Download The Renaissance - River Mill Academy

Day 32
1. RENAISSANCE AND THE NEW WORLD

 Knowledge and thought changed so much during the
Renaissance (rebirth of learning and culture) that it is
considered the end of the Middle Ages.
 Began in Florence, Italy in roughly 1350 and spread to Rome
and much of the rest of Europe.
The Renaissance Period ended in the 1600’s
bringing 4 key developments:

1.
2.
3.
4.
the flourishing of arts and literature based on the discovery of
classical works
the Protestant Reformation that tore apart the Christian world
and reduced the power of the Catholic Church
the voyages of discovery that led to the European conquest of
America and European supremacy in the world
The printing press which encouraged widespread literacy and
made it possible for large numbers of people to learn of the
new developments of the Renaissance. This new learning will
open the door for the Scientific Revolution as people began to
use reason and observation to understand how the world
works
2. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

 Columbus finally convinces the King of Spain
to finance a daring expedition to Asia
 Columbus proposed to east by sailing west, he
thought that he could travel west around the
globe to find the valuable spice trade
 Columbus believed the that world was small
and round, but didn’t know of the two
continents that stood in his way
 In 1492, Columbus sailed to the west and
landed in what is now Hispaniola
3. LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE

 Longitude - The Prime Meridian which begins with zero in
Greenwich England and measures north to south (astrolabe – a
Muslim invention)
 Latitude – Measures around the globe, beginning with the
Equator
4. WEST INDIES

 the West Indies are located in the Caribbean Sea
 Columbus believed he was in the East Indies, that is why he
called them Indians
 There were 8 million Indians when Columbus landed in 1492,
but by 1535, there were none (archipelago – a group of islands)
5. LATIN AMERICA

 This is the term applied to all of the Portuguese or Spanish
speaking nations south of the United States including Central
America, South America and Mexico
 The Panama Canal is located in Central America built by the
United States and given back to Panama near the end of the 20th
Century
6. FERDINAND MAGELLAN

 Magellan was a Portuguese navigator of the 1500’s who sailed
for Spain
 His crew was the first to circumnavigate the earth (travel
around)
 Magellan was killed in the Philippines by a poisoned arrow
 Vasco de Gama (Portuguese) was the first to find an all water
route to Asia
7. SOUTH AMERICA

 The continent of South
America was explored and
conquered by Spain and
Portugal
 Brazil was the only country
to speak Portuguese
 The Treaty of Tordesillas
(drawn by Pope Alexander
VI) divided the world into
2 parts between Spain
(west) and Portugal (east)
8. INCAS

 Native American people who built a great civilization along the
Pacific coast of South America
 The largest Indian Empire in the Americas
 Conquistador Francisco Pizarro with 200 men destroyed an
Indian army of 80,000 and captured their leader and held him
for ransom
 The ransom was paid (rooms of gold and jewels), but the leader
was killed and Pizarro was killed by his own greedy men
 The center of the empire was the city of Machu Picchu, which
was discovered until 1911
 The Indian wood was no match for Spanish steel
 The main goals of the conquistadors were: riches and
spreading religion
9. MAYA

 Native American people of southern Mexico and Central
America who developed the most advanced native civilization
of the new world
 Fine arts, a calendar of 365 ¼ days and stone pyramid temples,
also the Maya also had a written language
 The Maya were in decline before the Spanish came having
depleted their natural resources and over populating
10. AZTECS

 The Aztecs were an advanced native culture of Mexico and
Central America who were fierce and warlike; with their
polytheistic religion practiced human sacrifice
 The Spaniards were amazed to see bridges, highways,
aqueducts, a hundred foot temple, and a marketplace that
attracted 60,000 people a day
 The Aztec empire fell in 1519, when the leader Montezuma was
conquered by the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez
11. FLORENCE

 Lorenzo de Medici known as “Lorenzo
the Magnificent”, a wealthy banker who
took a great interest in recovering classical
literature and in supporting artists such as
da Vinci and Michelangelo.
 Artists and thinkers of the Renaissance,
like the classical Greeks who inspired
them, were Humanists ( interested in
studying and improving the human
experience on earth)
 Began in the northern city states of Italy,
especially Florence
12. MACHIAVELLI

 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote several books
about politics and war
 Wrote The Prince in which he says a prince
must use cunning and ruthless methods to
stay in power
 A humanist who believed people did better
under strong rulers than weak ones
 Stresses Political effectiveness over morality
 “machiavellian” has come to mean
manipulating others in a clever and deceptive
way
13. LEONARDO DA VINCI

