CH 23 Religious Division and Political Consolidation in

Europe

 LUTHER AND THE GERMAN NATIONAL CHURCH

Luther’s Beliefs

 CALVIN AND INTERNATIONAL PROTESTANTISM OTHER EARLY

PROTESTANT FAITHS
The Church of England

 THE COUNTER-REFORMATION RELIGIOUS WARS AND THEIR OUTCOMES TO

1600
France The Spanish Netherlands

 THE LEGACY OF THE REFORMATION THE BIRTH OF THE NATION-STATE

The Thirty Years’ War

 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ROYAL ABSOLUTISM

French Government Under Louis XIV Strengths and Weaknesses of French Absolutism

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 THE SPLIT IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF and church organization that is termed the
Protestant Reformation brought enormous consequences in its wake.

 Its beginning coincided with the high point of the Era of Discovery by Europeans.

 Taken together, these developments provide the basis for dividing Western
civilization’s history into the premodern and modern eras around 1500.

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 Luther and the German National Church

 The upheaval called the Reformation of the early sixteenth century had its roots in
political and social developments as much as in religious disputes.

 The longstanding arguments within the Christian community had already led to
rebellions against the Roman Catholic Church on several occasions.

 In the major instances in thirteenth-century France, fourteenth-century England, and

fifteenth-century Bohemia, religious rebels (the official term is heretics, or “wrong
thinkers”) had battled the papal church.

 Eventually, all of them had been suppressed or driven underground.

 But now, in sixteenth-century Germany, Martin Luther (1483–1546) found an

enthusiastic reception for his challenges to Rome among the majority of his fellow
Germans.

 Why was the church in the German lands particularly susceptible to the call for
reform? The disintegration of the German medieval kingdom had been followed by
the birth of dozens of separate little principalities and citystates, such as Hamburg
and Frankfurt, that could not well resist the encroachments of the powerful papacy in
their internal aff airs.

 Many of the German rulers were angry at seeing the tax funds they needed
sometimes used for goals they did not support.

 These rulers were eagerly searching for some popular basis to challenge Rome.

 They found it in the teachings of Martin Luther.

 In 1517, a major indulgence sales campaign opened in Germany under even more
scandalous pretexts than usual.

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 Much of the money raised was destined to be used to pay off a debt incurred by an
ambitious noble churchman, rather than for any ecclesiastical purpose.

 Observing what was happening, on October 31, 1517, the chaplain at Wittenberg
University’s church, Martin Luther, announced his discontent by posting the famous
Ninetyfive The ses on his church door.

 In these questions, Luther raised objections to papal indulgences and to the whole
doctrine of papal supremacy.

Luther’s Beliefs

 Luther’s youth had been a long struggle against the conviction that he was damned
to hell.

 Intensive study of the Bible eventually convinced him that only through the freely
given grace of a merciful God might he, or any person, reach immortal salvation.

 The Catholic Church, on the other hand, taught that humans must manifest their
Christian faith by doing good works and leading good lives.

 If they did so, they might be considered to have earned a heavenly future.

 Martin Luther believed that faith alone was the factor through which Christians might
reach bliss in the afterlife.

 It is this doctrine of justifi cation by faith that most clearly distinguishes

Lutheranism from the papal teachings.

 As the meaning of Luther’s statements penetrated into the clerical hierarchy, he was
implored, then commanded, to cease.

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 Instead, his confi dence rose, and in a series of brilliantly forceful pamphlets written
in the German vernacular, he explained his views to a rapidly increasing audience.

 By 1520, he was becoming a household word among educated people and even
among the peasantry.

 He was excommunicated in 1521 by the pope for refusing to recant, and in the same
year, Emperor Charles V declared him an outlaw.

 Th reatened by the imperial and papal officials, Luther found the protection of the
ruler of Saxony, as well as much of the German princely class.

 With this protection and encouragement, Luther’s teachings spread rapidly, aided by
the newly invented printing press and by the power and conviction of his sermons
and writings.

