The Protestant Reformation: Scientific Revolution And Impact On Church

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The protestant reformation during 1518-1648 was a key period within the Church’s history that saw the acts and teachings of all religions come under great scrutiny. Through the contributing social, cultural, political and religious factors that result in the Reformation it undoubtedly had a big impact not only on the 16th century but also in our world today.

During the 16th century the monarchy was still actively utilizing their power. Furthermore as this, all of Europe was Christians time, which resulted in the Church having primary authority over people’s lifestyles. Because of this, it caused many discrepancies in society as they believed the Catholic Church was focused more on money and power than in saving souls. for instance, whilst under the rule of Pope, if you committed a sin, you’d pay the church a fine and your sin would be forgiven so you’ll be able to head to heaven, which suggested that the rich could head to heaven and therefore the poor couldn’t – which is totally opposite to what the bible says as seen in Matthew 19:24.

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Furthermore in 1515, the pope started a replacement indulgence campaign to lift money for St Peter’s Basilica reconstruction in Rome. However, for theologiser, this was the irritation then with the invention of the press, theologiser in October 1515, printed 95 theses and nailed them on the doors of the Wittenberg Chapter. Therefore because of the press, it allowed Luther’s protests to rapidly be printed and spread around society therefore resulting in protests. Furthermore, as books were being translated from Latin into different languages, many of us began to question why Mass still used the Latin language, therefore provoking further protests as people – including theologiser, questioned why Church couldn’t be conducted during a language that everybody could understand, irrespective of their wealth or education.

During the 1400’s developments in formal theology in cultural life and in several regions in Europe all evidence of the continuity between the Reformation and earlier historical events. Specifically, churchmen disagreed about the first issues as God’s sovereignty, gaining salvation, effects of sin and beauty on the soul etc. With the abundance of universities and printed books around 1500, many of us in society became attentive to these debates of Christian faith, which therefore sparked the Reformation controversies.

Due to the protestant reformation, the schism from the Catholic Church was primarily initiated by Martin Luther, who actively protested and so made him an enemy of the pope then was excommunicated. However, many of us like John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli continued Martin Luther’s protests and their theologies resulted in Lutheranism and Calvinism, which were both one in all the main branches of Protestantism.

Moreover, in c. 1524, many peasants rebelled against the nobles for equality and humanity. Many countries in Europe therefore followed this notion of reformation and therefore result in Europe dividing by denomination. This consequently brought religious wars like the French Wars of faith.

As a result of the movement of the protestant reformation, the Catholic Church passed through this with the counter reformation, which began with the Council of Trent in 1545 and ended at the close of the 30 years war in 1648. The Roman Catholic Church at the time made new religious orders like Jesuits, which were made to combat Protestantism and inform people about Catholicism. The Church also made the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which was an inventory of banned books. Baroque art was also a key movement, which restored Catholicism’s predominance and centrality.

Overall, the movement of the religious movement resulted in many new churches like the anglican church Of England, Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian churches etc. along with the religious consequences resulting from the Reformation, political changes also occurred during the 16th century, as North Europe’s new religious and political freedoms were costlier, with decades of rebellions, wars and persecutions. However, in our world today the reformation’s impact on society continues to be pervasive as our thinking on subjects like family, economy, theology, sexuality, etc. all are reflective of the Reformation. Furthermore, our freedom of expression and diverse denominations we see today were strongly influenced by the Reformation’s developments and has now opened new avenues for explorations in our g outnumbered the nativ generation. With an increasing number of voyages happening in the 15th century so as to appear for a shorter path to China, John Cabot, an Englishman, was arguably the primary one to achieve Newfoundland in 1497. He started out for an additional voyage for North America in 1498 but was lost at the ocean. However, the primary Frenchman to achieve Newfoundland was Jaques Cartier, who finally arrived in 1534, and in 1535 and 1536, Cartier was ready to reach what later became Montreal and Quebec. Champlain was another Frenchman, who, in 1608, successfully managed to line up a settlement in Quebec. he’s also said to possess “opened up St Lawrence river and extended French influence throughout the nice Lake basin.” Champlain, together with Pierre du Gua de Monts, is additionally known to have made a trial to ascertain a settlement in Acadia in 1604, which had to be aborted within the winter as 36 men died of scurvy. After lots of other problems that the French colonists had to face, finally, a settlement was established at Port Royal (capital of Acadia) in 1610. But the French colony didn’t go unchallenged for long. Sir William Alexander petitioned James I, who was originally James VI of Scotland, for a Scottish colony in Canada. James I responded favourably and therefore the “Royal Charter of 1621, to Sir William Alexander” laid out land for this settlement. The charter also mentioned that this settlement was to be called Nova Scotia (“New Scotland” in Gaelic). However, Nova Scotia was purported to be exactly where Acadia was.

After a series of wars over the territory, the people finally managed to amass it in 1710, and therefore the Treaty of Utrecht sanctioned this transformation in governance in 1713. Nova Scotia was now officially a colony until 1854.

France, at first, had alliances through treaties with the native populations rather than trying to subjugate them with force. These treaties allowed the French to use and own parts of aboriginal lands in Canada. Britain looked down upon the natives as they were non-European, and weren’t very successful in forming alliances with them. But within the late 17th and 18th centuries, the settler population in Canada boomed thanks to the large influx of European population: Europe was finally ready to eliminate its poorer population by sending it to Canada; Loyalists moved to Canada in large numbers after the american revolution. The immigration was so massive that in 1812, it’s estimated that the settler population e population by 10 to 1. This massive influx of out of doors population, lots of things happened.

