Renaissance of the 12th century
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The Renaissance of the 12th century was a period of many changes during the High Middle Ages. It included social political and economic transformations, and an intellectual revitalization of Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots. These changes paved the way to later achievements such as the literary and artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century and the scientific developments of the 17th century.
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[edit] Historiography
Charles H. Haskins, was the first to talk about a renaissance that ushered in the High Middle Ages starting about 1070. He found that:
| “ | [the 12th century in Europe] was in many respects an age of fresh and vigorous life. The epoch of the Crusades, of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, it saw the culmination of Romanesque art and the beginnings of Gothic; the emergence of the vernacular literatures; the revival of the Latin classics and of Latin poetry and Roman law; the recovery of Greek science, with its Arabic additions, and of much of Greek philosophy; and the origin of the first European universities. The twelfth century left its signature on higher education, on the scholastic philosophy, on European systems of law, on architecture and sculpture, on the liturgical drama, on Latin and vernacular poetry... | ” |
[edit] The Renaissance of the 12th century
[edit] Trade and commerce
In Northern Europe, the Hanseatic League was founded in the 12th century, with the foundation of the city of Lübeck in 1158–1159. Many northern cities of the Holy Roman Empire became hanseatic cities, including Amsterdam, Cologne, Bremen, Hannover and Berlin. Hanseatic cities outside the Holy Roman Empire were, for instance, Bruges and the Polish city of Danzig (Gdańsk). In Bergen, Norway and Novgorod, Russia the league had factories and middlemen. In this period the Germans started colonising Eastern Europe beyond the Empire, into Prussia and Silesia.
In the late 13th century, a Venetian explorer named Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China. Westerners became more aware of the Far East when Polo documented his travels in Il Milione. He was followed by numerous Christian missionnaries to the East, such as William of Rubruck, Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, Andrew of Longjumeau, Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni de Marignolli, Giovanni di Monte Corvino, and other travellers such as Niccolò da Conti.
[edit] Science
- Main article: History of science in the Middle Ages
Philosophical and scientific teaching of the early Middle Ages was based upon few copies and commentaries of ancient Greek texts that remained in Western Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Much of Europe had lost contact with the knowledge of the past.
This scenario changed during the Renaissance of the 12th century. The contact with the Islamic world in Spain and Sicily after the Reconquista and during the Crusades allowed Europeans access to preserved copies of the Ancient Greek and Roman works (that were previously lost) along with the works of Islamic philosophers, specially Averroes. The birth of medieval universities started a new infrastructure which was needed for scientific communities and aided materially in the translation and propagation of these texts.
At the beginning of the 13th century there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of almost all the intellectually crucial ancient authors. By then, the natural philosophy contained in these texts began to be extended by notable scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus. Precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already in Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature, and in the empirical approach admired by Bacon. According to Pierre Duhem, the Condemnation of 1277 led to the birth of modern science, because it forced thinkers to break from relying so much on Aristotle, and to think about the world in new ways.
The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers. William of Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony: philosophy should only concern itself with subjects on whom it could achieve real knowledge. This should lead to a decline in fruitless debates and move natural philosophy toward science. Scholars such as Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme started to question the received wisdom of Aristotle's mechanics. In particular, Buridan developed the theory of impetus which was a first step towards the modern concept of inertia.
In 1348, the Black Death and other disasters sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive philosophic and scientific development. Later, new developments would lead to the Scientific Revolution, which may also be understood as a resumption of this process of scientific change halted at the start of the Black Death.
[edit] Technology
- Main article: Medieval technology
During the 12th and 13th century in Europe there was a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. In less than a century there were more inventions developed and applied usefully than in the previous thousand years of human history all over the globe. The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption or invention of printing, gunpowder, the astrolabe, spectacles, a better clock, and greatly improved ships. The latter two advances made possible the dawn of the Age of Exploration.
Alfred Crosby described some of this technological revolution in The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 and other major historians of technology have also noted it.
- The earliest written record of a windmill is from Yorkshire, England, dated 1185.
- Paper manufacture began in Italy around 1270.
- The spinning wheel was brought to Europe (probably from India) in the 13th century.
- The magnetic compass aided navigation, first reaching Europe some time in the late 12th century.
- Eyeglasses were invented in Italy in the late 1280s.
- The astrolabe returned to Europe via Islamic Spain.
- Leonardo of Pisa introduces Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe with his book Liber Abaci in 1202.
- The West's oldest known depiction of a stern-mounted rudder can be found on church carvings dating to around 1180.
[edit] Scholasticism
- Main article: Scholasticism
A new method of learning called scholasticism developed in the late 12th century from the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle through Medieval Jewish and Muslim Philosophy (Maimonides, Avicenna, and Averroes) and those whom he influenced, most notably Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure and Abélard. Those who practiced the scholastic method believed in empiricism and supporting Roman Catholic doctrines through secular study, reason, and logic. They opposed Christian mysticism, and the Platonist-Augustinian beliefs in mind dualism and the view of the world as inherently evil. The most famous of the scholastic practitioners was Thomas Aquinas (later declared a "Doctor of the Church"), who led the move away from the Platonic and Augustinian and towards Aristotelianism. Using the scholastic method, Aquinas developed a philosophy of mind by writing that the mind was at birth a tabula rasa ("blank slate") that was given the ability to think and recognize forms or ideas through a divine spark. Other notable scholastics included Roscelin, Peter Abelard, and Peter Lombard. One of the main questions during this time was the problem of the universals. Prominent non-scholastics of the time included Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Damian, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the Victorines.
[edit] Arts
- see Ars antiqua, Romanesque , Gothic Art, Gothic Architecture etc.
[edit] See also
- Gothic Art
- Gothic Architecture
- Medieval technology
- Medieval university
- History of science in the Middle Ages
- Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
- Ottonian Renaissance
- Carolingian Renaissance
