Transformations in Europe, 1500-1750

Culture and Ideas

Social and Economic Life

Political Innovations

Learning Objectives:

After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to discuss:

1. Be able to show how the religious reformation and dynastic rivalries further divided the people of Europe at a time when greater unity seemed desirable.

2. Be able to describe how royal centralization increased the unity and power of Spain, France, and England.

3. Understand how state policies with regard to economic growth and military reorganization, warfare, and diplomacy enabled northern European countries to move ahead of Spain.

4. Be able to analyze the relationships between climate change, human-induced environmental change, and social change in Europe.

5. Understand the ways in which witch-hunts, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment reflected different European views of the natural world and of human society.

Focus and Essential Questions:

What were the objectives and major accomplishments of the voyages of exploration undertaken by Chinese, Polynesians, and other non-Western peoples?

In this era of long-distance exploration, did Europeans have any special advantages over other cultural regions?

What were the different outcomes of European interactions with Africa, India, and the Americas?

Culture and Ideas

Art flourished in early modern Europe to an

extent that can scarcely be overestimated

The growth of powerful states extracted a terrible

price in death and destruction. The

Reformation brought greater individual choice

in religion but widespread religious

persecution

Theological controversies broke the

religious unity of the Latin Church and

contributed to violent wars

The influence of classical ideas from Greco-Roman

antiquity increased among better-educated

people, but some thinkers challenged the authority of the ancients

Religious Reformation

The papacy was simultaneously gaining stature and suffering from

corruption and dissent

The jewel of the building projects was the magnificent new Saint

Peter’s Basilica in Rome

Pope Leo X (r. 1513-1521)

Indulgence—raised funds for the construction of the basilica

Martin Luther (1483-1546) objected to the way the

new indulgence was preached

Indulgence preachers appeared to emphasize

giving money more than the faith behind act

Through his rejection of Indulgences, Luther led the “Protestant Reformation”

Luther insisted that the only way to salvation was

through faith in Jesus Christ

Luther’s use of the printing press to promote his ideas

won him the support of powerful Germans

John Calvin (1509-1564), a well-educated Frenchman

led the second wave of Reformation

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

masterful synthesis of Christian teachings

Calvin denied that even human faith could merit salvation. Salvation is “predestined”

Calvinists displayed simple dress, life, and worship

Rejected statues, most musical instruments, stained-glass

windows, incense, and vestments

Shaken by the intensity of the Protestant Reformers’

appeal, the Catholic Church undertook its own reforms

The council also reaffirmed the supremacy of the pope and called for a number of

reforms

The Society of Jesus, Jesuits, 1540

Ignatius of Loyola

Pre-Christian beliefs remained powerful *witch-hunts

folklore about magic and forest spirits passed down orally from pre-Christian times

Biblical teachings of the Christian and Jewish scripture

miracles, saints, and devils mixed with folklore

Traditional Thinking and Witch-Hunts

Natural events could have supernatural causes:

Earthquakes and flooding

They blamed unseen spirits

A Jesuit charged it “scandalous to pretend that

the earthquake was just a natural event”

Some hundred thousand people, 3/4 of whom are

women, were tried for witchcraft

Scientific Revolution

Scientific Advance from Copernicus to

NewtonOrigins of the

Scientific Revolution

The Importance of Antiquity

Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen“Natural

philosophers”

The Influence of “Magical”

Beliefs

Alchemist

Astrology

ParacelsusNeoplatonism

CabalaPythagoras

Observations, Experiments, and

Instruments

TelescopeVacuum pumpThermometer

BarometerMicroscope

The Breakthroughs

Vesalius

“The Structure of the human Body”

Used dissections to produce anatomical

description

He pointed out errors in the work of Galen

Copernicus (1473-1543)

“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”

Ptolemy’s model was too complex

Theory of a sun-centered solar system

Epicycles

Gregorian calendar

Theories in ConflictTycho Brahe

Conflict over knowledge

Kepler and Galileo Address the

Uncertainties

The Laws of Planetary Motion: Three

Orbits, regularity, distance

He confirms heliocentric theory

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Physics,Observation, and

mathematics: Connection between

planetary motion and motion on Earth

Correction of the Aristotelian view of

motion: objects must be pushed constantly

Telescope

Inertia

Friction and motion

A New Astronomy

Jupiter has Satellites and the Moon has mountains

Challenges to “perfect” heavens and corrupted

earth

Light from the Moon is a reflection

Does the Earth Move?