 Painted the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper
 His art inspired others to go outside of the
religious world and paint real people and
real events
 He designed weapons, bridges, buildings
and had ideas for balloons and flying
machines, drew detail images of the
human body, operations such as;
circulation of blood, how the eye worked,
the relationship between the moon and
tides
 When he died, da Vinci’s official title was
First Painter, Architect, and Mechanic of
the King
 Cited as the model of the Renaissance
Man, a term which means an
outstandingly versatile person who
performs in many fields

14. MICHELANGELO

 At 15 joined the household of Lorenzo Medici
 Sculpted David a symbol of the new confidence and humanism
of Renaissance man
 Created Pieta, a sculpture of Mary holding the dead body of
Christ
 Painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and designed the large
dome of St. Peter’s Basilica (church)
 Michelangelo painted on wet plaster, a technique called fresco,
when the plaster dries, the painting is boned to the wall
 Oil paints made painting more portable than frescoes and thus
started showing up in peoples homes

15. THE VATICAN

 Vatican City is an independent nation within
the city of Rome, at one-fifth of a square mile,
it is the world’s smallest country
 Home to the Roman Catholic Church and the
Pope
 Located within the Vatican are: the Sistine
Chapel (Michelangelo spent 4 years painting
biblical scenes on the ceiling) and St. Peter’s
Basilica (home church of the Pope and is the
largest Christian church building in the
world), Saint Peter’s Square (where the Pope
greets huge crowds on special occasions
Music/Art Resources

 http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/beginlst/renaiss.
htm (Music Selections)
 http://www.wga.hu/tours/sistina/index.html
(Sistine Chapel)
16. MARTIN LUTHER

 As a Catholic monk and university
professor in Germany, Martin Luther
became concerned about the sale of
indulgences (allowed a person to pay
money to be forgiven of his sins
 Luther attacked this in his 95 Theses
(arguments) nailing this to the door of
a Catholic Church in Wittenberg,
Germany
 Luther was merely trying to reform
the Catholic practices, he really
triggered the Protestant Reformation
which resulted in the establishment of
the Protestant Churches
Reformation/Inquisition

 The Reformation split the Christian
Church, and it started a century of
bloody warfare between the Catholics
and Protestants
 The Catholic Church launched a
Counter-Reformation which adopted
many reforms such as putting an end
to indulgences, but it also started the
Inquisition
 The Inquisition was a church court
that put on trial those who disagreed
with Catholic teachings
17. HENRY VIII

 Wants to divorce his first wife so he can marry the young Ann
Boleyn whom he hoped might bear him a son
 Henry VIII makes himself the leader of the Anglican Church
and proceeds to marry Ann Boleyn
 Anyone that refused to accept Henry VIII as the head of the
church would be put to death, including Thomas More, the
respected author of Utopia
 After 3 years of marriage, Henry accuses Ann Boleyn of
adultery with 5 men and executes all 6
 Marries Jane Seymour, who did bear Henry a son, but died
during the process
 Henry marries 3 more times, divorcing another wife and
executing another for adultery, his sixth wife outlives him
 A daughter born to Henry and Ann Boleyn became Queen
Elizabeth I
18. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 England’s greatest contribution to the art of the
Renaissance were the plays of William
Shakespeare
 Shakespeare is considered perhaps the greatest
writer in the English language
 Among his plays performed at the Globe
Theater in London were Julius Caesar and Antony
and Cleopatra
 Also known as some of his greatest works are
Romeo and Juliet (classically remade over and
over in Hollywood and Broadway), Midsummer’s
Night Dream, Hamlet
19. GALILEO

 Born in Italy
 Perfected an early telescope which he trained on Jupiter and her
four moons, lending to the idea that the sun, not the earth was
the center of the universe; this evidence contradicted the early
theories of Ptolemy (Ptolemy thought that the earth was the
center of the universe)
 Galileo wrote the Starry Messenger, but his theory contradicted
the teaching of the Roman Catholic church doctrine (rules and
beliefs)
 Galileo was tried by the church for heresy (disagreeing with the
church doctrine) and was imprisoned for the remainder of his
life
 Became the symbol for the fight against authority for freedom
of thought
 Galileo helped start the Scientific Revolution
20. GUTENBERG

 Johan Gutenberg was a German goldsmith of the 1400’s
who developed the metal movable type for the
printing press
 The first book printed on the Gutenberg press was a
beautiful version of the Bible ( a few copies still exist)
 Movable type allowed multiple copies of the same page
(it took one person 6 months to copy one book by
hand)
 Printing books became less expensive and gave people a
reason to learn to read and write
 Some people believe that Gutenberg’s invention was
one of the most important of the last one thousand
years