Protestant Reformation and Its Impact

Unit 2 of the AP European History curriculum is so important to understand. If you want an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, you have to know what happened in the Protestant Reformation and the wars of religion that followed. And guess what? That's exactly what I'm about to review for you, so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Now back in 1054, we had the first major split of the Christian Church. And that split gave us the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since that split, it was the Roman Catholic Church that dominated Western Europe. You know, if you were alive back then and you didn't like the Catholic Church, it's not like you could have gone down the street to the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church or whatever. You had one option, and that option was Catholic. And by the way, if you want note guides for this video and a bunch of other stuff to help you with this unit and all the other units, check out my AP European History Ultimate Review Packet, which is linked in the description below. Now, by the 1500s, the Catholic Church had gotten itself all kinds of tangled up in politics, and it accumulated a metric buttload of wealth. And some of those entanglements led to corruption, and you need to know a few of these. First was simony, which was the buying and selling of church offices. I mean, you would expect that the church office of archbishop, for example, would be reserved for the most pious, most experienced man. But no, in this period, church offices went to the guy who had the requisite amount of boom boom to buy his way into the office. Second was nepotism, which meant the appointing of family and friends to church offices. Again, people got church offices not because they were qualified, but because of who they were related to. Third, and maybe most important for our purposes, was the buying and selling of indulgences. Essentially, this was the church offering buy their salvation, or maybe buy loved ones out of purgatory. And the church justified these kind of behaviors because, hey, St. Peter's Basilica ain't going to renovate itself. Now, right into this nasty soup of corruption came an Augustinian monk and Christian humanist named Martin Luther. His grievances began when Luther was studying the book of Romans in the New Testament, which taught that a person's salvation was by grace alone through faith. Or, to put it another way, salvation is free, paid for by Christ himself. This, of course, sharply contrasted with the church's position that salvation was. earned by faith, and good works, not to mention buying it through indulgences. Now, Luther also came to believe that the scriptures alone ought to be the sole authority of Christians, which is to say, not the pope and not the elaborate system of church dogmas. Furthermore, he also saw that the scriptures did not endorse the hierarchy of believers into sacred and secular realms, but instead the scriptures taught the priesthood of all believers. And I hope by now you can start to taste the sauce that Martin Luther was cooking up, because It was spicy. And so all of this came to a head on October 31st, 1517. Luther composed a document containing 95 theses criticizing the corruption of the Church and calling the Church and its leaders to reform. He nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door, and it was on like Donkey Kong. Now, to be fair, Luther didn't intend these theses to be a broad proclamation throughout all of Europe for a new way to believe. It was really only meant to spark a discussion among a few educated monks and priests, but But because of the printing press, the 95 theses were spread throughout the German states of the Holy Roman Empire with great speed, and apparently many other Germans felt the same way about the Catholic Church's abuses because Luther's theses were widely embraced. Now once Luther's complaints and new interpretations of the scriptures made it to the Church officials, they went ahead and denounced him as a heretic, which is a person who rejects the accepted beliefs of the Church. Now those officials went ahead and put Luther on trial at the Diet of Worms, at which they demanded Luther's recantation. Luther refused to recant, and so they excommunicated him. He then went into hiding under the protection of the Catholic Church. of his prince, Frederick III, who was one of the many German princes who supported Luther. Now, is that because they were moved deeply by his writings and repented in dust and ashes and begged Luther to let them help spread these life-changing ideas? Yeah, no. No, these princes understood that if they supported Luther, that would weaken the Pope's power, and that means German princes would in turn have more power. So in a very real way, we can say that Luther wasn't the chief Protestant reformer, but rather the princes who protested the Catholic Church and supported Luther's work. Now, if you know your European history, you know that Luther was not the first reformer to criticize the Catholic Church. He had Christian humanists like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus who did it before Luther and really planted the seeds of the Protestant Reformation. So the real question is, why was it Luther's protest that ultimately split the Church? Well, that brings us back to the printing press. Luther was the first major reformer to have access to this new printing technology. By this point, there were three major kinds of publications coming out of the printing houses. Books, pamphlets, and broadsides. And Luther made proficient use of all three, but especially pamphlets. By 1520, there were something like 300,000 copies of his pamphlets all across Germany and as far away as England. Furthermore, as an Augustinian monk, Luther used to preach to the people in German, not Latin, because, you know, he wanted ordinary people to understand the doctrines of grace. Therefore, his production of a vernacular Bible in German spread far and wide thanks to the printing press. If you don't know the word vernacular, it just means the common language of the people. And that German Bible had a way of confirming Protestant doctrine. For example, when everyone could read a book like the Bible, not just priests and bishops. It gave support to the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. And so that was how the Protestant Reformation began, leading to the second major split in the Christian Church. So that was happening in the German states, but as I said, thanks to the printing press, the ideas of the Reformation spread quickly. And the next significant place the Reformation took root was Switzerland under the leadership of a guy named John Calvin. Calvin was originally a follower of Martin Luther, but the two split. over varying interpretations of the doctrine of salvation. Now, Calvin was known for two major Protestant theological developments. First was the doctrine of predestination, which said that God had, from before the foundation of the world, decided who would be saved and who would not. Therefore, salvation was not a matter of human choice, but God. God's choice. Second was the doctrine of the elect. Those whom God had chosen to save were the elect, and those who were truly elect had no choice in the matter and, further, could never lose their salvation. Now how did a person know he or she was a member of the elect? Well, simply because they desired salvation. a person was elect if their salvation led to good works. And to be clear, this was different from the Catholic doctrine. Catholics taught that faith and good works were necessary for salvation. Calvin argued that only by faith was a person saved, but if they were truly elect, that salvation would naturally result in good works. Additionally, Calvin taught that wealth accumulation would be a sign of a person's election, although he tempered that by teaching that a person's wealth was still governed by the law of love. A Christian, therefore, had an obligation to use wealth to care for the poor. And as a direct result of this teaching, welfare state in Geneva. Now, the last thing I'll say about Calvin's Geneva is this. The church and the state were so tightly tied