ABSTRACT
The beginning of the early modern era has sometimes been placed in the late thirteenth or mid-fourteenth centuries. The Renaissance and humanism also fall into this transitional period between 1450 and the early sixteenth century because by then, the impact of these movements was fully felt on the Italian peninsula and was also starting to be felt north of the Alps. Jewish communities were often protected by the authorities because they provided the valuable service of money-lending to the Christian community (Christian churches regarded money-lending as usury). In the British Isles, Calvinism was most influential in Scotland through the reformer John Knox (1513-1572), but Calvinist theology was also an important influence on the Protestant state churches of England and Ireland. During the Thirty Years' War, which started in Bohemia and involved the German princes, the Habsburg emperors, Denmark, Sweden, and France as major players, religion and politics were also intertwined.
