Martin Luther (1483–1546)

• Ninety-five Theses

  • • In itself, this was nothing new, for many people were critical of the luxurious life of the popes, the corruption and immorality of some clergy,the Church’s selling of indulgences (said to remove the penalties for sin), and other aspects of church life and practice.

    • its theological basis is what distinguishes it

    • Luther recently had come to a new understanding of salvation, which held that it came through faith alone.

    • Neither the good works of the sinner nor the sacraments of the Church had any bearing on the eternal destiny of the soul, for faith was a free gift of God, graciously granted to his needy and undeserving people.

    • To Luther, the source of these beliefs, and of religious authority in general, was not the teaching of the Church, but the Bible alone, interpreted according to the individual’s conscience

• Spread and acceptance

  • • Printing Press

      • • Luther’s many pamphlets and his translation of the New Testament into German were soon widely available

        • spread to France, Switzerland, England, and elsewhere, it also splintered, amoeba-like, into a variety of competing Protestant churches—Lutheran, Calvinist,Anglican, Quaker, Anabaptist—many of which subsequently subdivided, producing a bewildering array of Protestant denominations. Each was distinctive, but none gave allegiance to Rome or the pope.

    • kings and princes

      • • had long disputed the political authority of the pope, found in these ideas a justification for their own independence and an opportunity to gain the lands and taxes previously held by the Church

    • middle-class urban dwellers

      • • Protestant idea that all vocations were of equal merit

        • Middle class found a new religious legitimacy for their growing role in society, since the Roman Catholic Church was associated in their eyes with the rural and feudal world of aristocratic privilege.

        • common people, who were offended by the corruption and luxurious living of some bishops, abbots, and popes, the new religious ideas served to express their opposition to the entire social order, particularly in a series of German peasant revolts in the 1520s.

Catholic Counter-Reformation

• Council of Trent (1545–1563)

  • • Catholics clarified and reaffirmed their unique doctrines and practices, such as the authority of the pope, priestly celibacy, the veneration of saints and relics, and the importance of church tradition and good works, all of which Protestants had rejected.

    • they set about correcting the abuses and corruption that had stimulated the Protestant movement by placing a new emphasis on the education of priests and their supervision by bishops

• Inquisition

  • • A crackdown on dissidents included the censorship of books, fines, exile, penitence, and occasionally the burning of heretics.

    • Renewed attention was given to individual spirituality and personal piety

• Society of Jesus (Jesuits)

  • • a dedicated brotherhood of priests committed to the renewal of the Catholic Church and its extension abroad.

Direct Effects:

• divided societies and the fractured political system of Europe

  • • For more than thirty years (1562–1598), French society was torn by violence between Catholics and the Protestant minority known as Huguenots.

    • On a single day,August 24, 1572,Catholic mobs in Paris massacred some 3,000 Huguenots, and thousands more perished in provincial towns in the weeks that followed.

    • Henry IV, issued the Edict of Nantes (1598), which granted a substantial measure of religious toleration to French Protestants,though with the intention that they would soon return to the Catholic Church.

• Thirty Years’War (1618–1648), a Catholic–Protestant struggle that began in the Holy Roman Empire but eventually engulfed most of Europe.

  • • It was a horrendously destructive war, during which, scholars estimate,between 15 and 30 percent of the German population perished from violence,famine,or disease.

    • the Peace of Westphalia (1648) brought the conflict to an end,with some reshuffling of boundaries and an agreement that each state was sovereign, authorized to control religious affairs within its own territory.

    • Whatever religious unity Catholic Europe had once enjoyed was now permanently broken

Indirect Effects:

• the Reformation was profoundly religious, it encouraged a skeptical attitude toward authority and tradition, for it had, after all, successfully challenged the immense prestige and power of the pope and the established Church.

• Protestant reformers fostered religious individualism as people were now encouraged to read and interpret the scriptures for themselves and to seek salvation without the mediation of the Church.

• In the centuries that followed, some people turned that skepticism and the habit of thinking independently against all revealed religion.

• the Protestant Reformation opened some space for new directions in European intellectual life.

• Christianity was a more highly fragmented but also a renewed and revitalized Christianity that established itself around the world in the several centuries after 1500.

Shah Ismail blended Shiism and Turkish militancy to give his regime a distinctive identity, but it also created some powerful enemies.

