History glossary
humanism
a Renaissance intellectual movement focused on classical texts, rhetoric, ethics, and human learning.
- Category
- Intellectual movement
- Region
- Global
- Date range
- Varies
What it means
A Renaissance intellectual movement focused on classical texts, rhetoric, ethics, and human learning.
Stories using this term
The Elizabethan Age
Elizabeth I’s reign brought stability, cultural flourishing, exploration, and victory over the Spanish Armada.
The English Reformation
Henry VIII’s break with Rome reshaped religion, politics, and identity through decades of upheaval.
The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution transformed how humans understand the world, replacing tradition with observation, experimentation and mathematical laws that still shape modern science.
The Tudor Dynasty
The Tudors strengthened royal power, drove religious change, and shaped early modern England.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilisation of city-states, sailors, philosophers, soldiers, artists, and political experiments whose influence reached far beyond the Aegean world. From Athens and Sparta to the Persian Wars, democracy, philosophy, drama, and Alexander the Great, Greek history helped shape ideas about citizenship, empire, knowledge, and culture. Its legacy survived through Rome, Byzantium, Islam, and modern Europe, making Ancient Greece central to the story of the classical world.
The Renaissance
From Petrarch to printing, from Florence to northern Europe, the Renaissance transformed learning, art, politics, religion, and science while linking medieval inheritance to modern change.