together that you really couldn't tell where one started and the other ended. In Geneva, the Bible was the law, and this resulted in a kind of theocracy, which is when a state is ruled not by a human ruler, but directly by God. For example, citizens of Geneva were required by law to attend church five days a week. And if you were caught skipping those services enough times, don't worry, they would just excommunicate you or put you in jail. Under Calvin's direction in Geneva, the people couldn't drink. couldn't dance, couldn't swear, so, you know, all good in Geneva. It was by these rules that Calvin was able to control the population in Geneva. After all, Calvin taught that it was the elect who obeyed such rules, and everyone wanted to be part of the elect, right? Now, Calvin also benefited tremendously from the printing press as well. He laid down all of his ideas in a hefty volume called the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Institutes was the first complete treatment of Reformation doctrines, and the printing press enabled Calvin's work to spread throughout Europe. And what it did was to provide the needed doctrinal order to Protestant churches. And as Calvinism... spread throughout Europe, it created the Presbyterians in Scotland, the Huguenots in France, and the Puritans in England. So Calvin's Protestantism, while it held to the same basic principles as Luther's doctrine, developed its own distinctives. Another Protestant group that became a distinct entity during this time was the Anabaptists, who believed in the Reformation principles that Luther and Calvin did, but separated from them on the question of baptism. Calvin and Luther taught that infants could be baptized, and on this they agreed with the Catholic Church. Anabaptists, on the other hand, believed that baptism could not be performed on infants, on account of it was a right that only adults could protect. participate in because only adults could truly affirm that they were believers. So for Anabaptists, the baby dunking was out. Also out for the Anabaptists was military service. They believed in the absolute separation between church and state. That a person's commitment to God wholesale trumped their commitment to the state. So they were pacifists and refused to be conscripted for the wars that their states got themselves into. And speaking of wars, many of these conflicts in the church that I've just been talking about led to actual armed conflicts between European states. We call those Europe's wars of religion, and we'll talk about France and the whole Holy Roman Empire in this respect. First, France. In the first half of the 1500s, most French people were Catholic, but by the 1500s, Protestantism had gained a significant foothold. And those French folks who embraced Protestantism were known as the Huguenots. As it turned out, nearly half of the French nobles had converted to Calvinism and were seeking recognition and rights from the crown. In 1560, Charles IX took the throne, but he was a wee little thing coming in at only 11 years old. Therefore, his mother, Catherine de'Medici, was basically running the kingdom and wanted to purge France of the Huguenots and therefore to diminish the French power. diminish the power of the Protestant nobles. And remember, that's a power move. If the whole country was singular in its religious allegiance, then those loyalties would merge with their political allegiance and that would create a stronger, more powerful government. Now the French Wars of Religion began with the Massacre of Huguenot led by the Bourbon family in 1562, known as the Massacre of Vassy, in which members of the Catholic Guise family stormed their worship service and began killing them indiscriminately. So that was rough. But it got even worse in 1572 when Charles IX's sister married Bourbon Henry of Navarre who was also a Huguenot, and he invited many prominent Huguenots to the wedding. And Catherine de'Medici, fluffy lady that she was, organized a massacre of the Huguenots that became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. And as the massacre spread beyond the wedding, something like 10 to 20,000 Protestants were killed. As it turns out, Henry's life was spared because he promised he would convert to Catholicism, which he did. And as these political and religious conflicts continued to simmer, we got yet another conflict in this series, which was called the War of the Three Henrys, starting in 1587. This very appropriate The appropriately named war broke out because three different Henrys were vying for the French throne. There was Henry III, who was a Catholic and who also happened to be the king at that time and had the support of his mother Catherine de'Medici. He was a deeply unpopular king. As a Catholic, Protestants didn't like him, and the Catholics thought he wasn't Catholic enough. Second, there was Henry of Navarre, who was a Huguenot and leader of the Bourbon family. You'll remember him as the guy whose wedding turned into a slaughterhouse. Additionally, he was married to Henry III's sister, so thankfully this isn't even getting complicated. Third, there was Henry of Guise, who was a Catholic and he wanted to be the king of the to take measures to make sure that only... Catholics ruled France. Now I'd like to tell you that the three Henrys resolved this dispute by slathering themselves with whipped cream and wrestling it out Greek-style, but to my great disappointment knew. Henry III and Henry of Guise got themselves assassinated, and that left Henry of Navarre to take the throne, which he did under the name of Henry IV. And as king, Henry took steps towards religious toleration by issuing the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which officially established France as Catholic while also providing freedom for Huguenots to worship without harassment. Okay, so those were a few of the religious conflicts in France. Now let's talk about the conflicts in the Holy Roman Empire. And here we're going to talk about the Thirty Years'War, which in case you couldn't tell lasted for, you know, 30 years. Anyway, this was the last major war of the Protestant Reformation, and in order to get this one you need to know about the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. This established that individual rulers in the Holy Roman Empire could decide for themselves whether their people would be Lutheran or Catholic. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V passed the Peace of Augsburg for much the same reason that Henry IV enacted the Edict of Nantes, namely to end the state's religious squabbles and maintain the power of the state. Okay, hold on. That's not going to make any sense to you unless you understand what the Holy Roman Empire was. While France France was one unified state. The Holy Roman Empire was made up of hundreds of loosely confederated states which had individual rulers. Now, those rulers were answerable to the Holy Roman Emperor, but they had a great deal of power by themselves. So the Peace of Augsburg said that each of those leaders of the independent states could decide for themselves whether their people would be Catholic or Lutheran. Now if you've been listening closely, you have no doubt noticed that I haven't said anything about the Peace of Augsburg giving any latitude to Calvinists. And you would be right. The options were Lutheran or Catholic. So in 1618, a Calvinist leader named Frederick I challenged the Catholic Church to give the Catholic absolutism of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get a religious war. Ferdinand broke the peace of Augsburg by shutting down the Lutheran churches in the Bohemia region. Now, not surprisingly, this got the Protestants pretty angry, so they grabbed Ferdinand's officials, carried them up the stairs of the castle in Prague, and summarily threw them out the window. This event became known as the Defenestration of Prague, defenestration being a fancy word for throwing someone out a window. Anyway, the juicy part of the story is that Ferdinand's officials actually survived the defenestration, but only because a giant pipe pile of poo broke their fall. So that's fun. Anyway, that event sparked the Thirty Years War. And basically there were four phases to this war, and I'll