Cultural History - AP World History: Modern

After its formation in the sixth century, Islam spread rapidly around North Africa, Central and Southern Asia, and the Middle East. Islam had reached India by the early seventh century.

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.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 when the reformer Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. Luther was concerned with abuses of the clergy, namely the sale of indulgences; the practice of simony; and nepotism. Originally Luther intended to reform the church and contribute to a discussion within the framework of church authority, but eventually his movement evolved into a widespread reformation.

Matteo Ricci is famous for his missionary work in China, on behalf of the Catholic Church, in the late sixteenth century. Ricci is responsible for many of the early in-roads made by Christianity in east Asia and is also one of the first Europeans to be able to read, write, and speak traditional Chinese.

The Temple of the Sun was the chief place of worship of the Inca people in their capital city of Cusco. The Sun God was the chief deity of the Inca people and the Emperor was meant to be revered as a living descendant (or incarnation) of the Sun God.

The Edict of Nantes was issued by King Henry IV of France in 1598. It was primarily concerned with religious tolerance in France. It extended freedom of worship to French Calvinists (known as Huguenots) in what was, at the time, an officially and exclusively Catholic nation.

The Aztec religion included elements of human sacrifice. The Aztecs waged many brutal wars of conquest in Central America before the arrival of the Europeans. The people they conquered would be assimilated into the empire and some of their citizens would be sacrificed to appease the Aztec gods.

Although initially Rome's government persecuted early Christian communities, the Roman emperor Constantine tolerated Christians and even converted to Christianity himself; Christianity became the official state religion. The Athenian Empire and the Nabataeans existed before Christianity. The Hunnic Empire, a great enemy to Rome, was never Christian. The Mongol Empire had a Christian population that was tolerated but was never officially Christian.

Contrary to popular belief, the revival of and renewed appreciation for classical ideology was not a phenomenon that occurred only during the Renaissance. In fact, many eras throughout Western European history were witness to this craze for classicalism, including the preceding days of the ninth, twelfth, and fourteenth centuries, from Paris to Chartres and beyond. However, the renewed pursuit of classical sources and the revival of interest in the study of antiquity during the Renaissance was indeed quite unique, for a variety of interdependent reasons. From the beginning, Renaissance scholars decided to abandon the medieval method of study, which relied upon the collation, comparison, and summarizing of sources, in favor of much in-depth explorations. In keeping with this new approach, humanist students also focused less on religious matters, shunning the teachings of past theologians in favor of classical interpretations (such as those of Plato and Ptolemy) and choosing to study a wide variety of subjects. In order to facilitate such an aggressive educational campaign, humanists began in earnest to seek out undiscovered or under-utilized caches of classical manuscripts; their recovery efforts were much more successful than those of past generations. Renaissance scholarship was also notably dominated by secular individuals, rather than religious figures, which in turn helped to cultivate a more open, expansive, and even questioning educational culture. These humanistic learners often quite openly challenged traditional teachings, especially those of the Church and medieval theologians, subjecting such writings to strict standards of scholarship.

The path of Buddhist philosophy is to attempt to reach Nirvana, this is done through meditation and the philosophy of the eight-fold path. Nirvana is the state reached were the practitioner abolishes ignorance and worldly cravings, and is therefore released from suffering.

The Dominican and Franciscan religious orders are part of the group of religious orders known as the “mendicant orders.” These groups were known for renouncing all earthly possessions and for begging for financial support from the people they preached to. Both these groups were influential in European and global Christendom in the era immediately following the beginning of the Catholic Counter Reformation.

In the Hindu faith Brahma is known as the Creator or the World Soul. Brahma is one of the most popular deities in the polytheistic Hindu faith.

Arianism, proposed by Arius in the Third Century CE, proposed that Jesus Christ could not be God because God himself is unique and immutable. This would mean that Jesus Christ was created by God and therefore lesser. This was considered heretical and banned from Orthodoxy, but caught on in Germanic cultures.

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.

Mahayana is the one of the two major denominations of Buddhism - along with Theravada. Mahayana emerged in China, Korea, and Japan as a result of religious syncretism following the spread of Buddhist teachings into this part of the world.

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.

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.