The Renaissance and Reformation, 1400 to 1648
Primary Sources | Art History | Links
Theme
Early Modern History begins as classical culture comes back to stimulate the mind, religious division offers new choices, and exploration brings new opportunities to use power.
Summaries
The Purse of Princes
Many dynastic rulers in the transition period between the Later Middle Ages and the Early modern period became monarchs of territorial states.
Man as the Measure
The humanism of Greece and Rome excited the intellectuals of Europe.
Heaven Knows
Debate over the methods of salvation and authority of Church and state fractured religious unity.
Fatal Beliefs
Violence and War settled the religious divisions.
God, Greed, and Glory
Voyages to Africa, Asia, and the Americas allowed the expansion of European power.
Keywords
The Purse of Princes
Renaissance (1400-1648), capitalism, Commercial Revolution (1350-1600), banks, public debt, Hundred Years War (1338-1453), longbow, pikes, Joan of Arc (d.1431), gunpowder, Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), Tudor dynasty (1485-1603), Habsburg dynasty (1438-1918), Austria
Man as the Measure
Florence, textual criticism, Medici dynasty, Machiavelli's The Prince (1513), printing press, Christine de Pizan (d.1430), Shakespeare (d.1616), Christian humanism, Erasmus (d. 1536), witch hunts (1400-1800)
Heaven Knows
Reformation, Martin Luther (d. 1546), indulgences, 95 Theses (1517), Charles V (r. 1519-1556), Diet of Worms (1521), Lutheranism, Protestants, Treaty of Augsburg (1555), Protestantism, Anabaptism, Jean Calvin (d. 1564), Calvinism, predestination or determinism
Fatal Beliefs
English Reformation (1534-1559), Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547), Church of England / Anglicanism, “Bloody” Mary (r. 1553-1558), Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), Roman Catholicism, Council of Trent (1545-1563), Jesuits, Index (1559), Philip II (r. 1556-1598) , Dutch Netherlands (1581-), Spanish Armada (1588), St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), Henry IV “of Navarre” (r. 1589-1610), Edict of Nantes (1598), Thirty Years War (1618-1648), Peace of Westphalia, balance of power
God, Greed, and Glory
Western colonial imperialism, Western exceptionalism, Portugal (12th cent.-), the Indies, Vasco da Gama (1498), Spain (1479-), Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), Columbus (1492), North and South America, conquistadors, Atlantic-African slave trade, stock exchange, economic theory of mercantilism, Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
Review Questions
- How did late medieval monarchs concentrate still more power?
- How did the Renaissance promote the West’s transition into modernity?
- On what issues did the different Protestants carry out their reforms?
- How did Early Modern reforms among Christians culminate in wars over religion?
- How did the ‘‘voyages of discovery’’ begin colonial imperialism by Europeans?
Other Questions
- How does capitalism force change on civilization?
- How did attitudes toward religion change from the beginning of the Middle Ages to 1648? You might consider the following questions: What role did religion play in people's lives? What were the institutions and reforms of medieval Christianity? What groups were outside of and threatened the Christian church? How did the papacy assert its control? How then did the Reformation create Protestant faiths and redefine Catholicism?
- What were the changes in culture from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance? You might consider: What new ideas and institutions determined philosophy and theology? What forms of literature flourished? And what were the changes in artistic styles and subjects for each period?
- How did governance in political states in Western Europe change between the Fall of Rome to 1648. You might consider the following questions: What kind of governments replaced Roman Imperial rule; what did the Carolingians do to create unity? What new methods of rule established states in the High Middle Ages? How were these then changed through the Late Middle Ages and by the Commercial Revolution into the Early Modern Period?
- What were the characteristic social institutions in Western Europe which ended the Later Middle Ages and began the Early Modern Period (ca. 1300-1648)? You might consider what happened to overturn old ways and promote the new regarding the environment and knowledge about the world, the economy, the power of princes, and people's belief systems.
- What enabled the Spanish to so quickly conquer such large portions of the Americas?
