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The Forgotten Renaissance
The Renaissance of the twelfth century and how it changed the world
When we hear the word Renaissance, we are often reminded of the world of Greek and Roman revival and artistic effervescence that took place in the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries and had its epicentre in the Italian peninsula. However, in the twelfth-century, there was a revival of ancient theories and subjects due to the influx of new translations from Arabic to Latin of both Greek and Arabic authors. This amalgamation of events constitutes what historian Charles Homer Haskins named The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, in his book of the same name. The intellectual developments of the twelfth-century range from the revival of the Platonic and Aristotelian corpus, to the genesis of the Gothic style of architecture, to the novelty of the application of humanism to theology, and many others.
Philosophy, Humanism and the rise of the University
Two Philosophical approaches coexisted in this time period: on one side it was the science of analysing both life, the universe, and everything, trying to understand humanity’s place in creation; on the other side it was seen as a science of thinking, which meant it was seen as a skill which had a vocational application. This conceptualization of Philosophy…
