In the 16th century the church played a huge role in the lives of people in Europe, however, in some parts and Germany in particular, the Church was seen as not responding to the appetite for spiritual fulfillment and failing in some of its duties. The Church was involved not just spiritually but economically, politically and educationally; therefore, any corruption within the Church had consequences all over Christendom. The role of the Church was to perform the seven sacraments in order for Catholics to reach their goal – salvation. Firstly, the Church was resented because it was corrupt. This was resented in Germany because it seemed hard to obtain salvation and live a spiritual life when the representatives of Christianity were dishonest.
But that’s not the only reason religion caused the civil war, King Charles believed in the divine right. It was when the king/queen believes that god put them on the throne. So Charles took all the power because of this and Parliament didn’t want to go with his decision which contributes to the civil war. Also he made Scottish churches uses English prayer books which caused riots and England went to battle with Scotland. England lost.
Henry had spent a lot of money on wars in Europe, expensive clothes and food so he wanted to make up the loss by being head of the church. This meant Henry would have more money for himself. Finally, Henry made himself head of the English Church because he knew that previous kings had been unhappy with the amount of power the Pope had over the English church so he decided he wanted complete control over his country. Henry wanted power to divorce without the Pope's consent and in general Henry wanted more power over England's land. Henry wanted a divorce from Catherine of Aragon because she could not produce a son.
Bismarck began to fight back, he banned the most active order of Catholic priests and introduced a law that the government had a right to inspect all schools, including Catholic ones. The government would also control the training of priests and appoint them to churches and no one could be married without a civil ceremony in a government office. The Catholics saw this all as an attack on their beliefs, the country was left in struggle resulting in the ‘Kulterkampf’ movement. The loyalty of the Catholics had been weakened and the Prussian conservatives did not want the government to control local problems. This made Bismarck largely unpopular and cause disunity in Germany.
Wolsey was raised as a Catholic and supported the concept of marriage however, the main reason he was able to stay in power for so long was his flexibility to meet the kings wishes whatever they were. A divorce was very hard to obtain even for the king of England as it went against the religious nature of the country and so Wolsey knew he would have to find a loophole or old scripture that allowed Henry to be divorced from Catherine if he wanted to please Henry and stay in power. Wolsey tried to say that Edward had not consummated his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and so it was not valid, however this is most likely untrue and so this did not work. The Sack of Rome was used to put pressure on the Pope to grant the divorce as it kept the Pope as a virtual prisoner inside of Italy however this also failed. Wolsey’s final attempt to secure the divorce was through Henry’s own court however, this was not recognised by Catherine and she went to the Pope who refused to grant the divorce.
This meant when he came to power, there wasn’t really that much religious tension. At this point the most dangerous extremist group was the Catholic, they had been because of the Anti-Catholic laws that she had past once the Catholic Plots had started to appear. James was favoured in the eyes of Catholics as he was the son of the Catholic martyr Mary, Queen of Scots. It has been said that before he came to throne, while he was King of Scotland he has promised the Catholics more tolerance. This has been greatly debated and in the end he didn’t become more tolerant towards the Catholics, he started to suppress them.
The church had some positive impact on the Tsars reign – it played a great role in the reinforcement of Tsardom by threatening to ‘curse’ the people who didn’t put full belief into the Tsar. Although the church’s played part in reinforcing Tsarism, it also pushed away believers from the Tsar and this was an underlying problem that had no indication of being solved. The lack of democracy in Russian government saw an increase in the amount of extremist groups emerging throughout the country. The Tsar had all of the power and although he had councils, they were all run by members of the nobility. Most peasants
The cause of the English civil war The title ‘The cause of the English civil war’ means, what happened to make the civil war start. A civil war is when a country fights against itself with different beliefs. In 1625 King James died and Charles I came to the throne. James had strongly believed in the divine right of kings he had thought that monarchs got their power and the right to rule from God and that because of this they must be obeyed, the people of England were not very happy with this because it meant that the king could do whatever he wanted and claim that God had told him to. England for a long time had been told to hate Catholics and when James came from Scotland and became king he decided to marry Henrietta Maria, a Catholic, the people became unhappy because they did not know if their heir would be Protestant or Catholic.
This statement, naturally would anger any Catholic, especially if they were relentlessly worried about not being able to get a job or a house for their family. After the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament, many of the Unionists MP’s wanted to ensure that their control over the six counties would be permanent and could not be challenged. Thus, the RUC and B specials were created. As discrimination was put into gear, many Catholics could not enter the police force therefore creating an atmosphere were mainly Protestants were in control. This was seen as very bad news for the Catholics.
He also closed down many wine shops and nightclubs, and made swearing in public a crime. Like the Church, he also wanted to ban divorces in Italy. By doing this, Mussolini was trying to bring the Church onto his side to gets its support and give added credibility to his government. However, these relations were not always harmonious. In particular, Mussolini and the Church clashed over who should control education.