Most important invention/innovation in the Middle Ages

[Unconsensual]

In your opinion, what is the most important invention/innovation in the middle ages? For discussion purposes I will define the period as 500-1700.

For me it would have to be the advent of the movable printing press; for it allowed for an explosion of education and communication, in addition it had the side effect of weakening the clerical monopoly on education and fed fuel to the Reformation.

 

[Avitus]

In your opinion, what is the most important invention/innovation in the middle ages? For discussion purposes I will define the period as 500-1700.

For me it would have to be the advent of the movable printing press; for it allowed for an explosion of education and communication, in addition it had the side effect of weakening the clerical monopoly on education and fed fuel to the Reformation.

I'll take an entirely different approach and say either oceangoing ships or the nation state. The former because it allows faster and more long range travel, and thus trade and spread of ideas that were invaluable to the early modern world, and the latter for providing a stable society in which to pursue knowledge of all kinds without the duke nextdoor coming in and destroying your research.

 

[wolf_brother]

500 to 1700 That's quite some unusual dates for the "Middle Ages."

If we're going so far I'd say likely the introduction of the new world crop packages to the old world, and old world domesticates to the new.

 

[Unconsensual]

...

Yes, but it could be argued that those developments came from a desire to trade and circumvent the Middle East.Also faster ships by themselves is insignificant for the purposes of communication, often it takes an open society to adopt new ideas: that in addition to the lack of cheap paper meant that most skills and ideas were transferred by the word of mouth.

 

[Cook]

In your opinion, what is the most important invention/innovation in the middle ages?

I will go with Freeman Dyson on this one and say Hay. Hay was unknown to the Roman Empire and without the innovation of cutting straw in summer and storing it for the winter the large cities north of the Alps would have been an impossibility.