HIS 101 - Western Civilization to 1689 - Final Exam Study Questions

What was the most significant outcome of the Fourth Lateran Council?

codification of church practices

The Indo-European peoples were agents of

cultural penetration and engagement.

The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum depicts Titus's soldiers carrying back to Rome

the holy goods removed from the Temple in Jerusalem.

What did medieval and renaissance popes depend on to maintain their relative political autonomy?

the income and power they drew from the Papal States

How did Europe integrate and make sense of the mass of ancient knowledge flooding the west?

through the creation of the university

What was the goal of the Laws of Burgos and the New Laws of 1542?

to define proper government and treatment of the native Americas, and weaken or gradually abolish the encomienda system

What was the purpose of the Arsenal in Venice?

to equip and repair the republic's warships and merchant vessels

The wealth of the Mycenaeans came primarily from

trade and war.

The Song of Roland celebrates

vassalage

Where did our species, homo sapiens sapiens, reach its basic form?

Africa

Why did Alexander's Greek and Macedonian men begin to turn against him after the conquest of Persia?

Alexander had begun to adopt Asian customs and married a Bactrian princess.

How were the Greek gods and the social and class rigor of Hesiod's age connected?

Archaic Age aristocrats justified their position in part by asserting that they were the descendants of gods and heroes.

Constantine called a great church council that met at Nicaea in 325 to address a dispute over what doctrine?

Arianism

Along with new religious orders and the resurgence of ecstatic mysticism, the renewed vitality of the Catholic Church was evident in the reform agenda of the popes and the doctrinal decisions made by the

Council of Trent.

Alexander's final defeat of Darius took place in 331 at

Gaugamela

In 390-387 BCE, Rome was threatened by an invasion of northern Italy by the

Gauls.

During his first voyage under the sponsorship of Francis I, French explorer Jacques Cartier mapped the

Gulf of St. Lawrence and portions of Canada's Atlantic maritime provinces.

What did Columbus hope to achieve by sailing west across the Atlantic?

He sought to reach Asia.

Why did Clovis finally convert to orthodox Christianity?

He was looking for victory on the battlefield through religion.

Why did Luther's core insights undermine the Catholic Church?

His theology made the church and its clergy and rituals unnecessary and, indeed, an obstacle blocking Christians from the truth.

Luther was indebted to humanist ideas about how to handle texts. Why can it be said that he was never a humanist in spirit?

His view of the world and of humankind was too dark and pessimistic to have shared in humanist optimism about human potential and human capacities.

How did the Edict of Nantes end the French Wars of Religion by setting out the means by which Huguenots and Catholics could co-exist within France?

It differentiated between loyalty to the crown and religious faith, and restored certain civil rights to the French Protestants.

How did Hellenistic art depart from the earlier concerns of classical Greek art?

It embraced the particular and the realistic.

Why did conciliarism ultimately founder?

It remained the pope's prerogative to call universal councils of the church.

The artist of the High Renaissance who was interested in a wide range of scientific and technical questions as well as art was

Leonardo da Vinci.

Among the places Alexander conquered, besides Persia, were

Phoenicia, Gaza, and Egypt.

The most popular artist of the High Renaissance was

Raphael

Why did Romans despise Cleopatra?

She was both foreign and royal.

Florence's oligarchic government was led by a nine-member committee called the

Signoria

Who was the greatest systematic thinker of the Middle Ages?

Thomas Aquinas

The author of the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church was

Thomas Cramner.

Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days constitute

a description of the Archaic Age circle of life that led from the gods on high down to human work and suffering.

After the Carolingians, Europe entered a period of rapid

decentralization

What essential feature did Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization share?

dependence upon a great river complex

Romans summoned the gods of another city to their side with the

evocatio

The growing market for personal Books of Hours and Psalters was evidence of the

growing privatization or personalization of religion.

Which of the following best characterizes Golden Age sculpture?

mathematical precision of the human body in motion

The ideology of vassalage glorified

service and loyalty.

While Christian religious thought turned chiefly to matters of theology, Islamic religious thought centered primarily on

shari'ah

The speed of unfolding events after 1521 brought out Luther's own

social and political conservatism.

The Archaic Age was never able to overcome the

stubborn independence of each polis.

In the Hellenistic world, the beliefs, practices, forms, and divinities of different religions often combined in a process called

syncretism

At the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE,

ten thousand heavily armed Athenian hoplites defeated the Persian force.

Most of the African slaves who entered the European economy through the hands of Portuguese traders ended their journey in

the Canary and Madeira Islands.

At the Marburg Colloquy, Luther and Zwingli found they had a great deal in common, but they could not reconcile their beliefs concerning the

the Eucharist.

The greatest thinker of the Carolingian age was

the Irish master Eriugena.