explain each of them briefly. First was the Bohemian Phase, which lasted from 1618 to 1625. And it's called this because it was just a small localized war in Bohemia between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League. The Holy Roman Empire of Ferdinand II defeated Protestant Frederick I at the Battle of White Mountain and reestablished Catholicism in many German states. Second there was the Danish Phase, which lasted from 1625 to 1630. It's called the Danish Phase because the King of Denmark who was Protestant, got in on the action and led attacks against the Catholics. And it's important to notice here that the war is transforming now from a localized conflict into a transnational war. Now, ultimately the King of Denmark was defeated, and that led to the third phase, the Swedish phase, which lasted from 1630 to 1635. This marks the point at which the war extended beyond the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and became a proper European war. King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden organized the Protestant cause, and as a brilliant strategist, scored some major victories for the Protestants. Now here's where I tell you that during this phase a measure of the Roman Empire was not yet established. The metric buttload of funding for the Protestant cause came from a guy named Cardinal Richelieu of France. Wait a second, why in the fresh heck is Catholic France helping the Protestant cause? Well, it's an indication that the Thirty Years War is evolving from a purely religious conflict, although even that is debatable, to a more political conflict. So it was the Habsburgs who ruled Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and the French, in case you don't know, loathed the Habsburgs and sought any chance to diminish their power. And here were German and Swedish Protestants doing just that. So, you know... Let's jump in on the Protestant side. And then finally you get the fourth phase, which is known as the French phase, and it lasted from 1635 to 1648. Instead of just sending cartloads of hooch over to the Protestants, France went ahead and entered the war on their side. And again, the French cared almost none whether the Protestant or Catholic question was settled in the Holy Roman Empire. They actually used this war as an excuse to fight the Habsburgs in Spain in order to assure that they would not rebound from the Protestant defeats. Now, the war was finally over and everything got settled at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. And you're like, oh, well, isn't that interesting? That's the same year this time period ends. Yeah, that's because Westphalia was a big deal, and you really need to know it. So the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and marked a turning point in European history because it effectively marked the end of all of Europe's religious wars. It amended the Augsburg Agreement to include Calvinism as a legitimate faith, and it kept the Holy Roman Emperor weak and the rulers of individual states strong and thus hastened the decline of the Holy Roman Empire. Additionally, it officially marked the end of the medieval idea of universal Christendom. church was forever divided. And, you know, speaking of the church being divided, let's return to the Catholic Church. Now basically the whole time that Europeans were slaughtering each other during the religious wars, the Catholic Church was undergoing a reformation of its own, known as the Catholic Reformation, or you might hear it called the Counter-Reformation. In response to the criticisms leveled at the church from the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Catholic leaders decided to clean up their house. Now I should probably also mention that the Catholics started reforming themselves for a number of reasons. Yes, they were responding to the ideological criticism of the Protestant Reformers, but they also sought to reform themselves because they were losing lots of people to the Protestant side. So you could equally argue that the Catholics reformed themselves to maintain power and influence among their people. Anyway, Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition, which had the authority to arrest and execute heretics. Doesn't that smell a little Machiavellian? Connections, baby. We're making those connections! The Church is doing whatever it can to maintain power, including fear and intimidation. Additionally, the Church established an Index of Prohibited Books, which was a list of books that taught heretical doctrines. And it included works by the Christian humanist Erasmus and St. several Protestant reformers as well. But without doubt the most significant act of the Catholic Reformation was the Council of Trent, which met intermittently from 1545 to 1563. Its purpose was to reform the Catholic Church and forge some reconciliation with Protestants. The Council made some gains on the former, but basically did nothing on the latter. So at the Council, the Church began to clean up some of its corrupt practices that caused the Protestants so much angst. It suppressed simony and forbade the sale of indulgences. Also the Council reaffirmed the celibacy of the clergy. You know medieval priests were a little loose with this one, to put it mildly. And with these corruptions purged, the Catholic Church experienced a spiritual renewal, and what was established in the Council lasted to the middle of the 20th century. Now the Council also reaffirmed classical Catholic doctrines like transubstantiation, equal authority of the Pope and the Scriptures, and the seven sacraments. And so by doing this, reconciliation with Protestants was not possible. In reaffirming these doctrines, the Council permanently cemented the division in Christianity. Regardless, the Catholic Church itself continued to experience renewal, and one of the manifestations of that was the establishment of new religious orders. St. Teresa of Avila established the Carmelite Order, and she founded numerous convents and brought their order back to a stricter form of the faith, emphasizing asceticism and poverty. Probably the most significant new order to be established was the Jesuits. It was founded by Ignatius of Loyola for the purpose of spiritual renewal. And members of the order took vows of poverty and chastity, and they established schools and far-reaching missionary efforts. It was the Jesuits that brought Catholicism to India and Japan and Brazil and North America and Africa. But they also concentrated their missionary efforts at home, and through their work, many of the southern provinces of the Holy Roman Empire returned to Catholicism. Okay, let's turn the corner now and look at this period from the bottom up. We've talked a lot about the major figures and rulers so far, but now let's talk about the people, and I reckon we ought to begin with the social hierarchies. Social hierarchies define a person's social status regarding class and religion and gender in both rural and urban settings. Now, prior to this period, a person's class was established at birth by one's wealth and family. But with the rise of the merchant elites, some of whom became very wealthy, movement upward was now a possibility. Which is to say, class status was not necessarily connected with land anymore, nor your family of origin. Even so, land ownership still held quite a bit of prestige. For example, in the English Parliament, the Upper House, the House of Lords, was reserved for the landed citizens, while the Lower House, the House of Commons, was reserved for those without land, even if some of them were not. were very wealthy. When it came to religion, a person's beliefs certainly mattered in terms of social standing. Recall that if you were a Huguenot in Catholic France, you stood a good chance of getting slaughtered at a wedding. Additionally, the Spanish throne took pains to expel the Jews from their land. So yeah, you needed to believe the right thing if you were going to live the good life in Europe. In terms of gender, patriarchy was the order of the day, which meant that it was a male-dominated society. Women were expected to submit to their husbands and fathers, and their earnings belonged to the men in their lives. