Conclusion 43France, England, and Spain had consolidated their authority, and sover
eign monarchical states began to emerge.
Above all, three salient movements of change brought the Middle Ages to
an end. The first was the Renaissance, or cultural rebirth, which began in
the mid-fourteenth century in the Italian city-states (see Chapter 2). The
commercial prosperity of Florence, above all, but also of Venice and other
independent city-states made possible this period of extraordinary accom
plishment in literature and painting. The invention of printing began to
transform one culture after another. Second, the exploration and coloniza
tion of the New World would ultimately help end the Mediterranean Sea s
role as the center of European prosperity and would lead to Spain s emer
gence as a world power, along with England and the Netherlands (see Chap
ters 5 and 6). Colonization brought the establishment of European empires
abroad; between 1500 and the late eighteenth century, more than 1.5 mil
lion Europeans crossed the ocean to live in the New World. Third, the Refor
mation (see Chapter 3), which began in the second decade of the sixteenth
century, challenged the unity of the Roman Catholic Church and its domi
nance in much of Europe.