a new spirit in the west the renaissance, ca. 1300-1640

A New Spirit in the West

The Renaissance, ca. 1300-1640

A New Spirit in the West

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The Big Picture

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Capetian Dynasty

Angevin Dynasty Aragon Dynasty

Sforza DynastyItalian Renaissance

Tudor Dynasty

Northern Renaissance

Renaissance in England

A New Spirit Emerges: Individualism, Realism and Activism

The Renaissance: A Controversial Idea– Renaissance: What does the word mean?

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– “Rebirth”

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– “Rebirth”

– What did contemporaries think was being reborn?

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– “Rebirth”

– What did contemporaries think was being reborn?

– Classical sources of knowledge and standards of beauty, from the what they considered the “classical period” (roughly 800 B.C.E. to 400 C.E.).

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The Renaissance: A Controversial Idea– Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374): This Italian

writer was an early advocate of Renaissance ideals,seeing in ancient Greece and Rome models for a new world. Petrarch even wrote letters to classical authors, lamenting the lack of contemporaries who shared his ideas and feelings.

– Medieval Antecedents: Medieval scholars never lost touch with ancient Latin texts nor lost a sense

of beauty inherited from the ancients. Most aspects of what we call the Renaissance existed during the medieval period in some form or other.

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The Renaissance: A Controversial Idea– A Time of Rapid Change: Yet the Renaissance was a period of rapid

change, particularly in Italy. News spread more rapidly than ever before, and a new sense of individualism and realism emerged, leading to a new era of ambition.

– Relationship to Classical Texts: Classical texts were no longer used to support the status quo, but to question and transform it.

– Why Italy? Renaissance ideas were born out of fourteenth-century Italy, and then spread northward. But why did they emerge in Italy in the first place? Pressures on the Byzantines forced them to flee to Italy, especially after the collapse of the empire in 1453, thus reintroducing much Greek scholarship. Another argument says that the intense competition between Italian city-states favored the growth of new ideas. Another arguments puts forth that the Black Death reorganized the old political and economic order, making some families very rich and able to become patrons of the arts.

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A Multifaceted Movement– Individualism: The Renaissance at its core was a celebration of

humans and their achievement, renewing a sense of individualism the West had not seen since the ancients. Faith in individual human potential was a new and exciting idea. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling painting of man touching God shows man as reflecting the Creator, not as inferior.

– Realism: Renaissance artists and thinkers prided themselves on holding an accurate idea of the world. This belief carried over into art, literature, and politics.

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A Multifaceted Movement– Activism: Renaissance thinkers believed that it was not enough

just to know the truth, but that it was necessary to act upon it. The author, artist, and architect Leon Batista Alberti (1404-1472) reflected this attitude: “Men can do all things if they will.”

– A Secular Spirit: Renaissance thought was secular—not that it was anti-religious, because it was not—in that it mostly did not stay within the walls of the universities, monasteries, and churches that dominated medieval intellectual life. This spirit sought to apply new ideas to the real world, reflecting a faith in humans’ capacity to perfect themselves.

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Humanism: The Path to Self-Improvement– Education Valued: Those who lived in Italian city-states saw

education as a key to success. In Florence around 1300, 10,000 youths our of a population of 100,000 attended private schools.

– Humanist Curriculum: This curriculum emphasized the “humanities”—grammar (mostly Latin and Greek), poetry, literature, history, and ethics. Students learning this curriculum sought to understand human actions through studying classical literature, and their teachers believed that such study would prepare students for any possible career.

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Humanism: The Path to Self-Improvement– Educational Theory: Authors such as Baldassare Castiglione (1478-

1529), who wrote The Book of the Courtier, offered advice on how to improve oneself. His book gave advice on the behavior that was expected of men at the court of a prince. He advocated for a well-rounded, activist individual as the courtly ideal.

– Women Humanists: Much of humanist education focused on rhetoric, which was to be used for public speaking, which was seen as inappropriate for women. But several humanists thought it was good for women to be educated, as long as they did not use their knowledge in a public way. Yet rulers such as Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) and Isabella of Castile (r. 1474-1504) nonetheless used their educations in this manner.

