sosepagewhatisren

Petrarch a poet and humanist described the renaissance as "a     dawning as men broke through the darkness to return to the       pure, pristine radiance of antiquity".

The word renaissance is from the latin word rinascere refers to the act of being reborn. In this period European artists and         scholars revised the learning and art of the ancient civilizations   of Greece and Rome.
The Renaissance was a great cultural movement that began in    Italy in the early 1300's which then spread through many other European countries in the lat 1400's and ended in the 1600's.
During this time the people sought to recapture the essence of    the ancient Greek and Roman cultures in their own artistic,        literary and philosophical works.
These cultures, Greek and Roman, have often been called         classical antiquity.
The Renaissance was the represented as the rebirth of these       cultures and thus has been called the revival of antiquity or        revival of learning.
It is a time that can be seen in two different lights. One as a       period of history such as for instance the 15th century or it can be seen like the adjectives "medieval" and "Victorian", it can      describe a way of cultural ideas and thinking.
The renaissance is rich and vibrant in culture and shows in the   records of the time that we see today.
In summing to the question "What was the Renaissance?" I        would say that the Renaissance was a time of rethinking and as stated rebirth for all the humanities and arts that has greatly        contributed to the way we think today.