Reformation, science and a changed world

Questioning the Church. As humanism spread north, many Christians wanted a simpler religion free of elaborate rituals. Christian humanists such as Thomas More in England and Erasmus in Holland criticised the Church's greed and its many rituals. They especially attacked indulgences: documents the Church sold, claiming they would free the buyer from the punishment for sins. Humanist scholars also proved that the 'Donation of Constantine', a document by which the Church claimed legal and financial powers granted by the emperor Constantine, was a forgery. Peasants resented the Church's taxes, and many rulers resented its interference in their affairs.

The Reformation. In 1517, a German monk, Martin Luther, launched a campaign against the Catholic Church. He argued that a person did not need priests to reach God: faith alone could lead to salvation. His movement became the Protestant Reformation.

• In Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli and later Jean Calvin led similar movements.
• More radical Anabaptists went further, linking salvation with ending all social oppression and arguing that God created everyone equal, so people should not pay taxes. Peasants in Germany rose in 1525.
• Luther, however, did not support the radical peasants: he called on German rulers to suppress the 1525 rebellion.
• Some rulers backed the Reformation for their own reasons. In England, the rulers broke with the Pope, and the king or queen became head of the Church.
• The Catholic Church reformed itself too. In Spain and Italy, churchmen called for a simple life and service to the poor, and in 1540 Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) to serve the poor and spread Christianity.

The scientific revolution. The Church taught that the earth was a sinful place, heavy with sin and therefore unmoving, at the centre of the universe, with the heavens revolving around it.

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 to 1543) argued that the earth and planets revolve around the sun. Cautious of the reaction from traditionalist clergy, he did not publish his work in his lifetime.
• Johannes Kepler showed that the planets move around the sun in ellipses, not circles.
• Galileo Galilei, using a telescope, studied the heavens and the laws of motion.
• Isaac Newton crowned this work with the theory of gravitation.
• The new idea was that knowledge comes from observation and experiment, not from belief. Nature works by its own laws. Scientific societies such as the Paris Academy (1670) and the Royal Society in London (1662) held lectures and experiments for the public.

Was there a Renaissance? Historians now question Burckhardt's picture:

• The English historian Peter Burke argued that Burckhardt exaggerated the break with the past. Many 'Renaissance' features existed earlier: for example, a revival of classical learning in France in the ninth century.
• Europe's changes did not come only from reviving Greece and Rome. Europe learnt printing, the compass and gunpowder from China, and science, medicine, mathematics and art from India, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and China, through growing trade and travel.

What was truly new in this period:

• A sharper division between public life (the state and official religion) and private life (family, personal faith), with individuals judged more by their own skills than by their order.
• A growing sense among people who shared a language that they belonged together. Europe gradually dissolved into separate states, each held together by a common language.