n.

1. A rebirth or revival.

2. Renaissance

1. The humanistic revival of classical art, architecture, literature, and learning that originated in Italy in the 14th century and later spread throughout Europe.

2. The period of this revival, roughly the 14th through the 16th century, marking the transition from medieval to modern times.

3. often Renaissance

1. A revival of intellectual or artistic achievement and vigor: the Celtic Renaissance.

2. The period of such a revival.

adj. Renaissance

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Renaissance or its artistic and intellectual works and styles.

2. Of or being the style of architecture and decoration, based on classical models, that originated in Italy in the 15th century and continued throughout Europe up to the end of the 16th century.

[French, from Old French, from renaistre, to be born again, from Vulgar Latin *renāscere, from Latin renāscī : re-, re- + nāscī, to be born.]

Thesaurus

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renaissance

noun

The act of reviving or condition of being revived: reactivation, rebirth, renascence, renewal, resurgence, resurrection, resuscitation, revitalization, revival, revivification. See awareness/unawareness.

Music Encyclopedia

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Renaissance

Term applied, in Western music history, to the era lasting from c1430 to the end of the 16th century. The word means ‘rebirth’, referring to the objective of intellectuals and artists of the time to repudiate the previous era (the Middle Ages) and to restore the philosophical and artistic ideals of classical antiquity.

The relationship between this movement and music is complex and it is not easy to cite musical features that reflect Renaissance ideals, at least until rather later. However, the Renaissance spirit is often felt to be reflected in such music as the chansons of Dufay and Binchois, with their smoother, more flowing lines, and particularly in Josquin's music, from the end of the 15th century, in which imitative counterpoint in four or more parts (replacing the predominant three-part writing of the previous generation) came to be the norm, with all parts alike in texture and frequent imitative writing. Josquin's music, in particular, is often paralleled with the beginnings of humanism, at much the same time. This was also the period when, with the European invention of printing, knowledge began to spread more readily and music came to be published instead of circulating only in manuscript.

The characteristic musical style of the Renaissance period is the smooth, homogeneous, imitative polyphonic style, used by Palestrina, Lassus and Byrd. It was used not only in sacred music (predominantly masses and motets) but also in secular madrigals and instrumental consort music. The favoured instrument was the lute, which during the 16th century became established as the standard instrument for domestic music-making.

The Renaissance period was succeeded by the Baroque. Elements of Baroque style are found early in the second half of the 16th century but Renaissance imitative polyphony remained in use, particularly in sacred music, during the 17th century and beyond, widely recognized as a fitting manner for church music.

Literary Dictionary

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Renaissance

Renaissance, the ‘rebirth’ of literature, art, and learning that progressively transformed European culture from the mid‐14th century in Italy to the mid‐17th century in England, strongly influenced by the rediscovery of classical Greek and Latin literature, and accelerated by the development of printing. The Renaissance is commonly held to mark the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern Western world, although the problems of dating this process have caused much debate: the existence of a significant renaissance of European learning inthe 12th century is now accepted, while the 18th‐century Enlightenment is a direct continuation of the Renaissance's intellectual tendencies. However, the term normally refers to the combined intellectual and artistic transformations of the 15th and 16thcenturies, including the emergence of humanism, Protestant individualism, Copernican astronomy, and the discovery of America. In literary terms, the Renaissance may be seen as a new tradition running from Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy to Jonson and Milton in England, embracing the work of the French Pléiade and of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare; it is marked by a new self‐confidence in vernacular literatures, a flourishing of lyric poetry, and a revival of such classical forms as epic and pastoral literature. The term ‘Renaissance’ has also been extended to various literary revivals in specific times and places: for examples, see American Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

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Renaissance

Late medieval cultural movement in Europe. The Renaissance brought renewed interest in Classical learning and values to Italy and subsequently the rest of western and central Europe from the late 13th to the early 17th century. Attracted by the values and rhetorical eloquence of ancient writers, figures such as Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Lorenzo Valla rejected medieval Scholasticism in favour of human-centred forms of philosophy and literature. In northern Europe, Desiderius Erasmus cultivated Christian humanism, and writers such as Francois Rabelais and William Shakespeare produced works that emphasized the intricacies of human character. Inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance painters and sculptors took the visible world for their subject and practiced according to mathematical principles of balance, harmony, and perspective. The new aesthetic found expression in the works of Italian artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo, and the Italian city of Florence became the centre of Renaissance art. The term has also been applied to cultural revivals in England in the 8th century, the Frankish kingdoms in the 9th century, and Europe in the 12th century. See also Renaissance architecture.

For more information on Renaissance, visit Britannica.com.

British History

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Renaissance

Renaissance (rebirth) characterizes the impulse, initiated in Italy, towards improving the contemporary world by discovering and applying the achievement of classical antiquity. The movement was at its strongest from the time of Petrarch (1304-74) through the ‘long 16th cent.’ (1450-1625). ‘Renaissance’ is now generally used to describe the politics, beliefs, philosophy, science, scholarship, discourse, literature, handwriting, printing, painting, engraving, sculpture, architecture, and music of that period.

‘Renaissance’ was first used alone in the 19th cent., though Giorgio Vasari (1550) saw a ‘rinascità delle arti’ in his own time, and Voltaire two centuries later a ‘renaissance des lettres et des beaux-arts’ in Medicean Florence. The concept of an epoch marked by ‘the discovery of the world and of man’ was taken up in Jakob Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860). For Burckhardt the defining emphasis of the Renaissance was secular and individual; the new attitudes he detected in the Italy of that epoch to nature, morality, religion, affairs, art, and literature made him see it as inaugurating the modern era.

The English Renaissance was influenced by the Italian indirectly, through France, Burgundy, and the Netherlands, as well as directly. In its earliest phase, the patronage and book collections of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (1390-1447), were important; later, under Henry VII, William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre won a reputation for Greek. From about 1500, however, the chief force in English humanism was the concept of pietas literata, or evangelical humanism, associated with Erasmus. The friendship of Erasmus with John Colet and with Thomas More was particularly significant; he and More translated Greek together.

England produced no humanist scholar of the first rank during the Renaissance, More's Utopia being the finest Latin achievement of its early Tudor phase. Many classical and humanist works were translated into the vernacular, however. A pattern of civility on the Italian model was offered by Sir Thomas Elyot (Book Named the Governor, 1531) and Sir Thomas Hoby(translation of Castiglione's Courtier, 1561). Greek studies were notable, from the 1520s especially in association with the Reformation. Erasmus' Greek New Testament with Latin translation (1516-19) was used by Martin Luther for his German New Testament (1521): William Tyndale used both for his English version (1526-34).

The visual arts and architecture of Renaissance England remained predominantly traditional, in spite of the presence of Italian sculptors and of north European painters such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Rubens, and Van Dyck. The first English architect and designer of international stature was Inigo Jones, the Palladian (1573-1652). Music similarly remained traditional until the flowering of the Italian fashion (1575-1625).

Architecture and Landscaping

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Renaissance

Renascence

From the French renaître (to be born again) and the Italian Rinascimento (rebirth), the term is given to the great revival of arts and letters under the influence of Classical precedents which began in Italy in C14 and continued during the following two centuries, spreading to virtually all parts of Europe. It is also a convenient label for the style of architecture that developed in, and was characteristic of, that period from the time of Brunelleschi in Florence (early C15) to the beginnings of Mannerism (c.1520), and which was based on the architecture of Roman Antiquity. Indeed, it was referred to as maniera all'antica, and the style was codified by Alberti in De re aedificatoria (begun around 1450), drawing on the exemplary work of Vitruvius. In architecture the Renaissance includes the High Renaissance (c.1500–c.1520) in which Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael flourished, but it does not include the Baroque. Elsewhere in Europe, Renaissance architecture tended to acquire Italian Renaissance motifs, either from printed sources or from the observations of travellers, but each country or region produced buildings that looked un-Italian: German, French, Flemish, Spanish, and English (the latter associated with Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture) Renaissance styles all had distinct flavours. English, Flemish, German, Polish, and Scandinavian Renaissance buildings of C16 and early C17 fall into the Northern Renaissance category, but the infusion of Mannerism gave French Renaissance architecture a different flavour. Only in the early C17 was uncorrupted Renaissance architecture, firmly based on Italian prototypes, introduced in England (see Paesschen) by Inigo Jones, an event that was enormously influential in C18, first in England, and then elsewhere. There were various national Renaissance Revivals in C19 once Neo-Classicism had become wearisome. There are some (e.g. the late John Harvey (1911–97) ) who held that the introduction of Renaissance architecture was a disaster, destroying the living, indigenous, and inventive Gothic tradition of England and Northern Europe.

Bibliography

* Chilvers, Osborne, & Farr (eds.) (1988)

* Lewis & Darley (1986)

* H.Osborne (1970)

* Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.

Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Columbia Encyclopedia

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Renaissance (rĕnəsäns', –zäns') [Fr.,=rebirth], term used to describe the development of Western civilization that marked the transition from medieval to modern times. This article is concerned mainly with general developments and their impact in the fields of science, rhetoric, literature, and music. For a discussion of developments in the arts see Renaissance art and architecture.

Historical Background

In the 12th cent. a rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature occurred across Europe that eventually led to the development of the humanist movement in the 14th cent. In addition to emphasizing Greek and Latin scholarship, humanists believed that each individual had significance within society. The growth of an interest in humanism led to the changes in the arts and sciences that form common conceptions of the Renaissance.

The 14th cent. through the 16th cent. was a period of economic flux in Europe; the most extensive changes took place in Italy. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, emperors lost power in Italy and throughout Europe; none of Frederick's successors equaled him. Power fell instead into the hands of various popes; after the Great Schism (1378–1415; see Schism, Great), when three popes held power simultaneously, control returned to secular rulers.

During the Renaissance small Italian republics developed into despotisms as the centers of power moved from the landed estates to the cities. Europe itself slowly developed into groups of self-sufficient compartments. At the height of the Renaissance there were five major city-states in Italy: the combined state of Naples and Sicily, the Papal State, Florence, Milan, and Venice. Italy's economic growth is best exemplified in the development of strong banks, most notably the Medici bank of Florence. England, France, and Spain also began to develop economically based class systems.

Science

Beginning in the latter half of the 15th cent., a humanist faith in classical scholarship led to the search for ancient texts that would increase current scientific knowledge. Among the works rediscovered were Galen's physiological and anatomical studies and Ptolemy's Geography. Botany, zoology, magic, alchemy, and astrology were developed during the Renaissance as a result of the study of ancient texts. Scientific thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler attempted to refine earlier thought on astronomy. Among Leonardo's discoveries were the revelation that thrown or shot projectiles move in one curved trajectory rather than two; metallurgical techniques that allowed him to make great sculptures; and anatomical observations that increased the accuracy of his drawings.

In 1543 Copernicus wrote De revolutionibus, a work that placed the sun at the center of the universe and the planets in semicorrect orbital order around it; his work was an attempt to revise the earlier writings of Ptolemy. Galileo's most famous invention was an accurate telescope through which he observed the heavens; he recorded his findings in Siderius nuncius [starry messenger] (1610). Galileo's Dialogo...sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo [dialogue concerning the two chief world systems] (1632), for which he was denounced by the current pope (because of Galileo's approval of Copernicus), resulted in his living under house arrest for the rest of his life. Tycho Brahe gave an accurate estimate of planetary positions and refuted the Aristotelian theory that placed the planets within crystal spheres. Kepler was the first astronomer to suggest that planetary orbits were elliptical.

Rhetoric and Literature

Humanism in Renaissance rhetoric was a reaction to Aristotelian scholasticism, as espoused by Francis Bacon, Averroës, and Albertus Magnus, among others. While the scholastics claimed a logical connection between word and thought, the humanists differentiated between physical utterance and intangible meditation; they gave common usage priority over sets of logical rules.

The humanists also sought to emulate classical values. Joseph Webbe wrote textbooks that taught Latin through reconstruction of the sentences of classical authors from individual phrases and clauses. Roger Ascham taught that one could learn to speak effectively by studying the speeches of ancient orators. Thomas Elyot wrote The Book Named the Governor, which suggested rules for effective statesmanship. Thomas More's most significant contribution to humanism was Utopia, a design for an ideal society based primarily on works by classical authors.

The effect of humanism on English literature was wide and far-reaching. It is evidenced, for example, in the works of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. The poems and plays of Jonson often center on the difference between virtue and vice; Jonson considers sincerity, honesty, self-discipline, and concern to be chief virtues, while dissimulation, lying, or masking of identity is vicious behavior. His Volpone and The Alchemist exemplify humanist values. In a play such as Shakespeare's Tempest, a main character (Prospero) embodies a full range of human abilities: father, creator, ruler, magician, master, and scholar. In addition, Shakespeare took subject matter for many plays from classical sources (e.g., Coriolanus, Troilus and Cressida, and Julius Caesar).

In France Michel de Montaigne and François Rabelais were the most important proponents of humanist thought. Montaigne's essays are memorable for their clear statement of an individual's beliefs and their careful examination of society. In “On the Education of Children,” he suggests a remaking of secondary education according to classical models; in “On Cannibals,” he writes that cannibals are more civilized than others because they are removed from the dissimulation and vice of human society. Rabelais was the author of Gargantua and Pantagruel, the satirical biographies of two giants; the characters may be said to represent the humanist belief in the immensity of human capability. Guillaume Budé, Pierre de Ronsard, Guillaume Du Bartas, Joachim Du Bellay, and Jean Bodin are other major French humanist figures.

In Italy Petrarch is considered a founder of the humanist movement. His De viris illustribus, a set of heroes' lives, included both ancient heroes and such men as Adam; he also wrote a series of letters to classical figures (e.g., Cicero and Ovid). Giovanni Boccaccio, a follower of Petrarch, wrote works that include De genealogia deorum gentilium [on the genealogy of the gods of the gentiles], a collection of classical myths, and the Decameron, a book of 100 stories told by Italian courtesans taking refuge from the Black Plague. Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) was a Florentine political administrator who wrote treatises on humanism, taught thinkers Poggio and Bruni, and accumulated a large library of ancient Greek and Roman texts.

The Renaissance Italian Leone Battista Alberti is famed for a series of dialogues in which he teaches classical virtues in a vernacular tongue. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote Il Principe [the prince], in which he memorably described the various shapes a ruler must assume in order to become an effective leader, and Discorsi [the discourses], in which he studies Livy in a search for classical values. The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione is essentially about Castiglione himself; in it the author delineates the characteristics of a perfect gentleman.

Music

Renaissance music took great liberties with musical form. In 1300 the most popular music was French and secular. Although secular music gradually spread all over Europe, it flowered in Italy. In fact, in about 1330 an Italian school of musical composition developed in Padua, Verona, Bologna, Florence, and Milan. Often this music was written in the vernacular; its primary composers, thinkers such as Leonardo Giustiniani (1398–1446) and Marsilio Ficino, would often improvise words to the accompaniment of a lute-viola. This experimentation led to the development of contrapuntal music, or music that hinged on the pleasing interplay of two melodic lines.

Josquin Desprez composed masses, chansons, and motets, of which his Hercules Dux Ferriare mass and Misere motet are lasting examples; he was one of the first composers to use imitation, or repetition of melodies, successfully within a composition. Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina also composed mainly religious music. He distinguished himself with his motets and masses, namely Veni creator spiritus, Missa brevis, and Accepit Jesus calicem; he also made full use of the cantus firmus, or pre-existing melody around which other melodies are intertwined, in his compositions. Orlando di Lasso was also a noted composer whose work included motets, chansons, and madrigals.

Madrigals were popular throughout Europe; the best known, The White and Gentle Swan, was by the Flemish composer Jacob Arcadelt. English composers rivaled the Flemish; leading English madrigal composers of the Renaissance include Thomas Weelkes, William Byrd, Thomas Morley, and Orlando Gibbons. Often, English madrigal composers were influenced by the work of Italians. The main Italian madrigal composers were Luca Marenzio, Carlo Gesualdo, and Claudio Monteverdi. Monteverdi was the most accomplished artist of the three; in addition to composing madrigals, he composed the first major operas, including L'Arianna and Orfeo.

Bibliography

See Burckhardt's oft-translated classic, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860); J. H. Plumb, The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961); J. R. Hale, ed., A Concise Encyclopedia of the Italian Renaissance (1981); P. A. Ramsey, ed., Rome in the Renaissance (1982); A. B. Giamatti, Exile and Change in Renaissance Literature (1984); J. Snyder, The Northern Renaissance (1985); M. Elsky, Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing and Print in the English Renaissance (1986); J. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (1994); L. Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (1996).

History 1450-1789

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Renaissance

The Renaissance is one of the most interesting and disputed periods of European history. Many scholars see it as a unique time with characteristics all its own. A second group views the Renaissance as the first two to three centuries of a larger era in European history usually called early modern Europe, which began in the late fifteenth century and ended on the eve of the French Revolution (1789) or with the close of the Napoleonic era (1815). Some social historians reject the concept of the Renaissance altogether. Historians also argue over how much the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages and whether it was the beginning of the modern world, however defined.

The approach here is that the Renaissance began in Italy about 1350 and in the rest of Europe after 1450 and that it lasted until about 1620. It was a historical era with distinctive themes in learning, politics, literature, art, religion, social life, and music. The changes from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were significant, but not as great as historians once thought. Renaissance developments influenced subsequent centuries, but not so much that the Renaissance as a whole can be called "modern."

