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12- Recovery & Rebirth: The Age of the Renaissance
Widening Intellectual Horizons
During the fifteenth century, a brilliant rebirth of the arts and learning expanded the intellectual
horizons of Europeans as new voices celebrating secular human achievement and ability were
added to the voices glorifying God. The Renaissance thrived on a newfound human perspective
on life, the intensified study of Greek and Latin writing, and revolutionary techniques in
bookmaking.
The Humanist Renewal
Europeans’ rediscovery of Greek and Roman writers gave rise to humanism, the study of the
liberal arts or the humanities. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks sent
Greek scholars to Italy for refuge and gave extra impetus to the revival of interest in the Greek
classics. Humanist scholars focused on classical history and literature in their eagerness to
emulate the glories of the ancient world. They rejected the emphasis on logic and the abstract
language of the scholastics, preferring instead the eloquence and style of the great Roman
authors. Most humanists did not think that studying ancient texts conflicted with their religious
beliefs. Rather, in “returning to the sources,” scholars sought to harmonize Christian faith and
ancient learning. The study of the humanities raised expectations regarding what it meant to be
an educated person and influenced school curricula up to the middle of the nineteenth century
and even beyond.
The Advent of Printing
In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400-1470), a German goldsmith, invented printing with
movable type, which allowed printers to produce books and pamphlets on a scale and at a cost
never before possible. A durable metal mold for each letter of the alphabet was used to cast
multiple copies of a small block (a type) having the letter on its face. The type for the text of a
page was set in a frame, then inked and pressed against a sheet of paper. Paper, which was
much cheaper than parchment, had been introduced to Europe just before Gutenberg’s
invention. Movable type took bookmaking out of the hands of human copyists, allowing entire
manuscripts to be printed with only a small amount of human labor. After the 1440s, printing
spread rapidly from Germany to other European countries. The advent of printing was so
important that it brought about a communications revolution.
Revolution in the Arts
The Renaissance was one of the most brilliant creative periods in the European arts. New
techniques in painting, architecture, and music fostered original styles and new subjects. Artists’
individual talents and genius were recognized; artists developed a more naturalistic style; and
perspective brought a mathematical and scientific basis to the visual arts, architecture, and
music.
From Artisan to Artist
During the fifteenth century, artists acquired a more prominent social status, as individual talent
was recognized by society. Artists began to use a more naturalistic style, especially in
representing the human body, and they used mathematics to depict images with
realistic perspective. The concept of artistic “genius,” sometimes fashioned by the artists
themselves, convinced society of the unique and priceless nature of their works. However, the
artists’ imaginations were often tempered by their wealthy patrons, who did not always allow
artists to work unrestricted. Renaissance artists worked under three possible arrangements:
long-term service in princely courts, commissioned piecework, or production for the market. As
the heads of workshops, where they trained apprentices and negotiated their own contracts,
artists had a great degree of autonomy. Famous artists developed followings, and many gained
greater contractual control over their work, so that specific directions from wealthy consumers
became less common. A market system for the visual arts also began to emerge during the
Renaissance; artists produced works without prior arrangement for sale—a development that
became a major force in artistic creativity.
The Human Figure
In their works, Renaissance artists began to depict ever more expressively human movements
and emotions. In paintings like The Expulsion from Paradise, Masaccio (1401-1428) shows
Adam and Eve grieving in shame and despair. Many masterpieces represented feminine
beauty, as in the classical pagan figures of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510), while many
others, like the works of Raphael (1483-1520), depicted the Virgin Mary. Renaissance artists
also painted images of their contemporaries, including a growing number of highly detailed and
realistic portraits of the middle class, illustrating a new, elevated view of human existence.
