The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689

"During the years covered in this volume, Europe experienced a tumultuous period of civil wars and rebellions. Although each upheaval had its distinct character, a common thread running through the age was strife between adherents of the Catholic and Protestant churches. From the day in 1517 that Martin Luther had posted his ninety-five theses, religion became embroiled in politics. But the period of greatest militancy on both sides—of crusaders and martyrs, of plots and assassinations, of mobs and armies—began some forty years after Luther ignited the fuse of religious controversy. There was more to this age than warfare. A new centralization of political and economic power arose within the states of Europe, fostered by the rise of absolutist political theory and the spread of the mercantilist doctrine. Among the great rulers of the age were Phillip II of Spain; Queen Elizabeth I in England; and toward the end of the period, the Sun King, Louis XIV of France. During their reigns, Europe experienced a golden age of intellectual achievement: a great scientific revolution generated by the work of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton; a burst of creativity in painting, sculpture, and architecture known to us as the Baroque; and an era of the drama that has never been excelled—the era of Shakespeare, Molière, Lope de Vega, and their contemporaries. Richard S. Dunn has fashioned a fascinating historical panorama out of this rich and complex period of modern European history."—Dust jacket.