During the High Middle Ages in Europe, a new style of architecture, known as Gothic, evolved.

Gothic architecture intended to achieve greater height and light than Romanesque architecture.

The Crusades were launched in A.D. 1096 by Christians in an attempt to gain control of the Holy Land from Muslims.

The English king, Richard the Lion-Hearted, led the Third Crusade (1189-1191) in an attempt to regain Jerusalem from Saladin, the most famous and respected Muslim leader of his age.

Thomas Aquinas and other scholars who met at universities were known as scholastics. Aquinas wrote Summa Theologicae, which combined Christian belief with the ideas of Aristotle and other thinkers from ancient Greece.

William the Conqueror led the Normans in a battle that changed the course of English history-- the Battle of Hastings in England on October 14, 1066.

The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, limited the king’s powers and established basic legal rights for the English nobles.

Bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, swept through Europe starting in 1347. The plague was spread by black rats that carried fleas infested with a bacillus.

The plague left a shortage of peasant laborers who left manors in search of better wages, which accelerated the breakup of the feudal system.

During the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), England and France battled each other. The success of the longbow hastened the end of the mounted, heavily armored medieval knight.

In 1429, a teenage French peasant girl named Joan of Arc led French troops who broke the siege of Orleans.

Japan’s earliest religion, Shinto, was based on a belief in divine spirits that dwelled in nature. The Japanese later accepted Buddhism, which they combined with their Shinto beliefs.

During the Heian Period (794-1185), a highly refined court society developed that advanced art, culture, and etiquette.

During Japan’s feudal period, small farmers looked to warlords for protection. The first shogun, “supreme general of the emperor’s army,” was named in 1192. Warriors called samurai, who protected rival lords, lived according to a code of behavior called Bushido, or “the way of the warrior.”

In Africa, rulers of Ghana and Mali built empires based on their control of the gold-salt trade.

Sundiata became Mali’s first great mansa, or emperor.

Mansa Musa ruled Mali from 1312 to 1332. He gave away so much gold in Egypt while on a hajj to Mecca that the value of gold declined for 12 years.

The two largest kingdoms of the Yoruba people were Ife and Oyo.

According to tradition, an Ife artist was brought to the kingdom of Benin to teach his craft to Benin artists. Benin is famous for its bronze and brass sculptures.

The Shona people of southeastern Africa established a city called Great Zimbabwe, the capital of a thriving state from the 1200s through the 1400s.

In the Americas, the Maya built spectacular cities that featured giant pyramids, temples, palaces, and ball courts.

The Maya developed a calendar based on careful observations of the planets, sun, and moon. They developed an advanced writing system that consisted of about 800 glyphs.

The Aztecs founded the city of Tenochtitlan on an island in a lake in 1325. By the early 1500s, it had become a large, planned urban center with temples, palaces, causeways, canals, chinampas or “floating gardens,” and a huge market.

Aztec priests practiced human sacrifice because they believed their sun god, Huitzilopochtli, needed the nourishment of human blood to be strong enough to battle the forces of evil to get to the next day. Without human blood, Huitzilopochtli would be too weak, the sun would not rise, and all life would perish.

Under the leadership of Pachacuti, the Inca ruled an empire along the western coast of South America.

The Inca road system traversed rugged mountains to span the empire. A system of runners, known as chasquis, carried messages along these roads as a kind of postal service.

The decline of the Incan Empire can be traced to a struggle for the throne between Atahualpa and his brother.

The Renaissance (A.D. 1300-1600) started in Italy. Renaissance thinkers hoped to bring back to life the culture of classical Greece and Rome.

Florence came under the rule of the Medici, a powerful banking family. Lorenzo de Medici became a generous patron of the arts.

Renaissance artists used the technique of perspective to create the appearance of three dimensions on a flat surface.

Raphael used perspective for his painting, School of Athens.

Leonardo da Vinci was a true “Renaissance Man”-- a painter, sculptor, inventor, and scientist. His masterpieces include The Last Supper, Vitruvian Man, and the Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo used a realistic style when depicting the human body. Among his achievements are the statue of David and the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

As Renaissance ideas spread out of Italy, they mixed with traditions of Northern Europe.

The best known Christian humanists were Erasmus, author of The Praise of Folly, and Thomas More, author of Utopia. More’s Utopia is about a model society where greed, corruption, and war have been eliminated.

William Shakespeare is regarded by many as the greatest playwright of all time. His plays were performed at the Globe Theater in London. His most famous plays include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Around 1440, Johann Gutenberg developed a printing press that made it possible to produce books quickly and cheaply.

The greater availability of books resulted in an increase in literacy throughout Europe. Writers began to use vernacular (native) languages rather than classical languages (Greek and Latin) to express their ideas.

The Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. These were Luther’s objections to Catholic Church practices that included the sale of indulgences by Johann Tetzel. An indulgence was said to cancel punishment for a person’s sins.

Reformers who protested against the Catholic Church became known as Protestants.

The Protestant religion inspired by Luther’s teachings was known as Lutheranism.

In 1559, Queen Elizabeth I restored Protestantism to England when Parliament set up the Church of England, or Anglican Church, with Elizabeth as its head.

John Calvin was the leader of Protestants in Geneva, Switzerland. He developed the doctrine of predestination, the belief that God has known since the beginning of time who will be saved.