AP European History Exam Review Guide written by Augusto Gonzalez
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance Middle Ages: Began with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 Because of German barbaric raids in Europe: 1. Trade and industry declined 2. Learning and culture were destroyed 3. Europe became very decentralized Feudalism: Military, social, and political system based on the holding of land Lord protests the peasants in exchange for their labor This arose because people were afraid of the outside world Fief: land given to a lord by a king Feudal Society: Strict social order: 1. Kings 2. Nobles 3. Knights 4. Everyone else Crusades: Launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims Exposed Europeans to new ideas and new cultures Art and Culture: Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica and proved the existence of God Gothic: Dark and mysterious architecture. Flying buttresses (Notre Dame in Paris) Romanesque: Roman and Greek styled. Lots of columns and arches Scholasticism: combining the ancients with the Bible to have all available knowledge Bubonic Plague: Killed 1/3 of the European population Weakened feudalism and manolialism Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy: The King of France forces Pope Clement V to move to Avignon in France Pope Gregory XI moves back to Rome Italians demand an Italian pope Great Schism: Council of Pisa elects an Italian pope, Urban VI, because they were threatened by Italians There were now two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon (Clement VII) This weakens the prestige of the church and Catholics all around begin to see their faith diminish Third pope is elected by cardinals to get rid of other 2 but this does not work Popes keep excommunicating each other Council of Constance called and gets rid of all three popes The Renaissance Italy: After the Turks took Constantinople, lots of scholars fled the city and went to Italy with their books This allowed for the classics from Greece and Rome to come back to Italy Geography is destiny The most famous are the Medici, who rule Florence Virtú: Be all that you can be The sacking of Rome by Charles V in 1527 brought a symbolic end to the Renaissance Petrarch: Founder of humanism Wrote poems about Laura, the woman he loved Michelangelo: Made The Moses Made The David Painted the roof the Sistine Chapel Leonardo davinci: The true renaissance man Most famous for painting the Mona Lisa Machiavelli: Wrote The Prince It was the book on power He wrote it to tell the Medici s how to get their power back from the French Dante: Wrote The Divine Comedy It was about what he saw when a spirit showed him heaven and hell Northern Renaissance: same thing as the Italian Renaissance, but more religious Erasmus: Wrote The Praise of Folly Sir Thomas More: Wrote Utopia Cervantes: He was a Spanish writer He wrote Don Quixote It was meant to ridicule Medieval ideas The Protestant Reformation Signs of Discorder: Problems in church A. clerical immorality B. clerical ignorance C. clerical pluralism Pluralism: holding more than one office Bishops only casually enforced regulations regarding the education of priests Many priests could barely read and write The Christian church possessed a large proportion of the wealth of the countries of Europe
Luther s Early Years: He was a professor of the Scriptures at the University of Wittenberg He came to believe that salvation comes not through external observances and penance by through a simple faith in Christ The Ninety-five Theses: Archbishop of Magdeburg, Albert, had been appointed Archbishop of Mainz He needed the permission of the Pope to hold all these offices Pope Leo X needed money Solution: 1. Albert will borrow money from foggers to bribe the Pope 2. Pope will grant Albert the two offices 3. To pay back the money, Pope will let Albert sell indulgences Fredrick, the ruler of Saxony, forbade the sale of indulgences in Saxony, so people went to Thuringia to buy them instead An indulgence was a remission of the temporal penalties for sin John Tetzel: 1. Hired to sell indulgences 2. As soon as coin in coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs Luther posted his 95 theses on Wittenberg Castle on October 31, 1517 By December 1517, they had been translated into German and were read throughout the empire Luther firmly rejected the notion that salvation cold be achieved by good works, such as indulgences Luther denied both the authority of the Pope and the infallibility of a general council Charles V summoned Luther to appear before the Diet of Worms Luther refused to recant When Charles V declared Luther an outlaw, Fredrick of Saxony protected him Protestant Thought: Luther believed that authority resided in the Bible and the word of God He held that salvation was achieved by faith alone Luther re-emphasized the Catholic teaching that the church consists of the entire community of Christian believers While Catholics believe that the bread and wine at mass represent the actual body of Christ, Lutheran s believe that it has a symbolic meaning Social Impact of Luther s Beliefs: Preachers were men of superior education who were required to deliver about a hundred sermons a year, each lasting about forty-five minutes People used part of Luther s line A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none as a means to revolt The nobility ferociously crushed the revolt Luther advocated a simpler, personal religion based on faith, a return to the spirit of the early church and to cut down on elaborate ceremonies, just what the people in northern Europe wanted Luther believed that priests should be allowed to marry Germany and the Protestant Reformation: Unlike Spain, France, and England, the Holy Roman Empire lacked a strong central government Two years after Luther published the 95 theses, Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor Luther s interests and motives were religious, but many people responded to his teachings for political, social, or economic reasons Luther