Definitions

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar. His most famous and influential work is the Decameron, completed by 1353, in which his ten characters present 100 tales of everyday life. The book covers all manner...

John Carver (l. 1584-1621 CE) was one of the leaders of the Mayflower expedition, first signer of the Mayflower Compact, and first governor of Plymouth Colony. He was a prominent member of the separatist congregation of Leiden, the Netherlands...

Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469-1536) was a Dutch humanist scholar considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Renaissance. A prolific writer who made full use of the printing press, he produced editions of classical authors, educational treatises...

Christopher Jones (l. c. 1570-1622 CE) was the English captain and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, the cargo ship that brought the religious separatists (now known as pilgrims) to the New World in 1620 CE. Little is known of Jones' life prior...

The Plymouth Colony (1620-1691) was the first English settlement in the region of modern-day New England in the United States, settled by the religious Separatists known as the “pilgrims” who crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower in...

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) was a Polish astronomer who famously proposed that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun in a heliocentric system and not, as then widely thought, in a geocentric system where the Earth is...

The Jamestown Colony in Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in North America founded in 1607. It was the third attempt of the Virginia Company of London to establish a permanent trade center in the Americas following the failures...

Petrarch (1304-1374 CE), full name Francesco Petrarca, was an Italian scholar and poet who is credited as one of the founders of the Renaissance movement in art, thought, and literature. Petrarch actively searched for 'lost' ancient manuscripts...

The Mayflower is the name of the cargo ship that brought the Puritan separatists (known as pilgrims) to North America in 1620 CE. It was a type of sailing ship known as a carrack with three masts with square-rigged sails on the main and foremast...

The European colonization of the Americas was the process by which European settlers populated the regions of North, Central, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. It is also recognized as the direct cause for the cultures of the...