This century saw the domination of feudal lords, urban development, the birth of their new, bourgeois culture, new classes and new forms of class struggle, the great geographical discoveries, an unusually extended the mental horizon of the Europeans, and the cruel deeds of the conquistadors in the New World, political and religious battles of the Reformation, by undermining the power of the world the Catholic Church, the first steps of capitalism, marked by ruin and working people to the glory of 'primitive accumulation of capital', the bourgeois revolution in Germany and the Netherlands. But this century have left us a legacy not only the monuments of feudal violence and bigotry of the church, the people's darkness and theological-scholastic 'wisdom'. From this era came to us and poetic works in which the people embodied their genius, the magnificent Gothic cathedral, wonderful, wonderful art and non-repeatability poetic works of the Renaissance, the first successes of science and politics, gave a string of great men and great martyrs that are proud of all of humanity: the founders of utopian socialism, Thomas More and Campanella, bold thinkers of Giordano Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus, the leaders of the revolutionary masses, even a vague ideology of the communist idea Dolchino, John Ball, Thomas Munzer – all these and many other people, their lives, activities, and often martyred prepared and accelerate the progress of mankind, its imminent liberation from all darkness, oppression, violence and suffering. Thus, the Middle Ages have made their – and no small – share of the common fund material and spiritual values. Dividing the entire history of the ancient, middle, and new emerging even in XV-XVI centuries., During the Renaissance.
Humanists, the first representatives of an increasingly growing and growing class – city bourgeoisie begin the selection of his era as a "new", comparing it with ancient and at the same time oppose its immediately preceding her age, which they give the name 'Middle Ages', 'Middle Ages' (medium aevum). If modernity seemed humanists XV-XVI centuries. 'Revival' of ancient culture, the 'middle age' appeared to them since the fall of culture, a rough time of feudal barbarism is deeply hostile to any culture. Arose in the Renaissance a new tripartite periodization was further developed in the xviii century. historians and publicists 'Enlightenment'. Gradually gaining universal acceptance, it became the basis of all teaching history. As the events that determine the chronological framework of 'Middle Ages', it was assumed for the beginning of the era triumph of Christianity in the iv. or fall of the Roman Empire in the West, dating from 476 ad are usually, but for the rest of her – or the fall of Constantinople in 1453, or the discovery of America in 1492, or, finally, the beginning of the Reformation in Germany – in 1517 subsequent to the "Middle Ages" period is considered to be "new time", from this era stood still since French bourgeois revolution of 1789 as the 'newest' history.