The Renaissance and Reformation - Outline
I. The Renaissance in Italy
A. What was the Renaissance?
1. The Renaissance was a time of creativity and change in many areas: political, social, economic, and cultural.
2. Renaissance thinkers, unlike medieval scholars who were more concerned about the nature of after life, were eager to explore the richness and variety of human experience in the here and now, with a new emphasis placed on individual achievement.
3. The Renaissance supported a spirit of adventure and a wide-ranging curiosity that led people to explore new worlds, such as Columbus.
B. Italian Beginnings
1. The Renaissance began in Italy in the mid-1300s and later spread north to the rest of Europe and reached its height in the 1500s.
2. Italy, the center of ancient Roman history, was the site of architectural remains, antique statues, coins and inscriptions that sparked a re-interest in classical Roman and Greek culture.
3. The Medici family of Florence organized a banking business that prospered, and the family expanded into wool manufacturing, mining, and other ventures that soon placed the Medicis among the richest merchants and bankers in Europe that made them the uncrowned rulers of the city for many years.
C. Humanism
1. Based on the study of classical culture, humanism focused on worldly subjects rather than on the religious issues that had occupied medieval thinkers.
2. Humanists believed that education should stimulate the individual’s creative powers, and the main areas of study were grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history.
3. Petrach was an early Renaissance humanist who hunted down and assembled a library of Greek and Roman manuscripts and wrote literature of his own.
D. A Golden Age in the Arts
1. The Renaissance reached its most glorious expression in its paintings, sculpture, and architecture, which were supported by wealthy patrons.
2. Renaissance artists studied ancient Greek and Roman works and revived many classical forms and the method of perspective was learned, which brought about a new realism.
3. Several artists, such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, represented the Renaissance ideal of a multi-faceted genius.
E. Writings for the New Age
1. Poets, artists, and scholars mingled with politicians at the courts of Renaissance rulers, and a literature of “how-to” books sprang up to help ambitious men and women who wanted to rise in the Renaissance world.
2. The most widely read “how-to” book was The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione, whose ideal courtier was a well-educated, well-mannered aristocrat who has mastered many fields, from poetry to music to sports.
3. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a handbook that was a guidebook to becoming a successful leader and maintaining power that still holds today as a source of knowledge called The Prince.
II. The Renaissance Moves North
A. Artists of the Northern Renaissance
1. The northern Renaissance began in the 1400s in the prosperous cities of Flanders, a region that included parts of what is today northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
2. Albrecht Durer studied the techniques of the Italian masters and employed these methods in paintings, engravings, and prints that portray the religious upheaval of his age that helped spread the Italian Renaissance ideas to his homeland.
3. Jan and Hubert van Eyck helped develop oil paint and used strong colors and a hard surface that made art more durable than previously.
B. Northern Humanists
1. Northern humanists stressed education and a revival of classical learning, although they also emphasized religious themes.
2. Erasmus produced a new Greek edition of the New Testament and a much-improved Latin translation of the same text and called for a translation of the Bible into the everyday language of the people.
3. Sir Thomas More wrote books, such as Utopia, to press for social and economic reform.
C. Literature of the Northern Renaissance
1. Many northern writers used modern languages of their countries that formed a demand from the middle class for works in the vernacular.
2. William Shakespeare, and English poet and playwright, wrote 37 plays that are still performed around the world between the years 1590 and 1613.
3. The Renaissance in Spain produced its own great works, such as Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, that was an entertaining tale that mocks romantic notions of medieval chivalry.
D. The Printing Revolution
1. In 1456, Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, printed a complete edition of the Bible using a movable metal type, which began the European age of printing.
2. Printing presses sprang up in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and England, and by 1500, they had turned out more than 20 million volumes.
3. The printing revolution urged more people to learn to read and write, and allowed more people access to a broad range of knowledge and exposed Europeans to new ideas.
III The Protestant Reformation
A. Abuses in the Church
1. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, the Church had become increasingly caught up in worldly affairs, and Popes maintained a lavish lifestyle.
2. To finance their lavish projects, the Church increased fees for religious services and promoted the sale of indulges; a pardon for sins committed during a person’s lifetime.
3. Martin Luther, a German monk, wrote the 95 Theses and attempted to reform the church, despite being excommunicated and declared an outlaw; he was considered a hero by the common folk of Europe.