The Renaissance View of the Renaissance

The term "Renaissance" comes from the Renaissance. Several Italian intellectuals of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries used the term rinascità ('rebirth or renaissance') to describe their own age as one in which learning, literature, and the arts were reborn after a long, dark Middle Ages. They saw the ancient world of Rome and Greece, whose literature, learning, and politics they admired, as an age of high achievement. But in their view, hundreds of years of cultural darkness followed because much of the learning and literature of the ancient world had been lost. Indeed, Italian humanists invented the concept of the "Middle Ages" to describe the years between about 400 and 1400. Scholastic philosophy, which the Italian humanists rejected, and a different style of Latin writing, which the humanists viewed as uncouth and barbarous, prevailed in the Middle Ages. But Italian humanists believed that a new age was dawning. In the view of the humanists, the painter Giotto (d. 1337) and the vernacular writer and early humanist Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) led the rebirth or Renaissance. Most Italian intellectuals from the mid-fifteenth century on held these views.

Northern Europeans of the sixteenth century also reached the conclusion that a new age had dawned. They accepted the historical periodization of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance and added a religious dimension. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), the great Dutch humanist, and his followers looked back to two ancient sources for inspiration: the secular learning of ancient Greece and Rome, and Christianity of the first four centuries. The former offered models of literature, culture, and good morality, while the New Testament and the church fathers, such as Sts. Augustine (354–430) and Jerome (c. 347–419/420), combined pristine Christianity with ancient eloquence. But then barbarous medieval culture replaced ancient eloquence, and, in their view, the theological confusion of medieval Scholasticism obscured the message of the New Testament. Erasmus and his followers dedicated themselves to restoring good literature, meaning classical Greek and Latin, and good religion, meaning Christianity purged of Scholastic irrelevance and clerical abuses. They believed that Christians could best live moral lives and attain salvation in the next life by following both Cicero and the New Testament. They believed that there were no real differences between the moral precepts found in the pagans of ancient Greece and Rome and the Bible.

Chronology

A cluster of dates marks the beginning of the Renaissance era. The majority of scholars view the early humanist and vernacular writer Petrarch as the first important figure. He strongly criticized medieval habits of thought as inadequate and elevated ancient ideals and literature as models to emulate. By the period 1400 to 1450 numerous Italian intellectuals agreed with Petrarch's criticism of the Middle Ages and support for a classical revival. The result was the intellectual movement called humanism, which came to dominate Italian Latin schooling, scholarship, ethical ideas, and public discourse and spread to the rest of Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Both contemporaries and modern historians also see the Great Plague of 1348 to 1350, with its huge demographic losses (30 to 50 percent in affected areas) and psychological impact as another dividing point between Middle Ages and Renaissance. Next, a series of major political changes between 1450 and 1500 marked a new political era that was uniquely Renaissance. Spain, France, and England emerged as powerful territorial monarchies in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Their quarrels with each other and interventions in the affairs of smaller states through the next 150 years dominated European politics. Finally, the invention of movable type in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398–1468) created a break with the medieval past in the production and dissemination of books that was so great that it is difficult to measure. By the end of the year 1470, some nineteen towns had printing presses; by 1500 some 255 towns had presses, and the spread of printing was far greater in the sixteenth century. An efficient system of distribution and marketing spread printed books to every corner of Europe. The greater availability of books had an impact on practically every area of life, especially intellectual and religious life, so immense as to be beyond measurement.

Humanism

Humanism was the defining intellectual movement of the Renaissance. It was based on the belief that the literary, scientific, and philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome provided the best guides for learning and living. And humanists believed that the New Testament and early Christian authors offered the best spiritual advice.

The nineteenth century invented the term "humanism." But humanism is based on three Renaissance terms. Studia humanitatis meant humanistic studies, which were grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy based on study of the standard ancient authors of Rome and, to a lesser extent, Greece. This is the famous definition presented in 1945 by the eminent historian Paul Oscar Kristeller (1905–1999) and now widely accepted. The Renaissance also used and praised humanitas, an ancient Latin term meaning the good qualities that make men and women human. And the Renaissance invented a new term, humanista. It first appeared in Italian in a University of Pisa document of 1490. By the end of the sixteenth century it had spread to several European vernacular languages and was occasionally used in Latin. A humanista was a student, teacher, or scholar of the humanities.

Humanism became institutionalized in society as a new form of education. Around 1400 a number of Italian pedagogical leaders decided that the traditional medieval curriculum for Latin schools, consisting of studying medieval authors and a few ancient poetic classics, or portions of them, and learning to write formal letters in Latin according to nonclassical rules, was inadequate. They proposed a new curriculum and approach. Pier Paolo Vergerio (c. 1368–1444) wrote the first and most important humanist pedagogical treatise, called De Ingenuis Moribus et Liberalibus Studiis Adulescentiae (On noble customs and liberal studies of adolescents) in 1402 or 1403. He argued that the best way to foster good character, learning, and an eloquent Latin style in speech and writing was to teach humanistic studies. He gave pride of place to history, moral philosophy, and eloquence, a novel emphasis. Boys trained in humanistic studies would be ready to become honorable leaders in society as adults. Vergerio's treatise had enormous resonance: More than one hundred manuscripts can be found in Italian libraries, and Italian presses produced more than thirty incunabular (printed before 1501) editions. It enjoyed similar diffusion in northern Europe.

Humanism was more than skill in Latin. It tried to teach the principles of living a moral, responsible, and successful life on this earth. Parents came to believe that a humanistic education would best prepare their sons, and a few daughters, for leadership positions, such as head of a family, member of a city council, judge, administrator, or teacher. Humanistic studies provided the fundamental education. Training in the specialized disciplines of law, medicine, philosophy, or theology came later for those needing them. By about 1550 the English clergyman, the French lawyer, the German knight, the Italian merchant, and the Spanish courtier shared a common intellectual heritage. They could communicate across national frontiers and despite linguistic differences. They shared a common fund of examples, principles, and knowledge derived from the classics. Humanism brought intellectual unity to Europe.

Humanism also included a sharply critical attitude toward received values, individuals, and institutions, especially those that did not live up to their own principles. The humanists' study of ancient Rome and Greece gave them the chronological perspective and intellectual tools to analyze, criticize, and change their own world. Humanists especially questioned the institutions and values inherited from the Middle Ages. They found fault with medieval art, government, philosophy, and approaches to religion. Once the humanist habit of critical appraisal developed, many turned sharp eyes on their own times. And eventually they turned their critical gaze on the learning of the ancient world and rejected parts of it.

Scientific and Philosophical Learning

Renaissance scholars inherited from the Middle Ages intellectual views and approaches in philosophy, medicine, and science, and challenged almost all of them. In astronomy they inherited a conception of the universe originating in Ptolemy (c. 100 C.E.–c. 170 C.E.) of the ancient world that the sun revolved around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) in his De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium (1543; On the revolutions of the heavenly orbs) argued the reverse, that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun. Despite bitter opposition from both Catholic and Protestant religious authorities, his views prevailed with most astronomers by the early seventeenth century. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) absorbed Aristotelian science and then rejected it in favor of a mathematically based analysis of physical reality, the modern science of mechanics. And along the way he offered evidence that Copernicus's daring view was not just mathematical hypothesis but physical reality. Another mathematical achievement affecting Europe and the rest of the world in future centuries was calendar reform. Renaissance Europe inherited the Julian calendar of ancient Rome, which was ten days in arrears by the sixteenth century. Pope Gregory XIII (reigned 1572–1585) appointed a team of scholars to prepare a new calendar and in 1582 promulgated the Gregorian calendar still used today.

Renaissance medical scholars inherited an understanding of the human body and an approach to healing based on the ancient Greek physician Galen (c. 129–c. 199 C.E.), Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), and medieval Arab medical scholars. But a group of medical scholars called "medical humanists" by modern scholars challenged and altered received medical knowledge. Led by Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), who taught at the universities of Padua and Ferrara, they applied humanistic philological techniques and ideological criticism to both medieval and ancient medical texts, found them wanting, and proceeded to investigate the human body anew. As a result, Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) through his anatomical studies, William Harvey (1578–1657) through his study of the circulation of the blood, and other scholars revolutionized medical research and instruction. Several Renaissance medical scholars gave their names to parts of the body; for example, the eustachian tube between the ear and the nose is named for Bartolomeo Eustachi (1500/10–1574), and the fallopian or uterine tubes are named for Gabriele Falloppia (1523–1562).

Most of the innovative research in science, medicine, philosophy, and law came from universities. The Renaissance saw a great expansion in the number and quality of universities. It inherited twentynine functioning universities from the Middle Ages in 1400, then created forty-six new ones by 1601, losing only two by closure in between. This left Europe with sixty-three universities, more than double the medieval number. Demand for new universities came from several directions. Most important, increasing numbers of men wanted to learn. Society also needed more trained professionals. Monarchs, princes, and cities required civil servants, preferably with law degrees. A medical degree enabled the recipient to become a private physician, a court physician, or one employed by the town. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations stimulated the demand for theology degrees.

