Renaissance (14th century to the 17th century)

 The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic
“rebirth” following the Middle Ages.
 The Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.
 The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day
civilization.
From Darkness to Light: The Renaissance Begins
 Middle Ages
o a period that took place between the fall of ancient Rome in 476 A.D. and the
beginning of the 14th century.
o Also known as the “Dark Ages,” the era is often branded as a time of war, ignorance,
famine and pandemics such as the Black Death.
Humanism
 During the 14th century, a cultural movement called humanism began to gain momentum in
Italy.
 Humanism promoted the idea that man was the center of his own universe.
 Printing Press of Johannes Gutenberg (1450)
o improved communication throughout Europe and for ideas to spread more quickly.
o Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio which promoted the renewal of
traditional Greek and Roman culture and values, were printed and distributed to the
masses..
Medici Family
 The Renaissance started in Florence, Italy.
 Medici family ruled Florence for more than 60 years, were famous backers of the
movement.
 The movement first expanded to other Italian city-states, such as Venice, Milan, Bologna,
Ferrara and Rome. Then, during the 15th century, Renaissance ideas spread from Italy to
France and then throughout western and northern Europe..

Renaissance Geniuses

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): Italian painter, architect, inventor, and “Renaissance man”
responsible for painting “The Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper.

 Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536): Scholar from Holland who defined the humanist
movement in Northern Europe. Translator of the New Testament into Greek. 

 Rene Descartes (1596–1650): French philosopher and mathematician regarded as the father
of modern philosophy. Famous for stating, “I think; therefore I am.”

 Galileo (1564-1642): Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer whose pioneering work with
telescopes enabled him to describes the moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn.

 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543): Mathematician and astronomer who made first modern
scientific argument for the concept of a heliocentric solar system.
  Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): English philosopher and author of “Leviathan.”

 Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400): English poet and author of “The Canterbury Tales.”

 Giotto (1266-1337): Italian painter and architect whose more realistic depictions of human
emotions influenced generations of artists. Best known for his frescoes in the Scrovegni
Chapel in Padua.

 Dante (1265–1321): Italian philosopher, poet, writer and political thinker who authored
“The Divine Comedy.”

 Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527): Italian diplomat and philosopher famous for writing “The
Prince” and “The Discourses on Livy.”

 Titian (1488–1576): Italian painter celebrated for his portraits of Pope Paul III and Charles I
and his later religious and mythical paintings like “Venus and Adonis” and
"Metamorphoses."

 William Tyndale (1494–1536): English biblical translator, humanist and scholar burned at
the stake for translating the Bible into English.

 William Shakespeare (1564–1616): England’s “national poet” and the most famous
playwright of all time, celebrated for his sonnets and plays like “Romeo and Juliet.”

 Donatello (1386–1466): Italian sculptor celebrated for lifelike sculptures like “David,”
commissioned by the Medici family.

 Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510): Italian painter of “Birth of Venus.”

 Michelangelo (1475–1564): Italian sculptor, painter, and architect who carved “David” and
painted The Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Renaissance Art, Architecture and Science

 Art, architecture and science were closely linked during the Renaissance.
 Filippo Brunelleschi
o An architect who studied mathematics to accurately engineer and design immense
buildings with expansive domes.
 Galileo and Descartes
o presented a new view of astrology and mathematics, while Copernicus proposed
that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.
 Renaissance art was characterized by realism and naturalism.

Some of the most famous artistic works that were produced during the Renaissance include:
 The Mona Lisa (Da Vinci)
 The Last Supper (Da Vinci)
 Statue of David (Michelangelo)
 The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)
Renaissance Exploration
 Age of Discovery
o Europeans took to the seas to learn more about the world around them.
 Voyagers launched expeditions to travel the entire globe.
 Famous journeys were taken by Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo
Vespucci (after whom America is named), Marco Polo, Ponce de Leon, Vasco Núñez de
Balboa, Hernando De Soto and other explorers.

Renaissance Religion
 Humanism encouraged Europeans to question the role of the Roman Catholic church during
the Renaissance.
 Martin Luther
o a German monk, led the Protestant Reformation – a revolutionary movement that
caused a split in the Catholic church.
o As a result, a new form of Christianity, known as Protestantism, was created.

End of the Renaissance

 Scholars believe the demise of the Renaissance was the result of several compounding
factors.
 By the end of the 15th century, numerous wars had plagued the Italian peninsula. Spanish,
French and German invaders battling for Italian territories caused disruption and instability
in the region.
 Later, in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church censored
artists and writers in response to the Protestant Reformation.
 1545 - The Council of Trent established the Roman Inquisition.
 17th century – The Renaissance movement had died

The Reformation
 Protestant Reformation (16th-century)
o religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic in
Europe.
o In northern and central Europe, reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and Henry
VIII challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define
Christian practice.

Dating the Reformation

 Historians usually date the start of the Protestant Reformation to the 1517 publication of
Martin Luther’s “95 Theses.”
 Its ending can be placed anywhere from the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which allowed for the
coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism in Germany, to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia,
which ended the Thirty Years’ War.

The Reformation: Germany and Lutheranism

  Martin Luther (1483-1546) was an Augustinian monk and university lecturer in Wittenberg
when he composed his “95 Theses,” which protested the pope’s sale of reprieves from
penance, or indulgences.
 When German peasants, inspired in part by Luther’s empowering “priesthood of all
believers,” revolted in 1524, Luther sided with Germany’s princes. By the Reformation’s end,
Lutheranism had become the state religion throughout much of Germany, Scandinavia and
the Baltics.

The Reformation: Switzerland and Calvinism

 Began in 1519 with the sermons of Ulrich Zwingli, whose teachings largely paralleled
Luther’s.
 In 1541 John Calvin, a French Protestant who had spent the previous decade in exile writing
his “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” was invited to settle in Geneva and put his
Reformed doctrine—which stressed God’s power and humanity’s predestined fate—into
practice. The result was a theocratic regime of enforced, austere morality.

The Reformation: England and the “Middle Way”

 In England, the Reformation began with Henry VIII’s quest for a male heir.
 Henry dissolved England’s monasteries to confiscate their wealth and worked to place the
Bible in the hands of the people. Beginning in 1536, every parish was required to have a
copy.
 After Henry’s death, England tilted toward Calvinist-infused Protestantism during Edward
VI’s six-year reign and then endured five years of reactionary Catholicism under Mary I.
 In 1559 Elizabeth I took the throne and, during her 44-year reign, cast the Church of England
as a “middle way” between Calvinism and Catholicism, with vernacular worship and a
revised Book of Common Prayer.

The Counter-Reformation
 The Catholic Church was slow to respond systematically to the theological and publicity
innovations of Luther and the other reformers. The Council of Trent, which met off and on
from 1545 through 1563, articulated the Church’s answer to the problems that triggered the
Reformation and to the reformers themselves.
 The Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation era grew more spiritual, more literate and
more educated. New religious orders, notably the Jesuits, combined rigorous spirituality
with a globally minded intellectualism

The Reformation’s Legacy

 Northern Europe’s new religious and political freedoms came at a great cost, with decades
of rebellions, wars and bloody persecutions. The Thirty Years’ War alone may have cost
Germany 40 percent of its population.
 But the Reformation’s positive repercussions can be seen in the intellectual and cultural
flourishing it inspired on all sides of the schism—in the strengthened universities of Europe,
the Lutheran church music of J.S. Bach, the baroque altarpieces of Pieter Paul Rubens and
even the capitalism of Dutch Calvinist merchants.