| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Benvenuto Cellini | A goldsmith and sculptor who wrote an autobiography, famous for its arrogance and immodest self-praise. |
| Humanism | An intellectual movement of the Renaissance based on the study of the humanities, which included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy, and history. |
| Individualism | Individualism stressed personality, uniqueness, genius, and the fullest development of capabilities and talents. |
| New Monarchs | The term applied to Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who strengthened their monarchical authority often by Machiavellian means. |
| Rationalism | The application and use of reason in understanding and explaining events. |
| Renaissance | The period from 1400 to 1600 that witnessed a transformation of cultural and intellectual values from primarily Christian to classical or secular ones. |
| Secularism | The emphasis on the here and-now rather than on the spiritual and otherworldly. |
| Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) | A humanist who used historical criticism to discredit an eighth-century document giving the papacy jurisdiction over Western lands. |
| Virtu | The striving for excellence and being a virtuous person. Humanistic aspect of Renaissance. |
| Baroque | The sensuous and dynamic style of art of the Counter Reformation. (See Appendix.) |
| Brethren of the Common Life | Pious laypeople In sixteenth-century Holland who Initiated a religious revival in their model of Christian living. |
| John Calvin (1509-1564) | A French theologian who established a theocracy In Geneva and is best known for his theory of predestination. |
| Charles V (1519-1556) | Hapsburg dynastic ruler of the Holy Roman Empire and of extensive territories in Spain and the Netherlands. |
| Council of Trent | The congress of learned Roman Catholic authorities that met intermittently from 1545 to 1563 to reform abusive church practices and reconcile with the Protestants. |
| Index of Forbidden books | A list of books that Catholics were forbidden to read. |
| Indulgence | Papal pardon for remission of sins. |
| Inquisition | A religious committee of six Roman cardinals that tried heretics and punished the guilty by imprisonment and execution. |
| Jesuits | Also known as the Society of Jesus; founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) as a teaching and missionary order to resist the spread of Protestantism. |
| John Knox (1505-1572) | Calvinist leader in sixteenth-century Scotland. |
| Martin Luther (1483-1546) | German theologian who challenged the church's practice of selling indulgences, a challenge that ultimately led to the destruction of the unity of the Roman Catholic world. |
| Sir Thomas More (1478-1535 | Renaissance humanist and chancellor of England, executed by Henry VIII for his unwillingness to recognize publicly his king as Supreme Head of the church and clergy of England. |
| Nepotism | The practice of rewarding relatives with church positions. |
| Peace of Augsburg (1555) | Document in which Charles V recognized Lutheranism as a legal religion in the Holy Roman Empire. The faith of the prince determined the religion of his subjects. |
| Pluralism | The holding of several benefices, or church offices. |
| Simony | The selling of church offices. |
| Theocracy | A community, such as Calvin's Geneva, in which the state Is subordinate to the church. |
| Usury | The practice of lending money for interest. |
| Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) | Swedish Lutheran who won victories for the German Protestants in the Thirty Years War and lost his life in one of the battles |
| Duke of Alva (1508-1582 | Military leader sent by Philip n to pacify the Low Countries. |
| Armada (1588) | Spanish vessels defeated in the English Channel by an English fleet, thus preventing Philip II's invasion of England. |
| Vasco de Balboa | First European to reach the Pacific Ocean, 1513. |
| Catherine de Medici (1547-1589 | The wife of Henry II (1547-1559) of France, who exercised political influence after the death of her husband and during the rule of her weak sons. |
| Christopher Columbus | First European to sail to the West Indies, 1492. |
| Concordat of Bologna (1516) | Treaty under which the French Crown recognized the supremacy of the pope over a council and obtained the right to appoint all French bishops and abbots. |
| Fernando Cortez | Conqueror of the Aztecs, 1519-1521. |
| Defenestration of Prague | The hurling, by Protestants, of Catholic officials from a castle window in Prague, setting off the Thirty Years' War. |
| Bartholomew Diaz | First European to reach the southern tip of Africa, 14871488. |
| Dutch East India Company | Government-chartered joint-stock company that controlled the spice trade in the East Indies. |
| Edict of Nantes (1598) | The edict of Henry IV that granted Huguenots the rights of public worship and religious toleration in France. |
| Elizabeth I (1558-1603) | Protestant ruler of England who helped stabilize religious tensions by subordinating theological issues to political considerations. |
| Prince Henry the Navigator | Sponsor of voyages along West African coasts, 1418. |
| Henry IV (1589-1610) | Formerly Henry of Navarre; ascended the French throne as a convert to Catholicism. Surrived St. Bartholomew Day, signed Edict of Nantes, quoted as saying "Paris is worth a mass." |
| Huguenots | French Calvinists. |
| Ferdinand Magellan | Circumnavigator of the globe, 1519-1522. |
| Peace of Westphalia (1648) | The treaty ending the Thirty Years' War in Germany; it allowed each prince-whether Lutheran, Catholic, or Calvinist-to choose the established creed of his territory. |
| Philip II (1556-1598) | Son and successor to Charles V, ruling Spain and the Low Countries. |