argued that unless princes destroyed papal power in Germany, reform was impossible He urged princes to confiscate ecclesiastical wealth and to abolish indulgences, dispensations, pardons, and clerical celibacy The rejection of Roman Catholicism and adoption of Protestantism would mean the legal confiscation of lush farmland, rich monasteries, and wealthy shrines. The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty: Charles inherited Spain from his mother, her New World possessions, and the Spanish dominions in Italy From his father he inherited the Habsburg lands in Austria, southern Germany, the Low Countries, and the Franche-Comte in east central France Charles was convinced that it was his duty to maintain the political and religious unity of Western Christendom In this respect, Charles V was the last medieval emperor The Political Impact of Luther s Beliefs: The King determined the official form of religious practice within his jurisdiction Almost everyone believed that the presence of faith different from that of the majority represented a political threat to the security of the state Luther urged the princes to confiscate ecclesiastical wealth and to abolish indulgences, dispensations, pardons, and clerical celibacy Charles V was a vigorous defender of Catholicism, and contemporary social and political theory denied the possibility of two religions coexisting peacefully in one territory The protestant movement ultimately proved a political disaster for Germany Princes chose Protestantism over Catholicism because they could claim all church lands Peach of Augsburg 1. Only recognized Catholicism and Lutheranism 2. Cuius regio, eius religio - whose region, whose religion each prince was permitted to determine his territory s religion most of northern and central Germany became Lutheran, while the south remained Roman Catholic The Growth of the Protestant Reformation: By 1555 much of northern Europe had broken with the Roman Catholic church All of Scandinavia, England (except under Mary Tudor), Scotland, and Switzerland Calvinism: Calvin s theological writings fondly influenced the social thought and attitudes of Europeans and English-speakings peoples all over the worlds Calvin s ideas were embodied in The Institutes of the Christian Religion The cornerstone of Calvin s theology was his belief in the absolute sovereignty and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of humanity Predestination: God knows who will be saved and who will not Subsequently, the Reformed church of Calvin served as the model for the Presbyterian church in Scotland, the Huguenot church in France, and the Puritan churches in England and New England The Anabaptists believed that only adults could make a free choice about religious faith, baptism, and entry into the Christian community Anabaptists believed in religious toleration In Saxony, in Strasbourg, and in the Swiss cities, Anabaptists were either banished or cruelly executed by burning, beating, or drowning The English Reformation: King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, but it would not be given to him Henry petitioned Pope Clement VII for an annulment The Pope refused Because of this, Henry broke from the Catholic church The Act in Restraint of Appeals declared the king to be the supreme sovereign in England and forbade judicial appeals to the papacy The Supremacy Act declared the king the supreme head of the Church of England Henry decided to dissolve the English monasteries because he wanted their wealth Theologically he retained such traditional Catholic practices and doctrines as auricular confession, clerical celibacy, and transubstantiation Edward VI, Henry s son, continued the Protestant policy Book of Common Prayer included the order for all services of the Church of England The equally brief reign of Mary Tudor witnesses a sharp move back to Catholicism Mary brought the Inquisition to England, which got her the name Bloody Mary Mary s death raised to the throne her sister, Elizabeth, and inaugurated the beginnings of religious stability Elizabeth had been raised a Protestant, but at the start of her reign sharp differences existed in England the Parliamentary legislations of the early years of Elizabeth s reign - laws sometimes labeled the Elizabethan Settlement - required outward conformity to the Church of England and uniformity in all ceremonies Establishment of the Church of Scotland: John Knox dominated the movement for reform in Scotland He had studied and worked with Calvin in Geneva and was determined to structure the Scottish church after the model of Calvin s Geneva Knox persuaded the Scottish parliament, which was dominated by reform-minded barons, to enact legislation ending papal authority Knox established the Presbyterian Church of Scotland Knox s Book of Common Order became the liturgical directory for the church Protestantism in Ireland: English rulers in the sixteenth century regarded the Irish as barbarians, and a policy to complete extermination was rejected only because it would have cost too much Most of the Irish remained Roman Catholic even though they tried to force them to become Anglican Catholic property was confiscated and sold and the profits were shipped to England
