For example, at the fall of Rome there was very extensive slavery everywhere in Europe; by the time of the Renaissance it was long gone.
Encouraged by the Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the ev...
About all that Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and Anabaptists agreed upon was the divinity of Jesus and the wickedness of the pope.
The Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese.
In any event, there was no fall into Dark Ages. Instead, once freed of the bondage of Rome, Europe separated into hundreds of independent statelets.16 In many of these societies progress and increased...
By the seventh century, Christianity probably was far stronger and more sophisticated in North Africa and Asia than in Europe.
As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully buil...
39 It was the same in the other great houses. And all of this was possible because the great monasteries began to utilize a hired labour force, who not only were more productive than the monks had bee...
To sum up: the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to reli...
The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban...
The Byzantine governor assembled an army considerably larger than that of the Normans and rebels. He then sent a herald to the opposing camp offering either the Normans’ safe return to Lombard territo...
It is difficult to know how anyone, even the most bitter anti-Catholic, could truly have believed any of this! By itself, the biography of Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) makes a travesty of all these cl...
In contrast, a number of innovations can plausibly be attributed to the Little Ice Age: glass windowpanes, storm doors, skis, ice skates, sunglasses (first used for preventing snow blindness), distill...
In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable...
Even if they hated going to church and knew very little of Christianity, Europeans in the era of the Reformations were not irreligious. But, as Gerald Strauss put it, they ‘practiced their own brand o...
Coins and precious metals, food, slaves, and luxury goods flowed to Rome; little came back except tax collectors and soldiers.
As suggested by this definition, not all nations are states and not all states are nations.
Half of Americans belonged, and today about 70 per cent are affiliated with a local church.
When the Bishop of Gloucester systematically tested Church of England diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord’s P...
Today, little has changed in European religious life. State churches still dominate all of Europe’s ‘Protestant’ nations, with the negative consequences that will be seen in the next chapter. Church a...