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Humanism: The Path to Self-Improvement– Civic Humanists: These humanists applied their training to politics,

treating public life as their artistic canvas.– Christian Humanists: Others used their

analytical skills honed on classical texts on the Bible and other sacred texts to transform the studyof Christianity. The most famous of these was the Dutchman, Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466-1536), who famously made fun of human foibles in his essay, In Praise of Folly:

“If a man have a crooked, ill-favored wife, who yet in his eye may stand in competition with Venus, is it not the same as if she were truly beautiful?”

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The Generosity of Patrons: Supporting New Ideas– Patronage: The many talented writers and artists of the Renaissance relied on

wealthy and powerful patrons for financial support. In the early Renaissance, cities themselves awarded prizes to talented citizens for sculpture or building designs. In times of warfare or strife, private patrons filled this role, such as Isabella d’ Este (1474-1539), who was married to the Duke of Mantua. The Medici family in Florence and the Sforza family in Milan also prominently played this role.

– Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464): This wealthy aristocrat’s fascination with Plato led him to found the Platonic Academy in Florence, doing a tremendous amount to revive interest in that philosopher. Scholars at the academy demonstrated close affinities between Christianity and Platonic thought.

– Religious Patronage: The church also supported the arts, with popes backing artists. Churches recognized the religious purpose of much Renaissance art, encouraging the belief that many pieces of art held miraculous powers.

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The Invention of the Printing Press: Spreading New IdeaBefore the 1400s, books were produced through the laborious process of hand-copying. In China and Korea, inventors had developed a means to reproduce text and pictures more quickly through wood-block printing. This technique had spread to the West by the late 1300s. Also by that time, Asians had replaced wooden type with bronze type, which also came westward. In the 1440s, movable type was brought together with an oil press to print pages more rapidly. Paper-making technology also dramatically improved, replacing older parchment. Printing pressesspread quickly throughout Europe, with about 1,000existing by 1500. This ability to disseminate knowledgemore rapidly than ever before helped to spread Renaissance ideas.

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The Politics of Individual Effort

The Italian City-States– Power Vacuum: The struggle between popes and emperors

created a power vacuum in northern Italy that allowed city-states to flourish. At the beginning of the 1300s, most were free communes with republican forms of governments, but this was about to change.

– Unstable Times: The city-states were fighting over border conflicts and commercial interests almost constantly, while classes and political factions fought for control over the city government. In this environment, dictators tended to seize control of republican governments.

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The Italian City-States– Condottieri: Mercenary military captains called condottieri

were hired to fight wars, and often ravaged the countryside and ultimately destabilized governments. In this chaos, strong-willed men often rose to power without constitutional or hereditary legitimacy. The condottieri themselves often rose to power, such as the Duke of Urbino

– Republics and Principalities: Most Italian city-states fell into either of these two categories. Venice and Florence were mostly republican, while Milan and Naples were the foremost principalities.

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Italy in 1454

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Florence: Birthplace of the Renaissance– A Tense Republic: Florence prided itself on its republican form of

government, but it always seemed on the brink of erupting into violence. Only guild members could participate in government, and an oligarchy of leading families were often able to control it. Yet the plague had hit Florence hard, and so had warfare with Milan in the early 1400s. In this time of instability, the city turned to the wealthiest banking family in Europe: the Medici.

– The Medici: Cosimo Medici took control of the city in 1434, maintaining a façade of republican government. Under Medici control, the arts in Florence flourished. Cosimo himself funded public sculptures by Donatello, founded the Platonic Academy, and gave funds to help Brunelleschi complete dome of Florence Cathedral.

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Florence: Birthplace of the RenaissanceLorenzo the Magnificent (r. 1469-1492)Lorenzo di Medici, grandson of Cosimo, wasa versatile statesman, patron of the arts, poet,and athlete. Yet it took all of his skill topreserve Florentine independence fromforeign domination, avoid intrigues andAssassination attempts, and politicaldissension. Late in life, many Florentines began to question and challenge the Renaissance ideals that Lorenzo promoted.

