Renaissance of the 12th century

The Renaissance of the 12th century was a period of many changes at the outset of the High Middle Ages. It included social, political and economic transformations, and an intellectual revitalization of Western Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots. These changes paved the way for later achievements such as the literary and artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century and the scientific developments of the 17th century.^[1]

The earliest written record of a is from Yorkshire, England, dated 1185.

windmill

manufacture began in Spain around 1100, and from there it spread to France and Italy during the 12th century.

Paper

The compass aided navigation, attested in Europe in the late 12th century.

magnetic

The ancient Greek origin returned to Europe via Islamic Spain.

astrolabe

The West's oldest known depiction of a stern-mounted can be found on church carvings dating to around 1180.

rudder

was invented in 12th century France.^[15]

Dry compass

The invention of mechanical clock in the 13th century.

[16]

During the High Middle Ages in Europe, there was increased innovation in means of production, leading to economic growth.

Alfred Crosby described some of this technological revolution in The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 and other major historians of technology have also noted it.

Latin literature[edit]

The early 12th century saw a revival of the study of Latin classics, prose, and verse before and independent of the revival of Greek philosophy in Latin translation. The cathedral schools at Chartres, Orleans, and Canterbury were centers of Latin literature staffed by notable scholars. John of Salisbury, secretary at Canterbury, became the bishop of Chartres. He held Cicero in the highest regard in philosophy, language, and the humanities. Latin humanists possessed and read virtually all the Latin authors we have today—Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Seneca, Cicero. The exceptions were few—Tacitus, Livy, Lucretius. In poetry, Virgil was universally admired, followed by Ovid.^[17]

Like the earlier Carolingian revival, the 12th-century Latin revival would not be permanent. While religious opposition to pagan Roman literature existed, Haskins argues that "it was not religion but logic" in particular "Aristotle's New Logic toward the middle of [the 12th] century [that] threw a heavy weight on the side of dialectic ..." at the expense of the letters, literature, oratory, and poetry of the Latin authors. The nascent universities would become Aristotelean centers displacing the Latin humanist heritage^[18] until its final revival by Petrarch in the 14th century.

Continuity thesis

Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

Bauer, Susan Wise (2013), The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople, New York: , ISBN 978-0-3930-5976-2

W. W. Norton & Company

Benson, Robert L., Giles Constable, and Carol D. Lanham, eds. (1982). Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: .

Harvard University Press

Haskins, Charles Homer (1927), , Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-6747-6075-2

The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century

Hoyt, Robert S.; Chodorow, Stanley (1976), (3 ed.), New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc., ISBN 978-0-1552-4712-3

Europe in the Middle Ages

(1964). Medieval Technology and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-01950-0-266-9.