots fought for nearly half a century.

• In 1593, King Henry IV tried to unify the country by becoming Catholic and issued the Edict of Nantes

• The Edict allowed Huguenots to practice their faith. This lasted for 87 years.

• In 1685, King Louis XIV issued the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulting to social and economic turmoil.

Thirty Years' War

• Final great religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants from 1618 to 1648.

• The war developed into a conflict involving European powers resulting to widespread famine, starvation, and disease.

• Peace of Westphalia - allowed each area of the Holy Roman Empire to select one of the three religious options: Catholicism, Lutheranism, or Calvinism.

• Impact: more autonomy to nations

Islamic Religious Schisms

Islamic Religious Schism

• Ottoman - replaced Byzantine empire; strict Islamic legal system with all aspects of life

• Safavids - Shi'a Islam; denied legitimacy to any Sunni resulting to hostilities within the Ottoman Empire

• Mughal - Akbar tolerated all religions; gave land grant to followers of Sikhism; tried to ease tensions between Hindus and Muslims; invited Catholic priests to Delhi; encourage learning

Open Ended

Develop an argument that compares how religion was practiced in the three gunpowder empires.

Historical Development (context)

Political rivalries between the Ottoman and

Safavid empires intensified the split within Islam between Sunni and Shi’a. 

Sikhism developed in South Asia in a context of interactions between Hinduism and Islam. 

Scientific Revolution

In the early 1600s, scientific thinking gained popularity in northern Europe as trends in renaissance ideas, curiosity, investigation, and discovery spread.

Scientific Thought

• In 1620, Francis Bacon promoted empiricism - insisted upon the collection of data to back up a hypothesis and challenged traditional ideas

• Royal Academy of Science established in France and England with thinkers Sir Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler

• Many intellectuals thought that science showed the world's rational order and laws could be applied to show progress of governments and society.

Multiple Choice

Theories of heliocentrism

• upheld the beliefs of the ancient Greeks regarding the structure of the universe.

• provided impetus for Martin Luther and other to begin the Protestant Reformation.

• changed prevailing views on the orbits and composition of the planets.

• were initially proposed by Isaac Newton and fully developed by Galileo Galilei.

ANSWER: C

The geocentric theories of Aristotle and other ancient Greeks held that the earth was at the center of the universe and was the only planet made of heavy matter. medieval Europeans accepted these ideas because they fit well in the Bible's story of creation. Not until the 16th century did Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo publish observations that contradicted geocentrism and described a sun-centered planetary system, in which the earth and other heavenly bodies were composed of heavy matter and orbited the sun in elliptical, not circular, paths.

ACTIVITY

Individual Essay Outline (google docs)

Develop an argument that explains the continuity and change within various belief systems during the period 1450 to 1750.

LEQ: Context, Thesis, Evidence, HTS, and Analysis (counter-argument)