Download Chapter 12 - AP European History 2007-08

Chapter 12
Recovery and Rebirth: The Age of the Renaissance
Renaissance – the “rebirth” of classical culture in Italy between 1350 and 1550
Characteristics of Italian Renaissance
 By the mid-fourteenth century, northern Italy was mostly a land of
independent cities that dominated the country districts around them. These
city-states became the centers of Italian political, economic and social life.
 The Renaissance was an age of recovery from: Black Death, political disorder,
and economic repression (Dark Ages)
 There was a new regard for human dignity and worth and a realization of
individual potential which created a new social ideal of the well-rounded
personality
 Renaissance affected primarily the upper classes and elite people of Italy
The Making of Renaissance Society
Economic Recovery
Italian merchants carried on a flourishing commerce through the
Mediterranean Sea, expanded trading to the north
Hanseatic League – a number of North German coastal towns that had formed a
commercial and military association, involved in trade particularity in timber, fish,
grain, metals, honey, and wines
New Industries
By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Florentine woolen industry had
begun to recover and Italian cites began to develop and expand luxury
industries
Other new industries included: printing, mining, and metallurgy
Entrepreneur – one who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk in a business
venture in the expectation of making a profit
The city of Florence regained its preeminence in banking in the fifteenth century, due
to the Medici Family; the House of Medici was the greatest bank in Europe, however
in the early and middle part of the fifteenth century, the Medici bank suffered a
rather sudden decline due to poor leadership and a series of bad loans
Social Changes in the Renaissance
First Estate – the clergy whose preeminence was grounded in the belief that people
should be guided by spiritual ends
Second Estate – the nobility, whose privileges were based on the principle that the
nobles provided security and justice for society, land-holding citizens
who constituted between 2 and 3 percent of the population
Third Estate – consisted peasants and inhabitants of the towns and cities, between
85 and 90 percent of the population; decline of the manorial system
and the continuing decline of serfdom, beneath them were slaves
Slavery in the Renaissance
Although some domestic slaves existed, slavery had declined for economic
reasons and been replaced by serfdom; Slavery reappeared in Spain, where
both Christians and Muslims were taken prisoners as slaves during the
lengthy Reconquista. With the shortage of workers after the Black Death,
Italians were led to introduce slavery on fairly large basis. Slaves were used
as unskilled labor. By the end of the fifteenth century, slavery had declined
dramatically in the Italian states
Family in the Renaissance
Family included the extended household of parents, children, and servants as
well as grandparents, widowed mothers, and unmarried sisters; the family
bond was a source of great security
Marriage – often arranged by parents to strengthen business or family ties (dowry),
the father-husband was the center of the Italian family, made crucial
decisions and managed finances, the wife managed the household and their
primary function was to bear children, however childbirth was a fearful
occasion and could be deadly
The Italian States in the Renaissance
Five major powers: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples
Northern Italy was divided into Milan and Venice
Milan – after the death of the last ruler of Milan, Visconti, in 1447, Francesco Sforza,
one of the leading condottieri conquered the city and became the new duke,
generated enormous revenues for the state
Venice – remained an extremely stable political entity governed by a small oligarchy
of merchant-aristocrats; Venice embarked on the conquest of a territorial
state in northern Italy to protect its food supply and its overland trade routes
Florence – dominated the region of Tuscany, in beginning in the fifteenth century, it
was governed by a small merchant oligarchy that manipulated the apparently
republican government
Papal States – in central Italy, they nominally under the political control of the
popes, the Renaissance Popes of the fifteenth century directed much of their
energy toward reestablishing their control over the Papal States
Naples – most of southern Italy and usually the island of Sicily, they remained a
backward monarchy with a population consisting largely of poverty-stricken
peasants dominated by unruly nobles
Independent City-State
Many independent city-states under the control of powerful riling families that
became brilliant centers of Renaissance culture in the fifteenth century
Mantua, under enlightened rule of Gonzaga lords
Ferrara, government by the flamboyant d’Estate
Urbino, ruled by the Montefeltro dynasty
Warfare in Italy
The concept of a balance of power, designed to prevent the
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aggrandizement of any one state at the expense of the other
After 1454, the Italian states signed the Peace of Lodi, which ended
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almost a half century war and inaugurated a relatively peaceful forty year
era in Italy
An alliance system (Milan, Florence, and Naples versus Venice and the
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Papal States)
The workable balance of power failed to establish lasting cooperation
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among the major powers or a common foreign policy
Italy soon became a battlefield for the great powers struggle between the
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French and Spanish monarchies
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For the next fifteen years, the French and Spanish competed to dominate
Italy
The war was part of a long struggle for power throughout Europe between
the Valois and Habsburg dynasties
The sack of Rome in 1527 by the armies of the Spanish king Charles I,
brought a temporary end to the Italian wars, thereafter, the Spaniards
dominated Italy
Italy would not achieve unification and nationhood until 1870
Machiavelli and the New Statecraft
Niccolo Machiavelli - an Italian diplomat, political philosopher, musician, poet, and
playwright. He is a figure of the Italian Renaissance and a central figure of its
political component, most widely known for his treatises on realist political theory
(The Prince) on the one hand and republicanism (Discourses on Livy) on the other.
