Lesson Plans

The Western Heritage ©2000

by Kagan, Ozment, and Turner

Focus Lesson 4

Chapter 12: "The Age of Religious Wars"

AP* Course Description

1. Intellectual and Cultural History
   • Changes in religious thought and institutions
   • Secularization of learning and culture
   • Major trends in literature and the arts
   • Intellectual and cultural developments and their relationship to social values and political events
   • Developments in social, economic, and political thought
   • The diffusion of new intellectual concepts among different social groups
   • Changes in elite and popular culture, such as the development of new attitudes toward religion, the family, work, and ritual
2. Political and Diplomatic History
   • The rise and functioning of the modern state in its various forms
   • The evolution of political elites and the development of political parties and ideologies
   • The extension and limitation of rights and liberties (personal, civic, economic, and political); majority and minority; political persecutions
   • The growth and changing forms of nationalism
   • Forms of political protest, reform, and revolution
   • Relationship between domestic and foreign policies
   • Efforts to restrain conflict: treaties, balance of power, diplomacy, and international organizations
   • War and civil conflict: origins, developments, technology, and their consequences
3. Social and Economic History
   • Changes in the demographic structure of Europe, their causes and consequences

Key Components

• Instructor's Manual: pp. 26–27
• Study Guide and Workbook, Vol. I: pp. 119–129
• Test Item File: pp. 61–66

Key Web Sites

• Wars of Religion
• Reformation: Religious Wars
• Elizabeth I (1533–1603)

Key Words and Terms

Suggested Pacing

Test Strategy

Key Concepts

• Struggles between Catholics and Protestants
  As the number of Protestant sects grew, conflicts between Catholics and adherents of the major Protestant faiths came to a head in England, France, and the Spanish Empire. Students should keep track of the causes of the conflicts and how they were resolved. As they study the next century of European history, they should look for how these resolutions created new turmoil.
  
  
• Thirty Years' War
  The Thirty Years' War and its four phases show the growth of a new way of managing foreign affairs. Religious wars gave way to balance of power as the operative force in how monarchs and their ministers conducted foreign policy.

Summing Up Student Understanding

• Henry IV and his decision to convert to Catholicism and the repercussions of this choice on France
• Philip II and his decision to hold on to the Netherlands
• Elizabeth I and her dealings with both Catholics and Protestants
• Cardinal Richelieu and his decision, as the leader of the Catholic Church in France, to bring his country into the Thirty Years' War on the side of the Protestants

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Aspects of Western Civilization, Vol. I, edited by Rogers—Chapter 9, "Resolution: The Bloody Wars of Religion"
• Sources of the West, Vol. I, edited by Kishlausky—Part IV, "The Wars of Religion"