Universities provided stipends and other support for scholars. Since the universal language of learning was Latin and the printing press could publish new information, scientific communication was rapid and overcame the religious division of sixteenth-century Europe. University students to a lesser extent also crossed religious frontiers. The adoption of Roman law in central Europe created a demand for lawyers and judges trained in this field, which meant that both Catholic and Protestant Germans continued to study in Italian universities, the centers for the study of Roman law.

Renaissance Politics

Renaissance states had three basic forms of government: princedoms, monarchies, and oligarchies, which the Renaissance called republics.

Princedoms. A prince was an individual, whether called duke, count, marquis, or just signore (lord), who ruled a state, usually with the support of his family. The term "prince" meant the authority to make decisions concerning all inhabitants without check by representative body, constitution, or court. But the source of the prince's power and the nature of his rule varied greatly. He often had displaced another ruler or city council by force, war, assassination, bribery, diplomacy, purchase, marriage, or occasionally because the city invited him in to quell factionalism. Most often a prince came to power through an adroit combination of several of these. Once in control, he promulgated laws of succession to give himself a cloak of legitimacy so that his son or another family member might succeed him. Indeed, some inhabitants of the state would see him as legitimate and be content to be ruled by him.

Princely power was seldom absolute. Most princes depended on some accommodation with powerful forces within the state, typically the nobility or the merchant community. Many small princedoms depended on the good will of more powerful states beyond their borders to survive, and this limited options in foreign policy. And the prince's rule was always uneasy, which was one reason he relied on hired mercenary troops in war, instead of a militia created from his subjects. However achieved, what mattered most was that the prince possessed effective power to promulgate and enforce laws, to collect taxes, to defeat foreign invaders, and to quell rebellion. If the prince commanded the affection and loyalty of his subjects, this made his task easier. Italy and central Europe had an abundance of princedoms, including the states of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Parma, Piedmont-Savoy, and Urbino in northern Italy, and Bavaria, Brandenburg, Burgundy, Brunswick-Lüneberg, Luxembourg, the Palatinate, Albertine and Ernestine Saxony, and Württemberg in central Europe.

Monarchies. A monarchy was a princedom sanctioned by a much longer tradition, stronger institutions, and greater claims of legitimacy for its rulers. The majority of monarchies (for example, England, France, Portugal, Scotland, and Spain) were hereditary, while Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and the Holy Roman Empire were elective. Monarchies typically were larger than princedoms and ruled subjects speaking multiple languages and dialects. Monarchies usually had developed laws and rules that determined the succession in advance. Only when the succession was broken through the lack of a legitimate heir, a bitter dispute within the ruling family, or overthrow by a foreign power was a monarch displaced by another.

Monarchies grew in power and size in the Renaissance. The creation of the dual monarchy of Ferdinand of Aragón and Isabella of Castile between 1474 and 1479 created a powerful Spain that ruled the entire Spanish peninsula except Portugal, and Portugal as well from 1580 to 1640. The Tudor monarchy of England (three kings and two queens from 1485 to 1603) made England, previously a small, strife-torn, and remote part of Europe, into a major force. After the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War with England (1337–1453), France under the Valois dynasty (ruled 1328 to 1589) became a powerful and rich state. Conflicts between territorial monarchies dominated international politics and war in the Renaissance.

Republics. The smallest and most unusual political unit was the city-state consisting of a major town or city and its surrounding territory of farms and villages. Oligarchies, usually drawn from the merchant elite of the town, ruled republics. Flanked by the professional classes, the merchant community first dominated the commerce of the city. Then in the Middle Ages they threw off the authority of prince, king, or emperor. In their place the merchants created a system of government through interlocking and balanced councils. Large deliberative assemblies, comprising of one hundred, two hundred, or more adult males, elected or chosen by lot, debated and created laws. Executive committees, often six, eight, or a dozen men elected for two to six months, put the laws into action. Short terms of office and rules against self-succession made it possible for several hundred or more adult males to participate in government in a few years. The system of balanced and diffused power ensured that no individual or family could control the city. It was a government of balanced power and mutual suspicion.

Borrowing terminology and legal principles from ancient Roman law and local tradition, the men who formed oligarchies called their governments "republican" and their states "republics." They believed that their rule was based on the consent of the people who mattered. But they were still oligarchies, because only 5 to 20 percent of the adult males of the city could vote or hold office. Members of government almost always came from the leading merchants, manufacturers, bankers, and lawyers. Some republics permitted shopkeepers and master craftsmen to participate as well. But workers, the propertyless, clergymen, and other middle and low groups in society were excluded. Occasionally the laws conceded to them extraordinary powers in times of emergency. Those living in the countryside and villages outside the city walls had neither a role in government nor the right to choose their rulers. Indeed, the city often exploited them financially and in other ways. Venice, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Pisa, and Siena in Italy, and Augsburg, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and the Swiss cantons were republics. Some city-state republics were small in comparison with monarchies and princedoms. But the Republic of Venice commanded an overseas empire of considerable size and commercial importance, while Florence's merchants and bankers played a large role in international trade, and the city participated forcefully in Italian politics.

Renaissance Europe presented a constantly shifting political scene. No government escaped external threats and very few avoided internal challenge. The numerous weak small states tempted powerful rulers and states. Despite their eloquent proclamations in defense of the liberty of states and citizens, republics were just as aggressive in conquering their weaker neighbors as were princedoms, while monarchies were always on the watch for another princedom, landed noble estate, or republic to absorb. It was the same within the state. Some powerful group or individual within the state would attempt through force or stealth to take control and change its nature. Many succeeded. The maneuvering for advantage, the shifting diplomatic alliances, plots, threats of war, and military actions made Renaissance politics extremely complex.

Two broad political developments prevailed. Princedoms grew in number and strength, and more powerful states, especially monarchies, absorbed smaller states. Republican city-states became princedoms, as a powerful individual or family within the city took control while maintaining a facade of republican institutions and councils. The gradual transformation of the Republic of Florence into a princedom ruled by members of the Medici family is the classic example. Meanwhile, princedoms fell into the hands of monarchies through military action or dynastic marriages. Three examples will suffice. France and the Habsburgs divided the Duchy of Burgundy between them when its duke, Charles the Bold, was killed in battle in 1477, leaving no male heir; Spain took control of the Kingdom of Naples by military force in 1504; and Spain absorbed the Duchy of Milan as the result of an alliance when the Duke Francesco II Sforza died without an heir in 1535. Strong republics also grew at the expense of their neighbors. The Republic of Venice conquered almost all the independent towns and small princedoms in northeastern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century in its successful drive to create a mainland state. Small states survived at the price of careful neutrality, which avoided giving offense to more powerful neighbors, or by aligning themselves with larger powers. Such alliances came at a price. The small state lacked an independent foreign policy and might itself become a victim if the larger state fell.

Diplomacy and Political Thought

The very complex and ever-shifting political reality stimulated the rapid development of diplomacy. The resident ambassador, that is, a permanent representative of one government to another, was a Renaissance innovation. He went to live in the capital city or court of another state where he conveyed messages between his government and the host government. Or to use the words that Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), the English ambassador to Venice, supposedly wrote in 1604, "a resident ambassador is a good man sent to tell lies abroad for his country's good." Perhaps more important than the messages, or lies, was the information that the resident ambassador and his staff gathered about the host country. Ambassadorial reports full of every kind of information are invaluable sources for modern scholars studying the Renaissance. The reports of papal nuncios and Venetian ambassadors are particularly useful.

The instability of forms of government, the many wars, and the fluidity of international politics stimulated an enormous amount of discussion about politics, including several masterpieces of political philosophy. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), having observed both, wrote about princedoms in his Il principe (The Prince, written in 1513), and on republics in Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy, written 1514–1520). Numerous humanists wrote treatises advising a prince or king how he might be a good prince, work for the good of his people, and, as a result, see his state and himself prosper. Erasmus wrote the most famous one, Institutio Principis Christiani (1516; Education of a Christian prince). Jean Bodin (1530–1596) argued that state and society needed the stability that only a sovereign and absolute power can provide, and that this must be the monarchy, in his Six livres de la république (1576; Six Books on the commonwealth; in Latin, 1586).

Vernacular Literature

Vernacular literatures flourished in the Renaissance even though humanists preferred Latin. In 1400 standard English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and other vernaculars did not exist. People spoke and sometimes wrote a variety of regional dialects with haphazard spelling and multiple vocabularies. Nevertheless, thanks to the adoption of the vernacular by some governments, the printing press, and the creation of literary masterpieces, significant progress toward elegant and standard forms of modern vernaculars occurred.

