Useful Dividing Line between the Medieval and Modern Eras - Assignment Example

1. Many historians begin the early modern period of European history at roughly 1500. To what extent does 1500 mark a useful dividing line between the medieval and modern eras? The year 1500 belonged to the period found in between the postclassical period commonly called the Middle Ages (Latin: Medii Aevi) and the modern era. The term Middle Ages was coined by the Renaissance Florentine poet Francesco Petrarch to describe what he considered a period of cultural stagnation between two eras of cultural brilliance, the ancient Greco-Roman and his own1. This period was characterized by the decline of the medieval patterns of culture and its end was chacterized by the restructuring of its most prominent figure: the Catholic Church. Around the start of the 16th century, the weakening of the Church was in conjunction with the strengthening force of socio-economic, philosophical and scientific liberation. The period witnessed important religious, political, social, and philosophical changes in Europe. The medieval age was characterized by the strong power of the Catholic Church that was more often greater than that of the ruling king. Thus, even the political and social aspects of the medieval life were dependent on the Church. However, the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century which was initiated by the arguments of Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, weakened the Church. Kings and Princes worked together to challenge the power of the Church leaders, primarily the Pope. The cultural consensus of Europe based on universal participation in the Body of Christ was broken. Along with the Reformation came challenges to secular society. The nature and organization of power and government came under reevaluation as well. The huge impact of the Church in the medieval times2 caused the religious change to go hand-in-hand with changes in politics and society. Along with the decentralization of power from the Church and its supported rulers (kings and queens) came the rise of an expanding social class. The middle class, also known as the class of the bourgeosie, was growing and generally becoming more powerful. Merchants and learned artisans characterized this class, as opposed to the royal bloods and Church appointees who dominated the medieval age. The period was also home to the Commercial Revolution which was a time of European economic expansion, colonialism, and mercantilism which lasted from approximately 1520 until 1650. Voyages of discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries allowed European powers to build vast networks of international trade. This then resulted to the generation of a great deal of wealth for them. This growing global economy was based on silver, which allowed an easier way of purchase of goods than the barter of the medieval times. The mechanisms of commerce, systems of international finance, ocean-going trading fleets, an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, were all building a recognizably capitalist, money-based economy. Scientific innovation was also tolerated in the 16th century. Technological innovations like gunpowder were changing the nature of warfare and the military caste nature of society. The printing press created a media revolution3. It brought ideas, and partisan rhetoric to the common people. Most of all, it brought the Bible, in its original tongues and in the vernacular, to the masses. A spirit of inquiry, a desire to return to first principles, was blowing through the Church, and was reverberated in all the domains of society that the Church had affected. 2. Contrast Luther’s theology with that of the Catholic Church that he attacked and with that of the Calvinists who succeeded the Lutherans as the cutting edge of the Reformation. The Catholic Church of Martin Luther’s time practiced the community of faith which reserved a special role for the clergy. Learned Roman Catholics saw their Church as following the authority that Christ had given to the Bishop of Rome, the Church as built upon the tomb of Peter, and as such they believed there could be only one Christian Church. Due to this, everything that the Pope says became a divine command in itself and the selling of indulgences, and being exempt from taxation and civil responsibilities are common to priests. In turn, this resulted to a diversity of opinion and dissatisfactions that grew within the Church. Some still believed that good Christians should live simply, as they believed Jesus and his disciples had lived. Also of concern were the vices of priests and monks which included drinking, gambling and living with concubines. The wrongdoings within the Catholic Church finally resulted to the founding of Protestantism by the Augustine monk named Martin Luther. Luther was greatly against the selling of indulgences since he disliked seeing poor Germans giving up scarce coins that would be going to Rome. But more than this, Luther's foremost concern was religion. Luther argued that a greater devotion to reading the Bible and a more accurate reading of this Holy Scripture would guide people into living better lives4. When he was in doubt whether he was worthy of salvation or not, the Bible gave him assurance in the idea of forgiveness of sins: that God forgave individuals by their faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ -even without the intercession of a priest. Luther found in the Scriptures no support for indulgences and believed that indulges were of no value to a sinner. Before he openly criticized the Church, he wrote to the Pope and other high clergy officials but the lack of action or response in their part paved the way for the posting of the 95 theses that generally concluded that authority lay in the Bible. Luther pursued his belief that people found grace through faith and study rather than through sacraments performed by priests. Moreover, he started advocating marriage for the clergy since saw celibacy as a cruel defiance of the sexual drive that God had ordained for the purpose of begetting children. Lastly, Luther was appealing more to individualism than the community of faith practiced by the Church, and he appealed to the empire's individualistic-minded middle class (the bourgeoisie) who preferred his appeal to intelligence rather than to childlike obedience. While Luther's writings are credited for launching the Protestant Reformation, the encompassing restructuring of Christian practises and beliefs are attributed to a branch of Protestantism known as Calvinism. The central issue in Calvinist theology emphasizes that man is incapable of adding anything from himself to obtain salvation5 and that God alone is the initiator at every stage of salvation, including the formation of faith and every decision to follow Christ. Good works were consequences of union with Christ in faith, not the means of salvation.6 More broadly, "Calvinism" is virtually synonymous with "Reformed Protestantism", encompassing the whole body of doctrine taught by Reformed churches. One of the more important and distinctive features of this system is the regulative principle of worship, which in principle rejects any form of worship not explicitly instituted for the church in the Bible and which sets Reformed theology apart from Lutheranism, which holds to the normative principle of worship. 