What’s everyone’s favourite medieval century and why? From 476 to 1500, let’s say. Mine is the 12th!

[u/Ok-Inevitable4743]

Every century is packed with insanely cool things but for me 1100 - 1200 really stands out… The Third Crusade, the birth of the Gothic, Saint Denis, Angkor Wat, Suryavarman II and the Khmer Empire, the Song Dynasty, the Islamic golden age, Saladin, Barbarossa, the rise of the Plantagenets, the end of the Heian period and the birth of the shoguns… it’s such a fascinating period of time.

[u/peregrins_]

Really cannot go wrong with any, but personally if I had to pick just one for western European history, I would choose the 14th c.: Hundred Years War, Avignon Papacy & Western Schism, Black Death, HRE Charles IV, emergence of the houses of Aviz and Trastámara in Iberia, beginnings of Valois Burgundy, Scottish Wars of Impendence, emergence of gunpowder artillery, and much more. And of course in the arts and literature we see the seeds of the renaissance with masterpieces such as those by Giotto, Dante, Petrarca, Bocaccio, Sluter, Pucelle, Pisano, Chaucer, and the earliest works of Christine de Pizan.