German was typical. German-speaking lands inherited many varieties of German from the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century some state chanceries began to use German instead of Latin. Hence, versions of German associated with the chanceries of more important states, including the East Middle Saxon dialect used in the chancery of the electorate of Saxony, became more influential. Next, printing encouraged writers and editors to standardize orthography and usage in order to reach a wider range of readers. Most important, Martin Luther (1483–1546) published a German translation of the Bible (New Testament in 1522; complete Bible in 1534), which may have had three hundred editions and over half a million printed copies by 1600, an enormous number at a time of limited literacy. And many began to imitate his style. Since he wrote in East Middle Saxon, this version of German eventually became standard German. Literary academies concerned about correct usage, vocabulary, and orthography rose in the seventeenth century to create dictionaries. A reasonably standardized German literary language had developed, though the uneducated continued to speak regional dialects.

Similar changes took place in other parts of Europe, with the aid of Renaissance authors and their creations. In Italy three Tuscan authors, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)—medieval in thought but using Tuscan brilliantly—Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) began the process. Literary arbiters, such as Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) insisted on a standard Italian based on the fourteenth-century Tuscan of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Major sixteenth-century writers, including Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), and Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), agreed. None of the three was Tuscan, but each tried to write, and sometimes rewrote, their masterpieces in a more Tuscan Italian. Then the Accademia della Crusca (founded in Florence in the 1580s) published a dictionary. Tuscan became modern Italian. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and three English translations of the Bible, that of William Tyndale (printed 1526 and 1537), the Geneva Bible of 1560, and the King James Bible of 1611, had an enormous influence on English. The writers and dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age, particularly Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), did the same for the Castilian version of Spanish.

Art

Art is undoubtedly the best-loved and -known part of the Renaissance. The Renaissance produced an extraordinary amount of art, and the role of the artist differed from that in the Middle Ages.

The Renaissance had a passion for art. Commissions came from kings, popes, princes, nobles, and lowborn mercenary captains. Leaders commissioned portraits of themselves, of scenes of their accomplishments, such as successful battles, and of illustrious ancestors. Cities wanted their council halls decorated with huge murals, frescoes, and tapestries depicting great civic moments. Monasteries commissioned artists to paint frescoes in cells and refectories that would inspire monks to greater devotion. And civic, dynastic, and religious leaders hired architects to erect buildings at enormous expense to beautify the city or to serve as semipublic residences for leaders. Such art was designed to celebrate and impress.

A remarkable feature of Renaissance art was the heightened interaction between patron and artist. Patrons such as Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) of Florence and popes Julius II (reigned 1503–1513) and Leo X (reigned 1513–1521) were active and enlightened patrons. They proposed programs, or instructed humanists to do it for them, for the artists to follow. At the same time, the results show that they did not stifle the artists' originality. Men and women of many social levels had an appetite for art. The wealthy merchant wanted a painting of Jesus, Mary, or saints, with small portraits of members of his family praying to them, for his home. A noble might provide funding to decorate a chapel in his parish church honoring the saint for whom he was named. Members of the middle classes and probably the working classes wanted small devotional paintings. To meet the demand, enterprising merchants organized the mass production of devotional images, specifying the image (typically Mary, Jesus crucified, or patron saint), design, color, and size. It is impossible to know how many small devotional paintings and illustrated prints were produced, because most have disappeared. Major art forms, such as paintings, sculptures, and buildings, have attracted the most attention, but works in the minor arts, including furniture, silver and gold objects, small metal works, table decorations, household objects, colorful ceramics, candlesticks, chalices, and priestly vestments were also produced in great abundance.

The new styles came from Italy, and Italy produced more art than any other part of Europe. Art objects of every sort were among the luxury goods that Italy produced and exported. It also exported artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, who died at the French court.

The ancient world of Rome and Greece, as interpreted by the humanists, greatly influenced Renaissance art. Artists and humanists studied the surviving buildings and monuments, read ancient treatises available for the first time, and imbibed the humanist emphasis on man and his actions and perceptions, plus the habit of sharp criticism of medieval styles.

Stimulated by the ancients, Renaissance artists were the first in European history to write extensively about art and themselves. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) wrote treatises on painting (1435) and on architecture (1452); Raphael wrote a letter to Pope Leo X (c. 1519) concerning art. Giorgio Vasari's (1511–1574) Lives of the Artists (first edition 1550, revised edition 1568) was a series of biographies of Renaissance artists accompanied by his many comments about artistic styles. It was the first history of art. The silversmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) wrote about artistic practices and much more about himself, much of it probably fictitious, in his Autobiography, written between 1558 and 1566.

The social and intellectual position of the artist changed in the Renaissance. The artist began as a craftsman, occupying a relatively low social position and tied to his guild, someone who followed local traditions and produced paintings for local patrons. He became a self-conscious creator of original works of art with complex schemes, a person who conversed with humanists and negotiated with kings and popes. Successful artists enjoyed wealth and honors, such as the knighthood that Emperor Charles V conferred on Titian (Tiziano Vercelli, c. 1488–1576) in 1533.

Society

The Renaissance was a hierarchical age in which the social position of a child's parents largely determined his or her place in society. Yet it was a variegated society, with nobles, commoners, wealthy merchants, craftsmen, shopkeepers, workers, peasants, prelates, parish priests, monks in monasteries, nuns in convents, civil servants, men of the professional classes, and others. It was an age of conspicuous consumption and great imbalances of wealth. But Renaissance society also provided social services for the less fortunate. Ecclesiastical, lay, and civic charitable institutions provided for orphans, the sick, the hungry, and outcast groups, such as prostitutes and the syphilitic ill. Although social mobility was limited, a few humble individuals rose to the apex of society. Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), a mercenary soldier of uncertain origins, became duke of Milan in 1450 and founded his own dynasty. The shepherd boy Antonio Ghislieri (born 1504) became Pope Pius V (reigned 1566–1572).

Unity and Disintegration

Renaissance Europe had considerable cultural and intellectual unity, greater than it had in the centuries of the Middle Ages or would again until the European Economic Union of the late twentieth century. A common belief in humanism and humanistic education based on the classics created much of it. The preeminence of Italy also helped because Italians led the way in humanism, art, the techniques of diplomacy, and even the humble business skill of double-entry bookkeeping.

The prolonged Habsburg-Valois conflict, often called the Italian Wars (1494–1559) because much of the fighting occurred in Italy, and, above all, the Protestant Reformation began to crack that unity. Moreover, many typical Renaissance impulses had spent their force by the early seventeenth century. The great revival of the learning of ancient Greece and Rome had been assimilated, and humanism was no longer the driving force behind philosophical and scientific innovation. Italy no longer provided artistic, cultural, and scientific leadership, except in music, as a group of Florentine musicians created lyric opera around 1600.

Europe began a new age on the eve of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). More powerful monarchies with different policies ushered in a different era of politics and war. Exuberant baroque art and architecture of the seventeenth century were not the same as the restrained, classicizing art of the previous two centuries. Galileo Galilei and René Descartes (1596–1650) discarded Renaissance Aristotelian science in favor of mathematics and mechanics. The universities of Europe were no longer essential for training Europe's elite and hosting innovative research. France would be the military, literary, and stylistic leader of the different Europe of the seventeenth century.

Bibliography

Brand, Peter, and Lino Pertile, eds. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Rev. ed. Cambridge, U.K., 1999. See articles on Renaissance authors and genres.

Burns, J. H., ed., with the assistance of Mark Goldie. The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700. Cambridge, U.K., 1991.

Copenhaver, Brian P., and Charles B. Schmitt. Renaissance Philosophy. Oxford and New York, 1992. Excellent one-volume survey.

Elton, G. R. England under the Tudors. 3rd ed. London, 1991. Standard study.

Ferguson, Wallace K. The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation. New York, 1948. Classic study of the concept of the Renaissance from the fourteenth century to the twentieth.

Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600. Baltimore and London, 1989. Explains humanistic education.

——. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore and London, 2002. Survey of all sixteen universities and curriculum changes, 1400–1600.

Grendler, Paul F., et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. 6 vols. New York, 1999. Nearly 1,200 articles and 800 illustrations on every aspect of the Renaissance.

Hall, A. Rupert. The Revolution in Science, 1500–1750. 3rd ed. London and New York, 1983. Good survey.

Hardin, James, and Max Reinhart, eds. German Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, 1280–1580. Detroit, 1997.

Hays, Denys, and John E. Law. Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1380–1530. London and New York, 1989.

Hirsch, Rudolf. Printing, Selling and Reading, 1450–1550. 2nd printing with a supplemental annotated bibliographical introduction. Wiesbaden, 1974. Excellent short account of the first century of printing.

Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains. New York, 1961. Pioneering account of humanism by the most important twentieth-century scholar of the Renaissance.

Lynch, John. Spain under the Habsburgs. Vol. 1, Empire and Absolutism, 1516–1598. Oxford, 1965.

Mattingly, Garrett. Renaissance Diplomacy. Boston, 1955, with many reprints. Classic study not yet superseded.

Mc Farlane, I. D. Renaissance France, 1470–1589. London and New York, 1974. Survey of French literature.

Paoletti, John, and Gary Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy. 2nd ed. New York, 2002.

