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Ancient Greece and Christianity Comparison
Religion in early modern europe essay
Ancient Greece and Christianity Comparison
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In present times there are laws about religion being separate from government. In medieval and renaissance times things were not the same. Religion played a big part in everyday life and also in huge government decisions. At the start of these religiously ruled times the only source of religious guidance was the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore the Roman Catholic Church was the leading power of the medieval times. There were some in the common crowd who decided that the Roman Catholic Church was wrong for wanting all the power and started fighting back. The names of a few of these people are Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo Galilei. They were some of the famous theologists and scientist of their times and because of their research they were the most capable of fighting against the church. Martin Luther was the first of the three mentioned to start fighting the church, and it was Galileo Galilei who was at the tail end of them with Copernicus in the middle. The three of them, with a few of their colleagues, were able to steal the power of the church and give it to the people lower down the ladder through what the church called heretical and pernicious doctrine. With that doctrine and persistence the “thinkers” of the Middle Ages took power from the church and brought it to more deserving people and they were completely correct in doing so. This was the start of a religious revolution and also separation of church and state.
The church because of its governmental power was able to do many more things in the Middle Ages than are currently possible, today the churches in the United States are not able to control any part of our government as stated by the constitution as a separation of church and state. The Catholic C...
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...ules that you would be able to give up your lives for it. Some of the theologists and scientists of the medieval times did have that. Luther had to give up many of his friends and followers when the church came out with the Edict of worms. Copernicus was ridiculed by the non-thinkers of the world because he had the strength to put out his work even though he knew it would happen. Galileo was taken in front of a court twice to speak for the apparent crime of teaching what he believed to be right. All of these people were strong enough to stand up to the church and every time that each one of them did it gave the normal people, who were not in the church or positions of ruling, a little power. They started something that has affected us greatly by rightfully taking away the governmental power of the church. They were the fathers of religious change in the renaissance.
During the Scientific Revolution, the struggle between faith and reason was exhibited through Galileo and his discoveries. The Catholic Church during the time period of the Scientific Revolution did not approve of any outside scientists who came up with new theories and observations. The Church believed that all information about how the world worked was in the bible and that was the only right source. In an excerpt from “What is Scientific Authority?” written by Galileo in 1615, it states, “Showing a greater fondness for their [Catholic Church’s] own opinions than for truth, they sought to deny & disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them…” Galileo Galilei himself knew that the Church was not willing to approve of new ideas from other scientists, but only from the teachings in the Bible. Later on in the excerpt, Galileo writes, “They [Catholic Church] hurled various charges &…made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properl...
The Scientific Revolution, during the 16th and 18th centuries, was a time of conflict. It was not a hand-to-hand martial conflict. It was a conflict of advancement, similar to the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union. However, it was between the thinkers of the Scientific Revolution, such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, and the Roman Catholic Church. At the time, the Catholic Church was the most powerful religious body in Europe. It controlled everything from education to faith to finances. Thinkers like Galileo took the risk and went against the church. This is shown through the documents below. Those documents tell the story of Galileo and how he was forced to revoke his support of heliocentrism by the church. The documents below also show the struggle between faith and reason that existed during this era of advancement by hindering the flourishment of the sciences by stating that it did not agree with the Bible and naming these early scientists as heretics.
Martin Luther inspired another thinker of the time that questioned the Church’s beliefs. That man was John Calvin. The Catholic belief during the Renaissance and Reformation was that one’s good deeds hel...
During this time period the church was the center of life, and high members of the church wanted to keep it that way even going as far as to ban some books. Some people were very upset with some of the things the Catholic church was doing such as giving out indulgences. A man by the name of Martin Luther went against this idea and changed everything when he began to reject some practices of the Catholic Church. He was not the only one with these ideas, and soon hundreds of new churches started popping up in Europe. The idea that people could make decisions for themselves changed daily life for many people. No longer were you constrained to the job your parents had, or the religion you were born
In almost all histories and studies of science and religion, a “warfare thesis” has defined the relationship between the Catholic Church and scientific progress. According to this thesis, Galileo Galilee is portrayed as a brave and heroic general, a protector of science, and a martyr for the cause of truth. Likewise, the Church has been stereotyped as an ignorant and backward institution, clinging to her naïve predispositions, archaic philosophy, and unsubstantiated traditions. Though this “warfare thesis” has its merits, it fails to account for the political and social influences causing the decline of the Catholic Church during the time surrounding the Galileo affair. In actuality, the Galileo affair is the reaction of the Roman Catholic Church to its decline during the 17th Century. During this period, the Catholic Church was beginning to feel the weight
To speak out against the Church in this time was strictly taboo. If one spoke against the Church, it was considered heresy, which is exactly what happened to Galileo. Galileo invented the telescope and began studying the heavens above and noticed changes within the stars and planets. He observed that the "stars" that surrounded Jupiter moved. He came to the conclusion through rational thinking that Copernicus' heliocentric theory was correct.
