Northern Renaissance
More concerned with theology and personal morality, Cultural and intellectual movement of northern Europe; began later than Italian Renaissance c. 1450; centered in France, Low Countries, England, and Germany; featured greater emphasis on religion than It
Christian Humanists
Intellectuals, like Thomas More and Erasmus, in the late 15th and early 16th centuries who sought to realize the ethical ideals of the classical world and the Scriptures. They criticized their mother church, only to find to their horror that more extreme
Sir Thomas More
refused to sign the Act of Succession because he wouldn't recognize Henry VIII as head of the Church and the validity of his divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Despite his position as Lord Chancellor, he was beheaded in 1535; wrote Utopia (literally means no
Desiderius Erasmus
Dutch humanist, monk, and theologian who was the leading Renaissance scholar of northern Europe; although his criticisms of the Church in his In Praise of Folly led to the Reformation, he rejected Luther, his idea of no free will, and violence. Also wrote
Albrecht Durer
Famous Northern Renaissance artist, he often used woodcutting along with Italian Renaissance techniques like proportion, perspective and modeling. (Knight Death, and Devil; Four Apostles) Lent support to the doctrinal revolution brought about by Martin Lu
Geoffrey Chaucer
Englishman who wrote the Canterbury Tales (based on Boccaccio's Decameron), which were narrative poems about pilgrims on their way to Canterbury
Elizabethan Renaissance
Cultural awakening in England during Elizabeth I's reign and reign of James I. Cristopher Marlowe. Ben Jonson. Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare
an English poet who, never receiving more than a primary school education, he was able to author plays such as Hamlet and King Lear, showed an unsurpassed understand of the human psyche as well as a genius for dramatic intensity
Printing Press
invented by Johann Gutenberg in 1454; first book was Gutenberg Bible; changed private and public lives of Europeans; used for war declarations, battle accounts, treaties, propaganda; laid basis for formation of distinct political parties; enhanced literac