PortalsOS

During the Italian Renaissance, the Catholic Church became a major patron of the arts, funding projects like St. Peter's Basilica and embracing Hermeticism and Platonism.

The irony of the Catholic Church's fear of Protestant volatility is that their rigid response may have inadvertently fostered atheism. Both Catholics and Protestants over-relied on religious rules to combat each other, leading to centuries of brutal wars, including the Thirty Years' War, which devastated central Europe.

During the early modern period, governments in Catholic Europe, such as Spain and France, collaborated with noblemen to suppress the merchant classes, leading to a decline in economic prosperity compared to Northwestern Europe.

The Catholic and Protestant churches were powerful in pre-modern Europe due to the weak state, providing social organization and fostering ideals of personal responsibility and individualism.

In the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Church's influence was so pervasive in Western Europe that it shaped the very identity of its people. They identified first as Christians rather than Europeans, and this religious framework influenced everything from science to ethics.