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Florence: Birthplace of the RenaissanceSavonarola (1452-1498)In 1494, French armies invaded the Italiancountryside, and the Florentine republic was facedwith financial and political troubles. The Frenchfound an ally in the city in the form of a fieryPreacher, a Dominican monk, who despised Medici rule and the Renaissance values and the avid accumulation of money that that family stood for. He believed that humanism polluted everything from art to religion by putting humans rather than God at the center of the universe.

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Florence: Birthplace of the Renaissance– Savonarola Takes Over: Helped by disruptions caused by the French,

he arranged to have the Medici expelled in 1494, and he emerged as the leader of a new “Christian and religious republic.” He attacked nude statues and paintings, and in 1497, presided over a “Bonfire of the Vanities” in the center of Florence, in which “frivolous” items like mirrors, make-up, ornaments, and non-religious pictures were burned. Savonarola also attacked the excesses of the pope, who finally excommunicated him in forbade him to preach.

– Savonarola Overthrown: The Florentine people got tired of the monk’s overzealousness and kicked him out of power. He was charged with heresy, sedition, uttering prophecies, and other crimes, and sentenced to death. After he was hanged, his body was burned on the same site as his “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

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Venice: The Serene Republic?– The Venetian Republic: Venice had a much more stable republic than

Florence. About 2,000 of the great merchant families served on the Great Council, and this council elected an older man—usually in his 70s—to serve as its leader. This individual was called the doge, and he served for life. Venice called itself the “La Serenissima,” meaning “the most serene.”

– Overseas Trade: A source of Venetian stability was its tremendous wealth, produced by its domination of overseas trade, due in part to its strategically advantageous location on the Adriatic Sea. It had enjoyed a privileged position with trade in relation to the Byzantines, and had also cultivated relationships with Muslim rulers. It built a large empire of coastal cities and islands, as the next map indicates. Later, Venetian commercial power would be challenged by the rise of the Ottomans.

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The Venetian Empire in the Fifteenth Century24


• Milan and Naples: Two Principalities– Milan: A republic in the middle ages, Milan became a hereditary

principality in the Renaissance era. During a period of turmoil in the 1200s, a soldier from a family named Visconti took over control. His family dynasty controlled Milan from 1278 to 1447. In 1450, another dynasty took charge, the Sforza, who had a long tradition of serving the city’s military.

– Naples: The Kingdom of Naples was the only region of Italy to hold on to a medieval form of hereditary monarchy. In the early 1300s, it was ruled by the Angevin kings, who were related to the king of France. Yet these kings came to accept Renaissance ideals and were genrous patrons of the arts. Yet in 1435, the Spanish king of Aragon, Alfonso the Magnanimous, united the thrones of Sicily and Naples. He was not able to subdue the nobility there, and Naples remained feudal in political structure.

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The Papal States– Pope Martin V: When the Great Schism ended in 1417, the new

pope found the Papal states under control of neighboring states and the old city in a sad state of disrepair. Martin decided to regain control of the Papal States and refurbish the city of Rome to its former state of magnificence. The culmination of this effort was the construction of the new St. Peter’s church in the late 1400s. Money flowed from Europe to fund the new projects, and this angered many Christians.

– Papal Patronage: With this money, the popes transformed Rome and the headquarters of the church into a lavish environment that surpassed that of many kings of Europe. They funded works by great artists and architects to beautify the city. 26


The Papal States– The Borgia Family: During this period, the wealthy Borgia

family rose to prominence. A Borgia pope, Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), came to represent the power, greed, and ambition of the time. He was elected through bribery, used his influence to place his illegitimate children and family members into powerful positions, and had his enemies poisoned (he had several children by a mistress; as a Catholic priest he could obviously not marry). His soldier son, Cesare, carried out a military campaign to try to unify Italy under Alexander’s rule that ultimately failed. Alexander died suddenly in 1503, probably victim of malaria, which was common in Rome, although rumors of poisoning circulated.

