I want to be Human again!

I never thought about the idea that science can be so much of a blessing as so much of a curse. Without science’s development we would be dying of sicknesses that are curable nowadays, our lives wouldn’t be as comfortable without all the technological advances and we wouldn’t know our world as much as we do now. But in the other hand, violence and wars wouldn’t be as bad as they are because there wouldn’t be powerful weapons to easily kill people. It is also interesting to see how when science began to grow and develop religion lost some power. Once people began to discover that phenomenon had a scientific explanation other than a divine one, they began to question their beliefs. Science became a faith, it had the same effect on people like religion previously had. People saw the scientist like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and others as gods. People began to think that they could have all the answers to understand our existence.
The Scientific Revolution originated around the same time as the Renaissance was happening. People showed more interest in educating themselves and became more human, they were ready to grow and were interesting in investigating and discovering new things. Before the Scientific Revolution, the human being was described as a machine, nobody focused in explaining and analyzing the actual “human” side of men. Humanism was another important feature of the Scientific Revolution.
When reading about the Renaissance it didn’t even crossed my mind to think about the influence of humanism in Science. I thought humanism was mainly focused and expressed through visual arts.
I wonder if eventually technology will one more time destroy our human side, it seems to me that little by little we are relying on technology to connect with other people, to create visual arts and increase scientific development. Will humans realize this and have the need of another wave of humanism??

Renaissance

The Renaissance is an amazing period of time. It was the time when people began to realize how important it was to educate themselves and question their own beliefs and knowledge acquired mainly by the government and church’s influence. I loved the part that talks about humanism, especially the part about liberal arts. I always wondered why the term “liberal arts” was used, and I guess I finally got the answer. “The liberal arts are what are studied by free people and in turn are those arts whose studies make one free” (Knox). Having knowledge gives a person power to make decisions and therefore it makes you free.
The Renaissance was a time of change, growth and self expression, artists found in there creations a way to express their feelings, concerns and excitements of that time, and they did it in a beautiful way. The Italian Renaissance served as an example for other countries in Europe to do the same. One of my favorite examples is Spain. In the XVI century Spain’s military activity in Italy brought the Renaissance into the country. The press growth and the Italian Renaissance were the main factors that influenced the beginning of the Spanish Golden Age. The Golden Age is the period of time when the most amazing artistic works in Spain were created, mainly in literature.
I wonder if there is a modern time period that could be compared to the Renaissance. Could we compare this century when all the new technology is being used to create amazing works of art? What would be the main differences between the types of art?

Wikipedia 3

1. The article is 2837 words.
2. The Search term I used was Bartholomew’s Massacre and the exact title is “ St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”
3. The disambiguation link brought me back to the exact same article.
4. In the discussion box there are a couple comments complaining about this article being biased and not using proper information to describe the Massacre. They say that the article is based on fantasy instead of facts. They also mentioned that the most recent edits are partisan.
5. In the History of the article I found that there were at least 500 changes, the earliest was on 12/30/2002 and the latest on 9/8/2008.
6. There are 3 external links provided.
7. There are 10 references.
8. There is one entry on further reading.

This article talks about the horrible massacre that happen in France (starting in Paris) because of the conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church and the Huguenots (the French Calvinist Protestants). It first gives some background information on why this Massacre happened. The main reasons were the end of the Third War of Religion, the marriage between Henry III of Navarre and Marguerite of Valois and attempt to murder the Admiral of Coligny.
This article then narrates how the massacres happened and the parts of France were they took place. Then it gives us some detail of the reactions and what happened after the massacres.
When I first read this article I thought it had good information, but after reading the Discussion in made me realize that it is indeed biased. I would recommend reading it to see one side of the story, but I would definitely encourage the reader to further investigate the other side of the story.

Team work!

While reading about the struggles between the Parliament and the King, it made me think a lot about how important was to create a set of laws that would control how much power each political entity has and the boundaries and limits that must be respected.
In England, the Parliament and the King divided the army. Some members of the army would be loyal to the king and some to the Parliament. Just imagine what would happen these days if we did not have a Constitution that would regulate a balance between powers. With all the different opinions and controversy about the U.S. military intervention in other countries, we would end up having a war within the country!
It is very important to realize that back in those days the Parliament was constituted by members of the church, nobles and other powerful people. The combination of all of their personal interests and beliefs were contradictory to those of the King Charles I. After reading about Charles I, I had the impression that he wanted to rule the country without any advice. Through history we’ve learned that the best governments are those who have a good balance among powers. In this case Charles I wanted to leave the Parliament on the side, at some point he was ignoring his pleas. The Parliament was so desperate to be heard that hey had to hold him down to make him listen to them. Charles I did not like this behavior so he went 11 years without calling another Parliament. There was also a conflict of religious beliefs. Charles I supported Catholic religion, while the Parliament was Protestant. The King did not have a positive attitude towards Protestants.
Whenever the King felt like he was in trouble he would turn to the Parliament for help, but then again he would turn his back on them at some point.
The Parliament ended up dividing because of opposing religious and political views among its members, and the King wasn’t able to moderate the situation. When Charles noticed that the Parliament was taking control, he ordered to arrest 5 of its members. The Parliament was afraid of military action, so they tried to get the army to respond to them. When Charles saw this he ignored and rejected the bill, and instead, he raised his own army. This is how a Civil War started. At some point in this war the Parliament was ready to make peace, but Charles I refused to listen to them because he was winning battles and feeling powerful. The Scots became an allied against the King. Oliver Cromwell emerged as the radical’s leader, and with his leadership they became ready to take over the King. The Parliament’s army became very powerful including members from all over the nation. They finally defeated the King. When Charles I found himself defeated, he tried to make negotiations with the Parliament, but Cromwell was sick of him. The Parliament brought the King to a final trial, where he was convicted for treason and sentenced to be executed. This was the first public execution of King in Europe.
This episode of history shows how bad things go and how much violence and drama is created when the powers within a government can’t agree and make decisions together. Right now the USA is going through a very important period of change in the government, and the only way things will actually have a positive change is if the powers support each other and find ways to make decisions that will benefit the country, even if not all of them have the same ideas and beliefs.

