Download World History and Geography

World History and Geography
RENAISSANCE
Page 357
1. Renaissance - It means “rebirth.” It was a secular movement starting the Western
World away from religion. It emphasized ideas from Greek and Roman culture
and the importance of human beings and life on earth. People aimed to perfect
themselves through study and form a perfect society. The arts and literature of the
14th and 15th centuries in Italy and elsewhere in Europe show the rebirth of
culture change from the bare survival times of the Middle Ages.
2. Italian City-State Economic Wealth - It was the most important reason the
Renaissance started in Italy. The reason was the wealth from the growing trade
that northern Italy conducted. They met the converging Asian trade routes in the
eastern Mediterranean, carried the goods to Italy, and then relayed them either
over the Alps or by ship to the Atlantic coast of Europe. The riches earned in this
trade supported the arts and earning.
3. Venice - It was “Queen of the Adriatic” and the most powerful of the Italian citystates. By the 15th century they were the center of the East-West trade routes and
had a fleet of 3,000 ships. They controlled most of the trade in the Adriatic and
eastern Mediterranean.
4. Florence - It is an Italian city famous for its art. It was a Renaissance era
industrial and banking center run by the Medici family. One of its rulers Lorenzo
di Medici employed many famous talented people such as Michelangelo,
Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael.
5. Capitalism - It is an economic system in which private individuals or companies,
own businesses, control production and distribution of goods and services.
Banking was a new enterprise and it helped merchants protect, invest and borrow
money.
6. Republican Government - It is a government in which the supreme power
resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote. The citizens vote for officers and
representatives responsible to them and governing according to the law. A number
of Italian city-states adopted this form of government and became less willing to
accept the authority of the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor.
7. Italian Despots - They were leaders with unlimited power. Lorenzo di Medici
was one. Cesare Borgia was another. In Borgia’s case he conquered a number of
cities in central Italy through extreme treachery and terror. In his moment of
weakness, his enemies including Pope Julius II managed to defeat and imprison
him.
8. Condottieri - It is the term for the leader of a private band of soldiers or
mercenaries. Italy had lots these in the 14th and 15th centuries.
9. Niccolo Machiavelli - He was a scholar, writer and diplomat for Florence. He
wrote a guide for rulers on how to maintain their power. In his book The Prince
(1532), he gives advice that to get and maintain power a ruler had to forget ideals
and use every possible means including lying, cheating, murder, etc. to gain his
ends. Political acts were measured by only one standard—success. His
suggestions have been followed by rulers ever since.
10. The Prince - It is the book written by Machiavelli. It was essentially a set of rules
by which a strong ruler could create and hold a state. It described political affairs
as they really were, controlled by ruthless men who sought power and how they
ruthlessly kept power. The book gives such advice as, “. . . to be feared is much
safer than to be loved.” The book is still in print and still guides some rulers
today.
Page 360
11. Humanism - It is a new movement that became one of the chief elements of the
Renaissance. It was a system of thought and action concerned with human
interests and values. It had a major aspect of study of the ancient Greeks and
Romans. Another aspect was the new belief that humans are noble creatures and
people should change the world to make it a better place for all.
12. Petrarch - He inspired Italians to collect copies of ancient literature surviving
from Greece and Rome. He himself did, and his ideas about the classical literature
became popular. He found that the ancient Romans believed that this world on
earth as important for people and he thought the Church wrong to ignore the real
world in which people lived. He said the educated person should study humans
i.e. history, languages, literature and ethics.
13. Giovanni Boccaccio - He was a noted humanist who wrote both poetry and prose.
He used the Black Death as a setting for his book the Decameron that has a series
of short stories. This book is important because the stories have clear beginnings,
middle parts and endings. This new type of literature had great influence on all
writing after it.
14. “Renaissance Man”- It was the ideal outcome of education. Education was to
make a man well rounded in many aspects of learning and experience. The ideal
was to be well off economically, well mannered and witty. He should understand
good literature, painting, and music, be athletic, good at sports, know the arts of
war, and be brave. To reach this goal, Italian schools taught less theology and
more literature.
15. Leonardo Da Vinci - He was one of most brilliant minds of all time. He was a
many-sided person with studies in such areas as motion, sound, water, geology,
plants, weather, astronomy, eye sight, mathematics, mechanical design, machine
construction, horses, human flight, painting, sculpture, etc. His talent for painting
was such that his works like the Mona Lisa, Last Supper and the Madonna of the
Rocks are still wonders.
Page 363 and Video: Western Man…: The Renaissance Part 1 and 2
16. Giotto Di Bondone - He was the Florentine painter of the 13th and 14th
centuries, who was the first painter since classical time to make figures appear to
move and to be alive. He is the founder of the Renaissance style of art. He
innovated in art such things as a blue sky, placement of people, shading, showing
people having real emotions, etc.