...By tying the church to the government, people expect the government to behave ethically, but often times, an entirely moral ruler will be overthrown. People expect rulers to act differently than themselves. A ruler cannot show any weakness, or else he will no longer be feared enough to keep him in power, and he will be overthrown. Everybody sees what a ruler seems to be, but few really know who he is. A ruler must seem determined and moral to the people, and show positive results from his leadership. The most important thing for a ruler to do is to avoid being hated or despised by the people, which could occur if a ruler took people's property. For the people, more than the form of power, their perception of power may be the most important for a ruler to maintain his position. “If a ruler wins wars and holds on to power, the means he has employed will always be judged honorable, and everyone will praise him.”(pg.55) Therefore, a ruler should look mainly to winning and to the successful protection of his country. The ways he utilizes for this will always be considered honorable and will be praised by everybody.
Throughout history, conflicts between faith and reason took the forms of religion and free thinking. In the times of the Old Regime, people like Copernicus and Galileo were often punished for having views that contradicted the beliefs of the church. The strict control of the church was severely weakened around the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Old Regime ended. As the church's control decreased, science and intellectual thinking seemed to advance. While the people in the world became more educated, the church worked harder to maintain its influential position in society and keep the Christian faith strong. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church's task to keep people's faith strong became much harder, due to theories published by free thinkers like Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, David Friedrich Strauss, and others. These men published controversial theories that hammered away at the foundation on which the Christian church was built. As the nineteenth century progressed, more doubts began to arise about the basic faiths of the Christian church.
Seventeenth-century European study was controlled by two powerful forces: the Roman Catholic Church, headed by the Pope, and ancient philosophy dominated by the 2000-year-old ideas of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. The Church had an overwhelming influence on the lives of most Europeans. During Galileo’s time one in twelve people living in Rome was either a cleric or a nun.1 The Church forbid any teaching that deviated from what was taught in the Bible. To enforce this control, the Church set up the Inquisition. Galileo was targeted by the Inquisition for his observations and experiments. 2 Because his teachings differed from the socially accepted ideas of Aristotle, the Inquisition believed he should be persecuted. Even though Galileo’s observations were much more factual than Aristotle’s and, more important, backed up by experiments and the use of the telescope, he was still sentenced to house arrest for life.
In the middle Ages, the church power was at its peak. Lives of the individuals were influenced by the strong power that was in the church. The laws of the church were followed by the people since they considered them to be coming direct from god himself. With time, many vices entered this leading system to its downfall. The Roman Catholic Church was the universal European institution that existed before the Renaissance. The Renaissance age brought the humanism idea. This period had a big impact on the contemporary
The Roman Catholic Church had complete influence over the lives of everyone in medieval society including their beliefs and values. The Church’s fame in power and wealth had provided them with the ability to make their own laws and follow their own social hierarchy. With strong political strength in hand, the Church could even determine holidays and festivals. It gained significant force in the arts, education, religion, politics as well as their capability to alter the feudal structure through their wealth and power.
The Roman Catholics represented the largest branch of Christianity and it was headed by the Pope. Early Christians were persecuted during the Roman Empire. The clergy were important in guiding the rulers and the politics of the Roman Empire. The church served as a unifying factor between the people and the politicians. However, in the Middle ages the church took over from the Roman Empire and offered leadership at the helm of power. The church influenced politics and culture. The church took over governance through a pope who was the head of the catholic church at the time. The church undertook political functions as well as religious functions. The church was responsible for both the laws of the Almighty God and those laws of the land. The catholic church has made political advancements through taking up the role of advancing education and development. The church was responsible for political advice when the Kings asked for their wise counsel. The church and religious leaders had an important role in ensuring that there was a peaceful existence in the empires under different political rulers. In 452, the church played a role in European politics when the religious leaders met Attila the Hun and advised him change his decision about invading Italy. The pope played an important advisory role in shaping the politics of ancient civilizations (Backman, p
Since the dawn of time people have always believed in something higher than themselves. Whether it’s simply a belief or tradition, society as shown to put their politics aside and come to worship together. Today all around the world we have many different religions and under the First Amendment, United States citizens are able to freely worship their belief without the interference of the government. But that was not the case in Europe 1478. During this European Renaissance time, religion was a very important matter. There were many new religions starting and countries wanted to just have a dominant religion. The
In the middle ages, people’s lives were very dedicated to two things: the Church, and feudalism. Leading thinkers were preoccupied with the individual’s responsibility to God designing ways to make Feudalism better. People were thought that they were predestined in life and that they could only seek salvation through God. Religion was part of everyday life and almost all people in Europe were Christian. This lasted for about three centuries until a crisis struck Europe. In the beginning of the 14th century the Black Death swooped over Europe and a third of the population died. After that event there was The Hundred Years War which also further weakened Europe. Feudalism eventually broke down and people began to doubt the Church. New thinkers evolved such as Desiderius Erasmus, one of the greatest humanists, Niccolo Machiavelli,he wrote The Prince, and Francesca Petrarch, another humanist. They wrote books that introduced more secular, aristocratic, and brought back ancient Greek ideas. They often looked back at secular ideas of the Greeks and Romans. Instead of being concerned about salvation and the destiny of the soul, Greek philosophy was designed to teach men how to liv...
In the 15th century the Roman Catholic church was very powerful. The Roman Catholic church was such a powerful institution during medieval times due to the Franks converting to Christianity, the church providing education, and due to the pope having more power than monarchs.