Italian Renissance and the Reformation - 1233 Words

Could you imagine living in a time where you had to adhere to everything the church said? For the men and women of the fourteenth century, this was their life; marriages were arranged, men worked while the women would stay home and raise the children. You rested your faith solely in the hands of uneducated â€Å"spiritual† leaders. As Italy’s city-states grew through trade and commerce, they flourished economically and intellectually. This led to a peak in the interest of Classical literature, art, social, and political ideas of Greece/Rome. Humanism was a literary movement that occurred during the Renaissance. During this movement, authors began to deal with general questions of the soul. Dante wrote about the soul’s journey to†¦show more content†¦A political result of the Reformation was the Act of Supremacy. King Henry VII, of England, had wanted an annulment from his wife Catherine. However, marriages were authenticated by having sex; since the king had already had a child, Mary, with Catherine, there was no way of denying the marriage. When the pope denied him the annulment he created the Act of Supremacy, which declared him the only supreme head on Earth of the Church in England. After he annulled his marriage with Catherine, he married Anne Boleyn; three months after their marriag e, Anne gave birth to his second daughter, Elizabeth. Subsequently, her husband had her beheaded. Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a boy on October 12, 1537. The king finally had his male heir, however, just days after his birth his wife died. Henry was married a total of six times before his death in 1547. Nine year old Edward VI inherited the throne. Edward was an intelligent child who had been brought up as a Protestant; he began to purge England of its Catholic ways. All images in churches were to be dismantled; stained glass, shrines, and statues were defaced or destroyed; crucifixes were cut down; bells were taken down; vestments were prohibited and either sold or burned; the requirement of the clergy to be celibate was lifted as well. Edward’s accomplishments seemed to be sisyphean when he died in July of 1553. Mary, Henry’s eldest daughter, became queen. Mary,Show MoreRelatedItalian Renissance and the Reformation1005 Words   |  5 Pages The Renaissance and Reformation were two very important periods of time in European history that included change in culture and religion. The Renaissance happened before the reformation. The Renaissance was the rebirth of art, literature, and architecture. The reformation focused mainly on reforming the Catholic Church from its evil ways. Out of the Catholic Church came the protestant church. There were many different characteristics of the Renaissance. The main one is that society had a secularRead MoreItalian Renissance and the Reformation Essay example1452 Words   |  6 PagesThe European Renaissance was a turning point in the way people saw art, literature, and architecture. These new views soon led to the Reformation, or the reforming of the Catholic Church. These changes led Europe out of the middle ages and into modern times. The Renaissance began after Europe began recovering from the Black Death. Anyone who had survived was just happy to be alive and started focusing more on material things, rather than religious ones. Another reason the focus shifted from religious