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that women were largely excluded from the economic and political life of Europe. This was This was connected to the entire political structure of the European states. For example, Charles I of England understood himself as the father of the nation, and only if the family hierarchy was preserved would his own authority be preserved. Now this standard was more evident in urban wealthy families where they had more freedom to order their households. In rural households, men and women were more equal even though there were separate spheres of work for both in certain roles that they each fulfilled. Regardless, urban and rural households organized themselves around the nuclear family instead of the extended family. Now as it happened, the Renaissance and Reformation were the most important and most important The formation raised debates about this patriarchal structure and women's proper role in society. Among French intellectuals, they debated what they called the Querelle des Femmes, which when being translated means, the woman question. Mainly it was a debate over whether women were fit to receive university education. On one side, folks argued that no, they were not fit since women were naturally inferior to men. And how did they know? Well, wasn't it Eve who was deceived by the serpent and led the entire human race into sin and misery? And then the other side of the argument went like this. If women are inferior, it's only because men are inferior. have withheld education from them. After all, look at Queen Elizabeth in England. She was educated and ruled like a boss. In the Catholic Church, women, of course, could not be priests and, furthermore, could hold no position of authority over a man. But they could become nuns, and that was something. In the context of a convent, nuns had the opportunity to use their artistic or medical or leadership gifts in the context of a community of women. Now, on the Protestant side of things, Luther and Calvin both taught that the wife ought to be subservient to her husband and put herself on display as the model of obedience and charity. But it was only the Anabaptists who gave women positions of of authority, and some of them even became preachers. And out of all the Anabaptists who were martyred during this period, nearly a third of them were women in leadership. Now, during this period, with so many people moving from the country into the city, and A larger challenge to religious authority occurring because of the Reformation, city governments were left with the task of creating laws to legislate public morals. Where the church did this before, now the task was falling on secular authorities. So, for example, during this period, many municipal authorities outlawed prostitution. Protestants believed that marriage was the only legitimate remedy for lust, therefore they worked to get local governments to pass laws to close and ban brothels. In some places, authorities tried to restrict the festivities during a yearly celebration of Carnival. Since medieval times, this was a festival held right before Lent, which was the fasting season of the church. And people went positively crazy during Carnival. They got drunk and danced for days, dressed up as people in authority like kings and popes, and so it was kind of an upside down society for a few days. But because it was motivated by the Catholic doctrine of penance during Lent, some Protestant leaders attempted to make laws restricting the excesses of Carnival. However, in more rural areas far from the reach of the state, people persisted in celebrating like this. Now, in order to keep everyone in line, and local and church authorities had certain public punishments and humiliations, to keep the populace from violating certain legal and social norms. If you broke the law, you might find yourself in the stocks in which your head, arms, and feet were restrained in blocks of wood. But don't worry, it was usually right in the center of town so that any passerby could hurl rotten food and waste at the prisoner. Also there was flogging with a cane or whip, and sometimes you got flogged before you went in the stocks, so you know, that was a bad day. Even so, with the rise of capitalism, on which more in the next unit, a new culture of leisure was on the rise. In their free time, people began attending in greater numbers blood sports like boxing or bullfighting. lighting, or jousting. Additionally, Saints Day's festivities drew huge crowds for celebrations according to the church calendar. For example, All Saints Day was a festival celebrating all the saints that have departed. They maintained a strong belief in the mystical connection between the church triumphant, which is those who have already reached heaven, and the church militant, which were those who are still alive on earth. And the last thing I'll say about society during this period is this. Even with all the religious and political upheaval occurring, many people still held on to folk ideas that had been passed down through the generations. And related to that was the witchcraft craze of the 16th and 17th centuries. centuries. To Catholic and Protestant leaders during this time, witchcraft was evidence of a pact with the devil and thus ought to be feared and extinguished. Before the advent of science, many common illnesses or unfortunate events were attributed to witches. The belief grew that witches were in league with the devil to overthrow Christianity. And so, with the stakes getting higher and higher, the stage was set for a witch hunt. Historians estimate that in the 16th and 17th centuries, between 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft, the majority of them women. And that takes us right back to the belief that women were inferior. It was believed that women were not as morally strong as men and therefore were more susceptible to agreement with the devil. Three-quarters of those executions occurred in the Holy Roman Empire alone. And why is that? It's hard to know for sure, but think of this. It was within the Holy Roman Empire that the Protestant Reformation began, which resulted in serious social upheaval. Additionally, these people experienced a great deal of destruction and death during the Thirty Years'War. So it could be that those people were attempting to regain some control over their lives by scapegoating women as witches. Okay, now the last thing we need to do in this unit is talk about art. Mannerism developed during the Renaissance, and it was an art form in which artists made use of distorted figures, large musculature, and vibrant color in order to communicate deep emotion and drama. A great example of Mannerism is Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. If you want drama, it's all here. It's Judgment Day, and here you see the damned in a pretty bad way while the saints are rising to bliss. But also during this period, a new innovation in art developed called Baroque. It was extravagant in form, ornate, and detailed in style and height. highly emotional and dramatic. It began in Rome during the Catholic Reformation, and as the Church was undergoing renewal, they sought to appeal to the people and persuade them to reinvest their confidence in the Church. It was precisely this ornate and dramatic style by which the Catholics sought to critique the often barren and muted styles of Protestant art. It was also a sign of wealth and power, and the more ornate and the greater the size of the cathedral, the more it would reflect the power which the Catholic Church was so desperately trying to hold onto during this period. Now, probably the greatest artist in the Baroque style was Peter Paul Rubens. Look here. at this painting, the Elevation of the Cross, and you can see the flurry of action and emotion surrounding the body of Christ. It's magnificent. Alright, there are more videos on Unit 2 right over here, so I highly suggest you get your clicky finger out and click them. If this video helped you and you want even more help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, then go ahead and click right here and get my Ultimate Review Packet. And finally, if this video helped you and you want me to keep making them, then go ahead and subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.