The Prince
Machiavelli’s ideas on politics stemmed from two major sources, his
preoccupation with Italy’s political problems and his knowledge of ancient
Rome
The Intellectual Renaissance in Italy
Individualism – emphasis on and interest in the unique traits of each person
Secularism – the process of becoming more concerned with material, worldly,
temporal things and less with spiritual and religious things
Humanism – an intellectual movement in Renaissance Italy based on the study of
Greek and Roman classics
Renaissance Humanism was an intellectual movement based on the study of the
classical literary works of Greece and Rome. Humanists studied the liberal artsgrammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy or ethics, and history- all of which are
subjects called humanities
Emergence of Humanism
Petrarch - an Italian scholar, poet, and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists.
Petrarch is often popularly called the "father of humanism".
Petrarch was the first intellectual to characterize the Middle Ages as a period of
darkness, promoting the mistake belief that medieval culture was ignorant of
classical antiquity
Humanism in Fifteenth-Century Italy
Civic humanism – an intellectual movement of the Italian Renaissance that saw
Cicero, who was both an intellectual and a statesman, as the ideal and held that
humanists should be involved in government and use their rhetoric training in the
service of the state
Cicero served as the inspiration for the Renaissance ideal that it was the duty of an
intellectual to live an active life for one’s state
Civic humanism reflected the values of the urban society of the Italian Renaissance.
Humanists came to believe that their study of the humanities should be put to the
service of the state
Lorenzo Valla - an Italian humanist, educator, and rhetoric who studied both Latin
and Greek; he was credited for proving that the long suspected Donation of
Constantine was a forgery because the Latin text was written four centuries after
Constantine’s death
Humanism and Philosophy
Neoplatonism – a revival of Platonic philosophy in the third century A.D., associated
with Plotinus; a similar revival in the Italian Renaissance, associated with Marsilio
Ficino, who attempted to synthesize Christianity and Platonism
Renaissance Hermeticism
Hermeticism – an intellectual movement beginning in the fifteenth century that
taught that divinity is embodied in all aspects of nature; it included works on
alchemy and magic as well was theology and philosophy. The tradition continued into
the seventeenth century and influenced many of the leading figures of the Scientific
Revolution
 The Hermetic revival offered a new view of humankind, they believed that
human beings had been created as divine beings endowed with divine
creative power but had freely chosen to enter the material world
Pantheism – a doctrine that equates God with the universe and all that is in it
Education in the Renaissance
 Renaissance humanists believed that human beings could be dramatically
changed by education
 Vittorino de Feltre founded the mast famous secondary school of its time in
Mantua 1423
 Stressed importance of “liberal arts” which included, history, moral
philosophy, eloquence, letters, poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and music
 Humanist education was thought to be a practical preparation for life; its aim
was not to create great scholars but rather produce complete citizens who
could participate in the civic life of their communities
The Impact of Printing
The development of printing from moveable type was a gradual process that
culminated between 1445 and 1450; Johannes Gutenberg played an
important role in bringing the process to completion
By 1500, there were more that 1,000 printers in Europe; printing
became one of the largest industries in Europe
The Artistic Renaissance
Renaissance artists considered the imitation of nature their primary goal;
their search for naturalism became an end in itself: to persuade onlookers of
the reality of the object or event they were portraying
Art in the Early Renaissance
 Landscape
 Perspective (depth)
 Geometric
 Secular
Donatello: David
Brunelleschi
Masaccio: Tribute Money
Masaccio: Primavera
Artistic High Renaissance
By this time, many artists had mastered the new techniques for a scientific
observation of the world around them and were now ready to move into
individualistic forms of creative expression (1480-1520)
Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper
Raphael: School of Athens
Bramante
(architecture)
Michelangelo: Creation of Adam
The Artist and Social Status
By the end of the fifteenth century, a transformation in the position of the
artists had occurred; especially talented individuals, such as Leonardo,