3. One crucial characteristic of modern Western culture is the great emphasis placed upon the personal freedoms of individual, both in judgment and action. Discuss the development of individualism in Western thought, religion, and institutions. Human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty are the main moral, political, or social points stressed by individualism7. Individualists promote the unrestricted exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual's choices - whether by society, the state, or any other group or institution. Individualism is therefore opposed to holism, collectivism, communalism, and communitarianism, which stress that communal, group, societal, racial, or national goals should take priority over individual goals8. Individualism is also opposed to the view that adherents to tradition, institutions of religion, or any other group or authority should be empowered to limit an individual's choice of actions when those actions do not violate the rights of other individuals. The concept of "individualism" was propagated from Luther’s arguments that people do not need priests to interpret the will of God. Protestantism maintains that the Bible can provide everything that man needs to know about the Christ and that everyone can have a direct access to God through the reading of the Bible and proper prayer. In practice, individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state). Many individualists pay particular attention to protecting the liberties of the minority against the wishes of the majority and see the individual as the smallest minority. A turning point in the conventional approach to individualism was introduced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau's "social contract" maintains that each individual is under implicit contract to submit his own will to the "general will"9. This advocacy of subordinating the individual will to a collective will is in fundamental opposition to the individualist philosophy. An individualist enters into society to further his own interests, or at least demands the right to serve his own interests, without taking the interests of society into consideration. The individualist does not lend credence to any philosophy that requires the sacrifice of the self-interest of the individual for any higher social causes. However, Rousseau argued that the concept of "general will" is not the simple collection of individual wills but a synthesis of all these wills. In consequence, the synthesized or general will furthers the interests of the individual. The principle of individualism thrives in the world today through the different social agents that stemmed from the Western civilization. Democracy, which favors the concept of individualism, is the preferred form of government in western society. Additionally, creativity and the expression of the individual is commonly encouraged in western societies as long as it does not violate any established laws or challenge any social norm. Lastly, capitalism which is the prevalent economic system in almost every western nation, supports an individualistic ideology. However, individualism has negative connotations in certain societies and environments where it is associated with selfishness. For example, individualism is highly frowned upon in most East Asian countries where self-interested behavior is traditionally regarded as a kind of betrayal of those to whom one has obligations (e.g. family and nation)10. 4. In Western history, 800 BC – 1700 AD (800 BCE-1700 CE), philosophy (love of knowledge) has sometimes existed independently of religion, and at other times it has been incorporated into religion. Consider the importance of both that independence and incorporation in the development of Western values and knowledge Historically, the term “philosophy” refers to the philosophical thinking of western civilization, beginning with Greek philosophy in ancient Greece. The word philosophy itself originated in Greece: philosophia (φιλοσοφια) which can be translated literally as the "love of wisdom" (philein = "to love" + sophia = wisdom). Here, wisdom was used to refer to a sense of knowledge and the courage to act accordingly. The ancient Greek word for wisdom was related to ideas about universal knowledge, claims in mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, music, and many other subjects as indicated in the works of ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle11. Western philosophy has had a strong influence on, and has been greatly influenced by, Western religion, science, and politics. Indeed, the central concepts of these fields can be thought of as elements or branches of Western philosophy. However, the latter inhibits the reverse of such statement since its dependence on other aspects of life can be limiting and thus, self-defeating for philosophy. That philosophy is an expansive and ambiguous concept means that the discipline always asserts itself of being free from any form of belief, especially religious one. In this way, the path of knowledge is not restricted by any age-old tradition or religious dogma. If not for the independence of philosophy from religion and society, then people would still perceived the Earth, our world, as the center of the universe. Moreover, numerous advances in technology and science would not take place if religious beliefs and social norms were not challenged by newly formulated knowledge. However, during the medieval ages, philosophy was interwoven with religious thoughts. Philosophers are considered holy men chosen by God and priests and pharisees are turned to for their supposed knowledge and wisdom that came from God. This view stems from the assumption that the Creator of the world only reveals the nature of His creations to his chosen people. Moreover, the Church views knowledge as a very powerful tool that can be used to ensure submission and obedience. The start of the medieval age is characterized by stagnant ways of living and lagging technologies and during this time, the advances in the knowledge about man and nature from the Greek thinkers were centralized within the Catholic Church. Thus, the medieval people who are ignorant of the golden age of the Greeks believed that the Church’ wisdom came from God and as such, this alone was enough to give divine authority to the Church. Inspite of the centralized use during the middle ages, the interdependence of Christian Theology and Philosophy provide man with an abundant tradition on the philosophical discipline of Ethics12. The merging produced a set of principles that resulted in man’s intelligent submission to the guidance of God; thus, thinking wisely was easily correlated to doing what is right. Read More