B. Spread of Lutheran Ideas
1. Luther’s ideas found a fertile field in Northern Germany and Scandinavia, where the printing presses spread his ideas and preachers began to denounce Church abuses, and by 1530, the name Protestant was given to those who protested papal authority.
2. Lutheranism won widespread support mostly because many of the clergy saw it as an answer to church corruption, and leaders recognized it as a chance to seize power and faith from the people.
3. Peasants took up Luther’s banner and hoped to gain his support for social and economic change as well as religious reform, although Luther himself denounced these revolts.
C. John Calvin
1. John Calvin was the most important reformer to follow Martin Luther; he had a logical, razor-sharp mind, and his ideas had a profound effect on the direction of the Protestant reformation.
2. Calvin taught that God was all powerful and that humans were by nature sinful, and that God alone decided whether an individual achieved eternal life, as well as the idea of presdestination.
3. Calvin set up a theocracy in the city-state of Geneva, in Switzerland, that was seen by many in Europe as an ideal community.
IV Reformation and Spread of Ideas
A. Radical Reformers
1. As the Reformation continued, hundreds of new Protestant sects sprang up, whose sects often had ideas that were even more radical than those of Luther and Calvin.
2. Many groups rejected the act of infant baptism; these groups were known as Anabaptists.
3. Today, Protestant denominations such as Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, and Amish all trace their ancestry to the Anabaptists.
B. The English Reformation
1. In England, the English king Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and put it under his own control; this church became known as the Anglican Church.
2. Henry shut down all convents and monasteries in England and seized their lands, which brought new wealth and power to the royal exchequer.
3. Henry was not, however, a religious radical, and aside from making himself head of the Anglican Church and allowing the use of the English Bible, he kept most Catholic forms of worship.
C. Elizabeth I Restores Unity to England
1. When Mary Tudor became queen, she had Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London, and which made her more popular with the people of England.
2. Elizabeth was confined to a gatehouse at Woodstock, where she was kept for nearly a year in poor condition until she was made Queen after Mary’s death.
3. When Elizabeth became queen, she adopted a policy of religious compromise that mixed many traditional Catholic beliefs with those of Protestant reforms.
D. The Catholic Reformation
1. As the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Europe, a vigorous reform movement took hold within the Catholic Church.
2. The Council of Trent was held in 1545 to establish the direction that reform should take and it met on and off for almost twenty years.
3. To deal with the Protestant threat more directly, Pope Paul establish the Inquisition to root out heresies during the Middle Ages and created the Index of Forbidden Books.
E. Widespread Persecution
1. During this period of heightened religious passion, persecution was widespread with both Catholics and Protestants, and intolerance was fostered.
2. A wave of witch hunting was started between the years 1450 and 1750 that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of men and women accused of witchcraft.
3. The Reformation brought hard times to Europe’s Jews, who for a while lived in relative prosperity during the Renaissance, but were now being prosecuted and some even moved to ghettos.
V The Scientific Revolution
A. Changing Views of the World
1. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a heliocentric, or sun-centered, model of the universe that most experts of the time rejected because it contradicted both the Church and the teachings of Ptolemy.
2. Scientists of many lands built on the foundations laid by Copernicus and Kepler to further scientific discovery, despite many of these discoveries being prosecuted by the Church.
3. A new scientific method was developed that instead of basing on earlier approaches of scientists, started experiments with observations and experimentation; they used complex mathematical calculations to convert the observations and experiments into scientific law.
B. Newton Ties it All Together
1. Newton was a student at Cambridge University in England that devoured the works of the leading scientists of the day.
2. By age 24, he had developed a brilliant theory to explain why the planets moved as they did and called this theory the theory of gravity.
3. In 1687, Newton published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, explaining the law of gravity and other workings of the universe.
C. More Scientific Advances
1. The 1500s and 1600s saw change in areas other than astronomy, and among the most important breakthroughs were those that occurred in chemistry and medicine.
2. In the 1600s, Robert Boyle distinguished between individual elements and chemical compounds and explained the effects of temperature and pressure on gases; his work opened the way to modern chemical analysis.
3. Until the Scientific Revolution, physicians relied on the ancient works of Galen; however, he made many errors and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci made new efforts to study the human body through anatomy and art.