The Middle Ages
This event marks the start of the Middle Ages.
What is the fall of the Roman Empire?
This intellectual movement, exemplified by Petrarch’s belief in knowing history and writers like Dante using common languages, focused on human value and classical learning.
What is humanism?
This practice by the Catholic Church, which offered relaxation of penalties for sins, directly angered Martin Luther and sparked the Reformation.
What is the sale of indulgences?
Copernicus and Kepler proved the Earth is NOT the center of the universe, challenging centuries of Church teaching and Ptolemy's theory believed for over 1400 years. This is the center of the universe.
What is the Sun?
During the Middle Ages, people mostly accepted the authority of the Church and ancient philosophers. By the Scientific Revolution, people instead trusted this process of testing and observing.
What is the scientific method (or experimentation)?
This word refers to a country’s money and resources, which was weak and poor in Europe after Rome fell.
What is the economy?
This technique, which made Renaissance art look more realistic and three-dimensional, changed how artists painted space and depth.
What is perspective?
Ordered by Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, this church court hunted down and punished Muslims, Jews, and later Protestants to create a strictly Catholic culture with no opposition.
What is the Spanish Inquisition?
During the Scientific Revolution, thinkers began to question this institution and ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Ptolemy, instead trusting their own observations.
What is the Catholic Church (or Church leaders)?
This invention from the Renaissance caused ideas to spread faster than ever before, allowing Luther's complaints, Galileo's discoveries, and new scientific methods to reach thousands of people across Europe.
What is the printing press?
This system helped weak European countries protect their land and resources without spending a lot of money.
What is feudalism?
Invented by Johann Gutenberg, this technology allowed the Bible to be printed in common languages, spreading ideas and leading to church reform across Europe.
What is the printing press?
This series of meetings between 1545 and 1563 restated Catholic teachings, created new rules for clergy behavior, and made the church more organized and disciplined.
What is the Council of Trent?
Instead of just reading ancient texts, scientists began using these processes to understand how the world actually worked.
What are observations and experiments?
The Black Death caused this major social change in the late Middle Ages, which then led to workers having more power and eventually contributed to the end of feudalism.
What is labor shortages leading to higher wages and more freedom for peasants?
The disease that killed about 25 million people and made workers able to demand higher wages.
What is the Black Death (or the plague)?
After nobles forced King John to sign this document, the ruler was no longer above the law, helping to start democracy.
What is the Magna Carta?
This religious order, founded by Ignatius of Loyola, built schools and sent missionaries like Francis Xavier to Asia to spread Catholic teachings.
Who are the Jesuits (Society of Jesus)?
This scientist famously dropped balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (or used ramps and timers) to prove that heavier objects do NOT fall faster than lighter ones
Who is Galileo?
In the Middle Ages, challenging the Church could get you punished. By the Reformation and Scientific Revolution, this had changed because people like Luther and Galileo questioned authority and survived (or spread their ideas).
What is the decline of unquestioned religious and ancient authority (or the rise of individualism and critical thinking)?
During the Middle Ages, this person had the power to excommunicate kings, influence who ruled countries, and was seen as God's representative on Earth—often more powerful than any single monarch.
Who is the pope?
Wealthy bankers like this famous family directly caused the Renaissance by funding artists and scholars.
Who are the Medici (family)?
This devastating war, fought largely between Catholic and Protestant states in Europe, had long-term effects including the fragmentation of Germany and the end of religious wars as a political tool.
What is the Thirty Years' War?
While the Church taught that Earth was stationary and everything orbited around it, these two astronomers used mathematics and observation to prove the heliocentric (Sun-centered) model of the universe.
Who are Copernicus and Kepler?
In the Middle Ages, people believed Aristotle's claim that heavier objects fall faster. By the Scientific Revolution, Galileo caused this change in understanding.
What is proving that all objects fall at the same rate (or that mass does not affect falling speed)?