12th century  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Letters of Heloise and Abelard

This alludes to the birth of modern European poetry that occurred in Provence around the 12th century, whereupon, after the culture of the troubadours fell into almost complete desolation and destruction due to the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), other poets in the 14th century ameliorated and thus cultivated the gai saber or gaia scienza.

Inventions, discoveries and introductions of the 12th century

• Beginning of the Gothic architecture style in France.
• Building of Angkor Wat in Khmer empire.
• First European universities founded.
• Christian humanism becomes a self-conscious philosophical tendency in Europe.
• Earliest record of a miracle play, in Dunstable, England.
• Beginning of trouvère music and poetry in France.
• Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli composes his epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin
• Beginning of the Ars antiqua period in the history of Western European music.
• The Madrid Skylitzes manuscript illustrates the Synopsis of Histories by John Skylitzes.
• Earliest Western account of a mariner's compass, by Alexander Neckam is "De utensilibus" (see Shen Kuo).
• Although known in China since the 5th century BC, the blast furnace for smelting cast iron first appears in Europe, in and around Lapphyttan, Sweden, as early as 1150.
• First fire and plague insurance (in Iceland).
• First authenticated influenza epidemics.
• Invention of the Kente cloth.
• Start of Middle English.
• Introduction of Christianity in Finland, Karelia and Estonia
• Hoysala architecture reaches a peak.
• Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155–1191) founder of school of illumination (Ishraq).
• 1165 — The Liuhe Pagoda of Hangzhou, China, is built.
• 1111 — The Chinese Donglin Academy is founded
• 1107 — The Chinese engineer Wu Deren combines the mechanical compass vehicle of the South Pointing Chariot with the distance-measuring odometer device.
• The Durham Cathedral of England is completed.
• The kasbah of Marrakesh is built, city gate Bab Agnaou and the Koutoubia mosque.
• 1104 — The Venice Arsenal of Venice, Italy, is founded. It employed some 16000 people for the mass production of sailing ships in large assembly lines, hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution.
• 1106- Finished building of Gelati.
• 1185 First record of windmills.