In order to provide further clarity, I have created a set of sample essays in response to an LEQ prompt comparing the Italian and the Northern Renaissance. Each sample essay includes a detailed explanation of how each point has been earned. Included in the packet are one essay that would receive a maximum score and three essays that would receive middling scores that would put a student on the path to passing an exam.  This set of sample responses is completely free, but please consider supporting my annual 8 Month Writing Clinic if you would like to see more sample essays like this. The 8 Month Writing Clinic is a subscription-based course that provides teachers and students with videos, sample essays, and other resources to help prepare for the writing sections of the AP US History, AP European History, and AP World History exams. If you are a teacher who has participated in a recent AP Euro Reading, your feedback is always appreciated if you take issue with how I have awarded any of the points, please don't hesitate to contact me. Teachers with questions are more than welcome to contact me with questions, as well.
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Click here to view and print these lecture notes in PDF format. The year was 1527, and Pope Clement VII had made a big mistake. He had formed the League of Cognac, allying with France in hopes of driving Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, out of Northern Italy. His gamble had not paid off, and the troops of the Holy Roman Empire had scaled the walls of Rome. After a decisive victory over the French, the poorly-paid imperial troops had mutinied and demanded to march on Rome, where they could be paid in plunder. And plunder they did. Once inside the city, imperial troops abandoned all discipline and killed thousands. Many of those who survived fled the city and Clement only survived thanks to a heroic stand of his Swiss Guards. Rome, formerly a city of over 50,000 inhabitants, was reduced to 10,000 residents by the time imperial troops finally had their fill and abandoned the city eight month later. The Sack of Rome taught Pope Clement a valuable lesson about the consequences of challenging the most powerful man in Europe, but a high price had been paid for his foolishness. The papacy would never regain command the glory and prestige that it once had. At the height of the Renaissance, Rome had been a center of cultural achievement. Not anymore. The year was 1527, and the High Renaissance was over.  As Rome was being sacked, an artistic movement was already developing that challenged the conventions of Renaissance art with its insistence on perfect symmetry, proportion, grace, and stability. The masters of the High Renaissance had produced works that so thoroughly perfected this ideal that there was nothing left that anyone could do to rival their achievements while playing by the same rules. Even Michelangelo, the only great master of the High Renaissance who was still alive after the Sack of Rome, took his later work in a different direction. While not altogether different from the art of the High Renaissance, a new “manner” is noticeable enough in these works to give the works of the “Silver Age” of Late Renaissance art its own name. Art historians have chosen to call it Mannerism.
Michelangelo’s work had always portrayed a sense of awe and grandeur, a quality that contemporary Italian observers referred to as terribilità (terror), but the works he produced at the peak of his career balanced this with a sense of grace. His later work brought this terribilità quality to the forefront, as is seen in The Last Judgment. One does not look at this painting and think first that it is beautiful, but awe-inspiring and disturbing. Immediately, the painting was criticized for the over-muscled figures, the predominance of nudity beyond what was considered tasteful (especially for a church altar), and the incorporation of pagan themes. The suffering of the damned is portrayed with vivid emotion beyond the acceptable conventions of Renaissance art. The massive work appeared to exhaust the artist, as he chose to portray himself in the painting as the flayed St. Bartholomew. Michelangelo’s final paintings, The Conversion of Saul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter throw grace and symmetry out the window in order to fully capture vividly emotional and intense scenes from Christian history. His portrayal of Jesus in The Conversion of Saul appears in force like a modern video game character on the attack, confronting Saul with wrath in a scene of pure chaos. These final works did not gain a lot of praise at the time and rarely come up today in a discussion of Michelangelo’s work. Michelangelo is remembered first and foremost for the works he produced in his younger years as a master of the High Renaissance. As Michelangelo, in his later years, was rejecting the constraints of Renaissance conventions, younger artists were also choosing to experiment with new techniques rather than try to compete with the likes of Raphael and da Vinci. One of these younger artists, Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (the Little One from Parma), showed an early interest in using art to portray an augmented reality. Even before the Sack of Rome, he was experimenting with new approaches. As a young man, he painted at Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, an outside the box idea at a time when artists were obsessed with idealized realistic proportions. Parmigianino’s Conversion of St. Paul, completed over a decade before Michelangelo’s painting of the same subject, shows Paul unbalanced and in a state of fearful awe. In The Vision of St. Jerome, the central figure of John the Baptist shows a striking contrast to da Vinci’s. While da Vinci’s John the Baptist is idealized, with smooth skin and a straight finger, Parmigianino presents the Baptist as elongated, with blemishes on his skin and an elongated, crooked finger pointing to the Christ Child.  Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck is, perhaps, the most iconic Mannerist painting, presenting several challenges to traditional Renaissance conventions while not abandoning the style, altogether. The Madonna’s neck is elongated to give her a swanlike elegance, while the Christ-child, also elongated, rests precariously on her lap as if He could fall at any moment. Not only is the Christ-child imbalanced, but all of the admiring angels stand on the same side of the Madonna in a rejection of Renaissance symmetry. The Madonna’s foot is perched awkwardly on a cushion and projects outward, seemingly jutting out of the canvas. In this series of subtle challenges to the strict artistic standards of the Renaissance, Parmigianino and other Mannerist painters established themselves as “the first ‘modern’ artists” in the words of E.H. Gombrich, author of The Story of Art. Late Mannerism is most apparent in the paintings of Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco (the Greek). El Greco was born on Crete and distinguished himself as a painter in Western Europe, first in Rome and then in Spain, where he produced his best-known works. Like Parmigianino, he preferred elongated figures, as can be seen in his painting of St. Andrew and St. Francis, but his works show even more independence from the traditional Renaissance style. His painting of Laocoön, with its elongated and vulnerable figures fearfully succumbing to snakes sent by the gods, contrasts powerfully with a Greco-Roman sculpture of the same event, which features more powerful and idealized forms. El Greco’s most famous painting, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, provides something of a foreshadowing of the Baroque style, projecting the grandeur of the Catholic Faith in his portrayal of the legendary account of the Count of Orgaz being buried personally by St. Stephen and St. Augustine. Unlike Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, the painting is faithful to Catholic doctrine and is devoid of pagan elements. The painting also shows Byzantine influences that were present in El Greco’s works, showing both a heavenly and earthly plane, similar to traditional Byzantine icons of the Dormition of the Mother of God. El Greco’s works are widely praised for their originality as being ahead of their time. His later works, such as View of Toledo and The Opening of the Fifth Seal, could easily be mistaken for twentieth century art by a casual observer. His work is believed to have had a powerful influence on several modern artists. The Mannerists, in their willingness to challenge prevailing artistic conventions, will forever live as examples to anyone seeking to produce something new and original. Mannerism is mentioned in AP European History Key Concept 1.1, which states, "Mannerist and Baroque artists employed distortion, drama, and illusion in their work. Monarchies, city-states, and the church commissioned these works as a means of promoting their own stature and power." El Greco is mentioned as an illustrative example, but students may use examples from Michelangelo, Parmigianino, and other Mannerist painters when presenting original evidence for free response items.
At the turn of the seventeenth century, European monarchs began to consolidate power, undermining old feudal institutions, such as representative bodies and the nobility, in order to establish absolute rule. This radical centralization of government power required a philosophical foundation to justify it. Jacques Bossuet, a Catholic bishop who was Louis XIV’s court preacher, provided this foundation in Politics Derived from Sacred Scripture, in which he laid out the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. Bossuet used Scripture to justify royal authority without checks and balances, claiming that God has placed kings on their throne and it is the responsibility of the people to obey divinely appointed authorities without question. Rebellion against the king is rebellion against God.
James I of England (and VI of Scotland) was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings and published some of his own texts about the subject, which he shared with his son, Charles I. According to James, while a king could not be limited in his authority by the people, a king would be called upon to account for his actions at the Last Judgment. With this in mind, Christian kings were expected to conduct themselves with the fear of God, acting as “God’s lieutenants” on earth. Louis XIV of France was another advocate of the Divine Right of Kings. His decision to rescind the Edict of Nantes, which had granted limited toleration to French Protestants, was partly an attempt to fulfill his obligations as a divine right monarch. He did not want to hear from Jesus, “Louis, why did you allow your people to practice a false religion?”