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The Papal States: The Borgias

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Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia


The Papal States– Julius II (r. 1503-1513): This memorable

pope followed Alexander VI, and was almost as ambitious, but without the stenchof scandal that stuck to his predecessor. Hemade Rome a cultural center on par withFlorence, bringing Michelangelo to Rome and commissioning him to paint the ceilingof the Sistine Chapel, and to help with thedesign of St. Peter’s. Julius had fulfilledMartin’s initial ambition: to make the pope a powerful earthly ruler living in a magnificent city. Yet the earthly power of thepopes would eventually undermine their spiritual authority.

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The Art of Diplomacy– Machiavelli: Renaissance Italy was a time and

place of great intrigue and shifting alliances among the city-states. No writer captured the political skill and diplomatic aplomb that Renaissance leaders needed to cultivate more so than Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). Italian political thinker authored The Prince, an influential book that examines politics with a cold-blooded realism that had not been seen before: he advised rulers to be ruthless, strong, and at times, be willing to put aside traditional morality if they wanted to be successful.

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Individualism as Self-Interest: Life During the Renaissance

– Individualism: Individualistic and self-interested behavior that came to dominate many Italian city-states did have some considerable downsides. Political factionalism and class antagonisms (like that between the “fat people” and “little people” in Florence) led to sometimes brutal strife, and all of the cities experienced a rise in urban crime.

– Growing Intolerance: Renaissance states also passed laws against people they found threatening to order, from prostitutes to paupers.

– Persecution of Jews: Laws that restricted Jews’ movement through the city and forcing them to wear clothing that identified them as Jews became more common. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Spain’s Jews, leading many to flee to Muslim lands.

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• Economic Boom Times– Venice: Venice made its fortunes through importing, bringing in

tons of cotton, silk, and spices from the Far East and exporting woolen cloth and silver coin to pay for the imports.

– Milan and Florence: These were artisan-manufacturing centers that focused on wool cloth and silk production.

– Banking: This had become Europe’s most profitable business by the Renaissance, as medieval prohibitions against charging interest began to fall away. In the process, many Christian families raked in massive amounts of money on state-guaranteed bonds that promised a 15 percent return.

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Slavery Revived– Revival: Why was slavery being revived at a time when serfs

were being freed? Some historians suggest that labor shortages after the Black Death led to the demand for a new labor source.

– Source of Slaves: Earlier in the Renaissance, slaves came from the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. However, in the late 1400s as the Portuguese began to explore the West African coast, increasingly sub-Saharan African slaves became more common in Europe. But slavery had pretty much disappeared in Europe by the end of the Renaissance (but was only just beginning in the New World).

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• Children’s Lives– Childhood Hardships: Child mortality in Renaissance Italy was

exceptionally high, in part due to harsh parenting techniques. Children of wealthy families when first born were sent to the countryside to be nursed by strangers as breastfeeding was seen as dangerous to women’s health. When the children were reclaimed around the age of two, they were literally “little strangers” in the household. Experts said children should be treated harshly to prepare them for the hardships of life. Some were made to sleep on wooden planks without bedding.

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• Architecture: Echoing the Human Form–Human architecture

–Domes

–Town planning



• Sculpture Comes into Its Own–Michelangelo’s David



• Painting from a New Perspective–Linear perspective

–Raphael



• Celestial Music of Human Emotions



• Science or Pseudoscience?–Astrology and alchemy

–Mathematics and anatomy



• Leonardo da Vinci: The “Renaissance Man”–Painting

–Scientific notebooks


Renaissance of the “New Monarchies” of the North

• France: Under the Italian Influence–Louis the Spider

– Italians in France


France in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries



• English Humanism–Thomas More

–Renaissance queens



• Renaissance London: A Booming City–The south bank

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• England’s Pride: William Shakespeare


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