Empires: Belief Systems [AP World History] Unit 3 Topic 3

Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History. We’ve been going over Unit 3 of AP World History. And what we’ve been seeing is how land-based empires grew from 1450-1750 and how the rulers of those empires consolidated and legitimized their power.

In this video we fittn ta be talking about religion. In most of these empires religion was one of the key ingredients their expansion stew. And in many ways, religion for these empires was a unifying force, but under certain conditions it fractured empires and drove them apart.

Mmmmm. Intrigue. Let’s get to it.

So in this video we’re going to look at two major religious schisms: one in Christianity and one in Islam. Let’s start with the Christian schism in Europe. Now you may remember that in large part the particular flavor of Christianity that had dominated Europe for centuries was the Roman Catholic Church.

Now the Catholic Church got a little wobbly through Europe’s transition from feudalism to more powerful central governments. The reason is simple. When European society was fractured politically and socially in the feudal era, it was the Roman Catholic Church that largely provided cultural continuity to the people through its belief system and elaborate rituals.

But when kings started consolidating power, the kings themselves began competing for allegiance for the people’s hearts and minds. And so the Catholic Church lost power during this period. Not only did they lose power, but the people began to question the Church’s authority because for all the effort put forward by the Church, they were unable to stop the devastating effects of the Black Death.

Additionally, there were theological disputes in the church. John Wycliffe, for example, got himself into trouble for translating the Bible from Latin into the vernacular language so that anyone who could read, could read the Bible. And even more than that, the Church grew corrupt during this period.

Two of the main abuses included the sale of indulgences and simony. The church had lots of building projects to fund and not to mention the bishops gold-plated mitre ain’t gonna pay for itself, so they instituted these two practices. The sale of indulgences was the practice of selling the absolution of sins.

And who wouldn’t do that? If you just dropped your coin into this coffer, your sins are forgiven. Simony was the sale of church offices.

Now all things being equal, in a church the person who both spiritually and theologically qualified probably ought to get the office. But not in those days. In those days, if you had the boom boom you had the office.

But in the face of all this corruption, enter an obscure German monk named Martin Luther. This poor monk found that he was unable to quench the churnings of his guilty conscience through the prescribed means of the church. So he immersed himself in the Bible, specifically Paul’s letter to the Romans, and what he found there was nothing less than a revelation to him.

He discovered in Romans chapter 1 that salvation was guaranteed the believer by faith alone, and not through the elaborate system of works handed down by the Catholic Church. And so put that together with Luther’s deep distaste for the sale of indulgences and simony, and he decided he was going to do something about it. So on October 31, 1517, after he was done trick-or-treating, he nailed a document with 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church.

These theses outlined Luther’s newfound understanding of salvation apart from works and his complaints about the abuses of the church. Now it probably won’t surprise you to hear that the Catholic Church reacted harshly to Luther’s complaints and what they considered innovations in doctrine. After all, they relied on the money which those corrupt practices brought in.

But because of the introduction of the printing press, Luther’s ideas spread across Germany with great speed and took hold in the people’s imaginations. And this became the occasion for what’s known as the Protestant Reformation and a permanent split in the Christian church. The Protestanet Reformation spread into Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin and then further north in Scotland under the leadership of John Knox.

Now eventually the Catholic Church did acknowledge that some of its practices had become corrupt and they engaged themselves in the Catholic Counter Reformation. At the Council of Trent which lasted from 1545-1563, the Church corrected many abuses concerning the sale of indulgences and the sale of church offices. Additionally, they reaffirmed that they still thought Martin Luther and all the Protestants were doctrinal turds.

Okay, that’s enough talk of the conflicts in the Christian Church, let’s talk about an Islamic conflict. The schism in the Christian Church was bottom up. The Islamic problems were more top-down.

The main conflict was between the Ottoman Empire and her neighbor the Safavid Empire. Now the Ottomans were Muslim and the Safavids were Muslim, but they weren’t the same kind of Muslim. The Ottomans were Sunni Muslims and the Safavids were Shi’a Muslims.

Around 1500 the Safavid Empire fully shifted to the imposition of Shi’a Islam and in doing so denied the legitimacy of any Sunni Muslim. Now as you can imagine that proclamation really baked the Ottoman’s muffins. And since these two empires bordered each other, they were in constant dispute, sometimes armed dispute over who owned what.

And it’s very difficult to separate how much of this was sheer territorial dispute and how much of it was embedded in their religious disputes. I tend to lean towards the latter when I read what the Ottoman sultan wrote to the Safavid ruler in 1514: You have denied the sanctity of divine law… you have deserted the path of salvation and the sacred commandments… you have opened to Muslims the gates of tyranny and oppression… you have raised the standard of irreligion and heresy… [Therefore] the ulama and our doctors have pronounced a sentence of death against you, perjurer and blasphemer. Now thankfully given enough time the Sunnis and the Shi’a learned to get along and give each other a big Muslim hug.

Hmm? Okay, I’m getting word that they in fact have never learned to hug and that they still consider each other blasphemers. Okay, I stand corrected.

Is there anyone who can talk some sense in the middle of all this religious disagreement? Oh there is: Akbar, the ruler of the Mughal Empire. This guy was open to giving a hug to anyone from any religion.

He granted land to Hindus and Muslims without discrimination. He even helped fund the burgeoning Catholic church in India. Akbar was up for new religions too.

During his reign a new religion called Sikhism, which was basically a blending of Islam and Hinduism, emerged and he offered them a seat at the table as well. And I think the tolerance of Akbar should bring us to a close in this video. I’m here to help you get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam, so if you’re into that kind of thing, subscribe and join our little family.

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