Start of the Renaissance
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Since the term was first created in the 19th century, historians
have various interpretations on the Renaissance. Today, most
historians view the Renaissance as largely an intellectual and
ideological change, rather than a substantive one. For example:
Marxist historians view the Renaissance as a pseudo-revolution with
the changes in art, literature, and philosophy affecting only a tiny
minority of the very wealthy and powerful while life for the great
mass of the European population was unchanged from the Middle Ages.
They thus deny that it is an event of much importance.
Historians now point out that most of the negative social factors
popularly associated with the "medieval" period - poverty,
ignorance, warfare, religious and political persecution, and so
forth - seem to have actually worsened during this age of
Machiavelli, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the
intensified witch-hunts of the 16th century. Many of the common
people who lived during the "Renaissance" are known to have been
concerned by the developments of the era rather than viewing it as
the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th century authors. |
Perhaps the most important factor of the Renaissance is that those
involved in the cultural movements in question - the artists,
writers, and their patrons - believed they were living in a new era
that was a clean break from the Middle Ages, even if much of the
rest of the population seems to have viewed the period as an
intensification of social maladies.
Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the
Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. He
argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the high
Middle Ages, which destroyed much that was important. The Latin
language, for instance, had evolved greatly from the classical
period and was still used in the church and by others as a living
language. However, the Renaissance obsession with classical purity
saw Latin revert to its classical form and its natural evolution
halted. Robert S. Lopez has contended that it was a period of deep
economic recession. Meanwhile George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have
both criticised how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that
progress was slowed.
Historians have begun to consider the word "Renaissance" as an
unnecessarily loaded word that implies an unambiguously positive
"rebirth" from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Many
historians now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this
period, a neutral term that highlights the period as a transitional
one that led to the modern world, but does not have any positive or
negative connotations.
The Renaissance has no set starting point or place. It happened
gradually at different places at different times and there are no
defined dates or places for when the Middle Ages ended. The starting
place of the Renaissance is almost universally ascribed to Central
Italy, especially the city of Florence. One early Renaissance figure
is the poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the first writer to embody
the spirit of the Renaissance.
Petrarch (1304–1374) is another early Renaissance figure. As part of
the humanist movement he concluded that the height of human
accomplishment had been reached in the Roman Empire and the ages
since have been a period of social rot which he labeled the Dark
Ages. Petrarch saw history as social, art and literary advancement,
and not as a series of set religious events. Rebirth meant the
rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek Latin heritage through
ancient manuscripts and the humanist method of learning. These new
ideas from the past (called the "new learning" at the time)
triggered the coming advancements in art, science and other areas.
Another possible starting point is the fall of Constantinople to the
Turks in 1453. It was a turning point in warfare as cannon and
gunpowder became a central element. In addition, Byzantine-Greek
scholars fled west to Rome bringing renewed energy and interest in
the Greek and Roman heritage, and it perhaps represented the end of
the old religious order in Europe. |
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