Rabil, Albert, Jr., ed. Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1988. Articles on humanism everywhere in Europe.

Schmitt, Charles B., et al., eds. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K., 1988. Comprehensive coverage.

Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. New York, 1985.

Stephens, John. The Italian Renaissance: The Origins of Intellectual and Artistic Change before the Reformation. London and New York, 1990.

Turner, Jane S., ed. Encyclopedia of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist Art. 2 vols. New York, 2000. Part of the 34-volume Dictionary of Art (1996).

Wear, A., R. K. French, and I. M. Lonie, eds. The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, U.K., 1985.

—PAUL F. GRENDLER

History Dictionary

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Renaissance

The cultural rebirth that occurred in Europe from roughly the fourteenth through the middle of the seventeenth centuries, based on the rediscovery of the literature of Greece and Rome. During the Renaissance, America was discovered, and the Reformation began; modern times are often considered to have begun with the Renaissance. Major figures of the Renaissance include Galileo, William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Renaissance means “rebirth” or “reawakening.”

# The term renaissance is often used to describe any revival or rediscovery.

Music

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Renaissance

"Rebirth." The era from the mid-15th century to the end of the 16th century. The music was charactarized by the use of freer forms, and a progression from modes toward major and minor scales, and harmony.

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The Renaissance (French: "rebirth," Italian: "Rinascimento"), was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. It encompassed the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly and papal patronage, the development of perspective in painting, and advancements in science.[1] The Renaisance had wide-ranging consequences in all intellectual pursuits, but is perhaps best known for its artistic aspect and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who have inspired the term "Renaissance men".[2][3]

There is a general - though by no means unchallenged - consensus that the Renaissance began in Florence in the fourteenth century.[4] Various theories have been proposed to explain its origin and characteristics, focusing on an assortment of factors, including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at this time including its political structure and the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici.

The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and there has always been debate among historians as to the usefulness of the Renaissance as a term and as a historical age.[1] Some have called into question whether the Renaissance really was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for the classical age.[5] While nineteenth-century historians were keen to emphasise that the Renaissance represented a clear "break" from Medieval thought and practice, some modern historians have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras.[6] Indeed, it is now usually considered incorrect to classify any historical period as "better" or "worse", leading some to call for an end to the use of the term, which they see as a product of presentism.[7] The word Renaissance has also been used to describe other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Byzantine Renaissance.

Overview

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man shows clearly the effect writers of antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers. Based on the specifications in Vitruvius's De architectura, da Vinci tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man.

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Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man shows clearly the effect writers of antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers. Based on the specifications in Vitruvius's De architectura, da Vinci tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man.

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual enquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.[1]

Renaissance thinkers sought out learning from ancient texts, typically written in Latin or ancient Greek. Scholars scoured Europe's monastic libraries, searching for works of antiquity which had fallen into obscurity. In such texts they found a desire to improve and perfect their worldly knowledge; an entirely different sentiment to the transcendental spirituality stressed by medieval Christianity.[1] They did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life.[8]

Artists such as Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, and to improve government on the basis of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the invention of printing, this would allow many more people access to books, especially the Bible.[9]

In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought.

Origins of the Renaissance

Main article: Italian Renaissance

Most historians agree that the ideas that characterized the Renaissance had their origin in late 13th century Florence, in particular with the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), as well as the painting of Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337).[10] Yet it remains unclear why the Renaissance began in Italy, and why it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins.

Assimilation of Greek and Arabic knowledge

Cicero

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Cicero

The Renaissance was so called because it was a "rebirth" of certain classical ideas that had long been lost to Europe. It has been argued that the fuel for this rebirth was the rediscovery of ancient texts that had been forgotten by Western civilization, but were preserved in some monastic libraries, as well as the Islamic world.[11] Renaissance scholars such as Niccolò de' Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such classical authors as Plato, Cicero and Vitruvius.[12] Additionally, as the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Islamic Moors progressed, numerous ancient Greek works were captured from educational institutions such as the library at Córdoba, which claimed to have 400,000 books.[13] Along with these, the works of Arabic scholars (e.g. Averroes), were imported into the Christian world, providing new intellectual material for European scholars.

Greek and Arabic knowledge were not only assimilated from Spain, but also directly from the Middle East. The study of mathematics was flourishing in the Middle East, and mathematical knowledge was brought back by crusaders in the 13th century.[14] The decline of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 - and its eventual fall in 1453 - led to an exodus of Greek scholars to the West. These scholars brought with them texts and knowledge of the classical Greek civilization which had been lost for centuries in the West.[15]

Social and political structures in Italy

A political map of the Italian Peninsula circa 1494.

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A political map of the Italian Peninsula circa 1494.

The unique political structures of late Middle Ages Italy have led some to theorize that its unusual social climate allowed the emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence. Italy did not exist as a political entity in the early modern period. Instead, it was divided into smaller city states and territories: the kingdom of Naples controlled the south, the Republic of Florence and the Papal states the center, the Genoese and the Milanese the north and west, and the Venetians the east. Fifteenth-century Italy was one of the most urbanised areas in Europe.[16] Many of its cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; it seems likely that the classical nature of the Renaissance was linked to its origin in the Roman Empire's heartlands.[17]

Italy at this time was notable for its merchant Republics, including the Republic of Florence and the Republic of Venice. Although in practice these were oligarchical, and bore little resemblance to a modern democracy, the relative political freedom they afforded was conducive to academic and artistic advancement.[18] Likewise, the position of Italian cities such as Venice as great trading centres made them intellectual crossroads. Merchants brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the Levant. Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a producer of fine glass, while Florence was a capital of silk and jewelry. The wealth such business brought to Italy meant that large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for study.[18]

The Black Death

One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation caused by the Black Death in Florence (and elsewhere in Europe) resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th century Italy. Italy was particularly badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the familiarity with death that this brought thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife.[19] It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.[20] However, this does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors.[21]

Cultural conditions in Florence

Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence and patron of arts.

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Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence and patron of arts.

It has long been a matter of debate why the Renaissance began in Florence, and not elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several features unique to Florentine cultural life which may have precipitated such a cultural movement. Many have emphasised the role played by the Medici family in patronising and stimulating the arts. Lorenzo de' Medici devoted huge sums to commissioning works from Florence's leading artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti.[12]

The Renaissance was certainly already underway before Lorenzo came to power, however. Indeed, before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in Florentine society. Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e. because "Great Men" were born there by chance.[22] Da Vinci, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in Tuscany. Arguing that such chance seems improbable, other historians have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to prominence because of the prevailing cultural conditions at the time.[23]

Characteristics of the Renaissance

Humanism

Main article: Renaissance humanism

Humanism was not a philosophy per se, but rather a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, humanists would study ancient texts in the original, and appraise them through a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence. Humanist education was based on the study of poetry, grammar, ethics and rhetoric. Above all, humanists asserted "the genius of man... the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind."[24]

Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers, and applied them in critiques of contemporary government. Theologians, notably Erasmus and Martin Luther, challenged the Aristotelian status quo, introducing radical new ideas of justification and faith (for more, see Religion below).

Art

Main articles: Renaissance painting and Renaissance architecture

Raphael's School of Athens depicts illustrious contemporaries as Classical scholars, with Leonardo central as Plato.

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Raphael's School of Athens depicts illustrious contemporaries as Classical scholars, with Leonardo central as Plato.

One of the distinguishing features Renaissance art is its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the writings of architects Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalised as an artistic technique.[25] The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts (for more, see Renaissance Classicism).[26] To that end, painters also developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy. Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature, and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics, with the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were to be much imitated by other artists.[27]

Concurrently, in the Netherlands, a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed, the work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck having particular influence on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation. (for more, see Renaissance in the Netherlands). Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life.[28]

In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient Classical buildings, and with rediscovered knowledge from the 1st century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, formulated the Renaissance style. Brunelleschi's major feat of engineering was the building of the dome of Florence Cathedral.[29] The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno.

Science

Main article: Scientific Revolution

The upheavals occurring in the arts and humanities were mirrored by a dynamic period of change in the sciences. Some have seen this flurry of activity as a "scientific revolution," heralding the beginning of the modern age.[30] Others have seen it merely as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day.[31] Regardless, there is general agreement that the Renaissance saw significant changes in the way the universe was viewed and the methods with which philosophers sought to explain natural phenomena.[32]

Science and art were very much intermingled in the early Renaissance, with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. Yet the most significant development of the era was not a specific discovery, but rather a process for discovery, the scientific method.[32] This revolutionary new way of learning about the world focused on empirical evidence, the importance of mathematics, and discarding the Aristotelian "final cause" in favour of a mechanical philosophy. Early and influential proponents of these ideas included Copernicus and Galileo. While both were later hailed as thinkers of seminal importance, at the time they attracted much controversy, particularly from the Roman Catholic Church.[32]

The new scientific method led to great contributions in the fields of astronomy, physics, biology, and anatomy. With the publication of Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica, a new confidence was placed in the role of dissection, observation, and a mechanistic view of anatomy.[32]

Religion

Alexander VI, a Borgia pope infamous for his corruption.