Lutheranism in Scandinavia: In Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the monarchy took the initiative in the religious Reformation In 1520 Swedish nobleman Gustavus Vasa led a successful revolt against Denmark, and Sweden became independent As king Gustavus Vasa seized church lands and required the bishops loyalty to the Swedish crown Olaus Petri translated the New Testament into Swedish and, with the full support of Gustavus Vasa, organized the church along strict Lutheran lines Christian III, king of Denmark, secularized church property and set up a Lutheran church Norway, which was governed by Denmark, adopted Lutheranism as its state religion under Danish influence The Reformation in Eastern Europe: In Bohemia in the fifteenth century, the ethnic grievances of the Czech majority against German economic and ecclesiastical domination fused with Czech resentment at the corruption of the Roman church By 1500 Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were united in a dynastic union In comparison with western Europe, Poland-Lithuania was overwhelmingly rural, its largest cities Gdansk (30,000) and Cracow (15,000) were very small in population by Italian and French standards The Polish King banned Luther s teachings in Poland, and strong anti-german feeling among Poles meant that Lutheranism would have limited success outside Germanized towns The reformed traditions of John Calvin, with its stress on the peer of church elders, appealed to the Polish szlachta The Slowness of Institutional Reform: Modest reform efforts had begun with the Lateran Council called in 1512 by Pope Julius II Clement VII was far more interested in art than in religious reforms The Council of Trent: The council of Trent met intermittently from 1545 to 1563 Purpose: 1. Reform the Catholic Church 2. Secure reconciliation with the Protestants Lutherans and Calvinists were invited to participate Accomplishments: 1. Reaffirmed the seven sacraments 2. Required bishops to live where they had their title 3. Forbade Pluralism 4. Forbade the sale of Indulgences 5. Bishops forces to visit religious house at least once every two years The Age of Religious Wars and Overseas Expansion Politics, Religion, and War: In 1559 France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, which ended the long conflict knows as the Habsburg-Valois Wars Spain was the victor France, exhausted by the struggle, had to acknowledge Spanish dominance in Italy, where much of the wars had been fought Spanish governors ruled in Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Spanish influence was strong in the Papal States and Tuscany The Origins of Difficulties in France: The population losses caused by the plague and the disorders accompanying the Hundred Years War had created such a labor shortage that serfdom almost disappeared Francis I tried to raise money by: 1. Raising taxes 2. Sale of public offices 3. treaty with the Papacy The offices sold tended to become hereditary within a family, and once a man bought an office, he and his heirs are tax-exempt The treaty with the papacy was the Concordat of Bologna, in which Francis agreed to recognize the supremacy of the papacy In return, the French crown gained the right to appoint all French bishops This understanding gave the monarchy a rich supplement of money and offices and a power over the church Because of this treaty, France remained Catholic, Catholicism became that state religion Perhaps one-tenth of the population had become Calvinist The French nobility took advantage of this monarchical weakness In the second half of the sixteenth century, between two-fifths and one-half of the nobility at one time or another became Calvinist No one believed that peoples of different faiths could coexist peacefully within the same territory The Reformation thus led to a residence of feudal disorder Saint Bartholomew s Day Massacre: It led to fighting called the War of the Three Henrys, a civil conflict among factions led by the Catholic Henry of Guise, the Protestant Henry of Navarre, and King Henry III The death of Catherine de Medici, followed by the assassinations of Henry of Guise and King Henry III, paved the way for the accession of Henry of Navarre Henry IV wanted above all a strong and united France Henry s willingness to sacrifice religious principles to political necessity saved France The Edict of Nantes granted the Huguenots liberty of conscience and liberty of public worship in 150 fortified towns The Netherlands Under Charles V: Antwerp was ideally situated at the intersection of many trading routes, steadily expanded as the chief intermediary for international commerce and finance Each of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands possessed historical liberties: each was self-governing and enjoyed the right to make its own laws and collect its own taxes In 1556, Charles V abdicated, dividing his territories between his brother Ferdinand, who received Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, and his son Philip, who inherited Spain, the Low Countries, Milan, and the kingdom of Sicily, and the Spanish possessions in the Americas The Revolt of the Netherlands: Calvinism appealed to the middle classes because of its intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and emphasis on any form of labor well done In August 1566, a year of very high grain prices, fanatical Calvinists, primarily of the poorest classes, embarked on a rampage of frightful destruction Philip II sent Spanish troops under the Duke of Alva to pacify the Low Countries Alva interpreted pacification to mean the ruthless extermination of religious and political dissidents In 1576 the seventeen provinces united under the leadership of William of Orange In 1578 Philip II sent his nephew Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, to crush the revolt once and for all The seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the Union of Utrecht and in 1581 declared their independence from Spain The murder of William the Silent in July 1584 eliminated not only a great Protestant leader but also the chief military check on the Farnese advance The collapse of Antwerp appeared to signal a Catholic sweep through the Netherlands Philip II and the Spanish Armada: The Spanish Armada of 130 vessels met an English fleet of about 150 ships in the Channel The English fleet was composed of smaller, faster, more maneuverable ships, many of which had greater firing power than their Spanish counterparts Because of Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish Armada was only composed of trading vessels and no war ships The Thirty Years War: In an increasingly tense situation, Lutheran princes formed the Protestant Union and the Catholics retaliated with the Catholic League Each alliance was determined that the other should make no religious (that is, territorial) advance Dynastic interests were also involved in the German situation The Spanish Habsburgs strongly supported the goals of their Austrian relatives Violence erupted first in Bohemia where the new Catholic King of Bohemia, closed some Protestant churches On May 23, 1618, Protestant hurled two of Ferdinand s officials from a castle window in Prague This event marked the beginning of the Thirty Year s War Four phases of the war: 1. Bohemian 2. Danish 3. Swedish 4. International Bohemian Phase: 1. Civil War in Bohemia, Catholics against Protestants 2. Within 10 years, Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, made Bohemia Catholic again
