Michel de Montaigne's Essays (1580)

 

 

the Protestant Reformation (1517)

 

Thomas More's Utopia (1516)

 

Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly (1511)

 

Humanism in France

 

 

the Vitruvian Man (1492)

 

Conrad Celtes (1487) was named Poet Laureate

 

François Villon (1462) Le grand testament

 

 

Johann Gutenberg (re)invented the printing press (1455)

 

Pope Nicholas V established the library in the Vatican (1448)

 

Lorenzo Valla's De Voluptate (1437)

 

Poggio Bracciolini unearthed Manuscripts of classical writers  (1414)

such as Lucretius, Columella, Silius Italicus, Manilius and Vitruvius

 

the Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

 

Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People (14??) has been called the first modern history book.

Bruni was the first historian to write about the three period view of history: Antiquity, Middle Age and Modern

 

 

the Renaissance (1420-1630)

 

Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ (1418)

 

Humanism in Germany

 

the Age of Discovery (early 15th century - early 17th century)

 

rosicrucianism (1407)

 

the first complete English translation of the Bible (1380's) was finished by John Wycliffe

 

Renaissance humanism (late 14th century)

 

Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1353)

 

Petrarch's Rerum Memorandarum Libri (1342)

 

Humansim (14th century)