The nature of change: humanism, Reformation and state power

The big idea: Between about 1400 and 1600 Europe changed so deeply that historians call it a transition — the shift from the medieval to the early modern world.

It began with new ideas. Thinkers rediscovered the writers of ancient Greece and Rome and started to put human beings, not only the Church, at the centre of learning and art.

This movement of ideas is called humanism. It grew out of the Renaissance, meaning 'rebirth', which started in the wealthy cities of Italy such as Florence.

Humanists believed you could learn how to live well by reading the ancients directly, rather than only accepting what medieval scholars had said.

A huge boost came from the printing press, developed by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450.

Suddenly books could be copied in their thousands instead of by hand, so new ideas spread across Europe faster than ever before.

Spot it: what made ideas 'new': Three shifts define the change in thought: going back to the classics (ancient texts), putting humans at the centre (reason and potential), and spreading it by print. Together they loosened the medieval Church's grip on knowledge.

The biggest change of all was religious. For a thousand years Western Europe had a single Church led by the Pope in Rome.

In 1517 a German monk named Martin Luther attacked Church corruption — especially indulgences — and set off the Protestant Reformation.

Luther argued that faith alone saved a person and that the Bible, not the Pope, was the true authority.

Helped by the printing press, his ideas spread fast, and Western Christianity split apart — permanently.

The Catholic response — the Counter-Reformation: The Catholic Church fought back with the Catholic (Counter-) Reformation.

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) met to reform abuses and restate Catholic doctrine clearly, while the Jesuits — a disciplined new order founded by Ignatius Loyola — became teachers and missionaries who won people back to Rome.

Why it mattered: The split was not just about theology. It divided Europe into rival Catholic and Protestant camps, fed decades of religious wars, and forced every ruler to decide which side their state would take.

Religion quickly became tangled up with power. Kings and princes saw that controlling the Church meant controlling their people — and often its wealth too.

The clearest example is England.

Henry VIII's break with Rome (1530s): Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, but the Pope refused.

So in the 1530s Henry made himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, breaking with Rome. This was the English Reformation — driven as much by royal ambition as by religion, and it made him hugely rich by seizing the monasteries.

Religion tied to royal and princely authority: Across Europe, faith became a tool of the state. German princes chose Lutheranism partly to gain independence from the Catholic emperor.

The rule that later summed it up was cuius regio, eius religio: the prince's religion became his people's religion.

Society and the economy were changing too. Printing created a whole new industry, and as more people learned to read, literacy spread beyond priests and nobles.

Trade was booming, so a wealthy middle class of merchants, lawyers, doctors and officials grew — people who owed their status to money and skill rather than to birth.

The first stirrings of modern science: Change reached the heavens as well. In 1543 the astronomer Copernicus published his heliocentric theory.

By placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre, he directly challenged both ancient authority and the Church — the first spark of the Scientific Revolution.