ErasmusDesiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (ˌdɛzɪˈdɪəriəs_ɪˈræzməs; ˌdeːziˈdeːriʏs eˈrɑsmʏs; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus; 28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536) was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.
Francis BaconFrancis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (ˈbeɪkən; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon led the advancement of both natural philosophy and the scientific method and his works remained influential even in the late stages of the Scientific Revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism.
Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in the Mediterranean world.
Leonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology.
Luca PacioliFra. Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (sometimes Paccioli or Paciolo; 1447 – 19 June 1517) was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
MannerismMannerism (sometimes known as Late Renaissance) is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it. Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century. Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Vasari, and early Michelangelo.
MerchantA merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as industry, commerce, and trade have existed. In 16th-century Europe, two different terms for merchants emerged: meerseniers referred to local traders (such as bakers and grocers) and koopman (koopman) referred to merchants who operated on a global stage, importing and exporting goods over vast distances and offering added-value services such as credit and finance.
Printing pressA printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper, or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.
PeriodizationIn historiography, periodization is the process or study of categorizing the past into discrete, quantified, and named blocks of time for the purpose of study or analysis. This is usually done in order to understand current and historical processes, and the causality that might have linked those events. Periodizations can provide a convenient segmentation of time, wherein events within the period might consist of relatively similar characteristics.
Dante AlighieriDante Alighieri (ˈdante aliˈɡjɛːri; 1265 – 14 September 1321), most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (ˈdɑːnteɪ,_ˈdænteɪ,_ˈdænti, USˈdɑːnti), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (mikeˈlandʒelo di lodoˈviːko ˌbwɔnarˈrɔːti siˈmoːni; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (ˌmaɪkəl'ændʒəloʊ,_ˌmIk-), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci.
History of EuropeThe history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD 500), the Middle Ages (AD 500 to AD 1500), and the modern era (since AD 1500). The first early European modern humans appear in the fossil record about 48,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Era. Settled agriculture marked the Neolithic Era, which spread slowly across Europe from southeast to the north and west.
GalenAelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen (ˈgeɪlən) or Galen of Pergamon, was a Roman Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher. Considered to be one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic.
AlchemyAlchemy (from Arabic: al-kīmiyā; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, khumeía) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD. Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.
RhetoricRhetoric (ˈrɛtərɪk) is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics".
Italian RenaissanceThe Italian Renaissance (Rinascimento rinaʃʃiˈmento) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted.
VeniceVenice (ˈvɛnᵻs ; Venezia veˈnɛttsja; Venesia veˈnɛsja, outdatedly Venexia veˈnɛzja) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile).
Renaissance humanismRenaissance humanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first began in Italy and then spread across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist (umanista) referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included the study of Latin and Ancient Greek literatures, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
Reformation_The Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation, and the European Reformation) was a major movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in part, it also posed a challenge to papal authority. The Reformation marked the start of Protestantism and in the Western Church, the Latin Church, remained the Catholic Church. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.
FlorenceFlorence (ˈflɒrəns ; Firenze fiˈrɛntse) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany in Central Italy. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 360,930 inhabitants in 2023, and 984,991 in its metropolitan area. Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, becoming a major artistic, cultural, commercial, political, economic and financial center.
