<em>1. The Council of Trent is important because it </em>
- B. began the process of change that became the Catholic Reformation.
<em>2. Witch hunts were most deadly in the German states, Switzerland, and France because
</em>
- C. those countries had the most religious conflicts.
Further details:
1. The Council of Trent served to reform some abuses that were acknowledged by the Catholic Church, as well as to to assert the full authority of Roman power and doctrine over the Protestant threat. The Council of Trent held meetings over a span of years from 1545 to 1563. There were other aspects of the Catholic Reformation (also known as the Counter Reformation), such as:
- The formation of religious orders that aimed to build allegiance to Rome and the papacy, and to educate people in Catholic teaching. The Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits for short, was a key order of this sort. The order was founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534, along with Francis Xavier and several others.
- The Roman Inquisition (founded in 1542) acted as an investigative body in regard to threats to Rome's teachings. About a century later, Galileo would be one of the most famous persons tried by the Roman Inquisition.
2. Recall that the Protestant Reformation had its beginnings in Germany and Switzerland. Martin Luther led the Reformation movement in Germany, and Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin did so in Switzerland. Both Protestants and Catholics got involved in the witch-hunting fervor. Another factor that accentuated the witch hunt phenomenon, strangely enough, was the beginning of early science. People thought they had "scientific" methods to prove if someone was a witch, under the control of the devil. You could check out the lecture, "We Must Burn the Witches to Save Them," by Daniel Robinson, in the Teaching Company series on <em>The Great Ideas of Philosophy. </em>[Admittedly, burning witches was <u>not</u> a great idea, but that's part of Robinson's point in the lecture.]
