| A | B |
|---|
| Marco Polo | Christian Venetian merchant who helped introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China |
| Petrarch | Italian scholar and poet; first to develop the concept of the "Dark Ages" |
| Giovanni Boccacio | Italian author and poet best known for The Decameron |
| Chaucer | Father of English literature; famous for The Canterbury Tales |
| The Black Death | Also known as the Bubonic plague; responsible for the death of 25% to 50% of Europe's population |
| Cosimo de Medici, the elder | the first of the Medici political dynasty |
| Johannes Gutenberg | introduced modern book printing; his 42-line Bible has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality |
| Christopher Columbus | Genoese explorer, colonizer, and navigator who begins the discovery of "The New World" |
| Isabella and Ferdinand | funded Columbus', unified Spain, expelled the Jews from Spain |
| The Fall of Constantinople | the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire under the command of Sultan Mehmed II |
| Vasco da Gama | Portuguese explorer; first to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia |
| Nicolaus Copernicus | first astronomer to displace the Earth from the center of the universe |
| Martin Luther | German priest and theologian who initiated the Protestant Reformation |
| Hernán Cortés | Spanish Conquistador who led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire |
| Charles V | Also known as "Carlos Quinto"; the colonization of the Americas begins during his reign |
| Pope GregoryXIII | best known for commissioning and being the namesake for the Gregorian calendar |
| The Reformation | the schism within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early Protestants |
| Phillip II of Spain | the self-proclaimed leader of the Counter-Reformation |
| Miguel de Cervantes | author of Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel of Western Literature, regarded as among the best works of fiction ever written |
| The Enlightenment | an intellectual movement in 18th century Europe whose goal was to establish an "enlightened" rationality |
