History of the Western World - Term Paper Example

Table of Contents I. Godfrey of Bouillon………………………………………………… 3 II. Saladin …………………………………………………………….. 3 III. Richard the Lionheart……………………………………………... 4 IV. St. Thomas Aquinas ………………………………………………. 4 V. Scholasticism ……………………………………………………… 4 VI. Joan of Arc………………………………………………………… 5 VII. Babylonian Captivity (Avignon Papacy) ………………………… 5 VIII. John Wycliffe …………………………………………………… 5 IX. John Huss …………………………………………………………..5 X. Humanism ………………………………………………………….. 6 XI. Petrarch …………………………………………………………….. 6 XII. Medicis …………………………………………………………… 6 XIII. Michelangelo ……………………………………………………. 6 XIV. Thomas More ……………………………………………………. 7 XV. Erasmus …………………………………………………………… 7 XVI. Martin Luther …………………………………………………….. 7 XVII. John Calvin ………………………………………………………. 8 XVIII. Puritans …………………………………………………………. 8 XIX. Ignatius Loyola ……………………………………………………. 8 XX. Henry VIII …………………………………………………………. 9 XXI. Marco Polo ………………………………………………………… 9 XXII. Spanish Inquisition of 1492 ………………………………………. 9 XXIII. Vasco da Gama …………………………………………………… 10 XXIV. Ferdinand Magellan ………………………………………………. 10 XXV. Hernando Cortes …………………………………………………… 10 Abstract At the advent of the highly technological and modern period, it is essential to look at the past, particularly the pivotal events that triggered the restructuring of societal institutions that gave impetus to the emergence of the modern age and the people who led the revolution of the society through their efforts in improving technology as well as the more intangible societal relationships. This paper then will attempt to give a brief overview of these important events and key personalities in the history of the western world and thought. I. Godfrey of Bouillon He is the duke of Lower Lorraine and he leads the First Crusade. He became the earliest Latin monarch in Palestine after the fall of Jerusalem due to Muslim invasions in 1099. Moreover, Godfrey arranged alliances with the Muslim coastal cities of Ascalon, Acre and Caesarea and triumphantly defeated an Egyptian attack. Godfrey also recognized himself as a vassal of Daimbert, highest male in Jerusalem, hence forging the foundation for subsequent struggles between ordinary and religious personalities who aimed to manipulate the kingdom. On his demise, he was replaced by his male sibling named Baldwin I. Nevertheless, in spite of Godfrey’s feebleness as a monarch, the tall, attractive, and fair-haired descendant of Charlemagne was later idolized in epics and legends as the flawless Christian knight, the unrivaled champion of the entire crusading army (Columbia College 1961). II. Saladin He is the first Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and celebrated for successfully invading Jerusalem from the powerful Crusaders. Saladin has a Kurdish blood and heritage, and throughout his career he employed mostly Kurdish officials as his closest allies. Saladin was able to effectively put back the economy of Egypt on the right track, he restructured the military forces and with the counsel he received from his father, he kept away from any disagreements with Nureddin, his official lord, immediately after he was proclaimed as the true monarch of Egypt. He just then waited for Nureddin’s death before embarking on severe military actions initially against smaller Muslim countries, prior to the fight against the crusaders (ibid). III. Richard the Lionheart Richard Plantagenet is idolized as one of the great warrior monarchs of England; however, he is also popular for being the absent king because throughout his regime he consumed a sum of six months in England. Nevertheless, Richard was renowned for his courage which gained him the nickname ‘the Lionheart’; a nickname that has stretched out to legendary and mythological proportions, as popularly written by brilliant literalists such as Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (Greer 2004). IV. St. Thomas Aquinas Throughout the remaining days of his life, Aquinas taught at Paris and Rome, creating countless works on philosophical and theological subject matters and gaining his repute as the ‘angelic doctor’. Aquinas expanded in enormous detail a fusion of Christianity and Aristotelian philosophy that turned out to be the prescribed doctrine of theology in the Roman Catholic Church in 1879. His creative and vigorous endeavors ceased suddenly as the outcome of a religious experience a few days before this passing away (ibid). V. Scholasticism This is the philosophical framework and speculative predispositions of several medieval Christian scholars who were working in opposition to the milieu of inflexible religious dogma. They aimed to solve one alternative general philosophical dilemma, primarily under the effect of the supernatural and intuitional practice of patristic philosophy, and particularly