Christopher Columbus (#9) (Hart 47) landed in North America. He was an Italian explorer, navigator and colonizer who crossed the Atlantic in 1492. Columbus completed four voyages across the Atlantic. Islands in Asia known as the East Indies produced valuable spices; Columbus proposed to reach there by sailing westward. He received the support of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (#65) (Hart 322) of Spain who wanted to control this lucrative spice trade. Although Columbus landed in the Bahamas, he never admitted he had not reached the East Indies and he called the inhabitants “Indians.” Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas (Leif Ericson reached North America in about 1000 CE.), but his voyages led to the first lasting European settlements in the Americas. His strained relationship with the Spanish crown led to his dismissal as governor and even to his later arrest! The transfers between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange. Columbus’s legacy continues to be debated. He was widely venerated in the centuries after his death, but public perceptions have changed as recent scholars have given attention to negative aspects of his life, such as his abuse of native peoples, his role in the extinction of the Taino people, his promotion of slavery, and allegations of tyranny towards Spanish colonists. Also, Vasco da Gama (#86) (Hart 424) of Portugal sailed around the southern tip of Africa to India.
Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire using cannons. The empire had been greatly weakened and divided up after the sacking of the Fourth Crusade, and its territories were then gradually taken over by the Ottomans. The Fall of Constantinople itself was in 1453 after a long siege which finally ended the empire. The Ottomans changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul. Ottoman rulers continued to consider themselves heirs to the Roman Empire until the fall of the Ottoman Empire itself (in 1923). They felt they had simply shifted its religious basis as Constantine had done before. The Byzantine emperors were called Caesar; the Russian word was “Czar” which became “Tsar.”
Italian Renaissance peaked with the High Renaissance. After the Black Death, feudalism began to decline for many reasons, including: the increasing use of money rather than land as a medium of exchange, the growing number of serfs living as freemen, improved agricultural productivity due to improved farming technology and methods, the decline in power of the Roman Catholic Church, the rise of humanism, the formation of nation-states with monarchies who wanted to reduce the power of feudal lords, the increasing power of gunpowder over feudal armies, and the spread of ideas made possible by the printing press. These changes created an opening for the Renaissance which means “rebirth” and was a period of new-born interest in the cultures of classical antiquity, including Greece and Rome, and was a time of great cultural achievement. It began in the 1300’s, peaked in the late 1400 & early 1500’s, and lasted into the 1600’s. The Renaissance marked the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), many Byzantine scholars escaped to Italy where they brought increased knowledge of ancient Greece. The Italian Renaissance was centered in Florence and Siena and later spread to Venice and Rome. In Florence, a family of bankers, the Medici, gained influence and power. Early masters of the Italian Renaissance included Petrarch (1304 – 1374), who was a writer, poet, and considered the founder of humanism; and the architect Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446) who designed the dome of the Florence Cathedral, a feat of engineering that had not been accomplished since antiquity. He also developed the technique of linear perspective in art. The High Renaissance lasted about 35 years from the early 1490’s to 1527; it included the peak of three Italian masters: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519), like Michelangelo, is often considered the archetype of a Renaissance man, a person who is an expert in a significant number of different subject areas. Besides being a painter, he was a: sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist & writer. Michelangelo (#50) (Hart 254) (1475 – 1564) was a sculptor, painter, architect,poet, and engineer. Two of his best-known sculptures are the Pietà and the David, and he painted two frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He also became the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Two of his most famous paintings are the Mona Lisa & The Last Supper, and his Vitruvian Man is a cultural icon based on the ideal human proportions described by the ancient Roman Vitruvius. Raphael (1483–1520) was a painter and architect. Another influential Italian of this time was Niccolò Machiavelli (#79) (Hart 390) who is most famous for writing The Prince. He has often been called the father of modern political science. The term “Machiavellianism” is widely used as a negative term to describe unscrupulous politicians. (Wikipedia) The ideas of the Italian Renaissance later spread into Northern Europe.
Literacy increased after the greatly improved printing press was developed by Gutenberg (#8) (Hart 42) in Germany in 1440. He also made related inventions on his own and developed the first assembly-line for printing large quantities of books. This new technology soon spread all over Europe. A printer in Venice printed the first small, portable, inexpensive books. Gutenberg’s invention was the beginning of mass communication and led to the rapid spread of information and ideas, some of which were revolutionary. The sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and bolstered the emerging middle class. Latin, the language of scholars, began to decline while the European vernacular languages of ordinary people took hold. (All from Wikipedia)
