Ross Nunez
September 16, 2013
Document-Based Analysis
Religion is the primary reason for war in Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Religion has caused many hardships and conflicts in Europe. Catholicism was the dominant and most common religion in the western world. The pope was the Leader of the Catholic Church; everyone was forced to submit to him and his law, those who failed suffered the consequences.
Religious wars started in the sixteenth century once the Roman Church came to place in 580 AD. It involved most of the Europe countries like Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, Portugal, and many others. The war established the power of Frances army and its dominance.
Sebastian Castello, protestant theologian in France, who said, “why would you be or wish to be a Christian if you confessed the of Christ you would be murdered by Christians themselves with fire, water and he sword with out mercy”.(doc 1) If you disagreed with someone’s beliefs you would have been regarded as a heretic.
Many Religious groups were established during this era. There were Lutherans, Protestants, Calvinists, Anglicanism, and many more these would protest against the catholic denomination.
The Catholic Church would force people in and out of their borders to submit to their law or else they would be punished. Many people would submit to avoid battles and persecution, others because they had no religious beliefs and wanted something new, and some just because they were to weak to fight back or the lack of battle equipment. The people who would not submit to the pope and its laws had to suffer the consequences, some would be tortured others would have been locked up and some would have even been executed. It was truly hell for the people who denied the catholic rule
The French army during that era was definitely the strongest and most powerful army, because Germany was basically submitting to them and also had the Roman Empire in tact. People who would go against that army would probably have gotten wiped out of the map.
Lutherans was a big group who came up by a man named Martin Luther, and he had a different interpretation of Christianity than the Catholics had, for starters he didn’t believe that their should have been a pope in charge, Jesus was in charge. He mainly believed that we are saved