In the 14th century, the predominant academic trend of
scholasticism was challenged by the
humanist movement. Though primarily an attempt to revitalise the
classical languages, the movement also led to innovations within the fields of science, art, and literature, helped by impulses from
Byzantine scholars who had to seek refuge in the West after the
Fall of Constantinople in 1453. In science, classical authorities like
Aristotle were challenged for the first time since antiquity. Within the arts, humanism took the form of the
Renaissance. Though the 15th-century Renaissance was a highly localised phenomenon – limited mostly to the city-states of northern Italy – artistic developments were taking place also further north, particularly in the Netherlands.
Natural philosophy The predominant school of thought in the 13th century was the
Thomistic reconciliation of the teachings of
Aristotle with
Christian theology. The
Condemnation of 1277, enacted at the
University of Paris, placed restrictions on ideas that could be interpreted as heretical, restrictions that had implication for
Aristotelian thought. An alternative was presented by
William of Ockham, following the manner of the earlier Franciscan
John Duns Scotus, who insisted that the world of reason and the world of faith had to be kept apart. Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony – or
Occam's razor – whereby a simple theory is preferred to a more complex one and speculation on unobservable phenomena is avoided. This maxim is, however, often misquoted. Occam was referring to his nominalism in this quotation. Essentially saying the theory of absolutes, or metaphysical realism, was unnecessary to make sense of the world. This new approach liberated scientific speculation from the dogmatic restraints of Aristotelian science and paved the way for new approaches. Particularly within the field of theories of
motion, great advances were made, when such scholars as
Jean Buridan,
Nicole Oresme, and the
Oxford Calculators challenged the work of Aristotle. Buridan developed the theory of
impetus as the cause of the motion of projectiles, which was an important step towards the modern concept of
inertia.
Technology ), painted by
Tommaso da Modena in 1352 The earliest recorded comment on the use of
glass for optical purposes was made in 1268 by
Roger Bacon. The first eyeglasses were made in central Italy, most likely in Pisa or Florence, by about 1290, after which the widespread manufacture and use of optical glass for eyeglasses expanded rapidly in Europe.
Venice became an important center of its manufacture (a separate guild of Venetian spectacle makers was formed in 1320). In the mid-15th century, Venetian glassmakers developed the exceptionally clear colourless glass,
cristallo, used for luxury products like windows, mirrors, ships' lanterns, and lenses. When the first telescope was later invented during the Scientific Revolution, the first historical record of the invention did not appear in a work of natural philosophy but rather in a patent filed by a
spectacle maker. by
Johannes Gutenberg from
Mainz in Europe in the 15th century From a single print shop in
Mainz, Germany around 1440, the
movable type printing-press had
spread to no less than around 270 cities in Central, Western and Eastern Europe and had already produced more than 20 million volumes by the end of the 15th century. Printing made scholarly books more widely accessible, allowing researchers to consult ancient texts freely and to compare their own observations with those of fellow scholars. Printing ended the
manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, where
facts were few and far between, and replaced it with a
printing culture where reliable and documented facts rapidly proliferated and became the secure foundation for scientific knowledge. The
compass, along with other innovations such as the
cross-staff, the
mariner's astrolabe, and advances in shipbuilding, enabled the navigation of the
World Oceans and the early phases of
colonialism.
Visual arts and architecture , Germany A precursor to
Renaissance art can be seen already in the early 14th-century works of
Giotto. Giotto was the first painter since antiquity to attempt the representation of three-dimensional reality and endow his characters with true human emotions. The most important developments, however, came in 15th-century Florence. The affluence of the merchant class allowed extensive patronage of the arts, and foremost among the patrons were the Medici. The period saw several important technical innovations, like the principle of
linear perspective found in the work of
Masaccio and later described by
Brunelleschi. Greater realism was also achieved through the scientific study of anatomy, championed by artists like
Donatello. This can be seen particularly well in his sculptures, inspired by the study of classical models. As the centre of the movement shifted to Rome, the period culminated in the
High Renaissance masters
da Vinci,
Michelangelo, and
Raphael. The ideas of the
Italian Renaissance were slow to cross the Alps into northern Europe, but important artistic innovations were made also in the Low Countries. Though not – as previously believed – the inventor of oil painting,
Jan van Eyck was a champion of the new medium and used it to create works of great realism and minute detail. The two cultures influenced each other and learned from each other, but painting in the Netherlands remained more focused on textures and surfaces than the idealized compositions of Italy. In northern European countries,
Gothic architecture remained the norm, and the Gothic cathedral was further elaborated. In Italy, on the other hand, architecture took a different direction, also here inspired by classical ideals. The crowning work of the period was the
Santa Maria del Fiore in
Florence, with Giotto's clock tower,
Ghiberti's baptistery gates, and
Brunelleschi's cathedral
dome of unprecedented proportions.