Painters from the Low Countries, such as Jan van Eyck(1390?-1441), distinguished
themselves in portraiture, achieving a sense of detail and reality unsurpassed until the advent of
photography. The ideal of a universal man found expression in the writing of Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494), whose work On the Dignity of Man placed man at the center of the
universe as the “molder and maker of himself” and as the measure of all things; the work
stressed human responsibility in shaping society and a religious trust in God’s divine plan. For
the first time since classical antiquity, sculptors again cast the human figure in bronze in life-size
or larger freestanding statues. One idealized depiction of the human body
was Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475-1564) eighteen-foot marble statue, David, posing free of
fabric and armor.
Order Through Perspective
Renaissance art was distinguished from earlier artistic trends by being more concerned with
reality than symbolism. Renaissance artists used visual perspective-an illusory threedimensional effect on a two-dimensional surface-to create realistic images as the eye would
perceive them; to be described as an “imitator of nature” was the highest praise for a
Renaissance artist. Implicit in the use of perspective to represent space was a new
Renaissance worldview in which humans asserted themselves over nature by controlling space
itself. Artists like Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455), Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), and Piero
della Francesca (1420-1492) employed perspective in their work to create a sense of depth and
space. Architects also exemplified the Renaissance ideal of uniting creativity with scientific
knowledge. Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) proved a master of
engineering. The buildings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) reveal a strong classical
influence; in his theoretical work On Architecture (1415), he argued the merits of large-scale
urban planning and favored designs reminiscent of classical Rome. Pope Sixtus IV (r. 14711484) applied Alberti’s architectural ideas to Rome, transforming the medieval city into one that
recalled the grandeur of its ancient origins.
New Musical Harmonies
While Italy set the standard for Renaissance art and architecture, trends in northern Europe
influenced musical styles. The leader of the polyphonic style of music was Guillaume Dufay
(1400-1474) from the Low Countries. Dufay composed music with mathematical precision,
traveling to all the cultural centers of the Renaissance, where nobles sponsored compositions
and maintained corps of musicians at their courts. The new style of music was very popular
among social elites. Renaissance polyphony consisted of three main genres: the canon (central
texts) of the Catholic Mass; the motet, which used both sacred and secular texts; and the
secular chanson, which often incorporated the tunes of folk dances. Composers frequently
adapted folk melodies for sacred music, expressing religious sentiment through voices rather
than instruments. The tambourine and lute, as well as small ensembles of wind and string
instruments, became fashionable in the courts of Europe. Keyboard instruments, such as the
harpsichord, which could play several sounds and melodies at once, were also in use by the
fifteenth century.
The Intersection of Public and Private Lives
Beginning in the fourteenth century, the state attempted to shape private life through its
institutions and laws. This process was most evident in Florence, where considerations of state
power intruded into intimate personal concerns, such as sexuality, marriage, and childbirth.
Renaissance Social Hierarchy
In 1427 in Florence, the center of Renaissance culture, the government compiled a
comprehensive tax record of city households. Completed in 1430, this census provided
important details about social relations and demographics. Florentines recognized class
divisions, referring to the “little people” (workers, artisans, and small merchants; about 60
percent of the population) and the “fat people” (wealthier merchants and other professionals;
about 30 percent of the population). At the bottom of the hierarchy were slaves and servants,
largely women from the surrounding countryside employed in domestic service. At the top, a tiny
one percent of patricians, bankers, and wool merchants controlled a quarter of the city’s wealth.
Based on the survey, men seem to have outnumbered women, an unusual statistic that can be
explained by female infanticide and the underreporting of women. Most Florentines lived in
households of six or more, although the family unit itself-whether nuclear or extended-varied
depending on wealth. In rich patrician families and those of landowning peasants in the
countryside, extended families and higher numbers of children were the norm. Poorer
households could not afford additional mouths to feed.
