Secularism in AP European History

Italian humanists turn toward this world

Secularism enters the course in Topic 1.2, Italian Renaissance, inside Unit 1's larger question of how recovered classical texts changed European values. The course says plainly that some humanists "advanced secularism and individualism as values," with Petrarch named as a starting point.

The mechanism matters more than the label. Humanists developed philology (close study of a text's language and history), which let Lorenzo Valla show that the Donation of Constantine, a document the papacy used to support its claims to temporal power, was a forgery. Once scholars could check sources for themselves, the authority of universities and the Catholic Church weakened, and education moved from mostly theology toward classical texts.

Admiration for Greek and Roman politics also produced secular models for behavior. Machiavelli's The Prince judges rulers by their results rather than by Christian virtue, and Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier describes the ideal gentleman in terms of skill, grace, and learning. Both are illustrative examples for this idea, so a primary-source excerpt from either could anchor Short-answer Question 2 (Primary source), where you'd explain what values the passage reflects and connect it to the classical revival.

Why Erasmus and Bruegel don't count as "less secular" failures

Topic 1.3 sets up a contrast: the Northern Renaissance kept a stronger religious emphasis. Erasmus used humanist scholarship to reform Christianity, and painters like Pieter Bruegel the Elder showed peasants and village life as worthy subjects.

The common mistake is treating secularism as atheism. Petrarch, Valla, and Erasmus were all believing Christians. In this period, secularism means paying more attention to the here and now while still believing in God. If a multiple-choice question asks what a Renaissance text or painting reflects, an answer about "rejecting Christianity" is almost always wrong. A careful sentence reads like this: Italian humanists promoted secular values within a Christian society, while northern humanists aimed the same tools at religious reform.

Monarchs pull the church under the state, 1450-1648

In Topic 1.5, Italy's political fragmentation is the setting where new ideas of the secular state took shape, and theorists like Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius built political arguments that didn't rest on church authority.

In parallel, rulers strengthened their control over religious institutions. The Concordat of Bologna (1516) gave the French king power to nominate bishops, Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy (1534) made him head of the Church of England, and the Peace of Augsburg (1555) let German princes choose their territory's religion. This is a tricky case. The state was taking control of religion, which isn't the same as a society becoming less religious. These rulers enforced faith hard. What changed was who held final authority.

Topic 2.3 adds the pushback: Calvin and the Anabaptists rejected putting the church under the secular state, and groups like the Huguenots and Puritans turned that disagreement into conflict with monarchs.

Newton's alchemy and the limits of a "secular" Scientific Revolution

Topic 4.2 extends the trend into knowledge itself. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton questioned ancient authority, and Bacon and Descartes promoted reasoning and experiment over inherited texts. Explanations of nature increasingly came from observation and math.

The course builds in a limit, though. Alchemy and astrology kept appeal among elites and some natural philosophers, and Newton and Kepler are listed as examples. Many people still believed spiritual forces governed the universe. A strong essay uses this to show that secularization was uneven, which can help demonstrate complexity if you develop it as part of your argument.

The French Revolution forces the question, and critics answer

By the French Revolution, the shift became direct state action against the church. Revolutionaries seized church lands in 1789 and passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), which made priests state employees who had to swear loyalty to the new order. Topic 5.5 asks how these events shaped political thought, and the course frames two reactions: many were inspired by the Revolution's equality and rights, while critics like Edmund Burke condemned its violence and disregard for traditional authority, including the church.

The thread doesn't end in 1815. Topic 9.14 notes that organized religion kept a role in European life after 1945 despite modern secularism, which gives you a long-range continuity point.

Building a continuity-and-change argument around church authority

Secularism works best on Question 2 (Long essay) or Question 1 (Document-based) when a prompt asks about changing religious or political authority. A top response does three things:

• Defines the term precisely (worldly focus and declining church authority, without assuming a loss of faith).
• Tracks how the change happened in each era: humanist textual criticism, monarchs controlling churches, scientific method, revolutionary seizure of church property.
• Shows continuity alongside change, using Erasmus or Burke to discuss religion's continuing influence, and Newton's alchemy to show that newer scientific methods coexisted with older approaches.

That last move separates a list of examples from an argument about how much things actually changed.