Peasants were captive to their lords, essentially forced into servitude without wages. Through the worst conditions, a constant source of comfort was the Church and it's promise of a better life in Heaven. As it grew in power and riches, the Catholic Church became a political power, and peasants began to fear the church instead of worshiping the God, through the life of Jesus Christ, that it represented. In the political climate, protest was difficult. Anyone that was considered a threat to the power of the Church were often executed or exiled.
When Europe finally emerged out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Europeans despised everything about the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, queens and kings were decided by “divine power” which opposes the notion of rulership in Machiavelli’s The Prince. Erasmus, another key player in the Renaissance, once stated, “Men are made, not born” which totally contradicts the idea of divine power. Another new idea Machiavelli developed in The Prince that goes against Middle age thought was to use soldiers that one possesses in their state, instead of using mercenaries or auxiliary soldiers. In the Renaissance, the humility of the Middle Ages was completely thrown out, only to be replaced with people wearing extravagant clothing and consuming themselves in their image.
In 1933 Hitler legally came to power after a series of miscalculations by the government, they believed they would be able to control Hitler but they were truth. In fact it has been argued by historians such as Kershaw that this was actually the key to Hitler’s success. Structuralists believe that Hitler was in fact a very weak dictator. They have argued that the Nazi regime evolved from the ‘pressure of circumstance’ and not from the role of Hitler himself. Hitler was considered to be incapable of making a decision and as a result his government lacked any form control of important decisions and his general poor leadership skills it is clear to see why Hitler can be seen to be a weak dictator.
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.
How is this responsible? People believed that the PG was not a ‘true’ or ‘valid’ government. As they were not elected members, anyone could be made head of states or head of parliament making the PG ‘corrupt’ in the eyes of the Russian public. Carrying on with a lack of authority – the PG were seen as not revolutionary enough. During its leadership, the PG had two leaders: Prince Lvov – whose status as a member of the nobility immediately undermined the reforming credential as did its members as they were broadly liberal Octoberists and Kadet, which again, diluted its reforming enthusiasm.
They had used several immoral practices such as simony, the buying and selling of church offices. And as author Dan Petty put it, “pluralism (holding multiple offices simultaneously) and absenteeism (failure to reside in the parish where they were supposed to minister),”(Petty). Several situations in which the church displayed its power included taxations and practicing celibacy (Petty). Due to the church’s immense power, many expressed fear and became discouraged to contest its actions. One of the main leaders in the act to resist the Roman Catholic Church’s authority and change the ideas of Christianity in the Protestant Reformation was Martin Luther.
The cultural impact on England of the dissolution was seen as cultural vandalism to the Catholic. Architectural treasures were lost forever, only the ruins remained. Monastic libraries, religious arts and relics were sold for the profit of the crown. Because monasteries were a great deal for the Catholics the dissolution was one of the worst things that could have happed to them, their religious houses of worship and virtue was gone, there was thought to be no hope for the Catholic Church in England. Even though this is portrayed to be terrible some good came from it the monastic buildings that remained such as Tewkesbury were brought by local communities and served the lay population as parish churches, the abbeys that survived became cathedrals such as the one in Westminster, this was a great advantage to the Catholics since there was more places they could worship.
This proves the political instability of Germany in this period as they were the largest party in the Reichstag but still refused to cooperate. This need for the parties to agree cause germanys politics to become unstable yet again because they were unable to agree of unemployment benefits and foreign policy. This led the voter moving to more extremist parties like the KPD who had 10.6% of the vote in 1923. The election of president Hindenburg did not have a positive effect as he was very anti socialists, resulting in him excluding the SPD from the coalition despite their majority and including the DNVP to limit the coverage of the political spectrum in the hope his policies would pass quicker. In terms of economic development, the Dawes and the Young plan definitely helped develop and rebuild Germany’s economy, however there are other factors which counteracted them, making them less effective.
Also, another issue with the court system was all the power to the King. This was an issue because a large mass of people (The 3rd Estate) had no share in the government, which meant that the likelihood that they were unhappy was high; to make it worse, Louis XVI was not a great ruler. He was famous for the line, “The thing is legal because I wish it,” which basically means, “What I say goes,” which is not a good plan because there is no planning or foresight involved. Also, he used the lettres de cachet, which is like a warrant where any critic of the government would receive a letter that
The Kapp Putsch reinforced the view that the Republic relied heavily on unreliable forces to maintain a sense of order. Arguably, the right posed a greater threat to the Weimar Republic than did the extreme left because it had the support of most of Germany's establishment such as the military and much of the press. However the extremist right, were not trusted within the Reichstag as they opposed