The crusades affected western culture because of their biblical practices that threatened it. By 1905, Urban II’s call for a crusade was only part of a larer shifting in theological interpretations and justification of warfare: the Reconquista in Spain, for instance, had been under way for over two centuries and was rooted in a re-fashioned understanding of just war theory. The explicit pilgrimage and warfare gave the First Crusade a unique potency that triggered widespread enthusiasm across feudal social boudaries. Pilgrimage was a common practice during Middle Ages and, given the perils of travel, pilgrims often armed themselves for defense. The ideology of the crusade, however, was one rooted in the practice redemptive pilgrimage as well as conquest.
This internal dissent from tradition certainly affected Pugin’s view of what the true Christian style of architecture was. Pugin blamed the Reformation for the architectural decline in Britain and he championed the medieval, Gothic style that he felt was, “distinctly English”, (Richardson, 2008, page 113). All of these points demonstrate dissent however, was Pugin in fact a, “radical traditionalist”, (Mckellar, 2008, p131). In order to explore the ideas of Tradition and Dissent that was applied to the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster. I will be discussing Pugin’s abstractions, beliefs and ideologies and how they diverged from the Classical-Protestant views of the day, also, illustrating the features that could be interpreted as traditional or dissenting.
In defiance of the Great Chain of Being, the inclusion of several uses of the supernatural in the Scottish place, which includes Macbeth’s first meeting with the witches, the three apparitions, and the air-drawn dagger, serve to illustrate the danger resulting from the humanly desire to go against the natural order. To understand the supernatural better, one must first understand a concept that held certain popularity during the medieval and the renaissance, the Great Chain of Being. Arthur O. Lovejoy explains it in, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, that the Christian world follows a vertical chain that segregates all existence into several hierarchies, starting with God residing at the top of the chain, and beneath him—the angels. On the other hand, rocks and minerals exist at the bottom of the chain. Lovejoy argues that each time one moves up in the chain, the higher hierarchy contains something that the lower one does not (Lovejoy 5-8).
This uncertainty at the head of the church created divisions in Christendom that would last for a long time, divisions that would sow the seeds of the reformation, increase strength of national churches and lead the way to the creation of The Church of England. The crisis of Church in the later medieval ages was one of role, increasingly secular government was coming to the forefront of administration, where before the Church ‘had fulfilled many of the functions of the modern state’ The 18 years of Pope Innocent III’s pontificate is viewed by many as the height of the papacy in the medieval era. Innocent believed that the Pope controlled the spiritual world of man in Gods stead. He realised that to do this the Pope would have to have control of the temporal world as well. Innocent pursued these claims very successfully and Margaret Deanesly argues that ‘he was a greater force in the secular politics of Europe than either emperor or national king’.
WIthout the revolutions and the turning points in history, we would have a completely different world. The Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation had historical circumstances surrounding it, changed history and may have lead to an Age of Revolutions. The Renaissance, meaning rebirth, was the revival of art and literature during the late Middle Ages. Europe suffered from both war and plague, and people started to question the institutions of the Middle Ages. The institution were unable to prevent war and revive the people from the plague.
As established by Henry VIII in 1550 to distance himself from the Catholic Church and the Pope (and make it possible for him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon), the official religion of England at the beginning of the Victorian period, circa 1850, was that of the Anglican Church, known as the Church of England. Nonetheless, there were other religions that were quite important in the country, mainly Catholicism and Methodism, which was greatly known thanks to John Wesley and grew under Victorian times. There was also a movement of anti-Church, notably with the Age of Reason of Tom Paine, in 1794, and the apparition of spiritualism. The initiators of such movements where referred to as dissenters, and there were many dissented groups at the time. The Victorian period, up until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, was therefore a time of religious confusion, but also, as we will see, of great charity, as well as of birth of new beliefs.
The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories by Geoffrey Chaucer, was written during the Middle Ages - an unstable period in Western European history. The crises of the Late Middle Ages - the Great Famine, the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Peasants' Revolt (Goldsmith 417) - led to drastic societal change and social mobility. Chaucer creates controversial religious figures such as the Summoner, Pardoner, Friar, Monk and Prioress as a commentary on, and means to demonstrate, the change and conflicts in English life, and specifically in the Church at that time. One of the most interesting portions of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is the “Prioress’s Tale”. The hypocrisy of this character and the blatant anti-Semitism apparent throughout her Tale are used by Chaucer to demonstrate his views on England's social upheaval.
However, the changes were not uniformly experienced across Europe. Religious context Religion was one of the aspects of the Renaissance that changed drastically over a few centuries. Before the Renaissance, during the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was dominant in most states of Europe. The medieval thinkers believed that the most important responsibility of the people was to pray to God and aim at saving their souls. Society was believed to be full of evil temptations.
The Victorian Era saw the emergence of literature which reflect the dramatic changes that were taking place in England on a social, spiritual and intellectual level. Robert Browning’s poems, “Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”and Charlotte Bronte’s “The Professor”, through the employment of various literary techniques reflect and challenge previously accepted ideas on religion and gender roles in society during this period. During the Victorian Era it was widely accepted that men had the power in society. Women were thought to be inferior. This concept is reflected and challenged in “Porphyria’s Lover”.
Many factors led to the rise of Protestantism, for example, events like the Black Death and the Western Schism. The most crucial factors were the reformers themselves. Two of the most famous reformers were Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. Luther was a German priest who found the ways of the Roman Catholic Church to be corrupt, he fought the church until he was named an outlaw by the emperor, and shunned by the pope. Erasmus was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, and Catholic priest.