 By the mid-1520s, Lutheran congregations, rejecting the papal authority, had sprung
up throughout most of Germany and Scandinavia.

Calvin and International Protestantism

 It was not Luther, the German miner’s son, but John Calvin (1509–1564), the
French lawyer, who made the Protestant movement an international theological
rebellion against Rome.

 Luther always saw himself as a specifically German patriot, as well as a pious

Christian.

 Calvin, on the contrary, detached himself from national feeling and saw himself as
the emissary and servant of a God who ruled all nations.

 Luther wanted the German Christian body to be cleansed of papal corruption; Calvin
wanted the entire Christian community to be made over into the image of what he
thought God intended.

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 Calvin believed that the papal church was hopelessly distorted.

 It must be obliterated, and new forms and practices (which were supposedly a return
to the practices of early Christianity) must be introduced.

 In The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), Calvin set out his beliefs and
doctrines with the precision and clarity of a lawyer.

 His most dramatic change from Rome and Luther was his insistence that God
predestined souls.

 That is, a soul was meant either for heaven or hell for all eternity.

 Calvin believed that humanity had been eternally stained by Adam’s sin and that
most souls were destined for hellfire.

 Those who were not were God’s Elect.

 Despite its doctrinal fierceness, Calvin’s message found a response throughout

Europe.

 By the 1540s, Calvinists were appearing in Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland,

England, and France, as well as Switzerland.

 Geneva had become the Protestant Rome, with Calvin serving as its priestly ruler
until his death in 1564.

 More than Lutherans, the Calvinists thought of the entire community, lay and clerical
alike, as equal members of the church on Earth.

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 Calvinists also insisted on the power of the congregation to select and discharge
pastors at will, inspired by God’s word.

 They never established a hierarchy of clerics.

 There were no Calvinist bishops but only presbyters, or elected elders, who spoke
for their fellow parishioners in regional or national assemblies.

 The government of the church thus included both clerical and lay leaders.

 The combination gave the church’s pronouncements great political as well as moral
force.

 By around 1570, Calvin’s followers had gained control of the Christian community in
several places: the Dutch-speaking Netherlands, Scotland, western France, and
parts of northern Germany and Poland.

 In the rest of France, as well as Austria, Hungary, and England, they were still a
minority, but a growing one.

 Whereas Lutheranism was confined to the Germanspeaking countries and

Scandinavia and did not spread much after 1550 or so, Calvinism was an
international faith that appealed to all nations and identified with none.

 Carried on the ships of the Dutch and English explorers and emigrants of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it continued to spread throughout the modern
world.

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 Other Early Protestant Faiths

 The followers of a radical sect called Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”) were briefl y a

threat to both Catholics and Lutherans, but both groups put them down wiThe
xtreme cruelty.

 The Anabaptists originated in Switzerland and spread rapidly throughout German

Europe.

 They believed in adult baptism, a priesthood of all believers, and a primitive

communism that included sharing of worldly possessions.

 After their efforts to establish a republic in the Rhineland city of Münster were
bloodily suppressed, the Anabaptists were driven underground.

 The ir beliefs continued to evolve, and they emerged much later in the New World
as Mennonites, Amish, and similar groups.

 Yet another Protestant creed emerged early in Switzerland.

 Founded by Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), it was generally similar to Lutheran belief.

 The inability of Zwingli’s adherents and the Lutherans to cooperate left Zwingli’s
stronghold in Zurich open to attack by the Catholic Swiss.

 Th is use of bloody force to settle religious strife was an ominous note.

 It was to become increasingly common as Protestant beliefs spread and

undermined the traditional religious structures.

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 The Church of England

 The reform movement in England had its origins in the widespread popular
resentment against Rome and the higher clergy, who were viewed as more the tools
of the pope than as good English patriots.

 As we have seen, a group called the Lollards had already rebelled in the 1300s
against the clerical claims to sole authority in interpreting the word of God and papal
supremacy.

 The movement had been put down, but its memory persisted in many parts of
England.