A great deal of the evidence that Locke used was from the Bible, arguing that people had the right to form governments by virtue of their common descent from Adam. Thomas Paine, in an effort to encourage American colonists to sever ties with the British monarchy, referenced anti-monarchy passages from the Bible in Common Sense.  Both Locke and Paine used ideas from Enlightenment philosophy in order to argue against divine right monarchy. Enlightenment philosophers valued rational thinking and did not place the same weight on sacred texts, such as the Bible, as a foundation for arguments. Of course, both still used the Bible in their works – Locke because he was a Christian writing in the seventeenth century, and Paine because he knew that references to the Bible would be seen as credible by his audience. In Western Europe, divine right absolutism did not survive the Enlightenment era. In England and Scotland, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 obliged the monarch to share power with Parliament. The French Revolution saw the abolition of the French monarchy, although it returned in various forms in the nineteenth century. In Central and Eastern Europe, “enlightened absolutists” continued to wield absolute power but attempted to do so according to Enlightened ideals. This content aligns with Key Concept 2.1 in the AP European History Course Description.
One of the things people ask me for more than anything else is sample responses. I plan to be more attentive to this request in the coming months and I am going to start off by posting sample responses I've drafted for the 2018 AP European History DBQ. To be clear, these are sample responses that I have drafted myself as someone who is an experienced AP Reader, but I have not scored this essay prompt professionally. I certainly invite anyone who wants to offer feedback to do so. Pretty soon, I plan to have a Google Form ready so that people who have read this question professionally, can offer feedback if they disagree with any of my conclusions and want to help make these samples more valuable teaching tools. THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. MORE SAMPLE RESPONSES WILL BE ADDED SOON.
Not All Heroes Wear Uniforms
I've been a big fan of Albert.io and its practice questions for some time now. They have created an amazing product that not only helps students practice AP-style multiple choice questions, but also to know where they stand in their exam preparation. Albert's free AP Score Calculators are the best that I've seen and the products they offer to students and teachers are an amazing value. But it gets better...Albert has now released FULL PRACTICE EXAMS available to subscribing classrooms and individual student subscribers. During my recent Live Hangout with Will from Albert, he offered several AMAZING DEALS to my audience:
People often ask me what review book I recommend or what I think of this review book or that review book. There are so many review books out there that I don't have time to look through all of them, but that's okay because I have found a great one and don't see the need to look any further. Chris Freiler's AP Achiever text for AP European History is full of concise content summaries, exam strategies, and practice items. Students using this text have the benefit of using a review book written by someone who was part of the team that redesigned the AP European History exam a few years ago. In addition to that, Chris has participated in the AP European History Reading for several years - many of those years in the capacity of Assistant Chief Reader and Question Leader.
The British Empire's Rough StartIn the nineteenth century, the British presided over the largest empire in history. It was often written around that time that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” But this was not always the case. As with many success stories, the construction of the British Empire began with a series of failures. During the Age of Exploration, the Spanish were the first to emerge as Europe’s preeminent colonial power. The Spanish were the first to create a permanent settlement in the present-day United States with the founding of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida in 1565.
The first settlement founded in Virginia was named Jamestown in honor of Elizabeth’s successor, James I. The colony, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. This makes 1607 an important turning point in the history of Colonial America, as the English, who would become the dominant colonial power in North America, had finally established a permanent colonial presence.
While Smith’s leadership is credited with saving the colony in its infancy, he soon returned to England. During the winter of 1609-1610, nobody ate regardless of whether they worked or not. Only 60 of over 200 colonists survived the colony’s “starving time.” Unable to keep people alive – much less turn a profit – Jamestown was not on its way to becoming any more successful than the previous venture at Roanoke. Enter John Rolfe. Although Rolfe is more famous in pop culture for marrying Pocahontas, his agricultural innovations were much more important to the future of the colony. Previously, tobacco had been known to the English, but it had not become popular because they didn’t like how it tasted. Rolfe cultivated a sweeter strain of tobacco that became popular in England, striking “brown gold” that turned Virginia into a profitable colony with an economy driven by the cultivation of tobacco as a cash crop. Sir Walter Raleigh, while imprisoned in the Tower of London, wrote of tobacco, “It was my companion at that most miserable time.” Tobacco and the Cash Crop Labor Economy
The Virginians and the Powhatan Indians
347 English settlers were killed in this attack, including several people who were in the home of an ancestor of this writer (if he had been home, you would not be reading these lecture notes). Some colonists were luckier than others, able to find safety within the walls of palisaded plantations. The Virginia Colony survived, but the crown was not pleased with the Virginia Company’s management. In 1624, the crown revoked the Virginia Company’s charter and Virginia became a royal colony – a status that it would maintain until declaring its independence from Britain in 1776.
