The Renaissance began in Italy in the midfourteenth century as a revolution in artistic, philosophical, and scientific thought, and quickly spread throughout southern Europe. It took another hundred years and the invention of the printing press in the...

The Renaissance and Enlightenment Semantics, Logic, and Epistemology As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance in the late fifteenth century, logic (on which semantics had been centered) first lost its medieval attainments and then subsided into...

c. 1302 The Gothic artist Cimabue dies. c. 1305 Giotto completes his frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua. 1319 The great Sienese painter...

Crises. In 1350 the Catholic Church faced two major crises. One was the Black Death (1347-1351), which led to a preoccupation with death and the appearance of a highly mechanical form of religiosity that depended upon the performance of many pious acts...

Holy Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages the accepted form of government was the monarchy, in which one man had absolute authority, and the ideal was the universal empire, in which all the peoples of the world were subject to one emperor. The Holy Roman...

c. 1300 Work begins on the Cathedral of Florence. When completed, the building will be the largest church in Europe. 1334 The painter Giotto is appointed to oversee the construction of...

1300 Pope Boniface VIII calls for the celebration of the first Jubilee year at Rome, granting indulgences to those European pilgrims who visit the city. The rise of the Turks in the Mediterranean has made pilgrimage to Palestine increasingly...

Reciprocal Relationship. The intellectual and religious changes of the Renaissance and Reformation are often regarded primarily as the shapers of large institutions and structures of society: the churches where people worshipped, the courts where rulers...

c. 1300 Humanism, with its emphasis on the works of classical Antiquity, begins to attract disciples in Italy. 1321 Dante Alighieri completes his Divine...

Strategies. Early-modern Europeans feared disorder, and every aspect of their society aimed at preventing, or at least curtailing, it. With this overriding objective, Europeans persecuted lepers and heretics with great fervor; permitted, after the...

c. 1300 The Italians Lovato Lovati and Nicolò di Trevet produce commentaries on ancient tragedies by the Roman Seneca. 1315 Albertino Mussato writes the first Renaissance tragedy,...

Introduction. Surviving images, texts, and artifacts from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries provide scholars with a partial, somewhat opaque, picture of early modern society. Europeans of this period had ways of seeing and habits of...

c. 1300 Circles of humanists begin to appear in Italy. 1304 Francesco Petrarch is born. 1308 John Duns Scotus, the "subtle...

1308 The pope takes up residence at Avignon on the Italian-French border. During the fourteenth century French composers working in Avignon will nourish the development of secular and religious music inspired by their native...

The Renaissance—a term that means rebirth—is the period in European history marked by a renewed interest in classical scholarship and art forms that had been forsaken by much of society during the Middle Ages. Along with the rediscovery of...

Dark Ages. Greek culture produced great advances in natural philosophy (science) and medicine in classical antiquity. These developments were written in Greek, even after the Roman empire expanded and incorporated regions previously ruled by Greek...

A Hybrid Economy. The period between 1350 and 1600 laid the foundation for the rise of Europe to economic predominance in the world. However, for much of the period, the actual economic progress of Europe was slow and inconspicuous. The economy was a...

Sign of the Times. In the thirteenth century, a Franciscan friar named Roger Bacon sent an appeal for calendar reform from England to the Pope in Rome. Bacon correctly calculated that the calendar was incorrect. His appeal was denied and the erroneous...

1311 The Council of Ravenna repeats a traditional medieval requirement that Jews wear a distinguishing sign on their clothes. These measures continue to be unpopular and largely disregarded by populations throughout...

c. 1420 A Burgundian manuscript preserved at Brussels outlines the steps necessary to perform the bassedance. c. 1445 Domenico da Piacenza, dance master to the D'Este family at...

Interdependence. Physical geography is the study of the earth's surface and natural features. Geographers consider climate, but they focus primarily on topography, which consists of the physical characteristics, land formations, and bodies of water in a...

Renaissance "Renaissance" is the term customarily employed to designate a cultural movement that began in Italy in the middle of the fourteenth century and spread throughout the rest of Europe. Although the term is well established in the...

Sixteen-year-old Javan ruler Hayam Wuruk takes the throne of the Hindu state of Majapahit when his mother, Tribhuvana, abdicates Along with his powerful minister Gajah Mada, he extends Javan control throughout Indonesia Ramathibodi I, a Utong (Thai)...

Era of Australopithecus, the first...

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