 But it was the peculiar marital problems of King Henry VIII (1490–1547) that fi nally
brought the church in England into conflict with Rome.

 Henry needed a male successor, but his elderly Spanish wife Catherine had failed to
produce one.

 The refore, he wanted to have the marriage annulled by the pope (who alone had
that power) so that he could marry some young Englishwoman who might produce
the desired heir.

 The pope refused the annulment because he did not wish to impair the close
alliance of the Catholic Church with the Spanish monarchy.

 Between 1532 and 1534, Henry took the matter into his own hands.

 He intimidated Parliament into declaring him the “only supreme head of the church
in England”—the Act of Supremacy of 1534.

 Now, as head of the Anglican (English Protestant) Church, Henry proceeded to put
away his unwanted wife and marry the tragic Anne Boleyn.

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 Much other legislation followed that asserted that the monarch, and not the Roman
pope, was the determiner of what the church could and could not do in England.

 Henry went on to marry and divorce several more times before his death in 1547,
but he did secure a son, the future King Edward VI, from one of these unhappy
alliances.

 Two daughters also survived: the half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth.

 Henry’s Successors.

 Henry’s actions changed English religious beliefs very little, although the Calvinist
reformation was gaining ground in boThe ngland and Scotland.

 But under the sickly boy-king Edward (ruling 1547–1553), Protestant views became
dominant among the English governing group, and the powerful oratory of John
Knox led the Scots into Calvinism (the Presbyterian Church).

 At Edward’s death in 1553, popular support for Mary (ruling 1553–1558), the
Catholic daughter of Henry VIII’s first, Spanish Catholic wife, was too strong to be
overridden by the Protestant party at court.

 Mary proved to be a single-minded adherent of the papal church, and she restored
Catholicism to its official status during her brief reign.

 Protestant conspirators were put to death— hence, she is called “Bloody Mary” by
English Protestants.

 Finally, the confused state of the English official religion was gradually cleared by
the political skills of Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I (ruling 1558–1603).

 She ruled for half a century with great success.

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 She arrived at a compromise between the Roman and Protestant doctrines, which
was accepted by a steadily increasing majority and came to be termed the Church
of England.

 It retained the bishops, rituals, and sacraments of the Roman Church, but its head
was the English monarch, who appointed the bishops and their chief, the archbishop
of Canterbury.

 However, the strict Calvinists, called Puritans, were not happy with this
arrangement and wished to “purify” the church by removing all remnants of popery.

The Counter-Reformation
 Belatedly realizing what a momentous challenge was being mounted, the papacy fi
nally came to grips with the problem of Protestantism in a positive fashion during the
1540s.

 Pope Paul III (serving 1534–1549) moved to counter some of the excesses that had
given the Roman authorities a bad name and set up a high-level commission to see
what might be done to “clean up” the clergy.

 Eventually, the church decided to pursue two major lines of counterattack against
the Protestants: a thorough examination of doctrines and practices—such as had
not been attempted for more than 1,000 years—combined with an entirely novel
emphasis on instruction of the young and education of all Christians in the precepts
of their religion.

 These measures together are known as the Counter-Reformation.

 The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was the first general attempt to examine the
church’s basic doctrines and goals since the days of the Roman Empire.

 Meeting for three lengthy sessions, the bishops and theologians decided that
Protestant attacks could be met by clearly defi ning what Catholics believed.

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 But the council’s work had an unintended negative effect on the desired reunifi
cation of Christianity: The doctrinal lines separating Catholic and Protestant were
now firmly drawn, and they could not be ignored or blurred by the many individuals
in both camps who had been trying to arrange a compromise.

 The founding of the Jesuit Order was the most striking example of the second
aspect of the Counter-Reformation.

 In 1540, Pope Paul III accorded to the Spanish nobleman Ignatius of Loyola
(1491–1556) the right to organize an entirely new religious group, which he termed
the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits.

