Key People Flashcards
First European to round the Cape of Good Hope (at the southern tip of Africa)
Bartolomeu Dias
First European to sail around Africa, all the way to India
Vasco da Gama
An explorer who sailed to the New World; two continents are named after him.
Amerigo Vespucci
First to circumnavigate the globe (actually, his crew did, since he died before reaching home)
Ferdinand Magellan
First Englishman to circumnavigate the globe; he also helped defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588
Francis Drake
Attacked the Aztecs in modern-day Mexico
Hernando Cortes
- Leader of the Reformation in Germany
- His view of Scripture was dramatically changed after studying Romans 1:16-17
- He unintentionally started the Peasant Revolt
- He translated the Bible into German
Martin Luther
- Defender of Roman Catholicism
- Founder of the Jesuits
- Wrote, “I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.”
Ignatius Loyola
King who established the Anglican Church
Henry VIII
Scottish leader of the Reformation
John Knox
Founded the Amish
Jacob Amman
- Author of “Institutes of the Christian Religion”
- Leader of the Reformation in Geneva, Switzerland
- Well-known for his views on predestination
John Calvin
- Leader of the Reformation in Zurich, Switzerland
- Supported the Sausage Incident
Ulrich Zwingli
Queen who helped establish the Anglican Church as a medium between Roman Catholicism and Puritanism
Elizabeth I
A violent Anabaptist who took over the city of Munster, declaring that the end of the world was at hand; he was eventually killed and his body was put in a cage which was hung on a church
John of Leiden
- One of the most influential Anabaptist leaders
- Committed to pacifism
- Established the Mennonites
Menno Simons
First to claim that the earth revolves around the sun
Nicolaus Copernicus
Wrote an important book on human anatomy
Andreas Vesalius
Persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for his views on heliocentrism
Galileo Galilei
Explained that the planets orbit the sun through the force of gravity
Isaac Newton
Discovered that the planets move in elliptical orbits
Johannes Kepler
- English king nearly killed by the Gunpowder plot
- The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 fled his persecution (he did not like Puritans)
James I
Overthrown and beheaded during the English Civil War because he was an Absolutist
Charles I
English King during the Restoration
Charles II
Overthrown during the Glorious (“Bloodless”) Revolution because he was a Roman Catholic Absolutist
James II
- Daughter of James II who became queen of England after he was overthrown
- Her husband, who became king of England at the same time and who was originally a prince from the Netherlands
William and Mary
- “Lord Protector” who ruled England after Charles I was beheaded
- A strict Puritan who fought on the side of the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War
Oliver Cromwell
King of Spain who went to war against England and the Netherlands in an attempt to control them politically and convert them to Roman Catholicism
Philip II
French King who opposed the Huguenots; advised by Cardinal Richelieu
Louis XIII
French King known as the “Sun King”; he ruled France 72 years and built Versailles; he revoked the Edict of Nantes, thereby taking away the religious freedom fo the Huguenots
Louis XIV
An English political philosopher who promoted Absolutism in his book “Leviathan”
Thomas Hobbes
An English political philosopher who promoted Constitutionalism and supported the power of the people to revolt against unjust rulers; he had enormous influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States
John Locke
A French political philosopher who promoted Absolutism, especially the Divine Right of Kings
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
