| A | B |
|---|
| 1453 | Year of the conquest of Constantinople by Turkish armies |
| Constantinople | Greatest City of the Medieval World, conquered in 1453 by Turks |
| Turks | central Asian groups that settled in Anatolia and founded powerful states that threatened Europe for centuries |
| Jacob Burckhardt | scholar credited with the idea of a "Renaissance" |
| Renaissance | literally means "rebirth" |
| Petrarch | the "father of humanism" |
| humanism | intellectual movement that valued individualism and a rational approach to the world |
| Boccaccio | author of the Decameron |
| Decameron | Boccaccio's stories of a group of refugees from the Plague in 14th century Italy |
| Florence | Italian city-state dominated by the Medici and held vast wealth due to the wool trades and banking |
| civic humanism | also known as Florentine humanism, the convergence of humanism and civic reform |
| Francis I | French king of the Valois line who fought Charles V's Hapsburg family over control of Italy |
| Charles V | Holy Roman Emperor from 1500 to 1558, also a Hapsburg |
| Guelfs | propapal faction in the struggle for Italy |
| Ghibellines | proimperial faction in the struggle for Italy |
| Milan | Duchy of Northern Italy ruled by the Visconti with wealth based on textiles and iron working |
| Venice | the greatest of all Italian trading cities, had a powerful navy which dominated the Western Mediterranean |
| Papal States | central Italy under the direct rule of the pope |
| Naples | Southern Italy, part of Charles V's Hapsburg domains |
| Dodge | the title of the ruling executive of Venice |
| the Council of Ten | the ruthless judicial body that dominated the Venetian Republic |
| oligarchy | rule by the wealthy, as in the wealthy merchant class of Venice |
| grandi | the old rich of Florence, old money |
| popolo grosso | the newly wealthy of Florence, literally the "fat people" |
| popolo minuto | the lower classes of Florence, literally the "little people" |
| Ciompi Revolt | 1378 uprising of the poor in Florence, which eventually paved the way for the rise of the Medici |
| Cosimo de' Medici | the first Medici to rule Florence (from behind the scenes) |
| Signoria | the ruling council of Florence, representing guilds and professions in the city |
| guilds | organizations of craftsmen; controlled the quality and workforce of trades |
| Lorenzo the Magnificent | Lorenzo de' Medici, ruled Florence in an almost totalitarian fashion in the latter 15th century |
| despotism | type fo government in which power is exercised in a totalitarian fashion |
| condottierri | brokers for mercenary armies |
| Visconti | family that ruled Milan after 1278 |
| Sforza | family that ruled Milan after 1450 |
| Renaissance Humanism | the scholarly study of Latin and Greek classics and the Church Fathers |
| studia humanitatis | liberal arts program embracing rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, moral philosophy |
| Leonardo Bruni | coined the phrase "humanitatis" |
| Manuel Chrysoloras | Byzantine scholar who taught humanism at Florence from 1397-1403 |
| Scholastics | Medieval scholars who focused on summarizing and comparing views of accepted authorities and were bound to tradition |
| Thomas Aquinas | The greatest of the Scholastics |
| Dante Alghieri | credited with development of Italian vernacular; author of the Divine Comedy |
| La Divina Comedia | Dante's vernacular Italian work; Paradio and Inferno |
| Letters to the Ancient Dead | Petrarch's letters to the ancients |
| liberal studies | the Renaissance ideal; those worthy of a free man |
| Baldassare Castiglione | author of the Courtier; proper behavior |
| Christine de Pisan | most famous Renaissance female author |
| The Treasure of the City of Ladies | Christine de Pisan's chronicle of the accomplishments of great women |
| Florentine Academy | Platonic Academy that produced scholars like Pico della Mirandola |
| Platonism | system of thought attributed to Plato, revived during the Renaissance |
| Neoplatonism | mystical development of Platonism also revived during the Renaissance |
