What was the cultural life of Europe like during the medieval periodHow did the rise of universities and the increase in mobility through trade routes contribute to the spread of new cultural ideas?

this is a big question, but remember that Arabs, Turks, Persian, Indians, and Asians had trade routes that spanned from North Africa to China well before Europe started "discovering" the rest of the world.
Muslims along these trade routes spread cultural and scientific ideas for centuries prior to European interaction, including ideas about mathematics, optics, and science.
Undoubtedly the increased mobility and trade of merchant capitalism brought lots of new knowledge to Europe, but parsing cultural diffusion takes defining which cultural trait you are looking at.