if you've ever seen a movie set during the feudal period of europe which is to say the middle ages you've probably seen the king portrayed as all-powerful i'm the king and i do whatever i want but that is not how power worked in those days instead kings shared powers with their nobles and to some degree the church and if you asked which of those three was the most powerful during the middle ages then without doubt it would have been the nobility but all that began to change especially in the 1500s and in this video i'm going to tell you everything you need to know about that change so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk consolidation of power style let's get to it so in this period we see the rise of what became known as new monarchs and what made them knew was that they took measures to take power away from other entities like the church and the nobles and consolidated that power smack dab underneath themselves now in unit 3 we're going to talk about absolutist monarchs and they're really the ones who are like i'm the king and i can do whatever i want so while these new monarchs are not quite to that level their consolidation of power was definitely on the same path these new monarchs are going to get more powerful but they're not yet as powerful as the absolutist okay so these new monarchs have more power so what are they going to do with it so glad you asked the first thing we'll consider is top-down religious reforms and just for poops and giggles how about we start with the guy who couldn't seem to stay married for more than five minutes henry viii of england now henry reigned during the outbreak of the protestant reformation on which more on the next unit and he began as a staunch opposer of protestant doctrine in fact he so opposed martin luther on his new doctrines that the catholic pope named him defender of the faith the irony of which i shall explain presently henry was married to catherine of aragon for 20 years and she was rude enough not to produce a male heir for him at least none that survived long enough to succeed him so henry decided to be classy and kick her to the curb by getting their marriage and null but catherine happened to be the daughter of the catholic monarchs of spain and they began putting pressure on the pope to deny the annulment which he did but things got even more complicated when henry's mistress anne boleyn became pregnant and again sticking with his classy moves henry divorced catherine and married anne boleyn so the pope went ahead and declared that marriage illegal and henry bit his thumb right back at the pope and that's when the english parliament passed a law making henry the head of the church of england and as head of the state church wouldn't you know it henry was positively fine with the divorce and remarriage okay now all that is just set up for what we're talking about here which is how did new monarchs like henry consolidate power through top-down religious reform and here's how he did it the treason act was passed that made it a capital crime to refuse to recognize the church of england as the official state church now many english folks remained catholic but they had to kind of keep it on the download now let me quickly fill out the story in england here after mary tudor became queen and tried to wrench england back to catholicism again there's top-down religious reform elizabeth first rose to the throne elizabeth went ahead and ended the persecution of anglican bishops that occurred during her predecessor's reign and steered england back to anglicanism which is to say protestantism now real quick when i say anglicanism i'm talking about the anglican church which is just another term for the church of england don't get confused anyway elizabeth also consolidated power through top-down religious reform in something called the act of uniformity under which english subjects had to attend anglican church services once a week or pay a fine okay so top-down religious reform was one way these new monarchs consolidated power another way they did it was by being the only entity responsible for taxation and the extension of bureaucratic power now in case you don't know what a bureaucracy is let me just tell you real quick so the monarch has the power to tax his or her citizens for example now how is that monarch going to get all of those taxes like is the queen gonna go from door to door collecting them no is the king going to order all of his subjects to bring their taxes to his castle and drop them at the door no most people really couldn't travel in those days so what is the monarch going to do create a bureaucracy this is a group of officials whose job it is to make sure the people are following the law so it's the dozens or hundreds of folks in the bureaucracy that are going to go out and figure out how to get taxes from the people into the national treasury and just to be clear the bureaucracy is not a tax thing it's there to make sure that all the laws are executed so i reckon we ought to look at a couple of examples of how this works in spain ferdinand and isabella assumed the throne promptly and began their consolidation of power by establishing national taxes on the sailor exchange of property and creating a massive bureaucracy which was responsible for collecting taxes and deciding questions of justice in france we see similar methods being used namely taxation and bureaucracy but something specific from france you should know is the concordat of bologna in 1516. this was an agreement between francis the first and poplio the 10th concerning taxation and the church in this agreement the pope got the right to collect income from the french catholic church while francis got the right to appoint church officials which restricted their right to communicate with the pope directly now the third way new monarchs consolidated power was by assuming the right to determine the religion of their subjects you know when i say religion i don't mean that some european monarchs were like i think we'll be hindu no the choice was really between catholic and protestant christianity now a significant document to know in this regard is the piece of augsburg signed in 1555. this gave individual rulers in the holy roman empire the right to decide whether their subjects would be catholic or lutheran which was the earliest strain of protestantism now monarchs weren't the only ones gaining power during this time you also saw the rise in power of commercial and professional groups as well and with this new power they begin playing a greater role in political affairs now the group you should focus on here is merchants and bankers especially in the italian and german states in italy more particularly in florence you should know the medici family who essentially established the banking industry there in augsburg and the german states the fooger family established the banking industry there now the way they were able to gain power was because with the rise of the money economy all that money was flowing through their hands because they were the bankers that fostered a very close alliance between those groups and the monarchs which allowed these bankers to exercise increase political power now the last change you need to know under the heading of new monarchies was the rise of the concept of the secular state now a secular state is a state in which the church has little to no political influence this new idea began in the fragmented italian states and soon the debate would be taken up by french british and dutch authors as well in italy machiavelli championed republicanism in his book discourses on the 10 books of titus living republicanism in case you don't know is a government structure in which elected representatives make the laws and they wield the power by the consent of the government on the opposite side was jean-bodon of france and he thought the best structure for a secular state was one where the monarch ruled absolutely and not only that but the kings would rule by divine right which is to say the king ruled as a kind of substitute for god okay here's my playlist for unit one and that is definitely where you should go next click right here to grab my ap euro review pack which has everything you need to get an a in your class and a five on your exam i'll catch you on the flip-flop heimler out