| Pico della Mirandola | scholar of the Platonic Academy of Florence; wrote Oration on the Dignity of Man |
| Oration on the Dignity of Man | Pico della Mirandola's "Manifesto of the Renaissance" |
| Lorenzo Valla | Italian Renaissance Latinist and critic who wrote discovered the fraudulent nature of Donation of Constantine |
| Donation of Constantine | fraudulent imperial Roman decree that gave temporal authority in the Western Empire to the pope |
| Leonardo Bruni | wrote History of the Florentine People; known as the first modern historian |
| Leon Battista Alberti | best known as an architect but really the model of the universal man |
| Niccolo Machiavelli | author of the "Prince", advisor to the Medici in Florence |
| High Renaissance | 1450-1527; art and sculpture were characterized by fully mature expressions of naturalism and human values |
| chiaroscuro | the use of shading to embrace naturalness |
| linear perspective | gives the illusion of depth and allows artists to portray space realistically |
| Giotto | first of the great Renaissance painters |
| mysticism | idea that one could achieve spiritual communion with God |
| universal man | Renaissance ideal of a man who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields |
| Four Giants | da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian |
| mannerism | modified the symmetry of Renaissance art to make room for the strange and abnormal |
| El Greco | mannerist painter; painted The Assumption of the Virgin |
| Tintoretto | mannerist who painted "Ecce Homo" and "The Last Supper" |
| Tatars | term applied to Turkic people native to the Ukraine |
| Treaty of Lodi | alliance of Milan, Naples and Florence against Venice and the Papal States |
| Ludovico il Moro | despot of Milan who invited French help against Florence and Naples |
| Charles VIII | French king who intervened in war between the Italian states in 1494 |
| Girolamo Savonarola | pro-French monk who ruled Florence for four years; executed in 1498 |
| Alexander VI | Borgia Pope; perhaps the most corrupt pope ever; pro-French |
| Borgia family | papal dynastic family; enemies of Sforza and Medici families |
| Pope Julius II | the warrior pope; thoroughly secularized the Papal States |
| Battle of Novara | French defeated by the Holy League with Swiss mercenaries; driven from Italy temporarily |
| Battle of Marignano | Holy League defeated in 1515; Swiss massacred |
| Concordat of Bologna | gave the French king control over French clerics in exchange for the pope's right to collect annates and authority over councils |
| The Prince | Machiavelli's work of advice to Florentine rulers |
| the end justifies the means | Machiavellian precept |
| Charles V | Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor; King of Spain; King of Naples; Archduke of Austria; the most powerful man in Europe 1500-1555 |
| Estates General | French advisory assembly of nobles |
| Cortes | Spanish advisory assembly of nobles |
| Parliament | English advisory assembly of nobles |
| gabelle | French tax on salt |
| alcabala | 10 percent sales tax; Spain |
| taille | direct tax on the French third Estate |
| Charles VII | French king who "won" the Hundred Years War |
| Louis XI | built France into a great power |
| Charles the Bold | Duke of Burgundy defeated by France and the Hapsburgs |
| Maximilian I | Hapsburg Emperor who helped defeat Maximilian |
| Castile | central Spain ruled by Isabella in 1469 |
| Aragon | Eastern Spain ruled by Ferdinand in 1469 |
| 1469 | The Year Ferdinand and Isabella married and created a united Spain |
| 1492 | final conquest of Spanish Moors in Granada |
| reconquista | the long process of reconquest of Iberia by Portugese and Spanish Christians |
| Tomas de Torquemada | The Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition |
| 1492 | Columbus sails from Spain; Jews expelled from Spain |
| 1502 | unconverted muslims expelled from Spain |
| moriscos | converted muslims; often accused of secretly practicing Islam |
| conversos | converted Jews:often accused of secretly practicing Judaism |
| Crypto-Judaism | the private and secret practice of Judaism in 15th century Spain |
