I. The Renaissance and Reformation
A. The Renaissance
1. The Renaissance was a time of creativity and change in many areas � political, social, economic, and cultural.
2. Renaissance Europe did not really break completely with its medieval past.
3. The Renaissance did produce new attitudes toward culture and learning.
B. Italian Beginnings
1. The Renaissance began in Italy in the mid 1300s, and then spread north to the rest of Europe.
2. The Renaissance was marked by a reawakened interest in the culture of ancient Rome.
3. Florence, perhaps more than any other city, came to symbolize the Italian Renaissance.
C. Humanism
1. At the heart of the Italian Renaissance was an intellectual movement known as humanism.
2. Humanists believed that education should stimulate the individual�s creative powers.
3. Francesco Petrarch, a Florentine who lived from 1304 to 1374, was an early Renaissance humanist.
D. A Golden Age in the Arts
1. The Renaissance reached its most glorious expression in its paintings, sculpture, and architecture.
2. Renaissance art reflected humanist concerns.
3. Renaissance artists studied ancient Greek and Roman works and revived many classical forms.
E. Writings for the New Age
1. Poets, artists, and scholars mingled with politicians at the courts of Renaissance rulers.
2. The most widely read of these books was The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione.
3. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, combining his personal experience of the past to offer a guide to rulers on how to gain and maintain power.
II. The Renaissance Moves North
A. Artists of the Northern Renaissance
1. The northern Renaissance began in the 1400s in the prosperous cities of Flanders, a region that included parts of what are today northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
2. Albrecht Durer traveled to Italy in 1494 to study the techniques of the Italian masters.
3. Among the many talented artists of Flanders in the 1400s, Jan and Hubert van Eyck stand out.
B. Northern Humanists
1. Like Italian humanists, northern European humanist scholars stressed education and a revival of classical learning.
2. The great Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus used his knowledge of classical languages to produce a new Greek edition of the New Testament and a much-improved Latin translation of the same text.
3. Erasmus�s friend the English humanist Sir Thomas More also used his pen to press for social and economic reform.
C. Literature of the Northern Renaissance
1. While Erasmus and More wrote mostly in Latin, many northern writers used the modern languages of their countries.
2. The French humanist Francois Rabelais had a varied career as a monk, physician, Greek scholar, and author.
3. The towering figure of Renaissance literature was the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare.
D. The Printing Revolution
III. The Protestant
A. Abuses in the Church
1. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, the Church had become increasingly caught up in worldly affairs.
2. During the Renaissance, popes, like other Renaissance rulers, maintained a lavish lifestyle.
3. Many Christians protested indulgences.
B. Luther�s Protest
1. Protests against Church abuses continued to grow.
2. In 1517, a German priest named Johann Tetzel set up a pulpit on the outskirts of Wittenberg.
3. Almost overnight, copies of Luther�s 95 Theses were printed and distributed across Europe, where they stirred up furious debate.
C. Spread of Lutheran Ideas
1. Luther�s ideas found a fertile field in northern Germany and Scandinavia.
2. Many of the clergy saw Luther�s reforms as the answer to corruption in the Roman Catholic Church.
3. The peasants also took up Luther�s banner.
D. John Calvin
1. The most important reformer to follow Martin Luther was John Calvin.
2. Calvin was born in France and trained as a priest and lawyer.
3. In 1541, Protestants in the city-state of Geneva in Switzerland asked Calvin to lead their community.
IV. Reformations Ideas Spread
A. Radical Reformers
1. As the Reformation continued, hundreds of new Protestant sects sprang up.
2. Some Anabaptists sought radical social change.
3. Most Anabaptists were peaceful women and men.
B. The English Reformation
1. In England, religious leaders such as John Wycliffe had called for Church reform as early as the 1300s.
2. At first, Henry VIII stood firmly against the Protestant revolt.
3. Popes had freed rulers from marriages before.
C. Elizabeth I restores Unity to England
1. Mary Tudor was 17 years old when Elizabeth I was born.
2. In January 1554, barely six months after Mary ascended to the throne, a plot against her was uncovered.
3. As queen, Elizabeth adopted a policy of religious compromise.
D. The Catholic Reformation
1. As the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Europe, a vigorous reform movement took hold within the Catholic Church.
2. To establish the direction that reform should take, the pope called the Council of Trent in 1545.
3. To deal with the Protestant threat more directly, Pope Paul strengthened the Inquisition.
E. Widespread Persecution
1. During this period of heightened religious passion, persecution was widespread.
2. Almost certainly, the religious fervor of the times contributed to a wave of witch hunting.
3. The Reformation brought hard times to Europe�s Jews.
F. Looking Ahead
1. The upheavals of the Catholic and Protestant reformations sparked wars of religion in Europe until the mid-1600s.
2. At that time, issues of religion began to give way to issues of national power.
3. Catholic and Protestant rulers of the mid-1600s often made decisions based on political interests rather than for purely religious reasons.
V. The Scientific Revolution
A. Changing Views of the World
1. Until the mid-1500s, European scholars accepted the idea of the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy that the Earth was the center of the universe.
2. In 1543, Polish scholar Nicolaus Copernicus published On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.
3. Scientists of many lands built on the foundations laid by Copernicus and Kepler.
B. Newton Ties It All Together
1. As a student at Cambridge University in England, Isaac Newton devoured the works of the leading scientists of his day.
2. In the next 20 years, Newton perfected his theory of gravity.
3. In 1687, Newton published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, explaining the law of gravity and other workings of the universe.
C. More Scientific Advances
1. The 1500s and 1600s saw change in areas other than astronomy
2. Chemistry slowly freed itself forms the magical notions of alchemy.
3. Medieval physicians relied on the ancient works of Galen.
D. Bacon and Descartes
1. The new scientific method was really a revolution in thought.
2. Both Bacon and Descartes rejected Aristotle�s scientific assumptions
3. Bacon and Descartes differed in their methods, however