Absolutism is when sovereign power and divine right are given to a single ruler. In an absolutist government, one leader controls all aspects of the governing body. The prominence of absolutism occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. The idea was as radical as it sounds, but much of the cause of the rise of absolutism in Western Europe was primarily due to the social, economic, and political aspects of the 17th and early 18th centuries. The origins of the rise of absolutism go back to the Crusades. It was a holy war between Muslims and Christians when the Turks began demanding money and mistreating Christians in their holy land of Jerusalem. Regardless, without the Crusades, absolutism in Western Europe might have been unlikely because it was during the Crusades that Eastern European ideals spread to the western part of Europe. The idea of ​​a single ruler controlling all aspects of government was not as common in Western states. Much of the foundations allowing absolutism to take hold were already present in the 13th century. After medieval times, Western Europe remained barren and devastated. A British historian states in his book Lineages of the Absolutist State that "the long crisis of the European economy and society during the 14th and 15th centuries marked the difficulties and limitations of the feudal mode of production at the end of the medieval period. What was the final political result... the absolutist state... The centralized monarchies of France, England and Spain represented a decisive break with the fragmented, pyramidal sovereignty of medieval social formations, with their domains and systems of lieges. » (Perry 15) People who had paper... serious business. This radical form of government was also possible because of the transformation of the minds of the people after the Renaissance. During the Choi 6 Renaissance, people were thinking in sporadic new ways that no one had ever thought of. They also studied classical literatures such as Greek and Latin and excelled in self-improvement. Perhaps the absolutist monarchs hoped to follow the guide to becoming the true “Renaissance man.” Absolutism in Western Europe played an important role in the development of Europe. Although it had its drawbacks, much of Europe would have been completely different without absolutism. The combination of the popular struggle for peace and order, the rise and fall of the power of the nobility, the flood of new ideals from Eastern Europe and finally the ambition of absolutist monarchs contributed to the rise of absolutism in Western Europe..