Religion
During this time period, the power of the papacy, aka the Roman Catholic Church, was growing. They came up with Indulgence, which is a method of getting sacraments back by money. The scenario is that a rich sinner would pay the pope, who by the way is more than happy to use to pay for all the decoration being used on cathedrals, and the pope gives the sinner a certificate that certifies that he/she/heshe can go to heaven.
Martin Luther: Unfortunately, the religion is starting to piss people off like Luther (I’m sorry to distract you guys from studying but every time I see this name, I think of Martin Luther King and Lex Luthor who by the way in the 52 comics created his own church too). Back on topic. Luther writes a complaint and posts it on the door of the local church, aka the bulletin board of the Medieval Ages. Turns out, people thought he had a point and with the printing press, they spread his ideas around and it eventually gets to the Pope. Pope Leo X of the Medici family tells him to take back these words, but instead, Luther headbutts him full on by debating with him and gets kicked out of the church. So he starts printing a complete and polished version of his ideas, and starts his own church, the Lutheran Church.
Lutheran Church:
· Salvation is achieved by faith.
· People go to heaven because of the belief in God.
· People should rely on the Bible
Catholic Church:
· Salvation is achieved by works of art.
· People go to heaven because they paid the Pope.
· People should rely on the Pope.
This is the first time in a really long time Europe is divided in religion, and if you look on a map, you see most of Germany and northern places converting to Lutheranism. This is because of publishing the Bible in German rather than Latin so that people had more access to it, and can read it for themselves.
John Calvin: was another person pissed off at the church. His ideas were mostly borrowed from Luther but he did add some of his own ideas in. The big difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism is that Calvinism says that:
- Salvation is a gift from God and that faith is not enough to go to heaven.
- Lavish decorations and clothing are a no-no. One must sort of “humble” oneself before God.
King Henry VIII: started the Anglican Church because the priest did allow him to divorce his wife, later wives. The whole of England is then converted.
Puritans: People of Calvinism beliefs who refuse to separate from the Catholic Church and try to “purify” it with Calvin teachings.
Ok, so with all these changes going on, the Catholic Church is obviously not happy. So they decide to reform some of their ways like you have to go to school to be a priest a so on. They started the Society of Jesus or also known as Jesuits that went out and won back some Protestants. Soon, some religious wars break out and although Europe is still mostly Catholic, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Anglican churches divide Europe religious-wise.
Witch Hunts
With the ideas of Christian Religion mixed in with those of folklore, you get witch hunts. People believed that supernatural causes for bad events. Due to times of stress, such as rising taxes, rising social tension, and wars, people decided that the horrible things must be coming from something. The process of elimination follows:
- God: it can’t be God! He’s good and just and they haven’t done anything horrible to deserve this. Besides, he’s their buddy. So with him crossed out, let’s move on to
- Satan: Here’s an evil guy! Yeah this guy can totally be causing our misfortunes. But we can’t really beat this guy up and if we can’t beat him up, then we’ve got no hope left. So to find someone we can actually beat up are…
- Followers of Satan aka Witches: We’ve hit the mark guys. They are evil, work for Satan and thus give us bad luck by rituals of who knows what. And we can get rid of them! So people, Mary Johnson over there? She gave me the evil eye yesterday and today, I found a HUGE hole in my dress. WITCH! Let’s start the fire already man!
And the worst thing is that to stop the torture the witch hunters (majority of whom were Protestants) were inflicting on them, they sometimes confessed, leading them to believe in witches even more.
Scientific Revolution
Before, religion took up most of people’s lives and explained everything for them. But as scientists find more and more discoveries that contradict the Bible, the church gets upset because they uproot a lot of old beliefs.
Copernicus: Found that the Sun was in the center with Earth orbiting around it. The Bible contradicts that, stating that the Earth was in the center. His student, Kepler, furthered his ideas into what we now called heliocentricism.
Galileo: invented the telescope and looked at planets and found that they were not as perfectly round as they believed.
Newton/Boyle: Discovered gravity.
The ones that were the most against this are the Protestants and religious leaders. Galileo tried to make tensions nicer by helping them understand but ended up making fun of them (“Well, the people who wrote the Bible were probably dumb and they saw it one way when it was actually this way…” Others go, “Really? Then the whole thing about Jesus could’ve been wrong! The whole religion could’ve been a dream…” Church looks indignantly at Galileo. Galileo laughs nervously and asks for his execution time.) His works and books get banned. But word still spread out and Newton, being religions, bonded the two concepts a bit more.
Enlightenment
Their motto is that social and human laws can be discovered like science. In a way, it was an early form of psychology and sociology. They try to get politics to act according to these laws, resulting in opposition similar to those of science. Their books are burned/banned.
They try and turn the train of thought around from the obviously to a more “Really? Are you sure” topic such as the Amerindians who were “obviously” barbarians but the Enlightened people see them as more noble than European societies. They try and see everyone as equal.
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