The Decline of the Holy Roman Empire Essay -- Martin Luther, Protestan

The Holy Roman Empire was an empire in central Europe consisting of many territories and ethnicities. Once very powerful, the empire’s authority slowly decreased over centuries and by the Middle Ages the emperor was little more than a figurehead, allowing princes to govern smaller sections of the empire. Though the various ruling princes owed loyalty to the emperor, they were also granted a degree of independence and privileges. The emperor, an elected monarch, needed the allegiance of the princes and other aristocracy to support him, in turn giving them power or money. This tenuous allegiance between powers was greatly strained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as religious reform dominated Europe and religious tensions divided the empire. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the empire’s power significantly declined because of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation split the empire’s states into Protestant and Catholic divisions, straining the peace between territories. Though the relationship between the princes and the emperor had already been tenuous, the princes, seeing the religious divisions, sensed weakness in the empire and further challenged imperial authority. The Holy Roman emperors battled Protestant princes in Germany into the seventeenth century, where tensions were still high from the Reformation and wars of religion – initially contained to the German territories – began to include other territories and states. As more European states joined the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire continued to deteriorate. From the early sixteenth to the mid seventeenth century, the Holy Roman Empire’s power declined greatly because of its internal religious rifts, conflicts (in particular the Thirty Years War, whic... ...> * Crankshaw, Edward. The Habsburgs. New York: Viking, 1971. Print. Greengrass, Mark. The Longman Companion to The European Reformation, C. 1500-1618. London: Longman, 1998. Print. Hsia, R. Po-chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550-1750. London: Routledge, 1989. Print. Linder, Robert Dean. The Reformation Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008. Print. McElwee, W. L. The Reign of Charles V: 1516-1558. London: Macmillan and, 1936. Print. Scribner, Bob. â€Å"Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation.† History Today 1 October 1982: 10-14. Print. â€Å"The Twelve Articles of the Peasants.† 1525. TS. Marxists Internet Archive. The Peasant War in Germany. Web. 11 Nov. 2015. â€Å"Treaty of Westphalia.† 1648. TS. Lillian Goldman Law Library, New Haven. The Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

Academic Excellence Guarantees a Successful Life

Academic excellence guarantees a successful life. Do you agree? This topic also has been discussed with my upper six this year and they have written their version of the article. This sample answer shows beside the appropriate approach and language, how ideas should be generated and developed. The bold phrase at the beginning of each paragraph is the main idea, and after the details it is closed with a summary that relates the argument with the topic. No. I simply do not agree that academic excellence guarantees a successful life. If academic excellence means having a degree from a university, and a successful life is where a person is able to get whatever he desires and be happy with it, than there are other elements in life that helps in making life a success. It is obvious that during the last decade, academic qualification does not guarantee jobs for graduates, much to the frustration of the youngsters, who, throughout their university days were hoping for guaranteed posts in government agencies or steady private firms. Thousands were seen applying for jobs that were unpopular before, taking the teaching profession for example, where only a handful were recruited. Graduates without the extra qualities like the desire to move on, motivation, and communications skills will be left out,proving that academic excellence is not the license for a successful life. The blue-collar sector promises bright future for the non performing school students. The vast and rapid development of the various industries in the country, led by the successful automotive sector, has provided jobs for those with skills rather than academic qualification. School leavers with vocational skills, taking automotive as example, see better future compared to their counterparts on the academic line. Thus, it is a common scene nowadays to see mechanics and technicians in the various fields doing well in life, even without academic excellence. Some people who excel in academics do manage to land in secured jobs in the government and corporate giants, and went on to the highest and powerful position. These are the few lucky ones, as in most cases, there are other factors that help determine their success. It is not a secret that cronyism and nepotism are being practised everywhere, much to the dismay of those who depend only on academic qualification. Unless they really stand out with brilliant and extremely noticeable performance, they should be prepared to be ordinary officers up to the day of retirement. This is evidence that excellence in academic alone does not guarantee success. There are also people without academic excellence doing well in business. Through sheer determination and the urge to succeed, plus a little bit of aid from the bank perhaps, people have proven to be successful, earning way more than the salary of chief executives in the corporate sectors. In fact, with a hand from political influences, some are able to secure projects worth millions of ringgits. Would academic excellence be able provide this? To conclude, academic excellence does help comfort a person’s life, securing him a career to earn a living. Nonetheless, it is simply not enough to guarantee that he will be successful in life, as it takes a lot of other factors to achieve it.

Art Analysis Patssi Valdez And Bernard Buffet - 1023 Words

Art is something that can be described and expressed in several different ways to communicate ideas and emotions through visualizations. Through art we are able to see the world like never before. It inspires and motivates us to be creative. We are able to think further and beyond. In addition, art gives us the ability to understand what artists are trying to display and the messages they are trying to convey through their works. Art can be found anywhere and created by anyone (Dewitte, Larmann, and Shields 29-30). Patssi Valdez and Bernard Buffet are two artists that I found at the University of Southern Mississippi Museum of Art. Patssi Valdez is an American Chicana artist born in 1951 in Los Angeles, California. She is capable of many talents in different forms of media such as performance and conceptual art, installations, murals, fashion design, collage, photography and more (â€Å"Search Collections†). She attended Otis College of Art Design and received her B.F.A. in 19 85. She was also a member of the East Los Angeles Chicano artist collective called ASCO (â€Å"Patssi Valdez†). Valdez has received a tremendous amount of awards for her work from many notable organizations, including the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Brody Arts Fellowship in Visual Arts (â€Å"Offramp Gallery†). Her artwork can be found in the National Hispanic Center Collection, National Museum of