Firstly, as more and more settlers came in, more land was required to line up agricultural practices to sustain the eu colonial economy. So, they might go in aboriginal land that wasn’t within the treaties for them to use, and therefore the governments didn’t have the desire or the means to counter these incursions upon aboriginal land. Secondly, with the decline of the fur trade, the economies of the eu settlers and aboriginals became increasingly incompatible. Because the Europeans outnumbered the aboriginal populations by this point, aboriginal economy started declining thanks to the shortage of land, game and other resources that the Europeans had condemned. With this, the Europeans began to work out the aboriginals as hindrance to productive development, and because the colonial governments made them relief payments to stop the threat of starvation, they were perceived as nothing quite “drain on the general public purse”. Thirdly, the already small number of aboriginal grew even smaller with the diseases that afflicted them thanks to the arrival of the Europeans. While the Europeans had developed immunity to them over a few years, the aboriginals had not, and that they were drained in huge numbers. Lastly, with the arrival of European settlements, the aboriginal way of life came under erasure. The method had started with Champlain ensuring the conversion of natives into Christianity but the ultimate nail within the coffin was the Indian Act of 1876 and its subsequent amendments. The Indian Act ensured that the aboriginals would be assimilated and “enfranchised” into the eu way of life, with the aim that there would be no difference between a eu and an aboriginal. in line with a Report of the Royal Commission on the Aboriginal Peoples.

The discoveries made during the Scientific Revolution were incredible, impactful, and never even thought of before. However, these new discoveries were constantly under attack from the church. Even so, the breakthroughs kept coming, and therefore the church couldn’t stop them. a number of these scientific discoveries are still in use today, and were the building blocks to modern science. The people that made these revelations were the scientists who first revealed that the world revolved round the sun, or that the moon was filled with holes and craters. There have been many conflicts throughout this era, because the church didn’t want their power and concepts to come back into question. That was unacceptable to them.

One of the various people that contributed to the Scientific Revolution was Nicolaus copernicus. In 1543 he wrote and published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. This was his proposal of his theory of a sun-centered universe, called a heliocentric. He proposed that the sun was the middle of the universe, not the world, because it was widely accepted to be at the time. He further said that the world, together with all the opposite planets within the scheme, revolved round the sun. In his predecessor’s theory, Claudius Ptolemy, it showed that the world was the middle of the universe, and therefore the sun and planets revolved around it. to indicate this, he made a geocentric model depicting that theory, and it had been widely accepted. Meanwhile, Copernicus made a heliocentric model for his theory. It, naturally, showed his idea of a sun-centered universe. many people, experts, and particularly the church, rejected this revolutionary theory. People simply didn’t want to believe, after years and years of accepting that the middle of the universe was themselves, that they, in fact, weren’t. In Europe, all knowledge, domain and spiritual teaching were heavily supported by the ideas and arguments of classical thinkers. They thought that if Ptolemy’s geocentric theory was wrong, then their entire scientific and worldly understanding may be in question. However within the late 1500s, another astronomer, Tycho Brahe, found evidence that supported Copernicus. Brahe constructed an astronomical observatory, and spent years carefully studying and accumulating data about planetary movements. After Brahe died, his assistant Johan Kepler used Brahe’s data to assist calculate the orbit of the planets round the sun. Those calculations were in favor of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. They also showed that, instead of occupying an ideal circle, the planets moved in a very oval-shaped orbit called an ellipse.

Jumping forwards a touch, in 1609 an astronomer named uranologist checked out the starry night sky together with his new, specially ground lensed telescope. It allowed him to work out new, amazing things in space, like mountains on the moon, and fiery spots on the sun, and Jupiter’s four moons. This opened another new view of the universe. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and astronomer, proposed a theory that the moon and stars were manufactured from a pure, perfect substance. He also said that they were perfectly round spheres. The church supported this mainly because of Aristotle’s strong beliefs of excellent works for salvation, together with many other common thoughts among the church. They also may have supported his theory because they believed that God couldn’t create anything impure. Galileo, however, was scorned by the Church thanks to his theory of “Impure spheres”. As seen above, he also saw the four moons around Jupiter, which he discovered were revolving round the planet similar to the planets revolving round the sun. Galileo’s revolutionary discoveries caused widespread protest among other scholars, who attacked him. The church condemned him because, additionally to his ideas contradicting ancient views of the globe, they also challenged teachings that the heavens were perfect and immobile. They found Galileo a threat to their teachings and beliefs, and decided he had to be stopped. In 1633, the Inquisition brought Galileo into trial. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t recall his statements, or, as labeled by the church, “Heresies”. With no other choice, Galileo withdrew his statements. He publically said that his theories were false; that the world was completely still at the middle of the universe. It is said, though, that as he left the court, he muttered, “Nevertheless, it does move.” The church thought that they’d hidden Galileo’s theories, and ensured that their “truths” were preserved. Really, though, they’d just delayed the inevitable facts that the church’s influence was falling apart. “With sincere heart and unprecedented faith I reject…, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies and also every other error… contrary to the Holy Church, and that i swear that within the future i will be able to nevermore say or assert… anything that may cause an analogous suspicion toward me.” These words were spoken by Galileo during his trial. As said previously, the church forced him to mention this, or he would be put to death.

Meanwhile, a completely different way of going about the research project was being developed, even with the church’s opposition. It didn’t rely or draw from previous authorities, like Ptolemy, Aristotle, or perhaps the Bible, but instead on much observation and experimentation. During this new scientific approach, scientists had to gather data, accurately measure it, and explain the information. To do this, they used logical reasoning to make a hypothesis. The hypothesis, or theoretical explanation, was then tested with complex mathematical laws which were wont to convert their observations into scientific laws. Once a conclusion was reached, they repeated the method, over and once again, to form sure their data was accurate. This was eventually labeled because of the methodology.

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