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.
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