In large part, the beginning of the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance in the Italian states was due to the new access to Greek texts, brought.

CH 13EUROPEAN

SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF THE

RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550

BEFORE WE BEGIN

In large part, the beginning of the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance in the Italian states was due to the new access to Greek texts, brought by Byzantine scholars fleeing the imminent collapse of the Byzantine Empire. These Greek texts had been unknown in the West since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The influx of these classical works inspired scholars’ desire to relearn the Greek language, and the new scientific and mathematical texts inspired artists to portray nature more accurately.

This is also a period of ongoing struggles between the powerful nobles and the generally weak monarchs or ruling families. Pay attention during this chapter to the strategies employed by ruling families to consolidate their power and weaken the power of the nobles. Also notice the strategies employed by nobles to thwart the rulers’ plans.

Lastly, notice how the Catholic Church rebuilt its image with the laity and its relations with the politically power.

I. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

I.A. COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS

1. Venice, Genoa, and Milan grew rich on commerce between 1050 and 1300.

2. Florence, where the Renaissance originated, was an important banking center by the fourteenth century.

I.B. COMMUNES AND REPUBLICS 1. In northern Italy the larger cities won

independence from local nobles and became self-governing communes of free men in the twelfth century.

2. Local nobles moved into the cities and married into wealthy merchant families.

3. This new class set up property requirements for citizenship.

4. The excluded, the popolo, rebelled and in some cities set up republics.

5. By 1300 the republics had collapsed, and despots or oligarchies governed most Italian cities.

I.C. THE BALANCE OF POWER AMONG THE ITALIAN CITY-STATES 1. In the fifteenth century, five powers dominated the

Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States, and the kingdom of Naples.

2. City patriotism and constant competition fro power among cities prevented political centralization on the Italian peninsula.

3. As cities strove to maintain the balance of power among themselves, they invented the apparatus of modern diplomacy.

4. In 1494, the city of Milan invited intervention by the French King Charles VIII.

5. Italy became a battleground as France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor vied for dominance.

6. In 1527 the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome.

II. INTELLECTUAL CHANGE

1. The revival of antiquity took the form of interest in archaeology, recovery of ancient manuscripts, and study of the Latin classics.

2. The study of the classics became known as the “new learning,” or humanism.

3. Humanists studied the Latin classics to learn what they reveal about human nature.

4. Humanism emphasized human beings, their achievements, interests, and capabilities.

5. Interest in human achievements led humanists to emphasize the importance of the individual and individualism.

6. Humanists derided what they viewed as the debased Latin of the medieval churchmen.

II.A. HUMANISM

II.B. EDUCATION 1. Humanists placed heavy emphasis on

education and moral behavior. 2. Humanists opened schools and

academies throughout Italy. 3. They were ambivalent about

education for women. 4. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier

had a broad influence.

II.C. POLITICAL THOUGHT 1. Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince

addressed the subject of political power. 2. Starting with assumptions about

human nature, Machiavelli outlined a vision of power that rested on a realistic understanding of the political environment.

II.D. SECULAR SPIRIT

1. The secular way of thinking focuses on the world as experienced rather than in the spiritual and/or eternal.

2. Renaissance thinkers came to see life as an opportunity rather than a painful pilgrimage toward God.

3. Lorenzo Valla argued that sense pleasures were the highest good.

4. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about an acquisitive, sensual, worldly society.

5. Renaissance popes expended much money on new building, a new cathedral (St. Peter’s), and on patronizing artists and men of letters.

II.E. CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

1. Christian humanists in northern Europe interpreted Italian ideas in the context of their own traditions.

2. Christian humanists were interested in an ethical way of life.

3. Utopia by Thomas More (1478-1535) described an ideal socialistic community.

4. Erasmus (1466-1536) was the leading Christian humanist of his era.

5. Two fundamental themes run through Erasmus’s work. A)Commitment to education is the key to moral and

intellectual improvement B) Adherence to “the philosophy of Christ”

II.F. THE PRINTED WORD 1. The advent of movable

metal type had a huge impact on the spread of new ideas.

2. Printing with movable metal type developed in Germany in the middle of the fifteenth century.

3. Increased urban literacy, the development of primary schools, and the opening of new universities expanded the market for printed materials.

