Five

The year was 1887, and the place was New York City. Immigrants flooded into America’s streets in search of a better life, a life that fulfilled the American dream. The city was overcrowded, and the people were poor. The tenement district overflowed with new immigrants and one police reporter discovered light. The turn of the millennium was coming, and with it brought a new form of art. Photography was on the rise. Danish immigrant and New York City police reporter Jacob Riis took advantage of…

Martin Luther, who wrote the Ninety-Five Theses of 1517, created the anti-Catholic rebellion. His perspective on religion was against everything that Catholicism taught. He believed that if a person imagines that they are going to be saved by good deeds, “falls as uneasily as he who falls from the true service of God to idolatry.” Good works, such as ceremonies and attendance to Mass, are idolizing God. To Martin this was the wrong way to approach religion. The main problems with the Roman…

It is quite typical to refer to the period of history known as the Reformation as a paradigm shift sparked by one man---Martin Luther. He nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, pounding the Church into its rightful place whilst catapulting human history into the Reformation. However, while it makes for a nice story, the facts run much deeper than at first presumed. Luther likely did not nail the theses to the door at all. More importantly, there is a rich history of…

The Protestant Reformation is often indicated as just the Reformation. It was the major disagreement within Western Christianity started by Martin Luther. Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses in hopes of just starting a debate between the church, but ended up setting the religious world aflame. In his document, he started by criticizing the selling of indulgence, demanding that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in…

Nuremberg perfectly exemplifies the ideal Protestant city because it had an aristocratic ruling class, it had widespread support from prominent public figures such as artists and authors, it had humanist support, and most locals also favored the idea of citywide religious reform (Dixon 107). In other words, it was similar in structure to Germany as a whole, so it was the epitome of what the model Reformation city should be. This chapter in The Reformation in Germany aligns perfectly with the…

The European Age Of Exploration There are two era’s which led to a great deal of change in the world, these two ages are known as the Age Of Exploration, and the Protestant Reformation. If someone were to ask which age was more important it would be a tough question to answer, however many people believe that the Age Of Exploration had a greater significance than the protestant reformation. A few reasons the Age Of Exploration is considered to have a greater impact than the Protestant…

Imagine being a member of the Catholic Church in the early 1500’s and witnessing the corruption that occurred. A religious man named Martin Luther lived through the crookedness of the Church and wrote about it to spread awareness throughout Europe. His work inspired others to take action in the Church. These actions caused what we know today as the Protestant Reformation. So, who really was Martin Luther and why was he so important to the start of the Protestant Reformation? To understand what…

Before Martin Luther posted his 95th thesis on a church door in Worms, Germany so as to publicly air his grievances against the Church, another prominent figure also criticized the abuses of the Church. This man was no clergyman or ruler; he was a prominent literary figure of his time. This man was Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in part, deals greatly with the abuses and scandalous behaviors of authority figures in the Catholic Church. Before Luther and before changes were made,…

Social Conventions: The Condemnation of Norwegians Within his play, Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen places great emphasis on the issue of social conventions that prioritize duties and obligations in the Norwegian society of 1880. During his era, 90 percent of all Norwegians belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran National Church, the Church of Norway, which yielded great influence and authority within the society (Lovoll). Throughout Ghosts, the issues faced by the Alvings are rooted in the predefined beliefs…

In the article Simply, Chamorro: Telling Tales of Demise and Survival in Guam by Vicente M Diaz, he narrates the history of Guam through various tales. The tales describe the culture of Guam, narrates how Guam is before and after the war. Furthermore, they also recount how the war erased Guam’s culture. Specifically, the tales indicate that this drastic change in Guam’s culture was caused by American capitalistic and military oriented perspectives, and cultural assimilation. This is significant…