Renaissance/Reformation/Scientific Revolution Timeline Project

Petrarch

Jul 20, 1303

The Italian poet Petrarch is best known for the Iyric poetry of his Canzoniere. He is considered one of the greatest love poets of world literature. A scholar of classical antiquity, he was the founder of humanism. Petrarch has been called the first modern man.

Printing Revolution

1440

"Goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg was a political exile from Mainz, Germany when he began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France in 1440. He returned to Mainz several years later and by 1450, had a printing machine perfected and ready to use commercially: The Gutenberg press."

Michelangelo

Mar 6, 1475

"Michelangelo was the best painter and sculptor of the Italian Renaissance. He brought realism into art and challenged the old way of thinking by showing people that painting the human body was not a sin. This encouraged the new way of thinking and a new way of presenting art."

Thomas More

Feb 7, 1478

"Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, which was the forerunner of the Utopian literary genre. More served as an important counselor to King Henry VIII of England, serving as his key counselor in the early 1500s, but after he refused to accept the king as head of the Church of England, he was tried for treason and beheaded. More is noted for coining the word "Utopia," in reference to an ideal political system in which policies are governed by reason.

Inquisition

Nov 1, 1478

" The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims."

Raphael

Apr 6, 1483

" Raphael was one of the most talented painters of the Italian Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. He was also a popular architect during his lifetime."

Martin Luther

Nov 10, 1483

"Martin Luther is one of the most influential figures in Western history. His writings were responsible for fractionalizing the Catholic Church and sparking the Protestant Reformation. ... Although Luther was critical of the Catholic Church, he distanced himself from the radical successors who took up his mantle."

John Calvin

Jul 10, 1509

"John Calvin is known for his influential Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was the first systematic theological treatise of the reform movement. He stressed the doctrine of predestination, and his interpretations of Christian teachings, known as Calvinism, are characteristic of Reformed churches."

Heliocentric Theory

1543

"Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. This model positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets orbiting around it in circular paths, modified by epicycles, and at uniform speeds."

Council of Trent

1545

" The Council of Trent was the ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church that convened from 1545 to 1563. In response to the Protestant Reformation, key statements and clarifications regarding church doctrine, teaching, and practice were prepared."

Scientific Method

1561

"The scientific method was used even in ancient times, but it was first documented by England's Sir Francis Bacon who set up inductive methods for scientific inquiry."

Francis Bacon

Jan 22, 1561

"Francis Bacon served as attorney general and Lord Chancellor of England, resigning amid charges of corruption. His more valuable work was philosophical. Bacon took up Aristotelian ideas, arguing for an empirical, inductive approach, known as the scientific method, which is the foundation of modern scientific inquiry."

William Shakespeare

1564

"William Shakespeare has become an important landmark in English literature. He is also credited with being one of the first writers to use any modern prose in his writings; in fact, the growth of the popularity of prose in Shakespeare's time is clearly shown as he used prose progressively more throughout his career."

Galileo

Feb 15, 1564

"Galileo devised his own telescope, in which he observed the moon and found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun. Galileo played a major role in the scientific revolution and earned the moniker "The Father of Modern Science."

Isaac Newton

Jan 4, 1643

"Isaac Newton is considered one of the most important scientists in history. During his lifetime Newton developed the theory of gravity, the laws of motion (which became the basis for physics), a new type of mathematics called calculus, and made breakthroughs in the area of optics such as the reflecting telescope."