The Greeks were the first people in the world to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sorts of games; athletic contests of every description … contests in musi...
Thus, by no later than the thirteenth century, the leading Christian theologians had fully debated the primary aspects of emerging capitalism – profits, property rights, credit, lending and the like....
What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews?’ Luther offered seven actions. First, to set fire to their synagogues and schools . . . Second, I advise that their house...
Half of Americans belonged, and today about 70 per cent are affiliated with a local church.
The absolute rulers of the states that arose from ‘Protestantism’ often did the equivalent of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Foreigners were simply excluded and driven out of the Scandinavian nation states.
As is obvious, the English scientific stars were overwhelmingly from the bourgeois, while more than half of the European stars were from the ‘leisure class’, gentry and the nobility – only 16 per cent...
As the world learned of the horrors of the Nazi death camps, Pope Pius XII was widely praised for his vigorous and devoted efforts to saving Jewish lives during the war. In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, who w...
Echoing his teacher, but using many more words, St Thomas Aquinas began his analysis of just prices by posing the question ‘Whether a man may lawfully sell a thing for more than it is worth’.53 He ans...
For one thing, relatively small forces were involved – at the Battle of Hastings (in 1066), which resulted in the Norman conquest of England, about 10,000 Normans overcame about 7,000 English (the pop...
Impoverished Spain depended on imports not only for manufactured products but even for sufficient food. Spanish agriculture was hampered by poor soil and by the strange institution known as the Mesta....
Indeed, it was illegal to publish papal bulls and decrees in Spain or its possessions without prior royal consent – which is why, decades later, the pope’s decrees against slavery could not be read in...
It all began with the French Revolution. Prior to that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European warfare had involved very small professional armies, fighting very circumscribed campaigns...
It needs to be emphasized that the Church vigorously advocated and defended democracy in northern Italy. Not only did the Church unequivocally assert moral equality, but it also ventured into the poli...
Now, shouts of Dieu li volt! (God wills it!) began to spread through the crowd, and men began to cut up cloaks and other pieces of cloth to make crosses and sew them against their chests. Everyone agr...
The proximate cause of the rise of Italian capitalism was freedom from the rapacious rulers who repressed and consumed economic progress in most of the world, including most of Europe. Although their...
When William the Conqueror had the Domesday Book compiled in 1086, this forerunner of the modern census reported at least 6,500 water-powered mills operating in England, or one for about every fifty f...
For many people conversion is simply a matter of aligning their religious life with that of their family, friends, and neighbors who already have joined—thus creating a self-sustaining network of grow...
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) was among the first to express deep regrets over the rise of individualism, which he traced back to the Protestant Reformation. Tocqueville is, of course, famous for hi...
And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith.9
Belief in the virtues of work and of simple living did accompany the rise of capitalism, but this was centuries before Martin Luther was born.
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