OTHER EXPLORER

Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475 – around January 12–21, 1519^[1]) was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.

He traveled to the New World in 1500 and, after some exploration, settled on the island of Hispaniola.

Amerigo Vespucci (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈriːɡo vesˈputtʃi]; March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier,navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to Afro-Eurasians. Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be termed "America", deriving its namefrom Americus, the Latin version of Vespucci's first name.^[1][2]`

^{Ferdinand Magellan} 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer who organised theSpanish expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth.

Born into a wealthy Portuguese family in around 1480, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer and was eventually selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the "Spice Islands."

^{Juan Sebastián Elcano[1] (1476 – 4 August 1526) was a Spanish Basque[2] explorer[3][4] who completed the first circumnavigationof the Earth. After Magellan's death in the Philippines, Elcano took command of the nau Victoria from the Moluccas to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain.}Elcano served as a naval commander of Charles I of Spain and took part in the expedition to thePhilippines. 

THE PRINTING PRESS

The Renaissance spread to Germany, France, England, and Spain in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. In its migration northward, Renaissance culture adapted itself to conditions unknown in Italy, such as the growth of the monarchical state and the strength of lay piety. In England France, and Spain, Renaissance culture tended to be court-centered and hence anti-republican. In Germany, no monarchical state existed but a vital tradition of lay piety was present was present in the Low Countries. The Brethren of the Common Life, for example, was a lay movement emphasizing education and practical piety. Intensely Christian and at the same time anticlerical (shades of what was to come!), the people in such movements found in Renaissance culture the tools for sharpening their wits against the clergy -- not to undermine faith, but restore its ancient apostolic purity.

Northern humanists were profoundly devoted to ancient learning but nothing in northern humanism compares to the paganizing trend associated with the Italian Renaissance. The northern humanists were chiefly interested in the problem of the ancient church and the question of what constituted original Christianity.

Two factors operated to accelerate the spread of Renaissance culture after 1450: growing economic prosperity and the printing press. Prosperity -- the result of peace and the decline of famine and the plague -- led to the founding of schools and colleges. In these schools the sons of gentlemen and nobles would receive a humanistic education imported from Italy. The purpose of such an education was to prepare men for a career in the church or civil service.

Sometime in the 13th century, paper money and playing cards from China reached the West. They were "block-printed," that is, characters or pictures were carved into a wooden block, inked, and then transferred to paper. Since each word, phrase or picture was on a separate block, this method of reproduction was expensive and time-consuming

MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONS IN SPAIN

Major Institutions, Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church exercised significant power in medieval Spain. The church was important in two ways. First, it made royal authority legitimate, through the doctrine of the divine right of kings. People who did not accept Catholicism were suspected of disloyalty to the monarchy. Second, it asserted spiritual jurisdiction over all Spaniards. As both head of the Catholic Church and a foreign ruler, the pope could call upon church members in Spain to undermine royal policy. The papacy, for instance, frequently opposed royal actions that were perceived as conflicting with the church’s interests in other countries, and it sought to prevent kings from diverting the income of the church into the royal treasury. For these reasons, kings tried to control the selection of bishops in their territory. The church also controlled an immense amount of wealth, which it accumulated in the form of bequests when people died. Wealth and papal political influence gave the church great power that kings often sought to restrict.

The church consisted of several influential organizations. The most important were the monasteries and the military religious orders. Monasteries participated in the Christian reconquest, and several bishops and abbots led armies. As the idea of a crusade grew in popularity, the pope encouraged another religious institution in Spain, the military orders. The most important of these included the orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara. Knights in the orders took religious vows to fight the infidels, and they played a significant military role in the reconquest between 1150 and 1250. The orders were granted tracts of land to support the reconquest, and those who were admitted gained the status of nobles. Later, the orders grew wealthy and lost their original purpose.

HUNDRES YEARS´ WAR

The name the Hundred Years’ War has been used by historians since the beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453. Two factors lay at the origin of the conflict: first, the status of the duchy of Guyenne (or Aquitaine)-though it belonged to the kings of England, it remained a fief of the French crown, and the kings of England wanted independent possession; second, as the closest relatives of the last direct Capetian king (Charles IV, who had died in 1328), the kings of England from 1337 claimed the crown of France.

The war owes its historical significance to multiple factors. By its end, feudal armies had been largely replaced by professional troops, and aristocratic dominance had yielded to a democratisation of the manpower and weapons of armies. Although primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of French and English nationalism. The wider introduction of weapons and tactics supplanted the feudal armies where heavy cavalry had dominated. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire originated during the war, composed largely of commoners and thus helping to change their role in warfare. With respect to the belligerents, English political forces  time came to oppose the costly venture.