Explore by year

1045 CE

This year falls in the High and Late Middle Ages (c. 1000–1500 CE). Trade grows across Eurasia, and in the thirteenth century the Mongols build the largest connected land empire in history. The Black Death kills a large share of the people of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from the 1340s, and the era closes with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the first European voyages to the Americas.

Within fifteen years

Philosopher · High and Late Middle Ages · ItalyAnselm of Canterbury1033–1109Italian born monk who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093 and gave scholastic theology its motto, faith seeking understanding. His Proslogion argues for God's existence from the bare idea of God. He lived 1033 to 1109.

Philosopher · High and Late Middle Ages · IranAl Ghazali1058–1111Persian theologian from Tus, in modern Iran, who attacked the philosophers in The Incoherence of the Philosophers and turned toward Sufi mysticism. He taught at Baghdad, abandoned his post in a spiritual crisis, and returned to teaching. He lived 1058 to 1111.