And that split gave us the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since that split, it was the Roman Catholic Church that dominated Western Europe. You know, if you were alive back then and you didn't like the Catholic Church, it's not like you could have gone down the street to the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church or whatever.

You had one option, and that option was Catholic. And by the way, if you want note guides for this video and a bunch of other stuff to help you with this unit and all the other units, check out my AP European History Ultimate Review Packet, which is linked in the description below. Now, by the 1500s, the Catholic Church had gotten itself all kinds of tangled up in politics, and it accumulated a metric buttload of wealth. And some of those entanglements led to corruption, and you need to know a few of these. First was simony, which was the buying and selling of church offices.

I mean, you would expect that the church office of archbishop, for example, would be reserved for the most pious, most experienced man. But no, in this period, church offices went to the guy who had the requisite amount of boom boom to buy his way into the office. Second was nepotism, which meant the appointing of family and friends to church offices.

Again, people got church offices not because they were qualified, but because of who they were related to. Third, and maybe most important for our purposes, was the buying and selling of indulgences. Essentially, this was the church offering buy their salvation, or maybe buy loved ones out of purgatory. And the church justified these kind of behaviors because, hey, St. Peter's Basilica ain't going to renovate itself.

Now, right into this nasty soup of corruption came an Augustinian monk and Christian humanist named Martin Luther. His grievances began when Luther was studying the book of Romans in the New Testament, which taught that a person's salvation was by grace alone through faith. Or, to put it another way, salvation is free, paid for by Christ himself. This, of course, sharply contrasted with the church's position that salvation was.

earned by faith, and good works, not to mention buying it through indulgences. Now, Luther also came to believe that the scriptures alone ought to be the sole authority of Christians, which is to say, not the pope and not the elaborate system of church dogmas. Furthermore, he also saw that the scriptures did not endorse the hierarchy of believers into sacred and secular realms, but instead the scriptures taught the priesthood of all believers.

And I hope by now you can start to taste the sauce that Martin Luther was cooking up, because It was spicy. And so all of this came to a head on October 31st, 1517. Luther composed a document containing 95 theses criticizing the corruption of the Church and calling the Church and its leaders to reform. He nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door, and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Now, to be fair, Luther didn't intend these theses to be a broad proclamation throughout all of Europe for a new way to believe. It was really only meant to spark a discussion among a few educated monks and priests, but But because of the printing press, the 95 theses were spread throughout the German states of the Holy Roman Empire with great speed, and apparently many other Germans felt the same way about the Catholic Church's abuses because Luther's theses were widely embraced. Now once Luther's complaints and new interpretations of the scriptures made it to the Church officials, they went ahead and denounced him as a heretic, which is a person who rejects the accepted beliefs of the Church.

Now those officials went ahead and put Luther on trial at the Diet of Worms, at which they demanded Luther's recantation. Luther refused to recant, and so they excommunicated him. He then went into hiding under the protection of the Catholic Church.

of his prince, Frederick III, who was one of the many German princes who supported Luther. Now, is that because they were moved deeply by his writings and repented in dust and ashes and begged Luther to let them help spread these life-changing ideas? Yeah, no.

No, these princes understood that if they supported Luther, that would weaken the Pope's power, and that means German princes would in turn have more power. So in a very real way, we can say that Luther wasn't the chief Protestant reformer, but rather the princes who protested the Catholic Church and supported Luther's work. Now, if you know your European history, you know that Luther was not the first reformer to criticize the Catholic Church.

He had Christian humanists like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus who did it before Luther and really planted the seeds of the Protestant Reformation. So the real question is, why was it Luther's protest that ultimately split the Church? Well, that brings us back to the printing press.

Luther was the first major reformer to have access to this new printing technology. By this point, there were three major kinds of publications coming out of the printing houses. Books, pamphlets, and broadsides. And Luther made proficient use of all three, but especially pamphlets.

By 1520, there were something like 300,000 copies of his pamphlets all across Germany and as far away as England. Furthermore, as an Augustinian monk, Luther used to preach to the people in German, not Latin, because, you know, he wanted ordinary people to understand the doctrines of grace. Therefore, his production of a vernacular Bible in German spread far and wide thanks to the printing press. If you don't know the word vernacular, it just means the common language of the people.

And that German Bible had a way of confirming Protestant doctrine. For example, when everyone could read a book like the Bible, not just priests and bishops. It gave support to the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. And so that was how the Protestant Reformation began, leading to the second major split in the Christian Church.

So that was happening in the German states, but as I said, thanks to the printing press, the ideas of the Reformation spread quickly. And the next significant place the Reformation took root was Switzerland under the leadership of a guy named John Calvin. Calvin was originally a follower of Martin Luther, but the two split.

over varying interpretations of the doctrine of salvation. Now, Calvin was known for two major Protestant theological developments. First was the doctrine of predestination, which said that God had, from before the foundation of the world, decided who would be saved and who would not.

Therefore, salvation was not a matter of human choice, but God. God's choice. Second was the doctrine of the elect.

Those whom God had chosen to save were the elect, and those who were truly elect had no choice in the matter and, further, could never lose their salvation. Now how did a person know he or she was a member of the elect? Well, simply because they desired salvation. a person was elect if their salvation led to good works. And to be clear, this was different from the Catholic doctrine.

Catholics taught that faith and good works were necessary for salvation. Calvin argued that only by faith was a person saved, but if they were truly elect, that salvation would naturally result in good works. Additionally, Calvin taught that wealth accumulation would be a sign of a person's election, although he tempered that by teaching that a person's wealth was still governed by the law of love. A Christian, therefore, had an obligation to use wealth to care for the poor.

And as a direct result of this teaching, welfare state in Geneva. Now, the last thing I'll say about Calvin's Geneva is this. The church and the state were so tightly tied together that you really couldn't tell where one started and the other ended. In Geneva, the Bible was the law, and this resulted in a kind of theocracy, which is when a state is ruled not by a human ruler, but directly by God. For example, citizens of Geneva were required by law to attend church five days a week.

