Cries for reform of the Church characterized the 15th century, as Christians reacted to the scandal of the Great Schism and became more sensitive to religious abuses. The Italian religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola scathingly criticized the worldliness of his contemporary, Pope Alexander VI. The so-called observantist movement within the mendicant orders tried to recall members to a more austere life, and humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus attempted to create alternatives to the sterile speculations of academic theology. Sincere as these efforts were, they long remained uncoordinated and failed to have a perceptible impact on the institution as a whole.

clerical and lay landlords. Luther disapproved of the use of his demands for reform to justify a radical disruption of the existing economy, but in the interests of a peaceful settlement of the conflict he urged the landlords to satisfy the claims of the peasants. He soon turned against the peasants, however, and, in a pamphlet entitled Wider die mordischen und raubischen Rotten der Bauern, (Against the Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, 1525), violently condemned them for resorting to violence.

>From the revival of the Holy Roman Empire by Otto I in 962, popes and emperors had been engaged in a continuous contest for supremacy. This conflict had generally resulted in victory for the papal side, but created bitter antagonism between Rome and the German Empire; this antagonism was augmented in the 14th and 15th centuries by the further development of German nationalist sentiment. Resentment against papal taxation and against submission to ecclesiastical officials of the distant and foreign papacy was manifested in other countries of Europe. In England the beginning of the movement towards ultimate independence from papal jurisdiction was the enactment of the statutes of Mortmain in 1279, Provisors in 1351, and Praemunire in 1393, which greatly reduced the power of the Church to withdraw land from the control of the civil government, to make appointments to ecclesiastical offices, and to exercise judicial authority.

During the first half of the 18th century, the philosophes waged an uphill struggle against imprisonment, censorship, and attacks by the Church. Later in the century they began to triumph. By the 1770s, the second-generation philosophes were receiving government pensions and taking control of intellectual academies. The proliferation of newspapers and books ensured a wide diffusion of their ideas. Scientific experiments and philosophy became widely fashionable, even among members of the nobility and the clergy. Many European monarchs became champions of the Enlightenment. Voltaire and other philosophes admired the so-called enlightened despots, notably Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria, and were welcomed at their courts. Philosophes, especially in central Europe with its smaller reading public, depended on state patronage for their livelihood. Many ideas of the Enlightenment were useful to rulers: educational and judicial reform, !

studies laid the basis on which Luther, the French theologian and religious reformer John Calvin, and other reformers subsequently claimed the Bible rather than the Church as the source of all religious authority.

Enlightenment ideals have, however, been severely tested in the 20th century, with wars and revolutions as well as technological progress beyond the dreams of the philosophes. The rise of totalitarian regimes-in the former Soviet Union under the banner of Enlightenment ideals, and in Germany, seemingly a model of Enlightenment civilization-led Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to conclude, in the Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1944; trans. 1972), that the Enlightenment had turned against itself, perverting its own ideals in the very process of realizing them. Pollution of the environment and, in much of the world, unrestricted population growth-a danger indicated by an Enlightenment thinker Thomas Malthus-might also suggest that Enlightenment ideals are self-defeating. If the philosophes perhaps underrated human irrationality, and the importance of tradition and authority in keeping human beings on the right track, and if Enlightenment reason now has few wholehearted adherent!

The Enlightenment was a profoundly cosmopolitan movement with representatives throughout Europe and the American colonies: David Hume in Scotland; in Italy, Cesare Beccaria (a determined opponent of torture and capital punishment); and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the American colonies. In Germany, Enlightenment thought was champi

Some common words found in the essay are:
French Revolution, II Austria, Immanuel Kant, Catholic Church-as, Alexander Pope, Sigmund Freud, Peasants' War, Roman Catholicism, Social Contract, Denis Diderot, roman catholic, western europe, french revolution, holy roman, religious reformer, holy roman emperor, american colonies, human mind, reformer john, enlightenment ideals, 20th century, marquis de condorcet, peace augsburg 1555, europe american colonies, roman catholic church,
Approximate Word count = 4525
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)