Ever since I was a pre-teen, I was drawn to politics. I grew up in a family that talked politics often and the summer between eighth and ninth grade, when most kids were playing outside, I got my dad to drop me off at a gubernatorial campaign office four days a week. I had a blast and found myself in the midst of a great community of people - most of whom were considerably older than me and took me under their wing. I still keep in touch with some of those people to this day. Over the years, I continued to be involved in politics and always considered it a civic duty to keep up with the news every day. I never questioned that it was the duty of every American voter to do so. Needless to say, I embraced the drama of the 2016 election as politics became a matter of general interest and presidential debates were looked upon with the same excitement as sporting events. When YouTube and meme culture were added to the mix, the 2016 election cycle was more exciting than any election that had ever happened... Until it wasn't.  There was a time when the election was fun and games. And then Jeb(!) dropped out and something happened... before that, anyone - no matter what their political leanings - had been able to share a Jeb(!) meme and laugh. But without Jeb(!), that common ground was yanked out from under us and as a Trump presidency began to look like a potential reality, battle lines were drawn between those who saw potential benefits and others who saw a national catastrophe in the making. A Nation at War with ItselfAs someone with a modest internet following, I tried to remain neutral in public for a time, but like others with equally modest and still others with much larger internet followings, I eventually succumbed and joined a camp. When the battle lines are drawn, it's difficult to sit on the sidelines - especially for someone who had always embraced politics and active citizenship as a lifestyle. I fielded my share of insults from people who didn't even know me personally, though for every insult, there was an encouraging word from someone else. Every insult from without and word of encouragement from within tied me closer to the Trump camp. The election became a distraction from my own projects, such as my YouTube channel and my website, and I became more concerned about what was going on in the political arena than about my life's passion of providing online education to the public. Don't get me wrong. I met a lot of great people - not just in the Trump camp but also Bernie and Hillary supporters who exchanged good-natured discussions, barbs, and memes with me throughout the campaign. It was a privilege to broadcast live with Trump supporters, Democrats, and third party supporters. Often, I enjoyed the fanfare of the election, although I looked forward to it eventually being over. But it was never over. War Without EndDonald Trump's surprise victory was only the beginning as the nation embraced the perpetual campaign. Half a year later, political animosity continues to define relationships between Americans. This animosity has only become more pronounced, if anything, and has prompted me to want to divorce myself from it entirely. I'm beginning to question whether it is truly an American's duty to monitor politics daily - or even to care - when it comes at the expense of personal relationships and one's public standing.
The Mirror
These words have stuck with me ever since. What if I were to live my life on my own terms and aspire to be known for my own values and beliefs rather than my association with religious or partisan groups? Do I aspire to be remembered for my attachment to a political movement or by what I have accomplished with my own life? Now, it is clear to me that I want to be remembered for the latter. If I alienate anyone from this day forward, let it be because of a heartfelt belief that I have expressed or for my twin passions for economic freedom and educational freedom - but let me not alienate anyone by association and let me not ever look at someone with contempt because they belong to a different political tribe.
From this point forward, I want to define my life - and my life's work - by the mirror. I recently attended an Open Forum for AP Euro Readers where upcoming changes to the exam were discussed. These changes will be effective immediately for the 2017-2018 academic year.
Click here to access my notes in PDF format. |
Tom RicheyI am a history teacher who creates YouTube videos and instructional materials. I use this blog to publish lecture notes, book reviews, and personal reflections inspired by history, politics, and literature. Archives
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