And if you were caught skipping those services enough times, don't worry, they would just excommunicate you or put you in jail. Under Calvin's direction in Geneva, the people couldn't drink. couldn't dance, couldn't swear, so, you know, all good in Geneva. It was by these rules that Calvin was able to control the population in Geneva. After all, Calvin taught that it was the elect who obeyed such rules, and everyone wanted to be part of the elect, right?

Now, Calvin also benefited tremendously from the printing press as well. He laid down all of his ideas in a hefty volume called the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Institutes was the first complete treatment of Reformation doctrines, and the printing press enabled Calvin's work to spread throughout Europe. And what it did was to provide the needed doctrinal order to Protestant churches.

And as Calvinism... spread throughout Europe, it created the Presbyterians in Scotland, the Huguenots in France, and the Puritans in England. So Calvin's Protestantism, while it held to the same basic principles as Luther's doctrine, developed its own distinctives.

Another Protestant group that became a distinct entity during this time was the Anabaptists, who believed in the Reformation principles that Luther and Calvin did, but separated from them on the question of baptism. Calvin and Luther taught that infants could be baptized, and on this they agreed with the Catholic Church. Anabaptists, on the other hand, believed that baptism could not be performed on infants, on account of it was a right that only adults could protect. participate in because only adults could truly affirm that they were believers.

So for Anabaptists, the baby dunking was out. Also out for the Anabaptists was military service. They believed in the absolute separation between church and state. That a person's commitment to God wholesale trumped their commitment to the state.

So they were pacifists and refused to be conscripted for the wars that their states got themselves into. And speaking of wars, many of these conflicts in the church that I've just been talking about led to actual armed conflicts between European states. We call those Europe's wars of religion, and we'll talk about France and the whole Holy Roman Empire in this respect.

First, France. In the first half of the 1500s, most French people were Catholic, but by the 1500s, Protestantism had gained a significant foothold. And those French folks who embraced Protestantism were known as the Huguenots.

As it turned out, nearly half of the French nobles had converted to Calvinism and were seeking recognition and rights from the crown. In 1560, Charles IX took the throne, but he was a wee little thing coming in at only 11 years old. Therefore, his mother, Catherine de'Medici, was basically running the kingdom and wanted to purge France of the Huguenots and therefore to diminish the French power.

diminish the power of the Protestant nobles. And remember, that's a power move. If the whole country was singular in its religious allegiance, then those loyalties would merge with their political allegiance and that would create a stronger, more powerful government. Now the French Wars of Religion began with the Massacre of Huguenot led by the Bourbon family in 1562, known as the Massacre of Vassy, in which members of the Catholic Guise family stormed their worship service and began killing them indiscriminately. So that was rough.

But it got even worse in 1572 when Charles IX's sister married Bourbon Henry of Navarre who was also a Huguenot, and he invited many prominent Huguenots to the wedding. And Catherine de'Medici, fluffy lady that she was, organized a massacre of the Huguenots that became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. And as the massacre spread beyond the wedding, something like 10 to 20,000 Protestants were killed. As it turns out, Henry's life was spared because he promised he would convert to Catholicism, which he did.

And as these political and religious conflicts continued to simmer, we got yet another conflict in this series, which was called the War of the Three Henrys, starting in 1587. This very appropriate The appropriately named war broke out because three different Henrys were vying for the French throne. There was Henry III, who was a Catholic and who also happened to be the king at that time and had the support of his mother Catherine de'Medici. He was a deeply unpopular king.

As a Catholic, Protestants didn't like him, and the Catholics thought he wasn't Catholic enough. Second, there was Henry of Navarre, who was a Huguenot and leader of the Bourbon family. You'll remember him as the guy whose wedding turned into a slaughterhouse. Additionally, he was married to Henry III's sister, so thankfully this isn't even getting complicated.

Third, there was Henry of Guise, who was a Catholic and he wanted to be the king of the to take measures to make sure that only... Catholics ruled France. Now I'd like to tell you that the three Henrys resolved this dispute by slathering themselves with whipped cream and wrestling it out Greek-style, but to my great disappointment knew.

Henry III and Henry of Guise got themselves assassinated, and that left Henry of Navarre to take the throne, which he did under the name of Henry IV. And as king, Henry took steps towards religious toleration by issuing the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which officially established France as Catholic while also providing freedom for Huguenots to worship without harassment. Okay, so those were a few of the religious conflicts in France. Now let's talk about the conflicts in the Holy Roman Empire.

And here we're going to talk about the Thirty Years'War, which in case you couldn't tell lasted for, you know, 30 years. Anyway, this was the last major war of the Protestant Reformation, and in order to get this one you need to know about the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. This established that individual rulers in the Holy Roman Empire could decide for themselves whether their people would be Lutheran or Catholic. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V passed the Peace of Augsburg for much the same reason that Henry IV enacted the Edict of Nantes, namely to end the state's religious squabbles and maintain the power of the state.

Okay, hold on. That's not going to make any sense to you unless you understand what the Holy Roman Empire was. While France France was one unified state.

The Holy Roman Empire was made up of hundreds of loosely confederated states which had individual rulers. Now, those rulers were answerable to the Holy Roman Emperor, but they had a great deal of power by themselves. So the Peace of Augsburg said that each of those leaders of the independent states could decide for themselves whether their people would be Catholic or Lutheran.

Now if you've been listening closely, you have no doubt noticed that I haven't said anything about the Peace of Augsburg giving any latitude to Calvinists. And you would be right. The options were Lutheran or Catholic.

So in 1618, a Calvinist leader named Frederick I challenged the Catholic Church to give the Catholic absolutism of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get a religious war. Ferdinand broke the peace of Augsburg by shutting down the Lutheran churches in the Bohemia region. Now, not surprisingly, this got the Protestants pretty angry, so they grabbed Ferdinand's officials, carried them up the stairs of the castle in Prague, and summarily threw them out the window. This event became known as the Defenestration of Prague, defenestration being a fancy word for throwing someone out a window. Anyway, the juicy part of the story is that Ferdinand's officials actually survived the defenestration, but only because a giant pipe pile of poo broke their fall.

So that's fun. Anyway, that event sparked the Thirty Years War. And basically there were four phases to this war, and I'll explain each of them briefly.