 Their mission was to win, or win back, the minds and hearts of humanity for the
Catholic Church through patient, careful instruction that would bring to everyone the
word of God and of his deputy on Earth, the pope.

 Furthermore, the Index of forbidden books was created and the Inquisition was
revived to ensure that no Catholic deviated from that doctrine (Chapter 20).

 These institutions greatly expanded the church’s powers to censor the writings and
supervise the beliefs of its adherents.

 Both became steadily more important in Catholic countries during the next century.

Religious Wars and Their Outcomes to 1600

 The Counter-Reformation stiffened the Catholics’ will to resist Protestants’ attacks,

which had almost overwhelmed the unprepared Roman authorities.

 By 1555, the Peace of Augsburg had concluded a ten-year civil war by dividing
Germany into Catholic and Lutheran parcels, but it made no allowances for the
growing number of Calvinists or other Protestants.

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 In the rest of Europe, the picture was mixed by the late 1500s (see Map 23.1).

 England went through several changes of religious leadership, but it eventually

emerged with a special sort of Protestant belief as its official religion.

 Scandinavia became Lutheran in its entirety, almost without violence.

 Austria, Hungary, and Poland remained mostly Catholic, but with large minorities of
Calvinists and Lutherans.

 Spain and Italy had successfully repelled the Protestant challenge.

 Russia and southeastern Europe remained almost unaffected, being either hostile to
both varieties of Western Christianity (Russia) or under the political control of
Muslims.

 In two countries, however, the issue of religious affiliation was in hot dispute and
caused much bloodshed in the later 1500s.

France

 France remained officially Catholic but developed a large Calvinist minority among
the nobility and the urbanites.

 For a brief time, the Catholic monarchs and the Calvinists attempted to live with one
another, but costly religious wars began in the 1570s that threatened to wreck the
country.

 After some years, the Calvinists found a politician of genius, Henry of Navarre, who
profi ted from the assassination of his Catholic rival to become King Henry IV of
France.

 In 1593, he agreed to accept Catholicism to win the support of most French.

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 He became the most popular king in French history.

 His Protestant upbringing inspired the Calvinist minority to trust him, and he did not
disappoint them.

 In 1598, Henry made the firstsignifi cant European attempt at religious toleration by
issuing the Edict of Nantes.

 It gave the million-or-so French Calvinists—the Huguenots—freedom to worship, to

hold office, and to fortify their towns.

 The Edict held for the better part of a century, during which France rose to become
the premier power in Europe.

The Spanish Netherlands

 The Spanish Netherlands (modern Holland and Belgium) were ruled from Madrid
by the powerful King Philip II.

 He had inherited an empire that included Spain, much of Italy, and the Low
Countries in Europe, plus the enormous Spanish overseas empire begun by the
voyages of Columbus.

 Philip was a man with a mission, or rather two missions: the reestablishment of
Catholicism among Protestants and the defeat of the Ottomans.

 These missions imposed heavy demands on Spanish resources, which even the fl
ow of gold and silver out of the American colonies could not fully cover.

 Generally successful in his wars against the Ottomans, Philip could not handle a
revolt in the Netherlands that broke out in the 1560s.

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 The Netherlands were a hotbed of both Lutheran and Calvinist doctrines, and its
large middle class was much disturbed at the Spanish aliens’ attempt to enforce on
them the Counter- Reformation and papal supremacy.

 Thanks to Spanish overextension, the revolt held Philip’s feared professional army
at bay.

 While Philip saw himself as the agent of legitimacy and the Counter-Reformation,
the English aided the Dutch rebels militarily and financially.

 The English support was partly based on religious affinity, but even more on their
fear of Spanish wealth and power.

 In the mid-1580s, the friction came to a head.

 Philip became incensed at the execution of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, by
order of Elizabeth, who had imprisoned this rival for England’s throne.

 With the reluctant support of the pope, Philip prepared the vast Armada of 1588 to
invade England and reconquer that country for the “True Church.

