Cultural History - AP World History: Modern

Like the rest of Europe at the time, England had also been experiencing the stirring influences of the rising Protestant Reformation. But concrete action had yet to be taken, until King Henry VIII’s personal desires fatally clashed with Catholic dogma. Unhappy with his current wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and desperate to finally have a male heir, King Henry VIII was determined to divorce Queen Catherine and wed her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. However, divorce was a tricky matter during this era and could only be granted through Papal permission. King Henry personally appealed to Pope Clement VII, asking that he be allowed to divorce Catherine in favor of Anne, but the Pope, who was currently being held prisoner by Catherine’s nephew (aka the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) was not at all inclined to grant this request. Incensed, King Henry decided that he didn’t need to listen to the Vatican and he married Anne Boleyn anyway, declaring his divorce from Catherine to be legal under his authority as supreme sovereign of England. Then, in defiance of the Pope’s orders, in 1534 King Henry passed the Act of Supremacy, which declared that the entire nation of England was no longer a Catholic country, had no allegiance to the Vatican or to the Pope, and was no longer going to render either monetary or military support to the Papal State. Furthermore, King Henry declared that he himself, as England’s ruler, was the dominant religious leader in the land and so he created the Church of England (aka Anglicanism), the new official state religion.

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus is most famous for his works of drama. Most notable he wrote the Oresteia trilogy.

The Great Library of Alexandria was built in Egypt during the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty (circa 300 BCE) For a few centuries it was a renowned center of learning and innovation in the classical world.

The Canterbury Tales was written by the Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. It is considered to be of particular importance for encouraging the spread of vernacular English in English society.

Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century CE. It is an Abrahamic religion, which means it continues the same monotheistic tradition as Judaism and Christianity. Islam spread extremely rapidly around the Middle East and North Africa in the centuries after its foundation.

Pueblos were houses built by the Anasazi people in the caves, and on the plains, of the American southwest.

Moveable type and printing were both invented first in China. Moveable type allows for the mass production of documents and was first invented in China in the eleventh century, during the Song Dynasty.

One of the reasons that Christianity spread around the Roman Empire was because it was so popular among those who were powerless or disenfranchised in Roman society (which was the vast majority of the population). Christianity was rapidly embraced by non-citizens, slaves, the rural poor, the urban poor, and women.

Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim; pilgrimage to Mecca is considered a holy commandment by many devout Muslims. Devout Christians and Jews view Jerusalem as the holiest city and the most important pilgrimage site. Mali has never had a large Hindu or Buddhist community, nor have they ever had a ruler practice either of those religions.

Gunpowder was invented in China in the ninth or tenth century. The discovery of gunpowder led to the invention of fireworks and to the invention of firearms. Eventually gunpowder would transform the military and societies of almost everywhere in the world.

The use of Icons to depict saints, the messiah, and Mary became synonymous with the orthodox churches of the Byzantine and Russian Empires. Quakerism, Puritanism, and Calvinism are all branches of Protestantism that admonished the Catholic traditions of iconography that they claim broke the commandment against idol worship.

Luther himself created a vernacular translation of scripture. He was against sacerdotalism and encouraged all to communicate directly with God. The other practices listed are emblematic of the corruption he sought to purge from the Catholic Church. In order to answer this question, you could have either known of Luther's vernacular translation, or known about his points of contention with the church.

Sikhism emerged from the spread of Islamic powers into the Indian Sub-Continent. Because of its geo-political beginnings, Sikhism remains strongest in the southern part of Pakistan and Northern India where the two cultures clashed.

Jihad refers to "struggle" while for some it means a struggle for purity and faith, others interpret it as a duty to protect the Islam faith by destroying threats (including non believers). The other terms refer to pillars of Islam such as charity, prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage.

The Abbasid Caliphate was founded by descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's uncle, al-Abbas and overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate.

Henry VIII of England famously separated from the Catholic Church in order to obtain a Divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He subsequently formed the Church of England with himself as the head. Mary I was staunchly Catholic, and is infamous for executing protestant sympathizers. Similarly, Isabella I of Spain held the title of Servant of God, and began the Spanish Inquisition (for religious purity). Louis XIV of France remained staunchly Catholic until being executed by the French Revolution, and Charlemagne was the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Martin Luther began the reform movement that would become known as Protestantism by penning his 95 Theses. There is no historical evidence that he posted them publicly on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, but instead included them in a letter to Archbishop Albert of Mainz.

The opening years of the Renaissance coincided with a period in which the Catholic Church progressively fell from the position of near-absolute dominance which it had long exercised over much of Western Europe. This trend first emerged as a result of several events that occurred in the late Middle Ages – as the memory of the Black Death’s devastation receded, and was replaced with the horrific ravages of Europe’s many wars (especially the destruction wrought by the Hundred Years’ War), many individuals began to see the Church as less of a mainstay. Rather, the growing influence of national armies and international and/or inter-regional conflict promoted the birth of nationalist sentiment among the population. Increasingly, citizens from all societal classes came to view national loyalty and pride as a quite natural and important expression of allegiance, which in turn caused loyalty to the Church to correspondingly decline. After all, the Church taken sides throughout many of these wars as well, which many individuals regarded as unnecessary clerical meddling at best or even unwarranted papal posturing at worst. The deep transformations wrought by the Renaissance furthered this trend, as humanist scholars guided their students away from Church teachings in favor of more secularized and widely varied courses of study. These humanist students and scholars helped engender an entirely new breed of intellectuals, who began to serve as government administrators and officials, increasingly replacing the members of the clergy who once had filled these posts.

Historians have been able to pinpoint regions of the country known today as Germany as the starting location for the Protestant Reformation. Especially conducive to the Reformation’s outbreak were the imperial cities located throughout the Germanic region, such as Saxony. At the time, there existed sixty-five imperial cities in total, each operating as a free and independent body, answerable only to itself. As a result of such freedoms, the residents of these cities were already accustomed to governing their own political, economic, and social affairs, and so religious changes were received by many of the citizens as similarly natural – in other words, just another matter to assess and alter if required. Naturally (given their propensity for freedom), not all of these cities remained Protestant – many reverted back to versions of Catholicism, while others adopted a denominationally diverse lifestyle, with some residents living as Protestants and others as practicing Catholics. Most towns quickly came to adopt a culture of religious toleration, in which public preaching, argumentation, and attempts at conversion were deeply discouraged; this helped to keep the public peace in a great many cases.

Generally speaking, the Protestant Reformation, with its politically expansionist as well as its religiously transformative tones, appealed to segments of society who were either socially disadvantaged and/or desirous of greater social and economic mobility. Village residents and the peasantry, as the most impoverished group, were naturally drawn to the Reformation’s urgings, as were other individuals who had found themselves targeted by the state (such as political dissidents or residents who were under the control of an autocratic local ruler). The Reformation also received a great deal of support from guild members, particularly those who had experienced some financial gains and wanted this to ensure that this personal growth would continue. For the most part, these conditions meant that groups such as the aristocracy and the wealthy business class were largely immune to the Reformation’s charms, as they were already in an advantageous position, both financially and socially, and therefore regarded the notion of any sort of change as a potential threat to their prosperity.