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Modern world history patterns of interaction.
Chapter 1 section 1
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Years 1300 1600 saw a rebirth of learning and culture in Europe called the
Renaissance.
Italy was birthplace of the Renaissance-Why?
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Italy’s had some advantages:
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Italy was surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean. This meant that
any goods coming from non-European parts of the world entered Europe
through Italian merchants.
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Because of its Geographic Location it had the money and the means to
support the Renaisance first. This is why the Renaisance spread north from
Italy.
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The great surge in trade caused urbanization in cities. This brought people
together. When people are brought together they are more able to share
ideas.
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Because these cities were located near major world shipping routes. The
cities housed some of the richest merchants and bankers in the world. Such
as the Medici, the Sforza etc.
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This upper-class strongly believed in the idea of humanism.
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Humanism is the belief that the goal of humanity was to improve our
knowledge and understanding of the natural world world, as well as the
enrichment of human life.
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Humanism embraced the history of the classical world, and set it up as a
model. One of the main goals of humanism besides embracing the past was
the idea that they could surpass the achievements of the Romans.
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This was a shift from a religious centered view of humanity, in which the
primary goal of any people was obediently follow the teachings of the church
so that one day they may enter heaven.
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This set of beliefs combined with huge monetary resources made it possible
for artists, philosophers, authors, and scientists to prosper and become major
influence in people’s lives.
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While the church still maintained a great deal authority, and in many ways
became a patron of many of the artists and thinkers of the Renaissance it was
slowly losing secular power.
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Secular power means the power over worldly rather than spiritual affairs.
The church was in less of a position to rule over people’s daily lives.
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At one point the Catholic Church had an empire that expanded through most
of Italy. Today the Church’s only sovereign territory is Vatican City in the
heart of the City of Rome.
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A major facet of the Renaissance was in the influence of the Romans and
Greeks.
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These Italian merchant cities were built upon the ruins of the ancient Roman
Empire.
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The dark ages had washed away much of the evidence that a truly great and
prosperous civilization existed in Italy.
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The ruined sculptures, and few remaining pieces of architecture were nearly
all that was left of the Roman Empire. There were also rare historical
documents in which the philosophy of the Roman culture was marginally
preserved.
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But even these remains were enough to suggest that greatness and
worldliness that expanded far beyond the philosophy of the Middle ages.
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In the Renaissance people began asking the question, “If we were great once,
why can we not be again.” Why can we not be greater?
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The wealthy ruling class of people became huge patrons of the arts.
Without this funding we may never have known the names Michelangelo,
Leonardo da Vinci, Rafael da Santi, or any of the other hundreds of artists,
poets, and great thinkers of the Renaissance.
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Money and the willingness to use it properly = Art, science, prosperity,
growth of human worldly understanding. What is happening today?
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If a renaisance person was living up to the highest ideals of Renaissance
culture, this person would pursue interests and mastery of many disciplines
and creative endeavors.
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This type of person would be more than just an artist; they would also be a
scientist philosopher or even an architect. Today a multitalented person is
still referred to as a renaissance man.
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Perhaps one of the best examples of this type of person was Leonardo da
Vinci, who not only created art but also attempted to invent everything from
flying machines to submarines.
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Michelangelo Bounarrote, what’s another brilliant example of a multi
talented Renaissance man. Not only was Michelangelo a brilliant painter, he
was a sculptor, an architect and a poet.
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He was known for painting Sistine Chapel in the Vatican for Pope Julius the II
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One of his greatest sculptures is known as the David in Florence.
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And he was the architect and designer of the great dome over St. Peter’s
Basilica in Rome.
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As a result of these types of men, huge leaps were made in the arts.
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New methods were devised to make painting more realistic until last longer.
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The painting style no today is fresco was perfected in the Renaissance.
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Fresco is the act of painting with pigment over wet uncured plaster. The
paint would fuse with the plaster as it hardened making it one of the longest
lasting styles of painting known to man.
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Though still highly illegal and punishable by death if one was caught, the
study of human anatomy through the use of cadavers or recently dead bodies
became a practice that advanced the understanding of how to sculpt human
form.
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It is more importantly the beginning of a serious shift in medical science.
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Science and art began to fuse together. The idea of Artistic perspective was
born during the Renaissance. This idea used mathematics and art together
accurately describe the way that we see objects in three-dimensional space.
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It’s important to realize also that the subject matter of Art changed during
the Renaissance.
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Prior to the Renaissance in the Middle Ages art centered on religious and
spiritual aspects of life. In the Renaissance purely human interest were
discussed.
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Sandro Botticelli’s Venus de Milo was one of the first stark departures as it
depicted a non-Christian deity entirely nude. At the time this caused quite a
stir.
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Furthermore in literature the idea of writing in the vernacular became
popular.
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The vernacular meant that the literature was written in the language of the
people were meant to read it.
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Before this almost all literature was written in Latin which was language
used by the church. These writings were all primarily religious.
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The move to the vernacular meant two things.
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One was that people are beginning to read. Education was becoming more
widely available.
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Two, the audience being catered to was not necessarily church-based but
based on the common man and his understanding of his own language.
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This new literature focused on describing aspects of human life such as
government, Philosophy, or other human centric ideas.
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Niccolo Machiavelli wrote “The Prince”, which was his description of how the
city state governments were and should be led by autocratic leaders. He
believed the rulers should be politically effective right of them morally right.
To this day it is viewed by some as the philosophy of power.