Enlarge

Alexander VI, a Borgia pope infamous for his corruption.

Main articles: Reformation and Counter-Reformation

It should be emphasised that the new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developed against an unquestioned Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern Renaissance. Indeed, much (if not most) of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church.[8] However, the Renaissance had a profound effect on contemporary theology, particularly in the way people perceived the relationship between man and God.[8] Many of the period's foremost theologians were followers of the humanist method, including Erasmus, Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

The Renaissance began in times of religious turmoil. The late Middle Ages saw a period of political intrigue surrounding the Papacy, culminating in the Western Schism, in which three men simultaneously claimed to be true Bishop of Rome.[33] While the schism was resolved by the Council of Constance (1414), the fifteenth century saw a resulting reform movement know as Conciliarism, which sought to limit the pope's power. While the papacy eventually emerged supreme in ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1511), it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption, most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused variously of simony, nepotism and fathering four illegitimate children whilst Pope.[34]

Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church, often based on humanist textual criticism of the New Testament.[8] Indeed, it was Luther who in October 1517 published the 95 Theses, challenging papal authority and criticising its perceived corruption, particularly with regard to its sale of indulgences. The 95 Theses led to the Reformation, a break with the Roman Catholic Church that previously claimed hegemony in Western Europe. Humanism and the Renaissance therefore played a direct role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other contemporaneous religious debates and conflicts.

Renaissance self-awareness

By the fifteenth century, writers, artists and architects in Italy were well aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using phrases like modi antichi (in the antique manner) or alle romana et alla antica (in the manner of the Romans and the ancients) to describe their work. The term "la rinascita" first appeared, however, in its broad sense in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani (The Lives of the Artists, 1550, revised 1568).[35][36] Vasari divides the age into three phases: the first phase contains Cimabue, Giotto, and Arnolfo di Cambio; the second phase contains Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and Donatello; the third centers on Leonardo da Vinci and culminates with Michelangelo. It was not just the growing awareness of classical antiquity that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing desire to study and imitate nature.[37]

The Renaissance Spreads

In the 15th century the Renaissance spread with great speed from its birthplace in Florence, first to the rest of Italy, and soon to the rest of Europe. The invention of the printing press allowed the rapid transmission of these new ideas. As it spread, its ideas diversified and changed, being adapted to local culture. In the twentieth century, scholars began to break the Renaissance into regional and national movements, including:

* The Italian Renaissance

* The English Renaissance

* The German Renaissance

* The Northern Renaissance

* The French Renaissance

* The Renaissance in the Netherlands

* The Polish Renaissance

* The Spanish Renaissance

* Renaissance architecture in Eastern Europe

The Northern Renaissance

Main article: Northern Renaissance

The Arnolfini Portrait, by Jan van Eyck, painted 1434

Enlarge

The Arnolfini Portrait, by Jan van Eyck, painted 1434

The Renaissance as it occurred in Northern Europe has been termed the "Northern Renaissance". It arrived first in France, imported by King Charles VIII after his invasion of Italy. Francis I imported Italian art and artists, including Leonardo Da Vinci, and at great expense built ornate palaces. Writers such as François Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne, painters such as Jean Clouet and musicians such as Jean Mouton also borrowed from the spirit of the Italian Renaissance.

In the second half of the 15th century, Italians brought the new style to Poland and Hungary. After the marriage in 1476 of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, to Beatrix of Naples, Buda became the one of the most important artistic centres of the Renaissance north of the Alps.[38] The most important humanists living in Matthias' court were Antonio Bonfini and Janus Pannonius.[38] In 1526 the Ottoman conquest of Hungary put an abrupt end to the short-lived Hungarian Renaissance.

An early Italian humanist who came to Poland in the mid-15th century was Filip Callimachus. Many Italian artists came to Poland with Bona Sforza of Milano, when she married King Zygmunt I of Poland in 1518.[39] This was supported by temporarily strengthened monarchies in both areas, as well as by newly-established universities.[40]

The spirit of the age spread from France to the Low Countries and Germany, and finally by the late 16th century to England, Scandinavia, and remaining parts of Central Europe. In these areas humanism became closely linked to the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation, and the art and writing of the German Renaissance frequently reflected this dispute.[41]

In England, the Elizabethan era marked the beginning of the English Renaissance with the work of writers William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser, as well as great artists, architects (such as Inigo Jones), and composers such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, and William Byrd.

Enlarge

Poznań City Hall rebuilt from the Gothic style by Giovanni Batista di Quadro (1550-1555).

The Renaissance arrived in the Iberian peninsula through the Mediterranean possessions of the Aragonese Crown and the city of Valencia. Early Iberian Renaissance writers include Ausiàs March, Joanot Martorell, Fernando de Rojas, Juan del Encina, Garcilaso de la Vega, Gil Vicente and Bernardim Ribeiro. The late Renaissance in Spain saw writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora and Tirso de Molina, artists such as El Greco and composers such as Tomás Luis de Victoria. In Portugal writers such as Sá de Miranda and Luís de Camões and artists such as Nuno Gonçalves appeared.

While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy, there was a simultaneous southward spread of innovation, particularly in music.[42] The music of the 15th century Burgundian School defined the beginning of the Renaissance in that art and the polyphony of the Netherlanders, as it moved with the musicians themselves into Italy, formed the core of what was the first true international style in music since the standardization of Gregorian Chant in the 9th century.[42] The culmination of the Netherlandish school was in the music of the Italian composer, Palestrina. At the end of the 16th century Italy again became a center of musical innovation, with the development of the polychoral style of the Venetian School, which spread northward into Germany around 1600.

The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the Northern Renaissance. Italian Renaissance artists were among the first to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the purely religious art of medieval painters. At first, Northern Renaissance artists remained focused on religious subjects, such as the contemporary religious upheaval portrayed by Albrecht Dürer. Later on, the works of Pieter Bruegel influenced artists to paint scenes of daily life rather than religious or classical themes. It was also during the northern Renaissance that Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck perfected the oil painting technique, which enabled artists to produce strong colors on a hard surface that could survive for centuries.[43]

Historiography of the Renaissance

Conception

It was not until the nineteenth century that the French word Renaissance achieved popularity in describing the cultural movement that began in the late 13th century. The Renaissance was first defined by French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874), in his 1855 work, Histoire de France. For Michelet, the Renaissance was more a development in science than in art and culture. He asserted that it spanned the period from Columbus to Copernicus to Galileo; that is, from the end of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century.[44] Moreover, Michelet distinguished between what he called, "the bizarre and monstrous" quality of the Middle Ages and the democratic values that he, as a vocal Republican, chose to see in its character.[21] A French nationalist, Michelet also sought to claim the Renaissance as a French movement.[21] The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, (1818-1897) in his Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, by contrast, defined the Renaissance as the period between Giotto and Michelangelo in Italy. He saw in the Renaissance the emergence of the modern spirit of individuality, which had been stifled in the Middle Ages.[45] His book was widely read and was influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance.[46] However, Buckhardt has been accused of setting forth a linear Whiggish view of history in seeing the Renaissance as the origin of the modern world.[6]

More recently, historians have been much less keen to define the Renaissance as a historical age, or even a coherent cultural movement. As Randolph Starn has put it,

“ Rather than a period with definitive beginnings and endings and consistent content in between, the Renaissance can be (and occasionally has been) seen as a movement of practices and ideas to which specific groups and identifiable persons variously responded in different times and places. It would be in this sense a network of diverse, sometimes converging, sometimes conflicting cultures, not a single, time-bound culture. ”

—Randolph Starn[6]

For Better or For Worse?

Painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an event in the French Wars of Religion, by François Dubois.

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Painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an event in the French Wars of Religion, by François Dubois.

Much of the debate around the Renaissance has centred around whether the Renaissance truly was an "improvement" on the culture of the Middle Ages. Both Michelet and Burckhardt were keen to describe the progress made in the Renaissance towards the "modern age". Burckhardt likened the change to a veil being removed from man's eyes, allowing him to see clearly. Moreover, nineteenth century historians, at a time of European imperialism, sought to demonstrate the superiority of European culture, perhaps leading them to attribute too much merit to the Renaissance as compared to other cultural movements.[21]

Many historians now point out that most of the negative social factors popularly associated with the "medieval" period - poverty, warfare, religious and political persecution, for example - seem to have worsened in this era which saw the rise of Machiavelli, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch-hunts of the 16th century. Many people who lived during the Renaissance did not view it as the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th-century authors, but were concerned by these social maladies.[47] Significantly, though, the artists, writers, and patrons involved in the cultural movements in question believed they were living in a new era that was a clean break from the Middle Ages.[35] Some Marxist historians prefer to describe the Renaissance in material terms, holding the view that the changes in art, literature, and philosophy were part of a general economic trend away from feudalism towards capitalism, resulting in a bourgeois class with leisure time to devote to the arts.[48]

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness--that which was turned within as that which was turned without-- lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues.

—Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. In his book The Waning of the Middle Ages, he argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the High Middle Ages, destroying much that was important.[5] The Latin language, for instance, had evolved greatly from the classical period and was still a living language used in the church and elsewhere. The Renaissance obsession with classical purity halted its further evolution and saw Latin revert to its classical form. Robert S. Lopez has contended that it was a period of deep economic recession. Meanwhile George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both argued that scientific progress was slowed.

Some historians have begun to consider the word Renaissance as unnecessarily loaded, implying an unambiguously positive rebirth from the supposedly more primitive "Dark Ages" (Middle Ages). Many historians now prefer to use the term "Early Modern" for this period, a more neutral designation that highlights the period as a transitional one between the Middle Ages and the modern era.[49]

Other Renaissances

The term Renaissance has also been used to define time periods outside of the 15th and 16th centuries. Charles H. Haskins (1870–1937), for example, made a convincing case for a Renaissance of the 12th century.[50] Other historians have argued for a Carolingian Renaissance in the eighth and ninth centuries, and still later for an Ottonian Renaissance in the tenth century.[51] Other periods of cultural rebirth have also been termed "renaissances", such as the Bengal Renaissance or the Harlem Renaissance.

References and Sources

References and Notes

1. ^ a b c d Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Defining the Renaissance (Retrieved 10-05-2007)

2. ^ BBC Science & Nature, Leonardo da Vinci (Retrieved on 12-05-2007)

3. ^ BBC History, Michelangelo (Retrieved on 12-05-2007)

4. ^ P. Burke, The European Renaissance: Centre and Peripheries (Blackwell, Oxford 1998)

5. ^ a b Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919, trans. 1924)

6. ^ a b c

7. ^ The Idea of the Renaissance, Richard Hooker, Washington State University Website (Retrieved on 02-05-2007)

8. ^ a b c d Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Religious Context in the Renaissance (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

9. ^ Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Urban economy and government (Retrieved 15-05-2007)

10. ^ See below, under "Sources".

11. ^ Hugh Bibbs, The Islamic Foundation of the Renaissance, (Northwest and Pacific, 1999) (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

12. ^ a b Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003) p81-90, p172-197

13. ^ The Islamic World to 1600, University of Calgary Website (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

14. ^ History of Medieval Mathematics University of South Australia Website (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

15. ^ History of the Renaissance, HistoryWorld (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

16. ^ Julius Kirshner, "Family and Marriage: A socio-legal perspective" Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford University Press, 2004) p.89 (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

17. ^ Jacob Burckhardt, "The Revivial of Antiquity," The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (trans. by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878)

18. ^ a b Jacob Burckhardt, "The Republics: Venice and Florence," The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (trans. by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878)

19. ^ For more, see Barbara Tuchman's book, A Distant Mirror

20. ^ The End of Europe's Middle Ages: The Black Death University of Calgary website. (Retrieved on 05-04-2007)

21. ^ a b c d J. Brotton, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introdution (OUP, 2006)

22. ^ Jacob Burckhardt, "The Development of the Individual," The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (trans. by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878)

23. ^ J. Stephens, "Individualism and the cult of creative personality", The Italian Renaissance (New York, 1990) pp. 121

24. ^ As asserted by Gianozzo Manetti in On the Dignity and Excellence of Man. Cited in Clare, J, Italian Renaissance.

25. ^ John D. Clare & Dr. Alan Millen, Italian Renaissance (London, 1994) p14

26. ^ David G. Stork, Optics and Realism in Renaissance Art (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

27. ^ Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. George Bull, Penguin Classics,(1965), ISBN 0-14-044-164-6

28. ^ Peter Brueghel Biography, Web Gallery of Art (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

29. ^ Richard Hooker, Architecture and Public Space (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

30. ^ Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800, p. viii

31. ^ Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1996), p. 1.

32. ^ a b c d J. Brotton, "Science and Philosophy", The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2006)

33. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Western Schism (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

34. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Alexander VI (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

35. ^ a b Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, (New York: Harper and Row, 1960)

36. ^ The Open University Guide to the Renaissance, Defining the Renaissance (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

37. ^ Philip Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

38. ^ a b Lóránt Czigány, A History of Hungarian Literature, "The Renaissance in Hungary" (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

39. ^ History of Poland on Polish Government's website (Retrieved on 05-04-2007)

40. ^ For example, the re-establishment of Jagiellonian University in 1400.

41. ^ Review of Lewis Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists. Review by Gerald Strauss, English Historical Review, Vol. 80, No. 314, p.156. Available on JSTOR (subscription required).

42. ^ a b Paul Henry Láng, "The So Called Netherlands Schools," The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1. (Jan., 1939), pp. 48-59. (Subscription required for JSTOR link.)

43. ^ Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe, Metropolitan Museum of Art website. (Retrieved 05-04-2007)

44. ^ Jules Michelet, History of France, trans. G. H. Smith (New York: D. Appleton, 1847)

45. ^ Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (trans. S.G.C Middlemore, London, 1878)

46. ^ Peter Gay, Style in History. (New York: Basic Books 1974).

47. ^ Savonarola's popularity is a prime example of the manifestation of such concerns. Other examples include Phillip II of Spain's censorship of Florentine paintings, noted by Edward L. Goldberg, "Spanish Values and Tuscan Painting", Renaissance Quarterly (1998) p.914

48. ^ Renaissance Forum at Hull University, Autumn 1997 (Retrieved on 10-05-2007)

49. ^ S. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (University of Chicago Press, 1980)

50. ^ Charles Homer Haskins. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927).

51. ^ Jean Hubert. L’Empire Carolingien (English: The Carolingian Renaissance, Translated by James Emmons (New York: G. Braziller, 1970).

Sources

* Brotton, Jerry, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction ISBN 0-19-280163-5

* Burckhardt, Jacob (1878), The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans S.G.C Middlemore, republished in 1990 ISBN 0-14-044534-X

* Burke, P, The European Renaissance: Centre and Peripheries ISBN 0-631-19845-8

* The Cambridge Modern History. Vol 1: The Renaissance (1902)

* Cronin, Vincent (1967), The Florentine Renaissance, ISBN 0-00-211262-0; (1969), The Flowering of the Renaissance, ISBN 0-7126-9884-1; (1992), The Renaissance, ISBN 0-00-215411-0

* Ergang, Robert (1967), The Renaissance, ISBN 0-442-02319-7

* Ferguson, Wallace K.] (1962), Europe in Transition, 1300-1500, ISBN 0-04-940008-8

* Haskins, Charles Homer (1927), The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, ISBN 0-674-76075-1

* Huizinga, Johan (1924), The Waning of the Middle Ages, republished in 1990 ISBN 0-14-013702-5

* Jensen, De Lamar (1992), Renaissance Europe, ISBN 0-395-88947-2

* Lopez, Robert S. (1952), Hard Times and Investment in Culture

* Strathern, Paul (2003), The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance, ISBN 1-844-13098-3

* Stephens, John, The Italian Renaissance: The Origins of Intellectual and Artistic Change before the Renaissance ISBN 0-582-49337-4

* Thorndike, Lynn (1943) 'Renaissance or Prenaissance?' in "Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance", Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan. 1943 (Subscription required for JSTOR link.)

* Weiss, Roberto (1969) The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, ISBN 1-597-40150-1

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Translations for: Renaissance

Dansk (Danish)

n. - renæssance, genopblomstring

adj. - genopblomstret, renæssance-

Nederlands (Dutch)

renaissance, opleving, hergeboorte

Français (French)

n. - Renaissance

adj. - de la Renaissance, d'esprit universel (un homme)

Deutsch (German)

n. - Renaissance, Wiedergeburt

adj. - Renaissance-

Ελληνική (Greek)

n. - αναγέννηση, (μτφ.) αναβίωση

adj. - αναγεννησιακός

Italiano (Italian)

Rinascimento, rinascimentale

n. - renascimento (m), Renascimento (Hist.)

adj. - renascentista

Русский (Russian)

возрождение, Ренессанс, эпохи Ренессанса

n. - Renacimiento

adj. - del Renacimiento, renacentista

Svenska (Swedish)

n. - renässans (stil), pånyttfödelse

adj. - renässans-

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))

复活, 文艺复兴, 复兴, 文艺复兴的

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))

n. - 復活, 文藝復興, 復興

adj. - 文藝復興的

한국어 (Korean)

n. - 문예 부흥, 르네상스, 부활

adj. - 문예 부흥의, 르네상스의

日本語 (Japanese)

n. - 復活, 復興, 文芸復興, 再生

‏(الاسم) النهضه الاوروبيه (صفه) إنبعاث, ولادة من جديد‏

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