Conflict with the Church

Protestantism, Science,

and Jesuit Orders

Inquisition

against Galileo and

Copernicanism

The Book and the Trial

Ban from teaching heresy

Dialogue on the Two Great Systems

Italian vs. Latin

House Arrest and lost his eyesight

Galileo’s Legacy

discouragement in the scientific community

Scientific advancements move to England, Dutch,

and French

By 1630, all major astronomers believed in the

Copernican theory

Assurance Spreads

Advancements in anatomy

The English doctor, William Harvey

identified the function of the heart and the circulation of

blood

The Climax of the Scientific Revolution

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

He united physics and astronomy

He Established the basic laws of modern physics

The PrincipiaThe Mathematical Principles of

Natural Philosophy (1697

The laws:

1. In the absence of force, motion continues in a straight

line2. the rate of change of the

motion is determined by the forces acting on it

3. action and reaction between two bodies are equal and

opposite

He mathematically demonstrated that these laws

govern the motion of the

planets

Gravity, the Moon, and the

Earth’s pull

The Influence of Newton

The demigod, Newton

The slowing of science

The symbol of the “scientific revolution”

One man, in a line of thinkers

The Enlightenment

Many believed that human behavior and institutions

could be studied rationally, like Newton’s universe

They called this the Enlightenment—pursuit of

reason, tolerance, and virtue (apart from religion)

Paris—the focal point

Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau

The Broadening Reverberations of Science

Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton cared little for

social institutions

Remained practicing Christians

Their legacy, however, led to the unfolding of Christianity in west

The Popularization of ScienceNon-scientists applied the

methodologies of Descartes, Newton, and Locke to other

realms of human thought

fusion of methodological doubt and naturalist

explanations—scientific and mathematical spirit

Writers translated the discoveries into amusing

reading

Voltaire, the most famous of

Enlightenment thinkers, wrote science through literature and

criticism

The Elements of the Philosophy of Newton—a

freeing of the mind from dogma and

religion

Popularizations of scientific

method stimulated public

interest in science,

mathematics, etc.

Mesmerism—healing magnetic

fields

Natural History

*natural history— the science of the earth’s

development—a combination of geology,

zoology, and botany

G. L. Buffon, keeper of the French Botanical

Gardens

Natural History of the Earth

An exploration of the development of

the earth—completely ignored

the religious tradition of Genesis

Beyond Christianity The erosion of biblical revelation as a source of

authority

The elimination of superstitious imagery that could make religion seem

ridiculous

The devil could be considered a category of

moral evil rather than horned creature

The deemphasizing of miracles and an emphasis on the

moral teachings of the Bible

This kind of thinking ultimately

diminished the authority of

religion

Toleration

French critic Pierre Bayle emphasized the idea of

toleration

Critical and Historical Dictionary (1697)—put the

claims of religion to the test

Christianity as myth and fairy tale resulting in

fanaticism and persecution

The Spanish Inquisition and Louis XIV became

examples of why religion is immoral

Complete toleration—the allowance of any

person or any creed or faith as long as they are

moral

Habsburg emperor Joseph II

Deism

Voltaire became the Enlightenment’s most vigorous anti-religious

polemicist and dedicated to the destruction of

Christianity

l’infame (the infamous thing)

“Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold [Christianity] in horror”

The Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

Published anonymously and burned by

Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands

Organized religion is not simply false but

pernicious and destructive leading to fanaticism and

persecution

Voltaire hoped that educated Europeans

would abandon Christianity in favor of

*deism

Morality without the threat of damnation

Private contemplation rather than public

worship

The Philosophies Science and secularism became the rallying points of

a group of French intellectuals known as the

*philosophes

They saw themselves as bring the Enlightenment to

the masses

Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson

Intellectual Freedom Exposing assumptions and institutions to reason,

experience, and utility

Reason vs. faith and religion

A return to the Greco-Roman rational

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)

The Philosophies laid claim to Newton and Locke and used their

theories to expand their enlightenment

agenda

They placed human beings and human

reason (literally, much more than the

humanist) at the center of thought and reason

Persecution and Triumph

Religious traditionalist and the apparatus of

censorship threatened intellectual freedom

A few were forced into exile, jail, making public

confessions, and the burning of books

Pioneering in the Social Sciences

Voltaire and history

Social Science—a collection of disciplines to understand the past, not just “triumphal” political

history

Analyzed the past with questions of morality and

ethics

Political Liberty

The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by the French magistrate

Montesquieu

Comparative study of governments and societies

Introduced the perspective of relativism: climate,

religion, and commerce of various countries

Montesquieu argued that a government

needed checks on those who hold power

The various powers (executive, legislative,

Judicial) must be separated

Diderot and the Encyclopedia

The French philosphes collectively generated a

work enlightenment thought—the Encyclopedie

Denis Diderot, a popular publisher of novels,

plays, and mathematics, was the primary writer

Advocate of the “natural man”

Two of Diderot’s books were

condemned by the authorities as contrary to religion, the state,

and morals

The Encyclopedia

The ultimate purpose of the work was to “change

the general way of thinking”

Religion was treated with artful satire or relegated it to a philosophical or

historical principle

Science stood at the core

The Encyclopedia’s Impact “The vomit of hell”

Attorney general of France—”There is a

project formed, a society organized to

propagate materialism, to

destroy religion, to inspire a spirit of

independence, and to nourish the corruption of

morals”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Obsessed with the issue of moral freedom,

Rousseau found society far more oppressive than most philosophes would

admit—and they were part of the problem

Idleness and the dissolution of morals

The basis of morality was conscience, not

reason

Rousseau’s Concept of Freedom

The Social Contract

Popularized after the French Revolution

He denied the almost universal idea that some

people are meant to govern and others to obey

Governments should follow the consensus as to

the best interests of all citizens