Chapter Summary
The Age of Religious Wars was a period of economic hardships and religious turmoil that affected almost every European state. It can be argued that the sixteenth century was a century of crises. Catholics fought Protestants and nations fought each other in bloody battles that seemed to go on interminably.
There is little doubt that the Protestant Reformation, along with the fury of religious debate and enthusiasm it released, was directly responsible for a century of religious wars. No nation or people were immune from the Lutheran challenge; indeed, the answer to the question of which church one ought to belong to could mean life or death. In such an atmosphere, religious conflict was certain, despite the fact that many people were surprised by the scope of wars of religion that began during the end of the sixteenth century and carried on for most of the seventeenth century. Religious unity was now gone, and the people of Europe bore the scars of that loss.
Political theorists penned treatises that ran the full gamut of emotions. The theorists among the French Huguenots and English Puritans argued in favor of human liberty and institutional change that would preserve that liberty. At the same time, Jean Bodin, in France, and Thomas Hobbes, in England, attacked the question of government by arguing for an absolutist government that would bring about peace and order.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Spain had been humiliated by defeat at the hands of the English and the resultant destruction of the Spanish Armada; the Netherlands had declared itself free from Spanish influence. The Spanish "seaborne empire" was about to collapse as English and Dutch shipping came to dominate global trade. In the middle of the seventeenth century the English found themselves in the midst of civil war, a war that resulted in the beheading of Charles I in 1649, and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.
All was not lost. This century also produced great literary treasures: in England, Shakespeare wrote his plays and sonnets and John Milton composed Paradise Lost; in Spain, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote; and in France, Montaigne composed his Essays, which combined the very best of the literature of all ages.