4. Within fifty years of the publication of Gutenberg’s Bible of 1456, moveable type and brought about radical changes.

III. ART AND THE ARTIST

III.A. ART AND POWER 1. In the early Renaissance, corporate

groups such as guilds sponsored religious art.

2. By the late fifteenth century, individual princes, merchants, and bankers sponsored art to glorify themselves and their families. Their urban palaces were full of expensive furnishings as well as art.

III.B. SUBJECTS AND STYLE 1. Classical themes, individual portraits, and

realistic style characterized Renaissance art. 2. Renaissance artists invented perspective

and portrayed the human body in a more natural and scientific manner than previous artists did.

3. Art produced in northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tended to be more religious in orientation than that produced in Italy.

4. Rome and Venice rose to artistic prominence in the sixteenth century.

III.C. PATRONAGE AND CREATIVITY 1. Medieval masons were viewed as

mechanical workers/artisans. Renaissance artists were seen as intellectual workers.

2. The princes and merchants who patronized artists paid them well.

3. Artists themselves gloried in their achievements. During the Renaissance, the concept of artist as genius was born.

4. Renaissance culture was only the culture of a very wealthy mercantile elite; it did not affect the lives of the urban middle classes or the poor.

IV. SOCIAL HIERARCHIES

IV.A. RACE 1. Renaissance ideas about “race” were

closely linked with those about ethnicity and “blood.”

2. The contemporary meaning of “race” originated in the eighteenth century.

3. Renaissance people did make distinctions based on skin color.

4. Beginning in the fifteenth century, sizable numbers of black slaves entered Europe.

5. African slaves served in a variety of positions.

6. Fifteenth-century Europeans knew little about Africans and their cultures.

IV.B. CLASS 1. The contemporary notion of class was

developed in the nineteenth century. 2. The medieval system of social

differentiation was based on theoretical function.

3. During the Renaissance the inherited hierarchy of social orders was interwoven with a more fluid hierarchy based on wealth.

4. Social status was also linked with considerations of honor.

5. Cities had the most complex and dynamic social hierarchies.

IV.C. GENDER 1. Gender is a concept that grew out of the

women’s movement that began in the 1970s. 2. The Renaissance witnessed a debate about

the character and nature of women. 3. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the

debate about women also became one about female rulers.

4. Ideas about men and women’s roles shaped the actions and options of Renaissance people.

5. Maintenance of proper gender relationships served as a symbol for the maintenance of a well-functioning society.

V. POLITICS AND THE STATE IN THE RENAISSANCE (CA 1450-1521)

V.A. FRANCE 1. In France, Charles VII (r. 1422-1461) created the

first permanent royal army, set up new taxes on salt and land, and allowed increased influence in his bureaucracy from middle-class men. He also asserted his right to appoint bishops in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

2. Charles’s son Louis XI (r. 1461-1483) fostered industry from artisans, taxed it, and used the funds to build up his army. He brought much new territory under direct Crown rule.

3. The marriage of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany added Brittany to the French state.

4. The Concordat of Bologna gave French kings effective control over church officials within the kingdom.

V.B. ENGLAND 1. In England, Edward IV (r. 1461-1483) ended

the War of Roses between rival baronial houses. 2. Henry VII (r. 1485-1509) ruled largely without

Parliament, using as his advisers men with lower-level gentry origins.

3. Under Henry, the center of royal authority was the royal council.

4. Henry’s Court of the Star Chamber tried cases involving aristocrats and did so with methods contradicting common law, such as torture.

5. The Tudors won the support of the influential upper middle class.

V.C. SPAIN 1. Although Spain remained a confederation of kingdoms

until 1700, the wedding of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon did lead to some centralization. Ferdinand and Isabella stopped violence among the nobles, recruited “middle-class” advisers onto their royal council, and secured the right to appoint bishops in Spain and in the Spanish empire in America.

2. Popular anti-Semitism increased in fourteenth-century Spain. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella invited the Inquisition into Spain to search out and punish Jewish converts to Christianity who secretly continued Jewish religious practices.

3. To persecute converts, Inquisitors and others formulated a racial theory – that conversos were suspect not because of their beliefs, but because of who they were racially.

4. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain.