Posted by: Administrator in European History, History Blog, Medieval History, World History
Flavio Biondo, an Italian humanist, in the early 15th Century, first coined the term “Middle Age” (”medium ævum”) to designate the period between the Classical and the enlightened Renaissance revival of classical ideas, philosophies, aesthetics. In English, Dutch, Russian and Icelandic, the plural form of the term, Middle Ages, is used, however, other European languages use the singular form (Italian medioevo, French le moyen âge, German das Mittelalter.) The popular word we use commonly today, “medieval”, is a contraction of the Latin medium ævum or “middle epoch”. Enlightenment thinkers used it as a pejorative descriptor of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages would come to be viewed as a Dark Age during which many of the advances and achievements of the Greeks and Romans would be eclipsed by warfare and the gradual disintegration of institutions and culture that the Europeans had inherited from the Classical era.
[[continue reading...]]
Recent History Articles
|
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophy Society |
 Born in Russia in 1831, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky claimed to possess psychic prowess from an early age and, after abandoning her husband at the age of 17, spent the next decade traveling the world. When she returned to her homeland in 1858, she popularized tales of two years spent studying beneath Tibetan Masters in the Himalayas and her ability to contact other such â€[...]
|
|
|
The Globe Theater Burns: A Little Shakespeare |
 On June 29, 1613 during the first on-stage production of Henry VIII, the Globe Theater of Shakespeare fame burned to the ground. Quickly erected and quickly raised, the theater reminds fans of the Elizabethan era that even the best figures from history had their problems.
Built in a few short months in 1597 and 1598, the Globe was an open air amphitheater constructed o[...]
|
|
|
A Brief History of Ancient Greece |
 What historians typically designate as the ancient Greek period are the years between 1000 B.C. and 323 B.C. when Alexander the Great died or through the 3rd century C.E., when the Christian era began. The legacy of Greek civilization was greatly influential to the succeeding Roman Empire and to subsequent western cultures.
The Archaic Period and Classical periods[...]
|
|
|
The Renaissance - A Rebirth of Culture and Classical Ideas |
 The term "Renaissance", or rebirth, was coined by historians in the mid 19th century to describe the period in Western European history that was characterized by a resurgence of ideas, philosophies, and culture from the classical period. A golden age of cultural, intellectual and ideological movements occurred between roughly the early 14th to the late 16th century in Europe th[...]
|
|
| |