Augustinianism, and soon after that of Aristotle (Brinton 1963). VI. Joan of Arc Also famous as the ‘Maid of Orleans’ (Brinton 1963, 48), Joan of Arc was a Catholic saint of the 15th century and a French national heroine. She was a girl from the peasantry class in Eastern France, and later one she led the French army to various significant successes at some stage in the Hundred Years’ War, proclaiming the guidance of God, and was in some way accountable for the coronation of King Charles VII. She was arrested by the English and put on trial by a religious court and burned at the stake at the ripe age of nineteen (ibid). VII. Babylonian Captivity (Avignon Papacy) In the modern period the papacy became intimately linked with Rome. After all, the pope does assert to gain his influence and power from being the direct descendant of Peter the apostle, who was the very first bishop of Rome. In spite of the fact that the papacy commenced in Rome and is at present built in Rome, it wasn’t at all times exclusively located there. There was a time when the popes were located in Avignon, France, generally referred to as the ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of the papacy (Clough 1960). VIII. John Wycliffe He is an English theologian, a philosopher, an advocate for changes in the church, and supporter of the initial complete translations of the Holy Bible into English. He was one among the precursors of the Protestant Reformation. His theories were classified as politico-ecclesiastical which the church demanded to throw away its material possessions. This reaction of the church prompted him to begin a systematic attack on the principles and traditions of the church (Brinton 1963). IX. John Huss He was a priest from Bohemia who aimed to modify the Church to permit better involvement by the laity. His attempts gave reason to his excommunication due to charges of insubordination in 1412. He was put into trial and was charged of heresy and given the punishment of death. His radical advocates carried on his teachings and as a consequence, staged no less than five failed crusades instigated against them (Gochberg 1996). X. Humanism The pivotal intellectual movement of Renaissance Italy was called humanism. The proponents of the humanist doctrine believed that the Greek and Latin traditional arts contained both all the messages an individual needs to have a moral and successful life and the paramount frameworks for a commanding Latin style (ibid). XI. Petrarch He is an Italian intellectual, lyricist, humanist and a key motivation in the development of the Renaissance. He is popular for his poems pertaining to Laura, a romanticized loved one whom he met in 1327 and who passed away in 1348. Efforts have been exerted to name her, yet all that is known is that Petrarch met Laura in Avignon, wherein he had joined the household of a powerful cardinal (Columbia College 1961). XII. Medici This is a family of popes, particularly the three popes Leo X, Clement VII and Leo XI. Aside from this, the Medici family is very powerful and influential in Florence because some of the monarchs of Florence such as Lorenzo the Magnificent and a number of designers of the most popular works of Renaissance were members of the Medici family (Greer 2004). XIII. Michelangelo He is popularly known as an Italian painter, architect, sculptor, lyricist and engineer during the Renaissance period. In spite of creating hardly any ventures aside from art, his flexibility in the disciplines he took on was of excellence that he is frequently regarded as a challenger for the designation of the model Renaissance man, together with his competing fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci (Brinton 1963). XIV. Thomas More He was a lawyer, writer, and politician in England who during his life acquired a reputation as a dominant humanist intellectual and filled in various public positions, including Lord Chancellor, wherein he had a population of people burned at the stake because of allegations of heresy. He also created the concept of ‘utopia’ which he submitted to a perfect, fantastical island nation in which the political structure was described in his latter works (ibid). XV. Erasmus He was a traditional intellectual who wrote in an unadulterated Latin mode and took pleasure on the title of ‘Prince of the Humanists’. He has been regarded as the key figure of the Christian humanists. Applying humanist strategies he designed significant new Latin and Greek versions of the New Testament which produced questions that would be prominent in the Protestant Reformation (Columbia College 1961). XVI. Martin Luther He was a Christian theologian and Augustinian monk whose principles motivated the Protestant Reformation and profoundly affected the doctrines of Protestant and other Christian