Literature as portrayed by
Domenico di Michelino, from a fresco painted in 1465 The most important development of late medieval literature was the ascendancy of the
vernacular languages. The vernacular had been in use in England since the 8th century and France since the 11th century, where the most popular genres had been the
chanson de geste,
troubadour lyrics, and romantic epics, or the
romance. Though Italy was later in evolving a native literature in the vernacular language, it was here that the most important developments of the period were to come.
Dante Alighieri's
Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, merged a medieval worldview with classical ideals. Another promoter of the
Italian language was
Boccaccio with his
Decameron. The application of the vernacular did not entail a rejection of
Latin, and both Dante and Boccaccio wrote prolifically in Latin as well as Italian, as would
Petrarch later (whose
Canzoniere also promoted the vernacular and whose contents are considered the first modern
lyric poems). Together, the three poets established the
Tuscan dialect as the norm for the modern
Italian language. The new literary style spread rapidly and in France, influenced such writers as
Eustache Deschamps and
Guillaume de Machaut. In England,
Geoffrey Chaucer helped establish
Middle English as a literary language with his
Canterbury Tales, which contained a wide variety of narrators and stories (including some translated from Boccaccio). The spread of vernacular literature eventually reached as far as Bohemia and the Baltic, Slavic, and Byzantine worlds.
Music in a 14th-century
Medieval manuscript. Music was an important part of both secular and spiritual culture, and in the universities, it made up part of the
quadrivium of the liberal arts. From the early 13th century, the dominant sacred musical form had been the
motet, a composition with text in several parts. From the 1330s and onwards emerged the
polyphonic style, which was a more complex fusion of independent voices. Polyphony had been common in the secular music of the
Provençal troubadours. Many of these had fallen victim to the 13th-century
Albigensian Crusade, but their influence reached the papal court at Avignon. The main representatives of the new style, often referred to as
ars nova as opposed to
ars antiqua, were the composers
Philippe de Vitry and
Guillaume de Machaut. In Italy, where the Provençal troubadours had also found refuge, the corresponding period goes under the name of
trecento, and the leading composers were
Giovanni da Cascia,
Jacopo da Bologna, and
Francesco Landini. A prominent reformer of
Orthodox Church music from the first half of the 14th century was
John Kukuzelis; he also introduced a system of notation widely used in the
Balkans in the following centuries.
Theatre In the
British Isles, plays were produced in some 127 different towns during the Middle Ages. These vernacular
Mystery plays were written in cycles of a large number of plays:
York (48 plays),
Chester (24),
Wakefield (32), and
Unknown (42). A larger number of plays survive from
France and
Germany in this period, and some type of religious drama was performed in nearly every European country in the late Middle Ages. Many of these plays contained
comedy,
devils,
villains, and
clowns.
Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished until 1550, an example being
The Castle of Perseverance, which depicts
mankind's progress from birth to death. Another famous morality play is
Everyman. Everyman receives
Death's summons, struggles to escape, and finally resigns himself to necessity. Along the way, he is deserted by
Kindred,
Goods, and Fellowship – only
Good Deeds goes with him to the grave. At the end of the late Middle Ages, professional actors began to appear in
England and
Europe.
Richard III and
Henry VII both maintained small companies of professional actors. Their plays were performed in the
Great Hall of a nobleman's residence, often with a raised platform at one end for the audience and a "screen" at the other for the actors. Also important were
Mummers' plays, performed during the
Christmas season, and court
masques. These masques were especially popular during the reign of
Henry VIII who had a House of Revels built and an
Office of Revels established in 1545. The end of medieval drama came about due to a number of factors, including the weakening power of the
Catholic Church, the
Protestant Reformation, and the banning of religious plays in many countries.
Elizabeth I forbid all religious plays in 1558, and the great cycle plays had been silenced by the 1580s. Similarly, religious plays were banned in the
Netherlands in 1539, the
Papal States in 1547, and
Paris in 1548. The abandonment of these plays destroyed the international theatre that had thereto existed and forced each country to develop its own form of drama. It also allowed dramatists to turn to secular subjects and the reviving interest in
Greek and
Roman theatre provided them with the perfect opportunity.
After the Middle Ages After the end of the late Middle Ages period, the
Renaissance spread unevenly over continental Europe from the southern European region. The intellectual transformation of the Renaissance is viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. Europeans would later begin an
era of world discovery. Combined with the influx of classical ideas was the invention of
printing which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the
Protestant Reformation. Europeans also discovered new trading routes, as was the case with
Columbus' travel to the
Americas in 1492, and
Vasco da Gama's circumnavigation of
Africa and
India in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. ==Ottomans and Europe==