 ” The devastating defeat of the Armada gave a great boost to the Protestant cause
everywhere: It relieved the pressure on the Huguenots to accept Catholic
overlordship in France, it saved the Dutch Calvinists until they could gain full
independence some decades later, and it marked the emergence of England as a
major power.

 Spain remained the premier military power long after the Armada disaster, but the
country in a sense never recovered from this event.

 Henceforth, the other powers were able to keep Spain in check until its inherent
economic weaknesses reduced it to a second-line nation by the end of the
seventeenth century.

15
 The Legacy of the Reformation

 The Protestant movement made a deep impression on the general course of history
in Europe for centuries.

 It is one of the chief reasons European history is conventionally divided into

“modern” versus “medieval” around 1500.

 The religious unity of all western Europe under the Roman pope was irrevocably
shattered, and with the end of such unity inevitably came political and cultural
conflicts.

 For a century and a half after Luther’s defi ance of the papal command to be silent,
much of Europe was engaged in internal acrimony that wracked the continent from
the Netherlands to Hungary.

 Some of the other long-term cultural changes that resulted from the Reformation
included the following:

1. Higher literacy and the beginning of mass education.

 In much of Protestant Europe in particular, the exhortation to learn and obey

Scripture provided an incentive to read that the common folk had never had before.

 The rapid spread of printing after 1520 accelerated this change even more.

2. Emphasis on individual moral responsibility.

 Rejecting the Catholic assurance that the clergy knew best what was necessary and
proper in the conduct of life, the Protestants underlined the responsibility of
individual believers to determine what they must do to attain salvation.

16
 3.Increase in conflicts and intolerance.

 Much of Europe fell into civil wars that were initially set off by religious disputes.

 These wars were often bloody and produced much needless destruction by both
sides in the name of theological truth.

 Religious affiliation greatly exacerbated dynastic and emergent national conflicts.

 The Birth of the Nation-State Europe during the seventeenth century saw the birth
of the modern state as distinct from the domain of a ruling monarch.

 The powers attached to a governing office began to be separated from the person
of the occupant of the office.

 Th is separation allowed the creation over time of a group of professional servants

of the state, or bureaucrats— people who exercised authority not because of who
they were, but because of the offices they held.

 Religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic continued but gave way to
political-economic issues in state-to-state relations.

 The maritime countries of northwestern Europe became steadily more important

thanks to overseas commerce, while the central and eastern European states
suffered heavy reverses from wars, the Turkish menace, and commercial and
technological stagnation.

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 The Thirty Years’ War
 The Th irty Years’ War, which wrecked the German states and was the most
destructive conflict Europe had seen for centuries, arose from religious intolerance,
but it quickly became a struggle for territory and worldly power on the part of the
multiple contestants.

 It began in 1618, when the Habsburg (HABS-berg) Holy Roman Emperor attempted
to check the spread of Protestant sentiments in part of his empire.

 By 1635, the war had become an international struggle beyond consideration of

religion.

 The Protestant kings of Scandinavia and the Catholic French monarchy supported
the Protestants, whereas the Spanish cousins of the Habsburgs assaulted the
French.

 For thirteen more years, France, Holland, Sweden, and the German Protestant
states fought on against the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain.

 Most of the fighting was in Germany.

 But finally, a peace, through the Treaty of Westphalia, was worked out in 1648
after five years of haggling.

 The big winners were France and Sweden, while the losers were Spain and, to a
lesser degree, the Austrianbased Habsburgs.

 From 1648 on, Germany ceased to exist as a political concept and broke up into
dozens, then hundreds of small kingdoms and principalities (see Map 23.2).

 The Treaty of Westphalia was the first modern state treaty.

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 From start to fi nish, its clauses underlined the decisive importance of the sovereign
state, rather than the dynasty that ruled it or the religion its population professed.

 The logical uniformity was replaced by secular control of territory, and population as
the supreme goal of the rival powers.

 For Spain, the ultimate results were almost as painful, although the war was not
fought on Spanish territory.

