Pope Innocent III authorized the Massacre at Béziers (1209) that may have resulted in the deaths of 20,000 men, women, and children. The group the pope targeted were called [BLANK-1]. They were a minority Christian sect located primarily in Southern France who believed that the Old and New Testament spoke of different gods. According to this sect, the creator god of Genesis was cruel, violent, vindictive, and capricious – they believed he was Satan himself. The New Testament god, according to this faith, was the Christian God, Jehovah: typified by kindness, mercy, love, and forgiveness.

In 1152, the heir to the English throne, Henry II, married a powerful woman and great heiress named [BLANK-1]. She was formerly the Queen of France and two years after marrying Henry, she became Queen of England. With their marriage, Henry was able to extend his claims of control of French lands, further complicating relations between England and France.

After the splitting of the faith with the Protestant Reformation and years of religious conflicts, the Catholic Church launched a massive effort in their own right to remedy perceived problems of greed, corruption, and poorly trained and poorly acting clergy. This effort was known as the Catholic Reformation. In addition to requiring bishops to live in their dioceses, ending secret marriages, and establishing better methods for educating the clergy, the Catholic Reformation also featured the rise of new Catholic orders. One such new order of Catholics was founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540. This group, called [BLANK-1], emphasized education and missionary work.

Between 1455 and 1471, the ducal houses of York and Lancaster fought [BLANK-1] in England. The conflict led to the fall of the Plantagenet Dynasty and the foundation of the Tudor line by Henry VII.

A protégé of his patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, [BLANK-1] was a youthful prodigy and an example of humanist thought during the Italian Renaissance. In 1486, his most notable work, On the Dignity of Man, made an impassioned summary of peoples’ positive qualities and capacities for learning.

Particularly following the Iconoclastic Controversy, [BLANK-1] was particularly bland with non-specific depictions of people, poor perspective, poor anatomy, and repetitive themes. The Catholic Church was overwhelmingly the dominant patron of these works and set guidelines for the themes they requested. Madonna and Child, the Annunciation, and the Crucifixion of Jesus were common subjects.

[BLANK-1] formed a type of world economy during the Middle Ages, linking products, people, and ideas from across continents. It was centered on the Indian Ocean and it increased from the seventh to the fourteenth century.

A 1648 treaty known as [BLANK-1] is one of the most meaningful events in human history. This treaty not only ended the devastating Thirty Years’ War, but it also made Calvinism and Lutheranism recognized Christian sects and brought an end to the large-scale religious violence in Europe for many decades. This treaty further recognized the independence of more than 300 Germanic provinces and principalities. Perhaps most importantly, it set the foundation for modern conceptions of the nation-state and national sovereignty.

Decades of religious violence between Catholic and Protestant Christians was sparked by the Protestant Reformation. A 1556 agreement known as [BLANK-1], however, officially recognized Lutheranism as a legitimate Christian religion. The Habsburg patriarch, and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, was forced to sign this treaty in spite of being one of Catholicism’s staunchest supporters.

Accomplished by Mehmet II in 1453, [BLANK-1] is one of the most impactful events in world history. With this event, the Ottoman Empire was effectively born. As a result, the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) that had reigned for more than 1,000 years collapsed. Additionally, it paved the way for Muslim expansion into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, leading to the enslavement of white Christian boys by Muslim Turks. It also closed Black Sea Markets to European traders, including the prized slave markets of white Slavic slaves from the Caucasus Mountains. As a result, Europeans turned to Africa in order to acquire slaves. From that point on, African slaves would be central to European slave trading.