Family Alliances
In a society where class clearly defined marriage patterns among the social elite, money,
political status, and family standing all determined marriage alliances. The male head of the
household typically orchestrated Italian Renaissance marriages, although widows working with
male relatives could also play a role. Upper-class Florentine families traced their descent and
determined inheritance through the male line. Daughters could claim inheritance only through a
dowry. Fathers opened accounts for their daughters in theDowry Fund, a public fund that
provided handsome dowries to support a marriage market that ensured the social coherence of
the ruling classes. Female subordination in marriage was often the result of young girls marrying
significantly older men. This age disparity also left many women widowed in their twenties and
thirties. Often pressed by their own families to remarry to make a new alliance, widows faced
losing their children to their first husband’s family if they did. Older widows, under less pressure
to remarry, could hope to gain a greater degree of autonomy. By contrast, in northern Europe
marriage partners were much closer in age and women enjoyed a more secure position.
Women played a more active role in the northern economy, had more control over their dowries,
and could represent themselves before the law-rights that appalled many Italian men who
traveled to the north.
The Regulation of Sexuality
Class also manifested itself in child care. Middle- and upper-class families hired wet nurses to
breast-feed their infants. Poor families sometimes could not afford to raise their children and
abandoned them to strangers or public charity. In 1445, Florence opened the Ospedale degli
Innocenti, a foundling hospital, to deal with children abandoned by poor families and unwed
mothers, who were often servants impregnated by their masters. Over two-thirds of abandoned
children were female, a further indication of gender inequity. Most upper-class men
acknowledged and supported their illegitimate children as a sign of virility, and illegitimate
children of noble lineage often rose to social and political prominence. Unwed mothers,
however, were stigmatized and virtually lost their chances of marriage. The Florentine state’s
low tolerance for homosexuality led to the establishment of government brothels to “eliminate a
worse evil by a lesser one.” The Florentine state worked to uncover acts of sodomy, fining
homosexuals and putting pederasts to death. European magistrates took the rape of women
less seriously and the social class of the rapist and victim determined the punishments;
noblemen who raped lower-class or slave women received light sentences or none at all.
The Renaissance State and the Art of Politics
During the Renaissance the state was seen as a work of art, a human creation to be shaped,
conquered, and administered by princes according to the principles of power politics. Florentine
political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) laid out these principles in his work The
Prince. During this time many states developed stronger and institutionally more complex
central governments that paved the way for the nation-state in later centuries.
Republics and Principalities in Italy
Niccolò Machiavelli discussed politics without the slightest reference to ethical or moral goals.
Although he believed states rested on republican virtue, his keen observations of Italian politics
convinced him that power was necessary in founding a state. Italian states can be divided into
two categories: republics such as Florence and Venice, which allowed a civic elite to govern,
and principalities such as Milan and Naples, which were ruled by a single dynasty. In Rome, the
popes’ increased involvement in politics was meant to restore papal authority after the Great
Schism. The popes’ curbed local power, expanded papal government, increased taxation,
enlarged the papal army and navy, and extended papal diplomacy.
Renaissance Diplomacy
Many features characteristic of today’s diplomacy were pioneered during the fifteenth century.
Ceremonies, elegance, and eloquence formalized the new complex role of the diplomat, who
was expected to keep a continuous stream of foreign political news flowing to the home
government and not just conduct temporary missions as in the past. Milan led the way in the
development of diplomacy: Francesco Sforza used his diplomatic corps to extend his political
patronage, sending to his diplomats coded messages on individuals and events. As the center
of Christendom, Rome became the diplomatic hub of Europe, with over two hundred diplomats
stationed there by the 1490s. The papacy sent out far fewer diplomats than it received,
establishing permanent nuncios (envoys) in every European state only at the end of the fifteenth
century. The most outstanding achievement of Italy’s diplomacy came when a general peace
treaty settled decades of warfare engendered by Milanese expansion and civil war. The Treaty
of Lodi (1454) established a delicate balance of power among the major Italian states that
lasted until the more powerful northern European countries invaded in 1494.
