The Events That Modified The Face Of Europe In The Seventeenth Century

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In the history of the events which modified the face of Europe around the 1400-1500 century, there was a striking change that occurred distinguishing two interlocking developments. During the last decades of the fifteenth century, European state systems such as England, France and Italy had attained national unification under strong monarchies and the papacy. The year around the 1500 European systems saw the encounter of two gigantic movements that had not been known to the medieval world. These two movements are known as the Renaissance and the Reformation. The term Renaissance refers to an Italian phenomenon which is the essence of humanism; which is the discovery of man and his potential. Ranke, a political historian, saw the Renaissance …show more content…

Reformation evolved around the introduction of universities. The Emperor Frederick II founded the university of Naples to supply administrators for his south Italian kingdoms; and Walter de Merton (english bishop) founded the first college at Oxford for providing future servants for the crown in 1264 (Roberts and Westad 2013: 536). The main objective of Universities was to train the clergy and unite men into learning the language of the Church - Latin. It was meant to be a form of social solidarity and sharing a cosmopolitan culture. The existence of universities were very important in the near future which no-one could of foreseen. However, the consequence of universities in European system states is it allows individuals such as Roger Bacon or Machiavelli to question the authority that the Church upholds. Moreover, this institution created conflict between the academics and the popes, especially during the Black plague period. Therefore, it can be argued that the introduction of universities have allowed the chance of individuals developing new thoughts and ideas about the world around them. For instance, Peter Abelard of the University of Paris, advised his students not to accept any doctrine blindly as God’s version. They should accept anything if it is convinced by reason. This …show more content…

The coming of the Turks and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 led Greek intellectuals to migrate into different cities of Italy like Milan, Naples, Florence, Sicily, and Rome out of fear. This occurrence helped Italy become economically stable as they taught the Italians in universities like Padua and Bologna the way in anatomy, history, geography, mathematics and medicine. Therefore, it was the greek immigrants that provided the connecting links between the trade routes of the near East and those of transalpine Europe (Potter 1957: 46). In addition, Florentine Galileo Galilei taught astronomy - providing incontrovertible evidence for the heliocentric universe and destroyed the Aristotelian cosmos that had been crucial to the medieval world view (Duggan 1994: 65). Furthermore, library development such as manuscript text or printing had been made possible by the improved economic climate. The invention of printing brought about a revolution in book production (Potter 1957: 95) and a sense of urbanisation as they could look back at texts of ancient writers and the stories. In the following hundred years, this invention amounted to nothing less than information revolution where writers, artists, musicians, and scientists could reach a much larger international audience. All in all, this invention was one of the principal causes of the