This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part I . Martin Luther did not intend to destroy the Catholic Church, nor did he intend to start a separate church. Luther wanted to reform the Church, to bring it back to what it was meant to be—the pure Bride of Christ. Luther was not alone in wanting to reform the Church. Catholic humanists like Desiderius Erasmus of Holland, Thomas More of England, and the Cardinal Francisco Jiménez of Castile protested as loudly as Lut

This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise . The vigorous Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, had at last, it seemed, stabilized the government of France following the confusions that had followed the French Revolution. With peace established in France, Napoleon began to harbor the dream of a restoration of French power in North America. In 1800, he entered into secret negotiations with Spain over Louisiana, a vast territory stretching from New Orleans i

This text comes from our book, Hope for the Ages . By becoming Catholic and uniting most of Gaul under his rule, Chlodevech had established the first Catholic Germanic kingdom in Europe. Though the significance of this achievement was not apparent in his time or for over 200 years after Chlodevech’s death, history would later understand its meaning. The Germanic peoples would gradually be weaned away from their paganism and Arianism and drawn together by the unifying force of

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part II . Throughout the winter of 1815, the Congress of Vienna had continued its work, despite the return of Napoleon. By June 9, 1815, nine days before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Congress had signed its “Final Act”—its settlement for Europe. At the heart of this agreement was Metternich’s goal that the boundaries of the European states should, as far as possible, return to what they had been before the French Revo

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part I . How to heal the Great Schism was the most important question of the time, but no one could come up with a solution. Finally, in 1394, the theology faculty at the University of Paris came up with one—have both popes resign and a new pope elected in their place. The university actually demanded that both popes resign, and the clergy of France, Bohemia, Hungary, and Navarre said they would not obey the Avignon pope un

This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise . Of all Europeans, it was the French people who most warmly supported the American Revolution. This at first might seem strange, for France was a highly centralized monarchy—just the kind of government that it seems would most oppose revolution. Yet, it had been only 14 years since the Treaty of Paris gave all of Canada to Great Britain, and many of the French and their king wanted to see their ancient enemy, England,