 The Dutch Protestants gained full independence from Madrid, and the tremendous
military and naval advantages that Spain’s government had once possessed had all
been used up; it was now condemned to second rank in European and world affairs.

The Theory and Practice of Royal Absolutism

 The theory of royal absolutism existed in the Middle Age, but the upheavals caused
by the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death in the fourteenth century (see
Chapter 20), followed by the wars of religion, had weakened the powers of the
monarchies.

 Now, in the seventeenth century, they got back to the business of asserting their
sacred rights.

 The outstanding theorist of absolutism was a French lawyer, Jean Bodin (zhahn
boh-DAN), who stated that “sovereignty consists in giving laws to the people without
their consent.

 ” Sovereignty cannot be divided; it must remain in the hands of a single individual or

institution.

 Bodin insisted that the French monarch had “absolute power” over his people.

19
 Another Frenchman, Bishop Bossuet (bos-SWAY), even claimed that kings received
their august powers from God Himself.

 Bodin found his most potent and effective adherent in Cardinal Richelieu (rish-
LYOU; 1585–1642), the prime minister for the young King Louis (LOO-ee) XIII in the
1620s and 1630s.

 Richelieu was the real founder of absolute monarchy in France and, despite being a
prince of the church, Richelieu believed wholeheartedly in the primacy of the state
over any other earthly institution.

 Raison d’état (ray-ZOHN day- TAH; reason of state) was sufficient to justify almost
any action by government, he thought.

 The state represented order, the rule of law, and security for the citizenry.

 If it weakened or collapsed, general suffering would result.

 The cardinal set up a cadre of officials (intendants: ahn-tahn- DAHNTS) who kept
a sharp eye on what was happening in the provinces and reported to the king’s
ministers.

 The cardinal-minister used them to check the independence of the provincial

nobles, particularly the Calvinist Huguenots.

 He used armed force on several occasions and executed rebels.

 Before his death in 1641, Richelieu had handpicked as his successor as chief
minister Cardinal Mazarin (mahzah- REHN), who had the same values as his
master.

 The new king, Louis XIV (ruling 1643–1715), was just five years old, so the
government remained in Mazarin’s hands for many years.

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 The young Louis was brought up to believe that kingship was the highest calling on
earth and that its powers were limited only by God.

French Government Under Louis XIV

 The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the Age of France or, more
precisely, the Age of Louis XIV.

 Not only in government, but also in the arts, the lifestyle of the wealthy and the
highborn, military affairs, and language and literature, France set the pace.
 What Florence had been to the Renaissance, Paris was to the European cultural
and political world of the eighteenth century.

 Louis XIV was the incarnation of absolute monarchy, believing in divine right, which
said that the monarchy’s powers flowed from God.

 He allegedly once said, “I am the state,” a statement he truly believed.

 He saw himself as not just a human being with immense powers and prestige but as
the very embodiment of France.

 He took kingship very seriously, working twelve hours a day trying to govern a
country that was notoriously difficult.

 In this task he was greatly aided by a series of first-rate ministerial helpers— Jean-
Baptiste Colbert (cohl-BAYR) and others—each of whom made major contributions
to the theory and practice of his chosen field.

 To govern as he believed he should, Louis had to nullify the independent powers of

the aristocrats in the provinces.

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 He did this by forcing them to come to Versailles (vayr-SIGH), his magnificent
palace outside Paris, where they vied for his favor and he could keep them under a
watchful eye.

 By his death, the previously potent nobles had been reduced to a decorative,
parasitic fringe group, with few real powers.

 Although Louis kept the peace for the first thirty-five years of his reign, his
overpowering thirst for glory led him to provoke four conflicts with England, Holland,
and most of the German states in the last twenty years.

 The most important was the fi nal one, the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–
1713), in which France tried to seize control of much-weakened Spain and its
empire but was checked by a coalition led by England.

 The war bankrupted France and was extremely unpopular.

 The signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ended the hostilities.

 France succeeded only in placing a member of the Bourbon (boor-BOHN) family

(the French dynasty) on the Spanish throne, but under the condition that Spain and
France would never be joined together.