First was the Bohemian Phase, which lasted from 1618 to 1625. And it's called this because it was just a small localized war in Bohemia between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League. The Holy Roman Empire of Ferdinand II defeated Protestant Frederick I at the Battle of White Mountain and reestablished Catholicism in many German states. Second there was the Danish Phase, which lasted from 1625 to 1630. It's called the Danish Phase because the King of Denmark who was Protestant, got in on the action and led attacks against the Catholics. And it's important to notice here that the war is transforming now from a localized conflict into a transnational war. Now, ultimately the King of Denmark was defeated, and that led to the third phase, the Swedish phase, which lasted from 1630 to 1635. This marks the point at which the war extended beyond the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and became a proper European war.

King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden organized the Protestant cause, and as a brilliant strategist, scored some major victories for the Protestants. Now here's where I tell you that during this phase a measure of the Roman Empire was not yet established. The metric buttload of funding for the Protestant cause came from a guy named Cardinal Richelieu of France. Wait a second, why in the fresh heck is Catholic France helping the Protestant cause?

Well, it's an indication that the Thirty Years War is evolving from a purely religious conflict, although even that is debatable, to a more political conflict. So it was the Habsburgs who ruled Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and the French, in case you don't know, loathed the Habsburgs and sought any chance to diminish their power. And here were German and Swedish Protestants doing just that. So, you know...

Let's jump in on the Protestant side. And then finally you get the fourth phase, which is known as the French phase, and it lasted from 1635 to 1648. Instead of just sending cartloads of hooch over to the Protestants, France went ahead and entered the war on their side. And again, the French cared almost none whether the Protestant or Catholic question was settled in the Holy Roman Empire.

They actually used this war as an excuse to fight the Habsburgs in Spain in order to assure that they would not rebound from the Protestant defeats. Now, the war was finally over and everything got settled at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. And you're like, oh, well, isn't that interesting? That's the same year this time period ends.

Yeah, that's because Westphalia was a big deal, and you really need to know it. So the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and marked a turning point in European history because it effectively marked the end of all of Europe's religious wars. It amended the Augsburg Agreement to include Calvinism as a legitimate faith, and it kept the Holy Roman Emperor weak and the rulers of individual states strong and thus hastened the decline of the Holy Roman Empire.

Additionally, it officially marked the end of the medieval idea of universal Christendom. church was forever divided. And, you know, speaking of the church being divided, let's return to the Catholic Church. Now basically the whole time that Europeans were slaughtering each other during the religious wars, the Catholic Church was undergoing a reformation of its own, known as the Catholic Reformation, or you might hear it called the Counter-Reformation. In response to the criticisms leveled at the church from the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Catholic leaders decided to clean up their house.

Now I should probably also mention that the Catholics started reforming themselves for a number of reasons. Yes, they were responding to the ideological criticism of the Protestant Reformers, but they also sought to reform themselves because they were losing lots of people to the Protestant side. So you could equally argue that the Catholics reformed themselves to maintain power and influence among their people.

Anyway, Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition, which had the authority to arrest and execute heretics. Doesn't that smell a little Machiavellian? Connections, baby.

We're making those connections! The Church is doing whatever it can to maintain power, including fear and intimidation. Additionally, the Church established an Index of Prohibited Books, which was a list of books that taught heretical doctrines. And it included works by the Christian humanist Erasmus and St. several Protestant reformers as well. But without doubt the most significant act of the Catholic Reformation was the Council of Trent, which met intermittently from 1545 to 1563. Its purpose was to reform the Catholic Church and forge some reconciliation with Protestants.

The Council made some gains on the former, but basically did nothing on the latter. So at the Council, the Church began to clean up some of its corrupt practices that caused the Protestants so much angst. It suppressed simony and forbade the sale of indulgences. Also the Council reaffirmed the celibacy of the clergy. You know medieval priests were a little loose with this one, to put it mildly.

And with these corruptions purged, the Catholic Church experienced a spiritual renewal, and what was established in the Council lasted to the middle of the 20th century. Now the Council also reaffirmed classical Catholic doctrines like transubstantiation, equal authority of the Pope and the Scriptures, and the seven sacraments. And so by doing this, reconciliation with Protestants was not possible. In reaffirming these doctrines, the Council permanently cemented the division in Christianity.

Regardless, the Catholic Church itself continued to experience renewal, and one of the manifestations of that was the establishment of new religious orders. St. Teresa of Avila established the Carmelite Order, and she founded numerous convents and brought their order back to a stricter form of the faith, emphasizing asceticism and poverty. Probably the most significant new order to be established was the Jesuits. It was founded by Ignatius of Loyola for the purpose of spiritual renewal.

And members of the order took vows of poverty and chastity, and they established schools and far-reaching missionary efforts. It was the Jesuits that brought Catholicism to India and Japan and Brazil and North America and Africa. But they also concentrated their missionary efforts at home, and through their work, many of the southern provinces of the Holy Roman Empire returned to Catholicism.

Okay, let's turn the corner now and look at this period from the bottom up. We've talked a lot about the major figures and rulers so far, but now let's talk about the people, and I reckon we ought to begin with the social hierarchies. Social hierarchies define a person's social status regarding class and religion and gender in both rural and urban settings. Now, prior to this period, a person's class was established at birth by one's wealth and family. But with the rise of the merchant elites, some of whom became very wealthy, movement upward was now a possibility.

Which is to say, class status was not necessarily connected with land anymore, nor your family of origin. Even so, land ownership still held quite a bit of prestige. For example, in the English Parliament, the Upper House, the House of Lords, was reserved for the landed citizens, while the Lower House, the House of Commons, was reserved for those without land, even if some of them were not. were very wealthy.

When it came to religion, a person's beliefs certainly mattered in terms of social standing. Recall that if you were a Huguenot in Catholic France, you stood a good chance of getting slaughtered at a wedding. Additionally, the Spanish throne took pains to expel the Jews from their land. So yeah, you needed to believe the right thing if you were going to live the good life in Europe. In terms of gender, patriarchy was the order of the day, which meant that it was a male-dominated society.

