Module Information

Europe entered the 'Modern' world through a succession of landmark events and discoveries between 1450 and 1500: the invention of printing with moveable type in the Rhineland in the 1450s; the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople for Islam in 1453; the accidental landfall by Columbus in the West Indies in 1492. These events occurred within a broader cultural movement which had been under-way since the 14th century, and which we know as a period of re-birth or Renaissance. Slightly later, in 1517, Martin Luther kicked off a debate with the Papacy which eventually created the 'Reformation' of the western church, and two antagonistic confessions, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Together these events shaped a Europe which came to have recognisably 'modern' characteristics: warfare organised along ideological or commercial lines; a concerted quest for geographical and scientific 'discovery'; the closer definition of secular political rights; the justification of tyrannicide, and the first glimmerings of a universal franchise. These were recorded for us by increasing numbers of people who could read and write; and depicted in paintings of breathtaking realism and compelling perspective. Like our own modern world, the period was torn between impulses of the greatest humanity and compassion on the one hand, and by brutality and violence on the other. Religious wars gave birth to the attempts of philosophers and lawyers to elaborate effective systems of political arbitration. Witch hunts and crime waves gave rise to philosophical scepticism about the power of 'magic', and public disgust at the lives led by the poor and propertyless.