| Catherine of Aragon | married Henry VIII of England |
| Sephardic Jews | expelled from Spain in 1492; spoke Ladino |
| House of York | white rose |
| House of Lancaster | red rose |
| Wars of the Roses | 1455-1485 English Civil War |
| Richard III | supposedly an unscrupulous villain who murdered his two nephews in the Tower of London |
| Edward IV | Yorkist claimant to the throne; brother of Richard III |
| Battle of Bosworth Field | Henry Tudor (VII) defeats Richard III |
| Tudro Dynasty | established by Henry VII |
| Henry VIII | son of Henry VII; father of three monarchs of England |
| Star Chamber | court set up to curb the power of English nobles under Henry VII |
| 7 Electors | princes with the power to elect the Holy Roman Emperor |
| Golden Bull | set up the process by which the Emperor was elected |
| Reichstag | imperial diet; advisory assembly of the Empire's subjects |
| Council of Regency | gave German nobles a share of executive power to the German princes |
| Northern Renaissance | humanism imported to the Netherlands; more religiously oriented than the Italian Renaissance |
| Johannes Gutenberg | credited with the invention of the printing press with moveable type |
| Mainz | the early center of printing in Europe |
| Desiderius Erasmus | leader of Northern Renaissance |
| Where there is smoke, there is fire. | adage of Erasmus |
| adage of Erasmus | Leave no stone unturned. |
| Ulrich von Hutten | symbolized the union of humanism, German nationalism and Luther's religious reform |
| Letters of Obscure Men | satire attacking monks and Scholastics resulting from a controversy over humanist scholarship |
| Thomas More | close friend of Erasmus, English humanist; |
| Utopia | Thomas More's major work; depicted a society based on tolerance and reason |
| Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples | critical scholar who influenced Martin Luther |
| Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros | Grand Inquisitor of Spain who harnessed humanism for the Catholic Church |
| Prince Henry "the Navigator" | sponsored improvement in Portuguese navigation and overseas expeditions |
| caravel | new type of ocean going ship invented by the Portuguese |
| gold, spices and silk | motives for Spanish and Portuguese exploration |
| Bartholomew Dias | Portuguese navigator reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 |
| Vasco da Gama | Portuguese navigator made the round trip to India |
| Goa, Calcutta, Guinea Coast, Angola, Mozambique | Portuguese bases in the 15th century |
| October 12, 1492 | Columbus lands in the Western Hemisphere (Watling Island) |
| Amerigo Vespucci | Italian explorer for whom America is named |
| Ferdinand Magellan | Portuguese explorer who led the first expedition to round the globe |
| Aztecs | powerful Empire in Central Mexico conquered by Cortes in 1519 |
| Tenochtitlan | capital of the Aztec Empire |
| Incas | Peruvian Empire conquered by Pizarro in 1532 |
| Atahualpa | The Great Inca defeated by Pizarro |
| conquistadors | Spanish adventurers who conquered the New World |
| Bartolome de Las Casas | Dominican critic of Spanish colonial policies in the New World |
| Black Legend | Spanish treatment of natives was all cruel and inhumane |
| Potosi | massive silver deposit in Peru |
| quinto | one fifth share of mining revenue that went to the Spanish crown |
| pieces of eight | "Spanish dollars" |
| hacienda | large landed estates in Spanish America |
| peninsulares | Spanish colonists originally born in Spain |
| creoles | persons of Spanish descent born in America |
| sugar | the major cash crop of early Spanish America |
| encomienda | labor system giving Spanish landlords the right to the labor of Indian workers |
| repartimiento | required adult male Indians to devote a certain number of days of labor on the hacienda |
| 25 million | estimated population of Mexico in 1519 |
| 2 million | estimated population of Mexico in 1600 |
| Fuggers | banking family that lent Charles V the money to buy his election as Emperor |
| price revolution | the rise in prices from 1550-1650 caused by the influx of New World wealth |