Monarchies and Empires
With the exception of rulers in central Europe, political leaders expanded their empires and
centralized their powers. In England, intermittent dynastic wars between the houses of
Lancaster and York, later called the Wars of the Roses, continued until the coronation of Henry
VII in 1485. In Spain, the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon ended
decades of war between the two kingdoms. They ruled jointly over their territories, and their
union represented the first step toward the creation of a unified Spain. Isabella and Ferdinand
limited the privileges of the nobility and relied on the Hermandad, or civic militia, to enforce local
justice and on lawyers to staff the royal council. Their reign ushered in an age when militant
Catholicism became an instrument of state authority and shaped the Spanish national
consciousness, in which the practice of Catholicism was seen as a sign of loyalty to the
monarchy. After fourteen years of war, the last Muslim state in Spain, Granada, finally fell in
1492. Meanwhile, France had won the Hundred Years’ War but was overshadowed by the
brilliant Burgundian court and its territorial holdings. Under Louis XI (r. 1461-1483), France
seized large tracts of Burgundian territory after the death of Charles the Bold and inherited most
of southern France after the Anjou dynasty died out. Louis strengthened royal power at home by
promoting industry and commerce, imposing permanent salt and land taxes, and maintaining
the standing army established by Charles VII. By contrast, in Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland
the nobility maintained their right to elect kings, frustrating any attempts at state building. Sultan
Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) proclaimed a holy war and laid siege to Constantinople in 1453,
taking the city after fifty-three days. North of the Black Sea and east of Poland-Lithuania, the
princes of Muscovy began to assert their independence after the collapse of Mongol rule. Ivan
III (r. 1462-1505) was the first Muscovite prince to claim the imperial title of tsar. The tsar
enforced the Russian Orthodox faith and legitimized his rule by proclaiming Moscow the “Third
Rome.” The tsars divided the populace into land-holding elite in service to the tsar and a vast
majority of taxpaying subjects, creating a state more in the despotic political tradition of the
Ottoman Empire than of western Europe.
On the Threshold of World History: Widening Geographic Horizons
The fifteenth century ushered in the first era of world history, as European colonial expansion
began to break down cultural frontiers. Before this period, Europe had remained at the periphery
of world history, but European exploitation, conquest, and racism defined this era of transition
from the medieval to the modern world.
The Divided Mediterranean
During the second half of the fifteenth century, the Mediterranean Sea began to lose its
preeminence in trade to the Atlantic Ocean. Mediterranean states used the galley, a flatbottomed vessel propelled by oars, dependent on human rowers, and incapable of open-ocean
voyages. Although divided into Muslim and Christian zones, the Mediterranean still carried
significant trade. Sugarcane from western Asia reached the western Mediterranean. Then, from
the Balearic Islands off Spain, the crop traveled to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, where the
Spanish enslaved the natives to work sugar plantations. In this way, slavery was exported from
the western Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and then on to the Americas. Different ethnic groups
also crossed the Mediterranean. Muslims who had fled from Granada to North Africa continued
to raid the Spanish coast. When Castile expelled the Jews, some of them settled in North Africa,
more in Italy, and many in the Ottoman Empire. Marked by these competing interests and
religions, the divided Mediterranean prompted many Europeans to look for new opportunities
across the unexplored oceans.
Portuguese Explorations
In 1433, Portugal began systematic exploration of the western coast of Africa. Using
technologies such as the lateen sail, new types of ships, and better charts and instruments, and
financed by the Portuguese monarchy, the explorers were motivated by a crusading zeal
against Muslims and medieval adventure stories like those of the Marco Polo. The Portuguese
hoped to bypass the Ottoman Turks’ overland routes and reach the spice-producing lands of
South and Southeast Asia. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447-1455) granted King John II of
Portugal and his successors a monopoly on trade with inhabitants of newly “discovered”
regions. In 1499, Vasco da Gama led a Portuguese fleet around the southern tip of Africa and
reached Calicut, India, the center of the spice trade. By 1517, a chain of Portuguese forts dotted
the Indian Ocean, reaching from Mozambique to Malacca (modern Malaysia). After the voyages
of Christopher Columbus, Portugal’s interests clashed with those of Spain. Mediated by Pope
Alexander VI, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Atlantic world between the two
monarchies 370 leagues west of the Cape Verdes Islands, reserving the west African coast and
the route to India for Portugal, and the oceans and lands to the west for Spain. Unintentionally,
this agreement also allowed Portugal to claim Brazil in 1500.