conventions. Luther’s appeal to the Church to revisit the teachings of the Holy Bible led to a creation of new conventions within Christianity and in the Roman Catholic Church during the counter-reformation, concluding at the Council of Trent (Clough 1960). XVII. John Calvin Probably greater than Martin Luther, Calvin designed the patterns and thought that would prevail in Western culture all the way through the modern age. American culture, specifically, is comprehensively Calvinist in a number of ways; at the center of the manner American think and behave; people will discover this severe and commanding reformer. Calvin was a lawyer and he was filled with the conceptions of Northern Renaissance humanism. He was committed to modify the church and he obtained his opportunity to construct a reformed church when the people of Geneva rebelled in opposition to their rulers in the 1520s (Gochberg 1996). XVIII. Puritans The Puritans were an organization of people who mounted dissatisfaction in the Church of England and labored towards spiritual, ethical and societal changes. The works and ideas of John Calvin, an organizer in the Reformation, gave impetus to the emergence of Protestantism and were crucial to the Christian uprising (Brinton 1963). XIX. Ignatius Loyola He was the founder of the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were considered one of the most important forefronts of the Counter-Reformation. The works accomplished by Ignatius Loyola was perceived as a relevant counterattack to Martin Luther and John Calvin. Moreover, his Jesuits revolutionized the Roman Catholic Church in terms of value and they became a crucial segment of the Counter-Reformation (ibid). XX. Henry VIII He was a remarkable personality in the history of the English monarchy. Even though most of his regime he violently crashed the Protestant Reformations of the church, he is more famously known for his political resistances in Rome. These resistances decisively resulted in the separation of the Anglican Church from the Roman hierarchy, the termination of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and proclaiming himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England (Clough 1960). XXI. Marco Polo He is perhaps the most well-known Westerner who journeyed on the Silk Road. He surpassed all the other expeditionary in his willpower, his works, and his influence. His travel through Asia endured for more than two decades. He reached beyond what his predecessors have reached, further than Mongolia and China. He journeyed the entirety of China and lived to tell the tale, which became the world’s greatest travelogue (Columbia College 1961). XXII. Spanish Inquisition of 1492 This event was motivated by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain in 1492. The Alhambra edict, approved on the same year, granted the Jews in all the colonies of Spain to get out and never return. If they decided to remain, they had to accept Catholicism. Many Jews fled, yet still numerous chose to remain and convert (ibid). XXIII. Vasco de Gama He is a Portuguese conquistador who headed an expedition at the closing stages of the 15th century that consequently opened the sea channel to India through passing the Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of Africa. Further, he was a remarkable explorer and made an exceptionally vital voyage around the tip of Africa. He experienced a difficult voyage, but returned successfully. He was valiant and a fine leader (Greer 2004). XXIV. Ferdinand Magellan He was a Portuguese voyager. He desired to reach Southeast Asia, where the fabled spices were harvested, through sailing in a westward route across the Atlantic Ocean. As the King of Portugal wouldn’t agree to finance the expedition, he obtained the financial backing from Spain instead. He hoped to discover a channel through South America so that he could voyage all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Hence, his expedition was named the ‘first voyage ever to circumnavigate the world’ (Columbia College 1961, 105). XXV. Hernando Cortes With a military might of hundreds of men supported by horses and weaponries, Hernando Cortes attacked and invaded an Aztec civilization that was quite overpopulated at that time. Never before had such an insignificant military force subjugated such a massive land mass with immense wealth (ibid). References Brinton, Crane. Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Clough, Shepard B. Basic Values of Western Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Columbia College. Chapters in Western Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Gochberg, Donald. Classic of Western Thought Series: The Ancient World, Volume I. Greer, Thomas H. A Brief History of the Western World, Volume I: to 1715. Read More