High & Late Middle Ages

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Growing Power of Church

- Europe loosely united under Christian faith by Charlesmagne (740-814)
- Control over Holy Roman Empire
- Control over religious, political, and cultural life
- Faith ruled supreme over reason and intellectual life through the inquisition.

After 1000, Conditions Improved

- Crusades pulled Europe together and reconnected it to the outside world.
- Founding of first universities
- Byzantine scholars fled to West after fall of Byzantine Empire to Ottoman Empire.
- Renewed contact with Islamic World led to advances in science, mathematics, technology and a rediscovery of Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle.
- Introduction of new Philosophies and ideas led to a changed Zeitgeist and set the stage for the Renaissance.

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