 England emerged as the chief winner, having gained control of part of French
Canada and the key to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar.

 England’s biggest prize, however, was Spain’s concession of the rights to trade with
her possessions in the Caribbean.

 The war began the worldwide struggle between England and France for mastery of
Europe, but the Treaty of Utrecht helped vault England into a position that enabled
her to become the world’s greatest imperial and industrial power over the next 200
years.

22
 Strengths and Weaknesses of French Absolutism

 Louis XIV gave all of Europe a model of what could be accomplished by a strong
king and a wealthy country.

 With the help of his officials, the king kept a constant watch on the country as a
whole.

 Anything that happened in the provinces was soon known at the Palace of Versailles
and received a royal response.

 The palace was awe-inspiring, serving to reinforce Louis’s prestige and power in
visible fashion.

 Originally a mere hunting lodge, Louis reconstructed it into the largest and most
impressive secular structure in Europe.

 It was surrounded by hundreds of acres of manicured gardens and was large

enough to house the immense court.

 But problems also persisted.

 Finance was always the sore point for aspiring kings, and Louis and his successors
spent huge amounts of cash in their quest for military and civil glory.

 A helter-skelter system of concessions for tax collection in the provinces did not
work well.

 Worse, with the government legally prevented from taxing the Church and the
nobility, Louis’s common subjects were forced to bear the entire burden of his and
his successors’

23
 SUMMARY
 AS MUCH AS THE DISCOVERY of the New World, the Protestant movement gave
birth to the modern era in the West.

 The protests of Luther, Calvin, and many others against what they saw as the
unrighteous and distorted teachings of the Roman papacy had immense long-term
reverberations in Western culture.

 Among Calvinists, the material welfare of the Elect on Earth was linked to their
quality of being saved—a link that would gradually produce what later generations
called the “Protestant ethic.

 ” The Catholic response was the Counter-Reformation, which, spearheaded by the

Jesuits, eventually reclaimed much of the Protestant territories for the Roman
Church.

 Exceedingly bloody warfare broke out, and Europe entered the Modern Age in a fl
urry of fi erce antagonisms among Christians.

 From the early seventeenth century on, doctrines of faith took an ever-decreasing
role in forming state policy.

 The Catholic but anti-Habsburg French replaced Spain as the prime force in military
and political aff airs.

 Under the guidance of Richelieu and the long-lived Louis XIV, France became the
role model for the rest of the aspiring absolutist monarchies on the Continent.

 The English Revolution, sparked by the attempts of the Stuart kings to emulate
Louis XIV, ended in clear victory for the anti-absolutist side.
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 Led by the Puritan rebels against Charles I, the wealthier, educated segment of the
English people successfully asserted their claims to be equal to the Crown in
defining national policies and the rights of citizens.

 The Glorious Revolution of 1688 cemented these gains.

 The idea of a society that was contractual rather than authoritarian in its political
basis began to emerge.

 Along with this came the ideal of a state that guaranteed liberty and legal equality for
all its subjects.

 The eastern European dynasties were able to grow and foil the occasional eff orts
to restrict their royal powers because neither of the two potential secular
counterforces—the limited urban classes and the nobility—could fi nd ways to
substitute themselves for the throne.

 The rise of the Prussian Hohenzollern kingdom began in earnest in the mid-1600s
when the Great Elector cleverly made his petty state into a factor in the Th irty
Years’ War, which culminated in the reign of his great- grandson Frederick II.

 The weaknesses of the Habsburg state were partially addressed by the eff orts of
Empress Maria The resa, who brought a degree of centralization and uniformity to
the government.

 But Austria’s great problem—its potentially competing nationalities—remained.

 After an obstacle-fi lled climb from obscurity under the Mongols, the Muscovite
principality “gathered the Russian lands” in the 1500s, and the Russian nobility,
once all-powerful, were reduced by the various devices of the tsars to more-or-less
willing servants of the imperial throne.

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