MEDIEVAL HISTORY QUIZ-ANSWERS 16-20

Q16. A.
The Hundred Years War, which lasted 116 years, began when King Edward III of England pursued a claim to the throne of France through his mother's line. Fighting did not get underway for about five years, battles were somewhat infrequent, and there were long stretches of peace, albeit uneasy peace. There was also no formal treaty ending the war. The name "Hundred Years War" was given to the conflict by later historians.

Q17. B.
The characters in the Decameron are fleeing to the countryside to avoid the plague in Florence, and to pass the time and to lighten the atmosphere, they all tell stories. In The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the characters are on pilgrimage to Thomas Becket's shrine in Canterbury, and they engage in a similar pastime. Originally, Chaucer envisioned all thirty of his pilgrims telling at least four tales, but he never completed such an ambitious plan. Nevertheless, The Canterbury Tales stands as a masterpiece of late medieval English literature.


Q18. A.
Marco Polo was a renowned Venetian who reportedly traveled with his father and uncle to China and the court of Kublai Khan. He wrote an autobiography known as Il milione, a copy of which Columbus is reputed to have kept with him at all times.

Q19. A.
Humanism was the prevailing mode of Renaissance thought. It emphasized the significance of man and the human realm, particularly the quest to acquire and fulfill the best of human virtues.


Q20. B.
Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, Martin Luther's theses were printed up and widely distributed, and his ideas spread farther than they would have done just half a century before. What began as an effort to reform the Church from within soon transformed into a break with Catholicism and the establishment of Protestantism as a major theological segment of Christianity.

For many scholars the Reformation is a clear marker of the end of the Middle Ages.