The Voyages of Columbus
Born of Genoese parents, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) gained valuable experience
serving in Portuguese voyages down the west African coast and then settled in Spain. Inspired
by The Travels of Marco Polo, Columbus proposed to sail west to Asia’s gold and spices.
Columbus found patrons in Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In August 1492, with
three ships and about ninety men, Columbus set sail with a contract to assert Castilian
sovereignty over any new land and peoples and to share any profits with the crown. Reaching
what is today the Bahamas, Columbus explored the Caribbean islands, encountered the
peaceful Arawaks, and exchanged gifts of beads and glass for gold. Trusting natives
notwithstanding, the Europeans’ agenda was to find gold, subjugate the natives, and propagate
Christianity. Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 found no gold mines or spices and switched to
kidnapping slaves, who were exported to Spain. The Spanish monarchs, eager for riches, sent
officials and priests to the Americas (named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci).
Columbus’s career illustrated the changing balance between the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic. When the Ottomans drove Genoese merchants out of the eastern Mediterranean, the
Genoese turned to the Iberian peninsula and the Atlantic.
A New Era in Slavery
Although slavery had existed since antiquity, the European voyages of discovery expanded the
economic scale of slave labor and attached race and color to slavery. During the Renaissance,
nearly all slaves arrived in the Mediterranean ports of Barcelona, Marseille, Venice, and Genoa.
Some were captured in war or piracy, others (black Africans) were sold by African and Bedouin
traders to Christian buyers. In western Asia, impoverished families sold children into slavery,
and many in the Balkans became slaves following the devastation of the Ottoman invasions.
Slaves served as domestic servants in leading Mediterranean cities, as galley slaves in naval
fleets, and as agricultural laborers. In the Ottoman army, slaves even formed an important elite
contingent. After the Portuguese voyages, Africans increasingly filled the ranks of slaves. When
traders exploited warfare in West Africa, the Portuguese trade in “pieces” (as slaves were
called) drew criticism at home from some conscientious clergy. However, slavery’s critics could
not deny the enormous profits brought in by the slave trade. Most slaves worked in the sugar
plantations in the Portuguese Atlantic islands and in Brazil. Some worked as domestic servants
in Portugal, where Africans constituted 3 percent of the population in the sixteenth century. An
institution of exploitation, slavery would truly begin to flourish in the Americas.
Europeans in the New World
In 1500, the native peoples of the Americas were divided into many different societies, with the
Aztec and Inca civilizations of the Mexican and Peruvian highlands being the most organized.
Spanish explorers Hernán Cortés (c. 1485-1547) and Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475-1541)
organized gold-seeking expeditions from a base in the Caribbean. With the assistance of native
peoples who had been subjugated by the Aztecs, Cortés captured the Aztec capital
of Tenochtitlán in 1519, adding Mexico (then called New Spain) to the Spanish empire of King
Charles V. In the south, Pizarro exploited civil war between Incan kings to seize the Andean
highlands. Spain’s American empire extended from Mexico to Chile. The Spaniards also
subdued the Mayas on the Yucatan peninsula and discovered silver mines in what is today
Bolivia. Not to be outdone, other Europeans joined in the scramble for gold and riches. The
French began to search for a “northwest passage” to China. By 1504, French fishermen had
appeared in Newfoundland, and French explorers were mapping the inland waterways of North
America. Because of harsh winters and native hostilities, however, permanent European
settlements in Canada and the present-day United States would not succeed until the
seventeenth century.