Protestant Reformation
Started in the early Sixteenth Century, an era where people challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
Martin Luther
(1483-1546) A German monk who challenged the Roman Catholic Church in 1517. He believed indulgences were signs of greed and wrote the 95 Theses.
Indulgence
A type pf pardon that excused individuals from doing penance for their sins and thus facilitated their entry into heaven.
95 Theses
Written by Martin Luther in 1517, a document that denounced the sale of indulgences. It spread quickly throughout Europe.
Gutenberg (Printing Press)
John Calvin
(1509-1564) A French lawyer who converted to Protestant Christianity in the 1530s. He moved to Geneva in Switzerland and developed a Protestant community there. His missionaries spread all over Europe.
Catholic Reformation
The Roman Catholic Church's efforts to clarify the differences between Roman and Protestant churches, to persuade Protestants to return to the Roman church, and to deepen the sense of spirituality and religious commitment in their own community.
Council of Trent
An assembly of bishops, cardinals, and other high church officials who met intermittently between 1545 and 1563 to address matters of doctrine and reform
Jesuit
The members of the Society of Jesus. They had to complete a rigorous and advanced education. They made extremely effective missionaries.
Thirty Years' War
(1618-1648) A massive continental conflict that opened up after the Holy Roman emperor attempted to force his Bohemian subjects to return to the Roman Catholic church. The main battleground was the emperor's territory in Germany.
Charles V (Holy Roman Empire)
Reigned 1519-1556. He tried to bring the Holy Roman Empire into the preeminent political authority in Western Europe, but His attention was focused on the Lutheran movement.
Henry VIII
The monarch of England who reigned from 1509-1547. He came into conflict with the pope upon divorcing his wife, which the pope said he was not allowed to do. He became the head of the Anglican church in England and was excommunicated from the church.
Fernando & Isabel
The first monarchs of Spain who founded the Spanish Inquisition in 1478.
Spanish Inquisition
The most distinctive institution that relied on religious justifications to advance state ends. Founded by Fernando and Isabel in 1478. Its task was to ferret out those who practiced Judaism, Islam and Protestant heretics.
Constitutional State
A country or state that has a constitution that specifies the powers of the state. England and the Netherlands created their own constitutions during the early 17th century.
Oliver Cromwell
Lived from 1599-1658. He controlled parliamentary forces that captured Charles I. His regime took power after the beheading of Charles I but the monarchy soon came back.
Charles I (England)
The king of England who was unable to cooperate or communicate with parliament. He and parliament raised armies, but he was captured, tried for tyranny, and beheaded in 1649.
Glorious Revolution
(1688-1689) Parliament deposed King James II and invited his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange, to assume the throne. The arrangement provided that the kings would rule in cooperation with parliament.
Mary and William
The daughter of King James II and her Dutch husband, who came into power in 1689 in England, which is known as the Glorious Revolution.
Absolution
Stood on a theoretical foundation known as the divine right of kings. The monarchs had exceptional power in control of their lands.
Divine Right
Kings derived their authority from God and served as "God's lieutenants on earth." The king made law and determined policy.
Louis XIV (France)
The king of France, who reigned from 1643-1715. He best epitomized royal absolution and called himself "the sun king".
Versailles
A royal hunting lodge near Paris where King Louis XIV moved his palace. His palace was the biggest building in Europe, with 230 acres of formal gardens and 1400 fountains.
Tsar/Czar
Leaders of the Romanov Dynasty (1613-1917) that tightly centralized government functions. The Russianized version of the word Caesar.
Peter I
Reigned from 1682-1725. The most important of the Romanov tsars, who inaugurated a thoroughgoing process of state transformation. He desired Russia to become a great military power like those of Western Europe.
Catherine II
Reigned from 1762-1796. She sought to make Russia a great power like Peter I. She divided the empire into 50 different administrative provinces and promoted economic development in Russia's towns.
Peace of Westphalia
The treaty created in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years' War. It was an effort to avoid tearing their society apart. It laid the foundations for a system of independent, competing states.
Seven Years' War
(1756-1763) It pitted France, Austria, and Russia against Britain and Prussia, and it merged with conflicts between France and Britain in India and North America to become a global war for imperial supremacy.
Balance of Power
No ruler wanted to see another state dominate all the others. So, when one state grew too strong, the others would form alliances and weaken the strong state. It was risky business.
Urbanization
The rapid population growth drove this and cities grew tremendously. Some grew because rulers chose them as sites of government, while others were commercial and industrial as well as government centers.
Capitalism
An economic system in which private parties make their goods and services available on a free market and seek to take advantage of market conditions to profit from their activities.
Adam Smith
Joint-Stock Company
Especially important institutions in early capitalist society. They spread the risks attached to expensive business enterprises and also took advantage of extensive communications and transportation networks.
Putting-Out System
The delivery of unfinished materials such as raw wool to rural households. The men and women would create products out of them, sell them back to the entrepreneurs, who then sold them on the market
Serf/Serfdom
Peasants tied to the land, in Russia during this time, who had restricted freedoms. It is a labor system that requires peasants to provide labor services for landowners in exchange for protection
Ptolemic Universe
Earth is motionless surrounded by a series of nine hollow, concentric spheres that revolved around it. The nine are: the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the stars, and the ninth surrounds the entire universe. After that is the realm of Heaven.
Copernican Universe
The sun stood at the center of the universe and that the planets, including the earth, revolved around the sun.
Galileo
(1564-1642) Showed that the heavens were not the perfect, unblemished realm that Ptolemaic astronomers assumed but, rather, a world of change, flux, and many previously unsuspected sights
Isaac Newton
An English mathematician who lived from 1642-1727. He argued that a law of universal gravitation regulates the motions of bodies throughout the universe, and he offered precise mathematical explanations of the laws that govern movements of bodies on the earth.
Enlightenment
The abandon of Aristotelian philosophy, Christian theology, and other traditionally recognized authorities, and sought to subject the human world to purely rational analysis.
John Locke
An English philosopher who lived from 1632-1704. He worked to discover natural laws of politics by attacking divine-right theories used by absolute monarchs and advocating constitutional government on the grounds that sovereignty resides in the people rather than the state or its rulers.
Philosophes
Prominent intellectuals in France, where the center of Enlightenment thought was located. They advanced the cause of reason and addressed the educated public rather than scholars
Voltaire
The pen name of Francois-Marie Arouet who lived from 1694-1778. He epitomized the spirit of the Enlightenment and championed individual freedom and attacked any institution sponsoring intolerant or oppressive policies