Cox, Heisner 1

Caroline Cox, Madeline Heisner

Bennett
Humanities II- 6th
20th January 2016
Argument Essay
Throughout history, wars were frequently caused by conflict of belief. The violence that
occurred in the early modern era was heavily rooted in the religious beliefs that one religion was
meant by God to be superior over the other. Many religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam shared this belief, causing large groups of religious citizens to often break into unnecessary
conflict. During the early modern era, violence was motivated by group or shared beliefs and
religions rather than ones individual opinion or character. It is believed that every individual
human is naturally good at heart, and although human nature is often flawed, individual people
do not initially have bad intentions. However, when an individual feels challenged by those
around them to follow a crowd, or blend with those around them, their initial morals can become
lost and destroyed.
Since the beginning of Christianity, the followers of Christ have valued communal beliefs
more than those of an individual. Patricia Lopes Don viewed Christian missionaries as enactors
of religious violence and believed that missionaries were forcing the right religion upon their
subjects (Sanberg 14). Naming Christianity the correct or superior religion proves that violence
is motivated by a group, because without others backing an opinion, one would not be able to
consider their belief as right or wrong. Pope Urban IIs sermon at the Council of Clermont in
1095 sparked change in the citizens, and fueled the crusades, a series of holy wars in which the
goal was to gain back holy places in Palestine. The fourth out of sixth crusade resulted in the

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Ottoman Turks destroying Constantinople in 1453 (Litonjua 313). Led by Turkish forces, they
broke through the walls of the city, and led massacres in the cities, highlighting that the large
group of people were motivated by their shared Turkish beliefs, rather than their individual
opinions. One individual often does not believe solely in destroying anothers city or beliefs for
no reason, however when placed in a group of people, opinions tend to become bigger and blow
up an immense amount. Similar to the effects that peer pressure would have on a teenager, in an
extremist group containing many followers, one is inevitably going to feel forced to follow those
around them.
Megan Armstrong believes that the Wars of Religion were a cover for a war that
embraced the advancement of aggressive Islamic rule (Sanberg 15). During the early modern era,
the amount of muslim extremists grew exponentially as did their aggression. The battles being
referred to as Wars of Religion highlights the fact like war and conflict were derived from
religious argument. The Catholic Church during the 18th century was often confronted with
religious values that circulated throughout the Enlightenment. These challenging ideals
eventually led to loads of violence and fighting in this region, due to the fact that the Catholic
Church would fight with everything it had simply just to resist the ideas of the Enlightenment,
democracy, as well as liberalism. (Litonjua 315) The Catholic Church provided an immense
amount of force on imposing moral beliefs. This illustrates that individual ideals played no part
in this, due to the immense amount of irony in the situation. Morals and moral belief systems
(like Christianity/Catholicism) are essentially established to promote kindness, loving your
neighbor, etc. Violence and force due to intolerance promote the exact opposite of the principles
that their religion was initially rooted in. The behavior and attitude of groups of religious
extremists or terrorists is genuinely hypocritical.

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Although the motivations behind violence are infinite and difficult to prove, the role that
religion played is obvious and definite. Though religion is known to bring those together, ones
original morals can be lost in the uproar of a group.