Events | renaissance-period

The Reformation: Breaking with the Church

While the Renaissance was going on throughout Europe, there occurred in some countries another important series of events called the Reformation. In England these two vast movements were closely related, and their forces were felt by all English writers. Although the exact nature of the Reformation varied from country to country, one feature was common to all Reformers: They rejected the authority of the pope and the Italian churchmen. In England, conflicts with the papacy had occurred off and on over the centuries, but adjustments had always been made on both sides. By the 1530s, an open break with the Roman Church could no longer be avoided. By then, a number of circumstances made such a break possible. Strong feelings of patriotism and national identity made the English people resent the financial burdens imposed on them by the Vatican—the pope, after all, was a foreign power in far-off Italy. Moreover, new religious ideas were coming into England from the Continent, especially from Germany. There, a monk named Martin Luther (1483–1546) had founded a new kind of Christianity, based not on what the pope said, but on a personal understanding of the Bible. Like any institution that has been around for a long time and that has ignored corruption within its ranks, the Church needed reform. Right at home in England, humanists like More and Erasmus were ridiculing old superstitions, as well as the ignorance and idleness of monks and the loose living and personal wealth of priests and bishops.

The Spanish Armada Sinks: A Turning Point in History

King Philip of Spain, ever watchful for an excuse to hammer at England, used Mary’s execution as an excuse to invade England. He assembled a vast fleet of warships for that purpose: the famous Spanish Armada. In 1588, England’s Royal Navy, assisted greatly by nasty weather in the Irish Sea, destroyed the Armada. This victory assured England’s and all of northern Europe’s independence from the powerful Catholic countries of the Mediterranean. It was a great turning point in history and Elizabeth’s finest moment. If Spain had prevailed, history would have been quite different: All of North America, like most of South America, might be speaking Spanish instead of English.

Edict of Expulsion

In 1290, King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England. The expulsion edict remained in force for the rest of the Middle Ages. The edict was not an isolated incident, but the culmination of over 200 years of increased persecution. Oliver Cromwell permitted Jews to return to England in 1655, over 350 years since their banishment by Edward I, in exchange for finance.

Change for the Church: Jews and Banking in Renaissance Italy

Usury, the practice of lending money with an added cost called interest. Usury is found in a biblical verse, Deuteronomy 28:20, which reads: “Unto a foreigner thou may lend usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend usury.” The accepted interpretation of this verse by the Catholic Church is that “brother” refers to any human being, whereas the dominant Jewish interpretation identifies a “brother” as specifically a fellow Jew. Thus for the Christian, usury is prohibited, whereas the Jewish interpretation permits usury as long as the money is lent to a non-Jew. This divergence in interpretation created a fortuitous opportunity for the Jews of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries to monopolize the banking profession. According to the church, no sin was committed by letting the Jews do usury, as Jews’ “souls were probably lost in any case” and Jewish presence could be tolerated for the benefit of extracting their taxes.