What is the first great piece of Egyptian art called?

the Palette of Narmer

What was the issue at the heart of the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV?

the wealth and control of the French church

What was the primary reason that Alexander the Great invaded Persia?

to obtain gold to replenish his treasuries

Prehistory is normally thought of as that period before the invention of

writing

As the immediate presence of the apostles and their designates faded away, what became increasingly important in Christianity?

written texts

One of the most vocal critics of the Spanish colonial system was

Bartolommeo de Las Casas.

Otto sought to open up relations with the

Byzantines

Clovis was the ruler of the

Franks

The three members of the Caesarian Faction were

Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar.

How did the Little Ice Age affect the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland?

The Norse disappeared from Greenland.

Why did King John return to captivity in England after he was freed?

The duke of Anjou's escape and betrayal of the chivalric code shamed King John.

Why did lay brothers and sisters form societies outside of the formal church after the plague?

They preferred simplicity of faith and wanted to live in imitation of Christ.

What did Luther mean by his assertion that the true Christian church was made up of a "priesthood of all believers"?

All people, not just clerics, could establish a direct relationship with God.

Native Americans were the descendants of peoples who had migrated across the Bering Straits from

Asia

The success and ultimate failure of what dynasty determined much of the territorial and cultural character of the Middle Ages?

Carolingian

The century of imperial disorder that began with the accession of Commodus ended only with the rise of what emperor?

Diocletian

The leaders of the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar were

Brutus and Cassius.

How did Byzantium's first great conflict with Islam shape the empire?

Byzantium was forced to militarize the state.

Why did medieval people revere saints?

Saints seemed to offer supernatural protection.

Which European monarchy led the way in establishing an overseas territorial empire?

Spain

The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the non-European world between which two European powers?

Spain and Portugal

The denarius was made possible, in part, by the establishment of what by the Roman Senate in 289 BCE?

a mint

What did John of Salisbury and the intellectuals that he found in Paris seek to achieve?

a rational explanation of the world that reflected the divine will

The year 146 BCE was a watershed in the transition of Rome from

a republic to a quasi-empire.

What assisted the drive toward centralization and state control during the High Middle Ages?

a strong bureaucracy

Among the important techniques the church developed for winning over the countryside was a policy of

accommodation with popular pagan customs.

For most Romans, Christianity was

an insulting and dangerous superstition.

Behind many of the Greek settlement ventures of the Archaic Age may lie the

building social tensions of the Archaic Age poleis.

The intersection point of the many Carolingian cultures was the

church

At the time of the Renaissance, the governments of most of the northern Italian states were

communes

Çatal Hüyük was a

community of nearly a thousand rectangular houses in Anatolia.

The purpose of the Statute of Laborers was to

fix wages at pre-plague rates.

A central factor in the decline of the Roman Empire was the

high cost of defending the empire.

After the Carolingian collapse, what was the first great problem that Europe faced?

how to redistribute power

Among the threats the Roman Republic faced after 146 BCE was

imperial overreach.

Attic or Athenian Greek, which dominated Golden Age Greece, was replaced by

koine

With most of Europe lacking effective monarchies between 880 and 950, who filled the power vacuum?

local lords

Which religious agents led the way in the transformation of the west?

monks

Where did Luther's political sympathies lie during the German Peasants' War?

on the side of order and established secular power

The Roman Senate was composed mostly of

patricians

The chief patrons outside of Florence who commissioned works from Florentine artists were the

popes

Why did burghers and merchants in many towns in France, the Netherlands, and Italy set out their rights in charters?

to insure their relative freedom from noble and church interference

Why did Romans divide power in their government between the two guardians of the Republic, each of whom could veto the actions of the other?

to introduce a system of checks to limit the power of a single ruler

What was the primary goal of the Italian and Portuguese model for the establishment of permanent settlements?

to locate potential markets and establish trading centers

What was the cultural parallel to crusade in the twelfth-century Latin west?

translation centers

The first to give chivalric meaning and glory to the knight's role were the

vernacular poets of Provence in southern France.

The greatest provocation that led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War most likely was

Edward III's claim to the right to confiscate Gascony.

What did the Catholic doctrine of salvation teach?

Faith, good works, and the confession of sins led to divine forgiveness.

As a result of the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean, new ideas and cultural influences came to Italy, including

Greek learning.

What role did Persia play in the Peloponnesian War?

It lent naval support to Sparta and financed the continuing Spartan war effort.

The most well-known nineteenth-century proponent of the Renaissance was the Swiss historian

Jacob Burckhardt.

Renaissance humanism emphasized the study of what languages and literatures?

Latin and Greek

Just as Augustus had a supreme military operative in Agrippa, he possessed a sophisticated political operative and cultural advisor in

Maecenas.

The Romanesque Central Middle Ages took place from

900 to 1100