AP European History
AKA "Torture" :)
The Reformation
Section 1, part 1
Desiderius Erasmus
Erasmus was such an important Christian Humanist he was called the Prince of Humanism. He knew very well how corrupt the church was, since he was the illegitimate son of a "celibate" priest. He became a priest, going to Paris to study. He hated it there, and laid down some sick burns and dropping out. He moved to England where he and Thomas More became good friends. He studied some humanism with him, but his attenion was still focused on religion. He turned the humanist attention on classical texts to the Bible. He learnt Greek so as to read the New Testament, and just like Italian Renaissance humanists, he believed language was the basis for all other education. He said, "Our first care must be to learn the three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, for... the mystery of all scripture is revealed in them." This displays a very Renaissance mindset, which he applied to the reform of the Church. He believed that if people wanted to read the Bible, they should be able to do it, not have some priest read out their interpretation of it. So he took the Bible and translated it into the vernacular language of his time, and his version of it has been used to make most modern Bibles.
Source: The West in the World
Section 1, part 2
Martin Luther:
Martin Luther saw the failures of the Catholic Church to be the holy institution it was supposed to be. He didn't like the concept of Indulgences, or the whole thing the Roman Catholic Church had going with confessions, penance and the like. He believed people were saved by their faith and their faith alone. He felt that the sale of indulgences was like trafficking in God's grace. He wrote a letter that contained his Ninety-Five Theses, which were arguments protesting the things he felt were wrong. These 95 theses ended up becoming super popular; there's a lot of stories surrounding that, but the point is, they got publsihed and people were interested in them. The ideas spread quickly thanks to the printing press, and if video had been a thing back then, there would be montage-worthy film of people reading the theses, making surprised faces at each other.
source: The West in the World, A History Of Western Society.
John Calvin:
John Calvin broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530, and wrote a book called The Institutes of the Christian Religion. When the last edition was complete, it concisely abbreviated his theology in a brief 4 novels of 80 chapters. Some of his beliefs differ from Catholicism in that Calvinism teaches that people are justified by faith apart from works, which is something very similar to what Martin Luther was onto. Unlike Lutheranism, he thought that once people believe with true faith, they do good things as a result. He did not believe in simony as he felt that people were predestined to be saved and others were doomed, all regardless of their merits (or lack thereof). Calvin did not believe that authority was handed down through ranks of church officials like in the RCC, where the pope is the leader and authority trickes down from there. This implies that nepotism, the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends by giving them jobs, was most likely looked down upon by Calvin.
source: http://thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/40416
Anabaptists:
The Anabaptists were a group of radicals who were very pacific, but had some ideals that were considered distruptive to society by the Roman Catholic Church. They believed that people were their own ministers and priests, and they obviusly must not have liked the absenteeism in RCC officials caused by pluralism. Thye believed in theseparation of the church and state, so when church officials alled in political favors or vice versa, the Anabaptists must not have liked that very much.
source: https://apeuro4idiots.wordpress.com/reformation/
Section 1, part 3
The Jesuit Order
During the Catholic reformation, the Jesuit order was a group of people who did not want to alter Catholic doctrine, or depart from the Church, but only wanted to revive it, and whip Catholic's spritualities into shape. The founder, Ignatius Loyola, wrote a sort of P90X system, but instead of strengthening your core muscles and shedding fat, it was designed to strengthen your core faith and shed "inordinate attachments". This was a program titled Spiritual Excercises. The Jesuitsand their spritual P90X did strengthen the RCC, spreading the faith far and wide, and giving the the chruch a total makeover.
