Wars of Religion, Reformation and more War:

I. Wrap-up of Renaissance: Last issue: Technology and its advances

a. Guttenberg’s printing press; improvements in maritime technology (Prince Henry the Navigator) lead to the Age of Discovery (well, helped out quite a bit by trade and the Silk Road)

II. 100 years war: Trust me, there was one, which resulted in:

a. Cementing the power of dynasties: Habsburgs in HRE, Valois in France, Tudor-Stuart in England/Scotland.

b. Age of Nation-States ruled by kings and emperors is not new as such, but the change-out from relations based on personal relations and contracts to power relations based in more formal geopolitical boundaries.

c. But – subject to some political limitations: Parliament in England, Estates General in France, diet in principalities of HRE – all basically nobility councils of various power-brokering ways.

III. Church, popular religion and preludes to the Reformation: Why Martin Luther was not the first.

a. Wycliffe and Lollards, Jan Hus.

b. Humanism à Christian Humanism: D. Erasmus, Thomas More.

c. Popular piety and confraternities.

IV. Martin Luther and Jean Calvin: The Reformation

a. 10/31/1517 95 Theses; subsequently leading to

b. “Salvation through faith Alone”

c. Priesthood of all believers

d. Authority of the Bible

e. Papal Usurpation.

f. 1520 Diet of Worms: “Here I stand.”

g. Spread of Lutheran Revolution

h. Calvinism adds two ideas: Predestination and Sovereignty of God.

i. Protestantism in France (Huegenots) – underground phenomenon

j. Protestantism in Switzerland

V. Catholic response: Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits, Counter-Reformation

a. Council of Trent 1545-64

VI. The peculiar case of England’s Reformation

a. Henry VII, Henry VIII Tudor: Edward, Mary, Elizabeth

b. The later English Renaissance

c. Where is the English Reformation?