| A | B |
|---|
| Petrarch | first humanist writer and poet ,perfected the sonnet |
| Machiavelli | wrote The Prince, which described the ideal ruler, "the end justifies the means" |
| Dante | wrote the Divine Comedy which describes a journey through hell, purgatory and heaven |
| Erasmus | Dutch humanist and member of clergy who wrote In Praise of Folly which ridiculed the abuses of the Church |
| Michelangelo | Itailian painter, sculptor and architect whose works include David, Moses, The Pieta, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Cathedral |
| Leonardo da Vinci | excelled in painting, sculpture, architecture, science and engineering whose famous works include the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper |
| Copernicus | Polish scientist who developed the idea that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe |
| Galileo | invented the telescope and proved the sun was indeed the center of the universe |
| Kepler | German mathematician who used math to descibe the motion of the planets |
| Newton | English scientist who discovered laws of gravity and explained laws of force and motion |
| Gutenberg | invented the printing press in 1456 which allowed ideas to spread rapidly while books and education became more affordable |
| Charlemagne | Frankish King who created the largest empire in Europe since the Romans, spread Christianity and was crowned emperor by the Pope |
| Pope Gregory VII | banned lay investiture and excommunicated King Henry IV but eventually forgave him |
| King Henry IV | met with German nobles and demanded that Pope Gregory step down, was excommunicated and forced to beg for forgiveness from the Pope in the snow near Canossa |
| Henry VIII | ended the pope's power in England after he divorced Catherine and remarried trying to have a male heir to throne, became the head of England's Church |
| Elizabeth I | returned England to protestanism by setting up the Anglican Church (Church of England) which mixed the Catholic and Protestant practices |
| Martin Luther | posted the 95 Theses in 1517 which began the Reformation |
| John Calvin | wrote Institutes of the Christian Relgion which was a summary of the Protestant beliefs, including the idea of predestination |
