Introduction > From the Reformation to the Revolutions
1455 The first Gutenberg Bibles were printed in Mainz
1517 Martin Luther posted the 95 theses against papal indulgences in Wittenberg
1534 The Act of Supremacy made Henry VIII the head of the Church of England
1538 Guillaume Postel was appointed chair of Arabic at the Collège Royal in Paris
1598 The Edict of Nantes guaranteed the rights of French Protestants
1613 Thomas Erpenius became the first full professor of Arabic at Leiden
1618 The beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in continental northern Europe
1636 Edward Pococke was appointed chair of Arabic at Oxford
1649 The execution of the Anglican King Charles I during the second English Civil War
1685 The revocation of the Edict of Nantes made France a Roman-Catholic state
1688 The overthrow of King James II, the last Roman-Catholic monarch to reign over Britain
1755 The disaster of the Lisbon earthquake posed the most important contemporary challenge to Leibniz’s theodicy concept
1776 The Declaration of Independence by the thirteen United States of America
1789 The storming of the Bastille in Paris
1794 The execution of Robespierre ended the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror whose bloodshed and violence formed the backdrop of the nineteenth-century discourse about the role of religion in a democratic and liberal society
1804 The French government enacted the Code civil, which is the first modern legal code to grant full citizenship irrespective of religious affiliations