Women were expected to submit to their husbands and fathers, and their earnings belonged to the men in their lives. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that women were largely excluded from the economic and political life of Europe. This was This was connected to the entire political structure of the European states. For example, Charles I of England understood himself as the father of the nation, and only if the family hierarchy was preserved would his own authority be preserved. Now this standard was more evident in urban wealthy families where they had more freedom to order their households.

In rural households, men and women were more equal even though there were separate spheres of work for both in certain roles that they each fulfilled. Regardless, urban and rural households organized themselves around the nuclear family instead of the extended family. Now as it happened, the Renaissance and Reformation were the most important and most important The formation raised debates about this patriarchal structure and women's proper role in society. Among French intellectuals, they debated what they called the Querelle des Femmes, which when being translated means, the woman question.

Mainly it was a debate over whether women were fit to receive university education. On one side, folks argued that no, they were not fit since women were naturally inferior to men. And how did they know?

Well, wasn't it Eve who was deceived by the serpent and led the entire human race into sin and misery? And then the other side of the argument went like this. If women are inferior, it's only because men are inferior.

have withheld education from them. After all, look at Queen Elizabeth in England. She was educated and ruled like a boss. In the Catholic Church, women, of course, could not be priests and, furthermore, could hold no position of authority over a man.

But they could become nuns, and that was something. In the context of a convent, nuns had the opportunity to use their artistic or medical or leadership gifts in the context of a community of women. Now, on the Protestant side of things, Luther and Calvin both taught that the wife ought to be subservient to her husband and put herself on display as the model of obedience and charity.

But it was only the Anabaptists who gave women positions of of authority, and some of them even became preachers. And out of all the Anabaptists who were martyred during this period, nearly a third of them were women in leadership. Now, during this period, with so many people moving from the country into the city, and A larger challenge to religious authority occurring because of the Reformation, city governments were left with the task of creating laws to legislate public morals. Where the church did this before, now the task was falling on secular authorities. So, for example, during this period, many municipal authorities outlawed prostitution.

Protestants believed that marriage was the only legitimate remedy for lust, therefore they worked to get local governments to pass laws to close and ban brothels. In some places, authorities tried to restrict the festivities during a yearly celebration of Carnival. Since medieval times, this was a festival held right before Lent, which was the fasting season of the church. And people went positively crazy during Carnival.

They got drunk and danced for days, dressed up as people in authority like kings and popes, and so it was kind of an upside down society for a few days. But because it was motivated by the Catholic doctrine of penance during Lent, some Protestant leaders attempted to make laws restricting the excesses of Carnival. However, in more rural areas far from the reach of the state, people persisted in celebrating like this. Now, in order to keep everyone in line, and local and church authorities had certain public punishments and humiliations, to keep the populace from violating certain legal and social norms.

If you broke the law, you might find yourself in the stocks in which your head, arms, and feet were restrained in blocks of wood. But don't worry, it was usually right in the center of town so that any passerby could hurl rotten food and waste at the prisoner. Also there was flogging with a cane or whip, and sometimes you got flogged before you went in the stocks, so you know, that was a bad day.

Even so, with the rise of capitalism, on which more in the next unit, a new culture of leisure was on the rise. In their free time, people began attending in greater numbers blood sports like boxing or bullfighting. lighting, or jousting.

Additionally, Saints Day's festivities drew huge crowds for celebrations according to the church calendar. For example, All Saints Day was a festival celebrating all the saints that have departed. They maintained a strong belief in the mystical connection between the church triumphant, which is those who have already reached heaven, and the church militant, which were those who are still alive on earth.

And the last thing I'll say about society during this period is this. Even with all the religious and political upheaval occurring, many people still held on to folk ideas that had been passed down through the generations. And related to that was the witchcraft craze of the 16th and 17th centuries.

centuries. To Catholic and Protestant leaders during this time, witchcraft was evidence of a pact with the devil and thus ought to be feared and extinguished. Before the advent of science, many common illnesses or unfortunate events were attributed to witches.

The belief grew that witches were in league with the devil to overthrow Christianity. And so, with the stakes getting higher and higher, the stage was set for a witch hunt. Historians estimate that in the 16th and 17th centuries, between 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft, the majority of them women. And that takes us right back to the belief that women were inferior. It was believed that women were not as morally strong as men and therefore were more susceptible to agreement with the devil.

Three-quarters of those executions occurred in the Holy Roman Empire alone. And why is that? It's hard to know for sure, but think of this.

It was within the Holy Roman Empire that the Protestant Reformation began, which resulted in serious social upheaval. Additionally, these people experienced a great deal of destruction and death during the Thirty Years'War. So it could be that those people were attempting to regain some control over their lives by scapegoating women as witches. Okay, now the last thing we need to do in this unit is talk about art. Mannerism developed during the Renaissance, and it was an art form in which artists made use of distorted figures, large musculature, and vibrant color in order to communicate deep emotion and drama.

A great example of Mannerism is Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. If you want drama, it's all here. It's Judgment Day, and here you see the damned in a pretty bad way while the saints are rising to bliss. But also during this period, a new innovation in art developed called Baroque. It was extravagant in form, ornate, and detailed in style and height.

highly emotional and dramatic. It began in Rome during the Catholic Reformation, and as the Church was undergoing renewal, they sought to appeal to the people and persuade them to reinvest their confidence in the Church. It was precisely this ornate and dramatic style by which the Catholics sought to critique the often barren and muted styles of Protestant art. It was also a sign of wealth and power, and the more ornate and the greater the size of the cathedral, the more it would reflect the power which the Catholic Church was so desperately trying to hold onto during this period. Now, probably the greatest artist in the Baroque style was Peter Paul Rubens.

Look here. at this painting, the Elevation of the Cross, and you can see the flurry of action and emotion surrounding the body of Christ. It's magnificent.

Alright, there are more videos on Unit 2 right over here, so I highly suggest you get your clicky finger out and click them. If this video helped you and you want even more help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, then go ahead and click right here and get my Ultimate Review Packet. And finally, if this video helped you and you want me to keep making them, then go ahead and subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.

Transcript for:Protestant Reformation and Its Impact

Transcript for:
Protestant Reformation and Its Impact