Raphael, and Michelangelo, were no longer regarded as artisans but as artistic
geniuses
Northern Artistic Renaissance
In the north, the prevalence of Gothic cathedrals with their stained-glass windows
resulted in more emphasis on illuminated manuscripts and wooden pane painting for
altarpieces, northern painters became masters at rendering details
Van Eyck: Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride
Albrecht Duere: Adoration of the Magi
The European State in the Renaissance
 Attempts were made to reestablish the centralized power of monarchial
governments
 “New Monarchies” – the governments of France, England, and Spain at the
end of the fifteenth century, whose rulers succeeded in reestablishing or
extending centralized royal authority, suppressing the nobility, controlling the
church, and insisting on the loyalty of all peoples living in their territories
Growth of the French Monarchy
 The Hundred Years’ War left France in bad condition, depopulation,
desolate farmlands, ruined commerce, and independent and unruly
nobles all made it difficult for the kings to assert their authority
 Charles VII, established a royal army with the consent of the EstatesGeneral
 He received the right to levy the taille, an annual direct tax
 King Louis XI, also known as the Spider because of his wily and
devious ways, imposed a permanent tax imposed by royal authority;
Louis secured a sound, regular income, however he was not successful
in repressing the French nobility
England: Civil War and a New Monarchy
 The cost of the war in its final years and the losses in
manpower strained the English economy greatly
 War of the Roses broke out, in the 1450’s; the civil war pitted
the ducal house of Lancaster (red rose), against the ducal
house of York (white rose)
 Finally Henry Tudor defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III,
and established the new Tudor dynasty
 As the first Tudor king, King Henry VII, tried to reduce internal
dissension and establish as strong monarchial government
 Henry controlled the irresponsible activity of the nobles by
establishing the Court of Star Chamber, which did not use
juries and allowed torture to be used to extract confessions
 Henry was successful in extracting income from the traditional
financial resources of the English monarch; his policies enabled
him to leave England with a stable and prosperous government
The Unification of Spain
 Aragon and Castile, the two strongest Spanish kingdoms, were
joined together with the marriage of Isabella of Castile and
Ferdinand of Aragon
 Both kingdoms maintained their own parliaments, the two
rulers worked to strengthen royal control of government
 Ferdinand and Isabella reorganized the military forces of Spain,
and recognized the importance of controlling the Catholic
church, with its vast power and wealth
 They secured from the pope, the right to select the most
important church officials in Spain
 The Inquisition of Spain in 1478, worked with cruel efficiency to
guarantee the orthodoxy of the converts to Catholicism ,
however they had no authority over practicing Jews
 In their Conquest of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella took the
drastic step of expelling all professed Jews from Spain
The Holy Roman Empire: The Success of the Habsburgs
 The Holy Roman Empire failed to develop a strong monarchial
authority
 The position of the HRE remained in the hands of the Habsburg
dynasty
 Much of the Habsburg success in the fifteenth century was due
to a well-executed policy of dynastic marriages
The Struggle for Strong Monarchy in Eastern Europe
 Rulers struggled to achieve the centralization of their territorial
states due to many untold difficulties, religion, struggle
between crown and nobility
The Ottoman Turks and the End of the Byzantine Empire
 Eastern Europe was increasingly threatened by the steadily
advancing Ottoman Turks
 The Byzantine Empire had served as a buffer between the
Muslims Middle East and the Latin West; it was severely
weakened by the sack of Constantinople in 1204
 The Ottoman Turks spread rapidly, seizing the lands of the
Seljuk Turks, the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria
 Under the rule of Sultan Murad, the Ottomans completely
demised the Byzantine Empire
 By the end of the fifteenth century, they were threatening
Hungary, Austria, Bohemia, and Poland; the Holy Roman
Emperor, Charles V, became their bitter enemy
The Church in the Renaissance
Two widespread movements in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuriesLollardy and Hussitism-posed new threats to the church
 English Lollardy was a product of John Wyclif, whose disgust with
clerical corruption led him to a far-ranging attack on papal authority
and medieval Christian beliefs and practices
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