• Shiism--Twelver Shiism

  • • believed there had been twelve infallible imams (or religious leaders) after Muhammad, beginning with the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law Ali.

    • The twelfth, “hidden,” imam had gone into hiding around 874 to escape persecution, but the Twelver Shiites believed he was still alive and would one day return to take power and spread his true religion.

    • Ismail’s father had instructed his Turkish followers to wear a distinctive red hat with twelve pleats in memory of the twelve Shiite imams, and they subsequently became known as the qizilbash (“red heads”).

    • Safavid propaganda also suggested that Ismail was himself the hidden imam, or even an incarnation of Allah.

    • Although most Muslims, including most Shiites, would have regarded those pretensions as utterly blasphemous, the qizilbash enthusiastically accepted them, since they resembled traditional Turkish conceptions of leadership that associated military leaders with divinity.

    • The qizilbash believed that Ismail would make them invincible in battle, and they became fanatically loyal to the Safavid cause.

Sunni Ottomans opposition

• Sultan Selim the Grim

  • • Sunni Ottomans detested the Shiite Safavids and feared the spread of Safavid propaganda among the nomadic Turks in their territory.

    • Selim the Grim launched a persecution of Shiites in the Ottoman empire and prepared for a full-scale invasion of Safavid territory

Battle of Chaldiran (1514)

• Ottomans

  • • Ottomans deployed heavy artillery and thousands of Janissaries equipped with firearms behind a barrier of carts.

• Safavid

  • • knew about gunpowder technology and had access to firearms, they declined to use devices that they saw as unreliable and unmanly

    • Trusting in the protective charisma of Shah Ismail, the qizilbash cavalry fearlessly attacked the Ottoman line and suffered devastating casualties.

• Result:

  • • Ismail had to slip away, and the Ottomans temporarily occupied his capital at Tabriz.

    • e Ottomans badly damaged the Safavid state but lacked the resources to destroy it, and the two empires remained locked in intermittent conflict for the next two centuries

    • Safavid rulers recovered from the disaster at Chaldiran. They relied more heavily than Ismail had on the Persian bureaucracy and its administrative talents.

    • Ismail’s successors abandoned the extreme Safavid ideology that associated the emperor with Allah in favor of more conventional Twelver Shiism, from which they still derived legitimacy as descendants and representatives of the imams.

    • They also assigned land grants to the qizilbash officers to retain their loyalty and give them a stake in the survival of the regime

Shah Abbas (reigned 1588–1629)

• Shah Abbas fully revitalized the Safavid empire.

• He moved the capital to the more central location of Isfahan, encouraged trade with other lands, and reformed the administrative and military institutions of the empire.

• He incorporated “slaves of the royal household” into the army, increased the use of gunpowder weapons, and sought European assistance against the Ottomans and the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf.

• With newly strengthened military forces, Shah Abbas led the Safavids to numerous victories:

  • • He attacked and defeated the nomadic Uzbeks in central Asia

    • expelled the Portuguese from Hormuz

    • harassed the Ottomans mercilessly in a series of wars from 1603 to the end of his reign.

    • His campaigns brought most of northwestern Iran, the Caucasus, and Mesopotamia under Safavid rule.

Guru Nanak (1469–1539)

• had been involved in the bhakti movement but came to believe that “there is no Hindu; there is no Muslim; only God.”

• His teachings and those of subsequent gurus also generally ignored caste distinctions and untouchability and ended the seclusion of women, while proclaiming the “brotherhood of all mankind” as well as the essential equality of men and women.

• converts from Punjabi peasants and merchants, both Muslim and Hindu, the Sikhs gradually became a separate religious community

• developed:

  • • their own sacred book, known as the Guru Granth (teacher book)

    • created a central place of worship and pilgrimage in the Golden Temple of Amritsar

    • prescribed certain dress requirements for men, including keeping hair and beards uncut, wearing a turban, and carrying a short sword.

Mughal reaction:

• Akbar supported the efforts of the early Sikhs, who combined elements of Hinduism and Islam in a new syncretic faith

• seventeenth century, Sikhs encountered hostility from both the Mughal Empire and some of their Hindu neighbors.

• Sikhism evolved from a peaceful religious movement, blending Hindu and Muslim elements, into a militant community whose military skills were highly valued

  • • worked with the British when they took over India