17. Raphael - He was the most famous painter of religious subjects. He became the
favorite artist of two popes and painted lots of work for the Vatican. He lived
from 1483-1520. His painting of Mary, the Mother of Jesus is his most famous
figure.
18. Donatello - He was the outstanding sculptor of the early 1400s. He studied
ancient Roman sculpture and decided he had to study human anatomy so he could
completely understand how the human body moved. His grand statue of the
Venetian general Gattemelata was the first large-sized figure on horseback since
Roman times.
19. Revival of Classical Architecture - It was the Renaissance architects basing their
buildings on Greek and Roman models and adapting the pillars and domes to
structures to suit their own time. Many public buildings constructed in the U.S.
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on Renaissance models.
20. Michelangelo - He may have been the most outstanding artist of the Renaissance.
He did everything well, including painting, sculpting, architecture, and even
poetry. He lived for his art, with his painting and sculpture solid, naturalistic and
filled with real human expression. Some of his famous works include: Statues of
David, Moses and the Pieta. Painted masterpieces include the Sistine Chapel with
his story of Genesis and the mural of The Last Judgment. His outstanding
architectural challenge was the tomb of Pope Julius.
Page 366 and Video: Western Man…: The Renaissance Part 3
21. Johann Gutenberg - He was the first European to use moveable type. This
German adapted a wine press and constructed movable type to print the first
European book about 1455, the Bible. This invention had great impact on
increasing the quantity and availability of books and it helped spread the Northern
Renaissance. It meant that even peasants could own books and literacy spread
throughout Europe.
22. Gutenberg Bible - It was the first example in printing of the advantages of mass
production. It was the first book printed using movable type. It proved that books
could be made rapidly, in great quantities, and with much greater accuracy than
hand copying. The cost was much less than hand copying.
23. Desiderius Erasmus (i raz’ mas) - He was the prime example of 15th and 16th
century Northern Humanist thought. He was a priest from the Netherlands who
studied the Greek and Latin writings and was a prolific writer of books and letters
himself, which helped spread humanistic ideals. He said that men and women
were misled by ignorance and superstition, but through education people could
overcome all the injustices of the world and create more perfect societies. He
always spoke for peace, religious reform and social reform.
24. Sir Thomas More - He was a friend of Erasmus who became a lawyer and
served in many government posts under England’s kings Henry VII and Henry
VIII. He wrote about his ideas in reforming society and creating a better world in
his book Utopia and became England’s leading humanist. He was appointed the
first layman lord chancellor of England in 1529. He was an efficient worker, he
went after heretics without mercy and was supporter of the Church, but wanted it
reformed. He quarreled with Henry VIII over relaxation of the heresy laws and
supported the Pope’s refusal of Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon. After
Henry withdrew England from the Church, he was charged with treason and
beheaded.
25. Flemish School of Painting - It was the important change in painting style in
Northern Europe, which started even before the Italian Renaissance reached there
and influenced it. Jan van Eyck painted realistic portraits that were also spiritual
and had realistic landscapes. Pieter Brueghel the Elder painted country landscapes
and peasant life, in a religious and humanist way. Rembrandt van Rijn painted
nature and landscapes and became best known for his painting of human
character.
26. Albrecht Durer - He was a painter and engraver who was the leader of the
German Renaissance School of painting. He studied in Italy and noted that the
artists there had high social standing and said, “Here I am a lord, at home a
parasite.” His woodcuts and engravings illustrated the new printed books.
27. William Shakespeare - He was an English playwright who had a deep
understanding of human beings and he expressed the whole range of human
emotions in his plays. His plays seem to sum up the humanist ideals. Some of his
works include Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, etc. His
plays are still put on today.
28. Shakespeare’s Influence on English - It is the effect Shakespeare’s plays had on
his times, and the development of language. Phrases like “All’s well that ends
well” or “Love is blind,” etc. entered into common use. The people of his time in
the late 1500s and early 1600s came to see his plays six days a week in the
afternoons for entertainment. The printed text of his plays was appreciated and
has been in print ever since his death in 1616. His plays expanded people’s
vocabularies and established models for grammar.
29. Miguel De Cervantes - He was the Spanish humanist, nobleman, military man,
and writer who wrote Don Quixote. The book was written after knighthood and
feudalism had faded toward the end of the 1500s, but the codes of chivalry still
appealed to many people. The book is a satire about a 50-year-old Spanish
gentleman who loved to read knightly romances. He made a suit of armor and set
off with his old horse to seek adventure. His comic servant Sancho Panza goes
with him, often commenting on his master’s silly antics such as jousting with
windmills. The book laughs at the deals of knighthood chivalry in the funny and
absurd adventures of Don Quixote.