Ch. 16 Transformations in Europe, 1500--1750 I. Culture and Ideas A. Religious Reformation 1. In 1500, the Catholic Church built St.

. Peters Basilica in Rome. To pay for it & other projects, the pope authorized raising money by selling indulgences. 2. The German monk Martin Luther challenged the pope on indulgences and other practices, beginning the Protestant Reformation. To promote his ideas, Luther used the printing press. 3. Protestant leader John Calvin preached that salvation was granted by predestination. 4. The Protestant challenge to the church and its supporters was intense and emotional, resulting in bitter wars of religion. 5. In light of the challenges to the Catholic Church, many reforms were enacted, such as reforming the education of the clergy. B. Traditional Thinking and Witch Hunts 1. Europeans viewed the natural world through two belief systems: folklore, including magic, and Christian and Judaic teachings. 2. Belief in the supernatural is vividly demonstrated in the witch-hunts of the late 16th and early 17th centuries in which over 100,000 people were tried and about half of them executed on charges of witchcraft. 3. Women, especially widows, were often accused of being witches because it was believed that women who lived without male authority were susceptible to evil. C. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment 1. European intellectuals derived their understanding of the natural world from the writings of the Greeks and Romans; including Aristotles belief that the sun, moon, planets, and stars rotated around the earth. 2. The observations of Copernicus and other scientists, including Galileo, undermined this earth-centered model of the universe and led to an understanding of the Copernican sun-centered model. 3. Isaac Newtons discovery of the law of gravity showed why the planets moved around the sun in elliptical orbits. He basically asserted that mathematical laws governed the universe. 4. Many religious and intellectual leaders viewed the new science with suspicion, as shown by the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church. 5. The Scientific Revolution demonstrated that the workings of the universe could be explained by natural causes. 6. The Enlightenment in Europe was inspired by the advances of the Scientific Revolution. It was a blending of intellectual schools of thought from many diverse areas with the idea of improving the human condition. II. B. 6. 7. 8. Social and Economic life The Bourgeoisie Europes cities experienced spectacular growth between 1500 and 1700. The wealthy urban bourgeoisie thrived on manufacturing, finance, and especially trade. Amsterdams growth, built on trade and finance, exemplifies the power of seventeenth-century bourgeoisie enterprise. 9. The Dutch East and West Indies Company gained financial supremacy in Europe by forming themselves as a joint-stock company, thus reducing the risk of overseas cargo trade by attracting many investors and spreading out the financial risk. By establishing a monopoly on products from the Indies and allowing trade of stocks in the market in Amsterdam they helped to create modern capitalism. 10. Like merchants in the Islamic world, European merchants relied on family and ethnic networks D. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Peasants and Laborers While serfdom declined and disappeared in Western Europe, it gained new prominence in Eastern Europe. New crops, like potatoes and corn, helped the rural poor of Europe avoid starvation. High consumption of wood for heating, cooking, construction, shipbuilding, and the iron industry led to severe deforestation in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As the price of wood rose, Europeans began to use coal instead of wood. Deforestation had particularly severe effects on the rural poor, who had relied on free access to forests for wood, building materials, nuts and berries, and wild game.

E. Women and the Family 7. Womens status and work were closely tied to that of their husbands and families. 8. Common people in early modern Europe married relatively late because young men served long periods of apprenticeship when learning a trade & young women needed to work to earn their dowries. The bourgeoisie also married late. 9. Unlike in other parts of the world, marriage patterns in early modern Europe reflected a freer choice of one's marriage partner instead of an arranged marriage. 10. Bourgeois parents put great emphasis on education & promoted the establishment of schools. 11. Most schools, professions, and guilds barred women from participation. III. Political Innovations C. State Development 11. The Habsburg Emperor Charles V failed to unify all of Europe, but Spain, France, and England successfully unified their states by limiting the power of the church and the nobility. 12. To ensure that his subjects did not resist royal authority, King Philip II of Spain used the Spanish Inquisition to suppress opposition. 13. King Henry VIII of England severed his bond with the Catholic Church when the pope refused to grant him a papal annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. 14. In England, The Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War both started when the monarch refused to share power with the Parliament. The result was the Glorious Revolution in which the monarchs were forced to sign the English Bill of Rights limiting the power of the king. 15. The ideas of the Bill of Rights reflect those of the English political philosopher John Locke. According to Locke, if the monarch abused his or her power, the people had a duty to rebel. 16. In France, the kings were able to get around the representative assembly (the Estates General) and to create an absolutist style of government. 17. Louis XIV entertained and controlled the French nobility by requiring them to attend his court at Versailles. The gigantic palace symbolized the French monarch's triumph over the rights of the nobility. F. Warfare and Diplomacy 12. Constant warfare in early modern Europe resulted in better European armies, weapons, and maneuvers. 13. European rulers paid their large war expenses by making alliances with the rising commercial elites and protecting markets overseas. 14. England took the lead in the development of new naval technology, as was demonstrated when they defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, signaling an end to Spains dominance in Europe. 15. With the defeat of Spain, France rose as the strongest power on continental Europe, while its rival England held superiority in naval power.