Religion to the fullest

It was very interesting to finally read something about the Christian religion that I agree with. I have always disagreed with people that are religious just because they don’t know any better or because they are afraid of opening their minds and analyze their beliefs. I enjoy seeing a person who truly enjoys his beliefs and that is completely in love with his religion.
In this history course we have been learning a lot about the development of Catholics and Christians and how the religion was mainly used as a weapon to control people and gain power. Of course there were always people who were truly believers, but the people in power were using it with a different purpose.
Martin Luther King’s “The Freedom of a Christian” was truly enjoyable to read. He found a way to explain what a true Christian is. Martin Luther King says “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful of all, and a subject to anyone”. This view of a Christian is just amazing, and it applies to all religious people no matter what religion they are from. You have to be the one in control of yourself and your surroundings, but at the same time live to help and serve others. This is the perfect balance and something we never saw in religion in previous chapters. If people would have these ideas in the past, they could’ve prevented many wars and violence mainly in the Middle Ages.
Martin Luther King also explains that if you are not true to your religion, you would be performing labors to justify your faith and save yourself and not following the spiritual principles of the religion. This was also very common in the Middle Ages, where people would fight to gain power and conquer new places using their religion as a shield to justify their actions.
“The law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Tim. i. 9). Laws were created because men could not peacefully live and govern themselves, sadly we need rules to be able to interact and respect each other freedom.

Church Rules!

Once again the most interesting topic from this section had to do with religion. I have always believed that religion is something very personal and nobody should be allowed to tell you how to experience it and live it. In the Middle Ages religion was imposed in a horrible way. It was the perfect tool to keep people under control and benefited political interests. You weren’t allowed to question it, so people would simply believe what they were told for fear of being hurt. When people began to show more interest in education, the church wasn’t happy because the more intellectual people became, the more they started questioning their beliefs. The rise of popular Heresies was the reading I was waiting for. After reading all those documents about how religion was developing in the ancient and middle ages, I was thinking: “when will people start questioning “the revealed truth”!!!!”
The rise of anti-clericalism is totally understandable. People started to get more educated what led to more research and examination of the “revealed truth”. From all that research there were some documents written by scholars that made people curious about questioning their beliefs. Also, in those times the Church was deeply involved with politics, Church was way stronger than any other form of government. The Church’s political interests led to inciting civil wars in countries like Germany, what caused a lot of suffering to their people. People also realized that churches were spending a lot of money in their buildings instead of helping the poor, and their main focus was on the wealthy people instead of on those that needed more economic help.
Church didn’t focus in the spiritual side, for me Church seemed to be just another political party that took possession of the government. When people realized all of that they began to think for themselves and changed their beliefs. Could it be possible that nowadays Church’s interests are similar but they are approaching people in different way?

Humanity

I enjoyed reading the 12th century Renaissance. It seemed that in this century people of all classes started to be more concerned about there human side and began to care about growing in every way. If we analyze what was going on at that time, we will be able to see how the changes in the government, education and religion influenced each other.
“Christianity was the matrix of medieval time” (Lectures on Ancient and Medieval European History). Every single aspect of everyday life was influenced by the religion. And in the 12th century Christianity was more oriented towards men, it became more human. I believe that one of the reasons why religion became more human was because people became more intellectual and instead of just believing what they were told to believe they started to analyze their beliefs. For this reason they became more optimistic towards their way of experiencing religion and wouldn’t believe or accept that half of the world would be damned forever. People were ready to have a more personal and intense religion experience.
The government had significant changes as well. People began to be concerned about justice. Before they would trust mainly in divine justice and rule society by God’s laws. The change in religion influenced people to believe that there should be a more efficient justice system. People started to be more concerned about safety and the solution of legal issues. There was also a growing desire for learning. Thousands of men and women were eager to expand their knowledge, which didn’t make the Church very happy. But the Church couldn’t do anything about it and there were a constantly increasing number of students. Because the old monastic and cathedral schools couldn’t absorb all of them, the students move to different places to find education. This is how the universities of Oxford, Paris and Bologna were founded.
In the 12th century people were very interested in bettering themselves. The most interesting part is that material riches weren’t their main goal, it was the spiritual and intellectual enrichment that mattered.