Danish Phase: 1. King Christian IV of Denmark, a protestant, felt threatened, to he invaded 2. He was utterly crushed, leaving only the Swedish part of the HRE protestant Swedish Phase: 1. Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, defends his land from the Catholic troops 2. Cardinal Richelieu subsidized the Swedes, hoping to weaken Habsburg power in Europe 3. With a small but well-disciplined army equipped with superior muskets, Gustavus Adolphus won a brilliant victory at Lutzen, though he was fatally wounded in the battle 4. The participation of the Swedes in the Thirty Years War proved decisive for the future of Protestantism and later German history International Phase: 1. France joins on the side of the Protestants to weaken the Habsburgs 2. French, Dutch, and Swedes, supported by Scots, Finns, and German mercenaries The Thirty Years War lasted so long because neither side had the resources to win a quick, decisive victory Finally, in October 1648, peace was achieved Peace of Westphalia, marked a turning point in European political, religious, and social history Conflicts fought over religious faiths ended The north German states remained Protestant, the south German states, Catholic Germany After the Thirty Years War: The Thirty Years War was a disaster for the German economy and society, probably the most destructive event in German history before the twentieth century 1/3 of the urban residents and 2/5 of the inhabitants of rural areas died In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, all Europe experienced an economic crisis primarily caused by the influx of silver from South America Because the Thirty Years War was fought on German soil, these economic difficulties were badly aggravated in the empire During and after the war, inflation was worse in Germany that anywhere else in Europe Agricultural areas suffered catastrophically The population decline caused a rise in the value of labor, and owners of great estates had to pay more for agricultural workers The map to the left shows Europe as a result of the Peace of Westphalia Colonial Administration: Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro claimed the lands they had discovered for the Crown of Spain According to the Spanish theory of absolutism, the Crown was entitled to exercise full authority over all the imperial lands They split the lands into four viceroyalties Viceroyalties Were: 1.New Spain 2.Peru 3.New Granada 4.La Plata Within each territory, the viceroy, or imperial governor, exercised broad military and civil authority as the direct representative of the sovereign in Madrid From the early sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, the Spanish monarchy acted on the mercantilist principle that the colonies existed for the financial benefit of the home country The Crown claimed a quinto, one-fifth of all precious metals mined in South America Gold and silver yielded the Spanish monarchy 25 percent of its total richness In return, it shipped manufactured goods to the Americas and discouraged the development of native industries After the union of the Crowns of Spain and Portugal in 1580, Spanish administrative forms were introduced Local officials called corregidores held judicial and military powers In the eighteenth century Brazil led to the world in the production of sugar The Status of Women: Luther, Calvin, and the English Puritans all held that women could merit salvation and that men and women were spiritually equal, but they also insisted that women were subordinate to men Protestant reformers stressed the value of marriage Marriage had three purposes: 1.The procreation of children 2.The avoidance of sin 3.Mutual help and companionship Reformers urged everyone to marry Reformers saw marriage asa woman s highest calling and believed that it freed women from sexual urges Counselors believed that marriage should be based on mutual respect and trust Moralists held that the household was a woman s first priority Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental unions that, if validly entered into, could not be dissolved Protestants saw marriage as a contract in which each partner promised the other support, companionship, and the sharing of mutual goods Protestants recognized a mutual right to divorce and remarriage for various reasons, including adultery, and irreparable breakdown The Great European Witch-Hunt: A witch was a person who had made a pact with the devil Religious reformers extreme notions of the Devil s powers and the insecurity created by the religious wars contributed to the growth of belief in witches The idea developed that witches made pacts with the Devil in return for the power to work mischief on their enemies Since pacts with the Devil meant the renunciation of God, witchcraft was considered heresy Baroque: Its purpose was to overwhelm the viewer/listener Designed to show off the Catholic church and to convince people to come back The Night Watch by Rembrandt is the best example of chiaroscuro It is the best example of chiaroscuro Rubens: He drew fleshy people Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe Absolutism: In the absolutist state, kings claimed to rule by divine right meaning that they were responsible to God alone In some respects, the key to the power and success of absolute monarchs lay in how they solved their financial problems