Case study 1 — Renaissance and Reformation Europe (Europe)

A rebirth of interest in classical Greek and Roman art, ideas and learning, beginning in the wealthy Italian city-states around 1400.

Wealthy, independent city-states like Florence and Venice, enriched by trade, competed to fund art and classical learning; they also sat among the ruins of ancient Rome.

A wealthy Florentine banking dynasty who used their fortune to fund artists, architects and scholars — a famous example of Renaissance patronage.

A Renaissance way of thinking that studied classical texts and celebrated human reason, potential and worldly achievement.

The Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople. Greek scholars fled west carrying ancient manuscripts, fuelling humanist scholarship in Italy.

Johannes Gutenberg, around 1450, using movable metal type.

It made books fast and cheap, so humanist and later reformist ideas could spread across Europe in weeks instead of being hand-copied slowly.

A Church document said to reduce the punishment for sins — its sale for money angered many Christians and sparked calls for reform.

The sale of indulgences, absentee clergy who never served their regions, and widespread corruption and worldly wealth despite preaching poverty.

A written list of arguments attacking indulgences and Church corruption, traditionally marked as the start of the Protestant Reformation.

It was a patchwork of states the emperor could not fully control, so individual princes were free to protect and adopt Protestantism.

Long-term: Renaissance humanism, trade wealth, the printing press and Church corruption. Immediate trigger: Luther's 1517 Ninety-Five Theses.

A "rebirth" of ancient Greek and Roman learning in Europe (roughly 1400–1550) that reshaped ideas, art and scholarship.

A movement that revived classical texts and stressed human dignity, reason, and the study of history and languages.

The leading humanist; he produced a fresh Greek New Testament and, in *In Praise of Folly* (1509), mocked corrupt clergy and urged a simpler Christianity.

That rulers should study how power is really gained and kept, separating politics from religious morality.

As painter, engineer and anatomist he embodied the curious "universal man" who studied nature closely.

In 1517 Martin Luther attacked the sale of indulgences, sparking a movement that split Western Christianity.

Lutheran (Luther, Germany/Scandinavia), Calvinist (Calvin, Geneva), and Anglican (Church of England).

A series of Church meetings that reaffirmed Catholic doctrine, ended abuses like indulgence sales, and improved priest training.

The Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540; educated, obedient priests who ran schools and missions to win people back to Catholicism.

In the 1530s he broke with Rome; the Act of Supremacy (1534) made him head of the Church of England and let him seize monastic wealth.

The printing industry spread books cheaply and literacy rose, letting new ideas travel fast and strengthening a growing merchant and professional class.

The heliocentric theory — that the Earth orbits the Sun — challenging Church and ancient authority and beginning the Scientific Revolution.

1562–1598 — civil wars between Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots in France.

The 1572 killing of thousands of Huguenots in Paris and across France — the bloodiest point of the French Wars of Religion.

It granted the Huguenots limited freedom to worship, ending the French Wars of Religion — an early, rare step toward toleration.

1618–1648; it began in the Holy Roman Empire as a Protestant revolt against a Catholic emperor and devastated central Europe.

It ended the Thirty Years' War, let each state choose its religion, and created the principle of state sovereignty.

They pushed rulers toward centralised, absolutist states that controlled religion — the principle 'whose realm, his religion'.

Rising literacy (people read the Bible and printed works) AND intensified persecution (witch-hunts and hostility to minorities).

Religious anxiety, war, plague and hardship led divided communities to blame outsiders — tens of thousands, mostly women, were executed.

Enduring achievements in art, literature and learning that laid foundations for the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Mixed: religious upheaval, warfare and economic disruption caused suffering, but print gave new access to Bibles, ideas and news.

Was it truly transformative (new faiths, states, ideas) or built on medieval continuities (rural, poor, religious life persisting)?

Rulers gained power, the literate gained ideas, Protestant states gained independence — while minorities, 'witches' and peasants suffered.