| Francisco Pizarro | Conqueror of Peru, 1532-1533. |
| St. Bartholemew's Day (August 24, 1572) | Catholic attack on Calvinists on the marriage day of Margaret of Valois to Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV). |
| Prince William of Orange (1572-1584) | Leader of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. |
| Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) | Minister to Louis XIII. His three point plan (1. Break the power of the nobility, 2. Humble the House of Austria, 3. Control the Protestants) helped to send France on the road to absolute monarchy. |
| Absolutism | The theory that the monarch is supreme and can exercise full and complete power unilaterally. |
| Bill of Rights (1689) | English document declaring that sovereignty resided with Parliament. |
| Charles I (1625-1649) | Stuart king who brought conflict with Parliament to a head and was subsequently executed. |
| Charles II (1660 1685) | Stuart king during the Restoration, following Cromwell's Interregnum. |
| Colbert (1619-1683) | The financial minister under the French king Louis XIV who promoted mercantilist policies. |
| Constitutionalism | The theory that power should be shared between rulers and their subjects and the state governed according to laws. |
| Oliver Cromwell (1559-1658) | The principal leader and a gentry member of the Puritans in Parliament. |
| Diggers and Levellers | Radical groups in England in the 1650s who called for the abolition of private ownership and extension of the franchise. |
| Divine right monarchy | The belief that a monarch's power derives from God and represents Him on earth. |
| Frederick the Great (1740-1786) | The Prussian ruler who expanded his territory by invading the duchy of Silesia and defeating Maria Theresa of Austria. |
| Frederick William (1640-1688) | The "Great Elector," who built a strong Prussian army and infused military values into Prussian society. |
| French Classicism | The style in seventeenth-century art and literature resembling the arts in the ancient world and in the Renaissance-e.g., the works of Poussin, Moliere, and Racine. |
| Fronde | The last aristocratic revolt against a French monarch. |
| Glorious Revolution | A reference to the political events of 1688-1689, when James II abdicated his throne and was replaced by his daughter Mary and her husband, Prince William of Orange. |
| Habeas corpus | The legal protection that prohibits the imprisonment of a subject without demonstrated cause. |
| Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) | Political theorist advocating absolute monarchy based on his concept of an anarchic state of nature. |
| Interregnum | The period of Cromwellian rule (1649-1659), between the Stuart dynastic rules of Charles I and Charles II. |
| James I (1603-1625) | Stuart monarch who ignored constitutional principles and asserted the divine right of kings. |
| James II (1685-1688) | Final Stuart ruler; he was forced to abdicate in favor of William and Mary, who agreed to the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing parliamentary supremacy. |
| John Locke (1632-1704) | Political theorist who defended the Glorious Revolution with the argument that all people are born with certain natural rights to life, liberty, and property. |
| Louis XIV (1643-1715) | Also known as the "Sun King"; the ruler of France who established the supremacy of absolutism in seventeenth-century Europe. |
| Maria Theresa, (1740-1780) | Archduchess of Austria, queen of Hungary, who lost the Hapsburg possession of Silesia to Frederick the Great but was able to keep her other Austrian territories. |
| Mercantilism | Governmental policies by which the state regulates the economy, through taxes, tariffs, subsidies, laws. |
| New Model Army | The disciplined fighting force of Protestants led by Oliver Cromwell in the English civil war. |
| Peace of Utrecht (1713) | The pact concluding the War of the Spanish Succession, forbidding the union of France with Spain, and conferring control of Gibraltar on England. |
| Peter the Great (1682-1725) | The Romanov czar who initiated the westernization of Russian society by traveling to the West and incorporating techniques of manufacturing as well as manners and dress. |
| Petition of Right (1628) | Parliamentary document that restricted the king's power. Most notably, it called for recognition of the writ of habeas corpus and held that only Parliament could impose new taxes. |
| Puritan Revolution | A reference to the English civil war (1642-1646), waged to determine whether sovereignty would reside in the monarch or in Parliament. |
| Puritans | Protestant sect in England hoping to "purify" the Anglican church of Roman Catholic traces in practice and organization. |
| Restoration | The return of the Stuart monarchy (1660) after the period of republican government under Cromwell-in fact, a military dictatorship. |
| Test Act (1673) | Law prohibiting Catholics and dissenters to hold political office. |
| Versailles | Palace constructed by Louis XIV outside of Paris to glorify his rule and subdue the nobility. |
| War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) | The last of Louis XIV's wars involving the issue of succession to the Spanish throne. |
| William of Orange (1672-1702) | Dutch prince and foe of Louis XIV who became king of England in 1689. |
| Aristotelian | Ptolemaic cosmology-the geocentric view of the universe that prevailed from the fourth century B.C. to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and accorded with church teachings and Scriptures. |
| Francis Bacon (1561-1626) | inductive thinker who stressed experimentation in arriving at truth. |
| Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) | Polish astronomer who posited a heliocentric universe in place of a geocentric universe. |
| Deism | The belief that God has created the universe and set it in motion to operate like clockwork. God is literally in the wings watching the show go on as humans forge their own destiny. |
| Rene Descarte (1596-1650) | Deductive thinker whose famous saying cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") challenged the notion of truth as being derived from tradition and Scriptures. |
| Enlightenment | The intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century in which the philosophes stressed reason, natural law, and progress in their criticism of prevailing social injustices. |
| Galileo (1564-1642) | Italian scientist who formulated terrestrial laws and the modern law of Inertia; he also provided evidence for the Copernican hypothesis. |
| Laissez-faire | The economic concept of the Scottish philosophe Adam Smith (1723-1790). In opposition to mercantilism, Smith urged governments to keep hands off the operation of the economy. He believed the role of government was analogous to the night watchman, guarding and protecting but not intervening in the operation of the economy, which must be left to run in accord with the natural laws of supply and demand. |
| Isaac Newton (1642-1727) | English scientist who formulated the law of gravitation that posited a universe operating In accord with natural law. |
| Philosophes | Social critics of the eighteenth century who subjected social institutions and practices to the test of reason. |
| Royal Society of London and French Academy of Sciences | Organized bodies for scientific study. |
| Tabula rasa | John Locke's concept of the mind as a blank sheet ultimately bombarded by sense impressions that, aided by human reasoning, formulate ideas. |
| Cesare Beccaria | Crime and Punishment. |
| Condorcet | Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind. |
| Denis Diderot | Encyclopedia. |
| David Hume | An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. |
| John Locke | Two Treatises on Government; Essay on Human Understanding. Montesquieu-Spirit of the Laws, Persian Letters. |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract; Emile. |
| Adam Smith | Wealth of Nations. |
| Voltaire | Philosophical Letters; Candide. |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. |
| Ancien regime (Old Regime) | France prior to the French Revolution |
| Banalities | Fees that peasants were obligated to pay landlords for the use of the village mill, bakeshop and winepress |
| Bastille | The political prison and armory stormed on July 14, 1789, by Partisian city workers alarmed by the king's concentration of troops at Versailles |
| Cahier de doleances | List of grievances that each Estate drew up in preparation for the summoning of the Estates-General in 1789. |
| Code Napoleon | The codification and condensation of laws assuring legal equality and uniformity in France. |
| Committee of Public Safety | The leaders under Robespierre who organized the defenses of France, conducted foreign policy, and centralized authority during the period 1792-1795. |
| Concordat (1801) | Napoleon's arrangement with Pope Plus VII to heal religious division in France with a united Catholic church under bishops appointed by the government. |
| Continental System | Napoleon's efforts to block foreign trade with England by forbidding Importation of British goods Into Europe. |
| Corvees | Roadwork; an obligation of peasants to landowners. |
| Coup d'etat | Overthrow of those in power. |
| Declaration of Pillnitz (1791) | Austria and Prussia agreed to intervene in France to end the revolution with the unanimous agreement of the great powers. |
| Declaration of the Rights of Man end Citizen (August 27, 1789) | Document that embodied the liberal revolutionary Ideals and general principles of the philosophes' writings. |
| Directory (1795-1799) | The five-man executive committee that ruled France in its own interests as a republic after Robespierre's execution and prior to Napoleon's coming to power. |
| Estates General | The French national assembly summoned in 1789 to remedy the financial crisis and correct abuses of the ancien regime. |
| Great Fear | The panic and insecurity that struck French peasants in the summer of 1789 and led to their widespread destruction of manor houses and archives. |
| Jacobins | The dominant group In the National Convention in 1793 who replaced the Girondist. It was headed by Robespierre. |
| Law of the maximum | The fixing of prices on bread and other essentials under Robespierre's rule. |
| Levee en masse | A national draft in France in 1794, created under the Jacobins, of a citizen army with support from young and old, heralding the emergence of modern warfare. |
| Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) | Consul and later emperor of France (1799-1815), who established several of the reforms (Code Napoleon) of the French Revolution during his dictatorial rule. |
| Parlement | Law court staffed by nobles that could register or refuse to register a king's edict. |
| Peninsular War (1808-1813) | Napoleon's long-drawn-out war with Spain. |
| Robespierre (1758-1794) | Jacobin leader during the Reign of Terror (1793-1794). |
| Sans culottes | A reference to Parisian workers who wore loose-fitting trousers rather than the tight-fitting breeches worn by aristocratic men. |
| Taille | A direct tax from which most French nobles were exempt usually on land or property, that provided a regular source of income for the French monarchy |
| Tennis Court Oath | Declaration mainly by members of the Third Estate not to disband until they had drafted a constitution for France (June 20, 1789). |
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