1st year history

• Pagan


  Someone who worships various gods, often with a focus on nature or the earth
• Druid


  A spiritual figure similar to a priest in pre-Christian Celtic Ireland
• Monastery


  A closed religious community living by the rules of an order
• Monk


  A man dedicated to a religious order and to life in a monastery
• Scriptorium


  A room where manuscripts were copied by hand and illustrated by scribes
• Round tower


  A bell tower and safe place for people and treasures if the monastery came under attack
• Manuscript


  A book written by hand, often in Latin, on sheepskin parchment or vellum (calfskin)
• High cross


  A free-standing stone cross, usually with elaborate carvings showing biblical scenes
• Longphort


  A Viking camp by the water, used as a base for raids
• Feudalism


  The system of land ownership where rulers (kings, lords) divided land among their followers in return for loyalty and taxes
• Peasants


  The people who worked on a lord's land
• Oath of chivalry


  Sworn by a knight to be loyal to his lord, protect the poor and weak and be brave in battle
• Open field system


  The system of farming where peasants were each given strips of land to farm in large fields
• Fallow


  Leave the land uncultivated for one year so that the soil could recover its nutrients
• Commons


  Used for grazing the animals that belonged to the peasants
• Tithe


  The payment of one-tenth of a peasant's annual income to the Church
• Charter


  A contract whereby a town was granted freedom to run its own affairs but paid taxes to the king
• Guild


  An organisation of skilled people who worked in the same trade
• Renaissance


  The rebirth of European interest in the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome. During this period, people began to question old ideas from the Middle Ages and develop new ideas about art, architecture, science, literature and medicine
• Humanism


  A shift in mindset from a focus on God to a focus on human knowledge
• Patron


  A wealthy person who commissioned (hired) an artist to produce a work of art for them
• Perspective


  The creation of depth and distance in a painting
• Anatomy


  The study of the structure of the human body
• Movable type printing press


  A method of printing books that placed individual metal letters into a frame to form words, coated them with ink and pressed the frame onto paper
• Heresy


  Knowingly holding a view that went against the official teachings of the Catholic Church
• Caravel


  A type of ship large and sturdy enough to make long voyages and sail in all winds
• Conquistadores


  Spanish for 'conquerors': soldiers who conquered indigenous American civilisations
• Colonisation


  When a country takes over another territory and settles some of its own people there to control it
• Slavery triangle


  The trade triangle whereby ships delivered African slaves to the Americas, American goods to Europe, and European-manufactured goods back to Africa
• Columbian exchange


  The exchange of foods, animals and technologies between Europe and the Americas