A reflection on the intellectual awakening of Latin-Germanic Europe in the XII century, a world-changing phenomenon interpretabile as the consequence of economic development, political-territorial recomposition and contact with the other great systems of Islamic and Jewish culture. In the video we talk about the qualitative and quantitative improvement of the written production in the XII century, a phenomenon different from the Carolingian and Ottonian elitism, which involved new the cultural partecipation classes which gave birth to a lay historiography. Among other things we talk about the consequences that this phenomenon had in developing the new theological and juridical culture, as well as universalism as a direct consequence of the birth of the universities: a process that strongly distinguishes the West in terms of the division of powers and the approach scientific-rational to the Creation.