HIST

317 Midterm Review

Part I: Identifications:
You will need to identify three of these choices:

Feudalism
Vassalage
Fief
Peace and Truce of God
Church Reform (Middle Ages)
Investiture Contest
Twelfth-Century Renaissance
Peter Abelard
Canon Law
Unam Sanctam
Black Death
Hundred Years’ War
Joan of Arc
Longbow
Peasant Revolts
Great Schism
Anticlericalism
John Wyclif
Jan Hus
Humanism
Francis Petrarch
Giovanni Boccacio
Erasmus of Rotterdam
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Lorenzo Valla
Book of the Courtier
Oration on the Dignity of Man
On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres
Sandro Botticelli
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Battista Alberti
Movable type
Firearms
Scientific Revolution
Nicolas Copernicus
Jakob Fugger
Industrial Capitalism
TO Map
Portolan Chart
Catalan Atlas
Caravel
Prester John
John II of Portugal
Vasco de Gama
Catholic Kings
Christopher Columbus
Magellan
Treaty of Tordesillas
Hernan Cortés
Francisco Pizarro
Columbian Exchange
Transatlantic Slavery
Thomas Aquinas
De vera nobilitate
Sumptuary Laws

Part II: Essays
You will need to answer one of the following three essays:

1. Compare and Contrast medieval and Renaissance culture. What was different about the
culture of Renaissance Italy as compared to medieval culture? What was similar? What
was the nature of the Renaissance’s literary, artistic, and political achievements? Make
specific references to humanism. Provide a thorough discussion of Renaissance
contributions and place them in their historical context.

2. In many respects, we are the children of the early modern scientific overthrow of
classical and medieval models. What was the Scientific Revolution? What sort of
cultural/scientific paradigms did it overthrow? What was the nature of scientific change
and of new perspectives on the world and on the relation of women and men to religion,
cultural production, and the material world? How did the Humanist movement influence
the Scientific Revolution?

3. During the last two decades of the fifteenth century and the first two decades of the
sixteenth, the Iberian peninsula witnessed significant changes in its political, social, and
religious structures. In addition, Castilians and Portuguese came into direct contact with
unknown civilizations. Describe the nature of these changes, cultural encounters, and
their historical significance. Why were these events occurring in this place and time?
How was “otherness” constructed in Iberia, the rest of Europe, and the New World and
why? Make a comparison with the ways “otherness” was articulated in relation to Jews,
Muslims, old women, the ill, natives in the New World, and heretics.