The Roman Catholic Church:
Section 2, part 1
Some more Reformation
Many English rulers, such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were reforming the church from the highest levels of authority down. Henry VIII did this by creating his own religion, of which he was the supreme ruler, and making his entire country convert to that. But wait, there's more- this all began because the pope refused to give him an anullment to his marriage to Catharine of Aragon. He didn't want to stay with her because she couldn't give him a male heir. So instead of dealing with his dynasty ending and maybe being carried on by his daughter Mary, he just decided that the best course of action would just be to make an entire new church ( the Anglican church) with him as the leader. Eventually though, when Mary was the queen, she forced everyone in the country to revert back to Catholicism instead, since that is the way she was raised and tose were the morals she believed everyone should have. She did this very violently, earning her the lovely nickname of Bloody Mary. When Elizabeth showed up though, they named an entire ERA after her, because she was so cool. She returned the country to Protestantism, but allowed religious tolerance in the country. The Spanish Inquisition was not as gentle as Elizabeth, but a bit more like her bloody half sister. It was supposed to bring greater control to the state, and it worked, it just wasn't very pretty. The Spanish Inquisition punished converted Jews and Muslims who were suspected to be faking their faith. It got pretty out of hand though, because they even ended up killing a couple Catholic saints, St. Theresa of Avila and St. Ignatius Loyola, who as previously mentioned, wrote Spritual Excercises and thus created the Jesuits, a very devout Catholic group who call themselves warriors of Christ. The Spanish Inquisition even banned books that were approved by the Holy See. Eventually, it was abolished in 1834. Yikes. The Concordat of Bologna too tried to increase state authority, by giving the Pope the ability to collect all income made by the Catholic church in France, while the king got to pretty much decide who ran what in the Gallican church. It laid down some solid ground rules for the later reformation in France, so that was good.
Source: http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/inquisition-the-spanish-inquisition.html
Source: The West in the World -Sherman
Those Stubborn Protestants (sec 2 part 2
Both Calvinists ad Anabaptists didn't want the church to be subordinate to the state, thye just handled the situation in VERY different ways. For instance, the Anabaptists lived pretty communist lives by themselves and just wanted a separation of church and state, usually living pacifist lives. The Calvinists in Geneva, on the other hand, decided to just create a town where they all had to practice devout Calvinsim, and punished/killed people for doing things against the religion. I think that is a satisfactory compare and contrast, don't you, Mr. Perkins?
source: The West in the World- Sherman
DANG HUGEUNOTS (SEC 2 PART 3)
AGHH OKAY SO THE HUGUENOTS AND PURITANS WERE LIKE "WTF BRAH JUST LET ME DO ME AND YOU DO YOU" BUT THAT MONARCHY WAS LIKE "UH WHY SHOULD WE" SO IT LED TO A BUNCH OF VIOLENCE AND PEOPLE WHO WERE AGAINST CALVINISM AND PURITANISM TO BREAK SOME STUFF AND CUT SOME PEOPLE.
USELESS ROYALS AND STUFF
MUCH LIKE I AM DESPERATELY TRYING TO SAVE MY GRADE DESPITE KNOWING IT IS FUTILE, CATHERINE DE MEDICI TRIED TO SOOTHE TENSION BY GIVING HUGUENOTS FREEDOM TO WORSHIP HOWEVER THE FRICK THEY WANTED. BUT THAT ONLY MADE STUFF WORSE BECAUSE FRICKIN FRANCOIS, DUKE OF LORD KNOWS WHERE WENT AND KILLED 30 FRICKIN HUGUENOTS LIKE IS THAT WHAT U WANTED CATHERINE YOU DUMB LIBERAL. APPARENTLY SHE WANTED MORE, BECAUSE SHE PLANNED A FREAKING MASSACRE ON BART-FREAKING-THOLOMEW'S DAY OKAY LIKE WHAT THE HECK.SHE KILLED THOUSAND OF HUGUENOTS HOW IS THAT GOING TO HELP THE SITUIATION???? HINT HINT IT DIDN'T.
SO THEN HUGUENOT HENRY, BRITISH KING HENRY, AND CATHOLIC KING HENRY GO THE FRICK AT IT AND START A FREAKING WAR. I'M SORRY BUT DO I REALLY HAVE TO EMBELLISH MORE???!?!!? OBVIOULSY A FREAKING WAR IS GOING TO EXACERBATE THE FREAKING CONFLICTS OKAY THIS WAS LITERALLY THE PURE EMBODIMENT OF THE PROMPT BYE SON I'M OUT
the edict of FREAKING NANTES
OKAY COME ON MAN IF YOU WERE GOING TO PASS A LAW THAT PISSED OFF THE A HUGE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE YOU BETTER BE PREPARED TO LET THOSE PEOPLE HAVE SOME EXTRA PRIVELEGES.