In 1453 Constantinople fell, and the Turk was permanently established in the east of Europe. As a counterstroke, in the west, not forty years later, the Moorish dominion in Spain was wiped out, Spain emerging as a united Christian kingdom. Before the end of the century Columbus and Gama had discovered America, and virtually rediscovered India. Across the ocean a new, almost unlimited field for expansion, for enterprise, for rivalry had been opened to the European peoples. Already in the realms of intellect old forgotten knowledge had been gradually recovered by the Renascence, the revival of learning and letters; with the intellectual expansion and the invention of the printing press paths to new knowledge were being opened. Men were shaking themselves free from the shackles of authority and tradition. Hence, the sixteenth century witnessed that revolt of half Western Christendom from Rome which we call the Reformation; in its essence, though by no means in its form at the first, a revolt against the interposition of any human authority between the individual man and his Maker. With that revolt political and national divisions were inextricably blended, while the whole was complicated by the new conditions of political supremacy created by the New World. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | TIME-TABLE OF THE WORLD: A.D. 1000 to 1500 | | | | Development of Feudalism. The Rise and Decadence of the Papacy. | | The Crusades. Holy Roman Empire. The Organisation of England, | | France, and Spain. The Renaissance | +-----+--------------------------+-----------------------------+-----+ |A.D. | The Non-Christian World | Christendom |A.D. | |1000 | | |1000 | | | Mahmud of Ghazni. | Scandinavian power: Canute, | | | | Beginning of | King of Norway, Sweden, | | | | Mohammedan invasions | Denmark, and England. | | | | of India. | Franconian line of emperors;| | | | | Burgundy reunited to | | | | | Empire. | | | | | Dynasty of Hugh Capet in | | | | | France. | | |1050 +--------------------------+-----------------------------+1050 | | | | ENGLAND: The Norman | | | | | conquest, 1066. | | | | | Norman conquests in Sicily | | | | | and S. Italy. | | | | Power of the Seljuk | Power of the Empire under | | | | Turkish Dynasty.