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From the 14th to 17th century, many towns were grown in many countries of Europe like Florence, Venice and Rome. Read this chapter about Changing Cultural Traditions notes and don’t forget to share.
Artists and writers were patronised by the aristocrats. Printing books and a sense of history also developed in Europe. Church religion belief was overturned by scientists, they challenge the religion.
Sources of European history
Documents, painting, sculptures, buildings, printed books, textiles.
From the 19th century, historians used the term renaissance (rebirth) to describe the cultural changes of this period.
German historian Ranke thought that the primary concern of the historian was to write about states and politics but Swiss scholar Jacob Burckhardt disagreed with this limitation of goals. He supposed that history was as much concerned with culture as with politics.
In 1860, he wrote a book called” the civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy” in which he emphasized a new’ humanist ‘culture by paying attention to literature, architecture and painting.
In this culture, men were capable of making his own decisions. He was modern in contrast to ‘medieval’ man whose thinking had been controlled by the church.
The revival of Italian cities
After the decline of the Roman empire the towns of Italy which were political and cultural centers, fell into ruin. After the fall of the Roman empire, Western Europe was restructured by feudal bonds and unified under the Latin church.
Eastern Europe went under the rule of the Byzantine Empire and Islam was building a common society further West.
At this time Italy was weak and fragmented. All these developments helped the revival of Italian culture. The ports on the Italian coast revived because of the development of trade between the Byzantine empire and the Islamic countries.
From the 12th century, the Mongols started trading with China through the silk route and as trade increased with European countries, Italian cities played a vital role. These cities kept their identity as independent city states. Florence and Venice were among the republics. Many cities came into existence because their administration was in the hands of rich merchants and bankers, free from the control of clergy or feudal lords and this helped the idea of citizenship.
The role of universities and humanism
In Europe, earlier universities were established in Italian towns. The universities Padua and Bologna had been centres of legal studies from the 11th century.
There was a change in emphasis and law became a popular subject of study.
There was a growing demand for lawyers and notaries to write and interpret rules and written contracts as increasing trade and commerce depended over there. Francesco Petrach represented this change and stressed the significance of a deep reading of ancient authors.
The educational program of that period was a means of study which religious teaching alone could not give. The term humanist began to be applied in the early 15th century for masters who could teach grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and philosophy. These subjects had no connection with religion. They were developed discussions and debates of individuals. These ideas influenced other universities also, especially in the newly established University in Florence,(the hometown of Petrarch).
By the 15th century, Florence became famous as a trade and education centre. The city was known not only for its wealth but also for its citizens and Florence had become popular with Dante Alighier a layman who wrote religious themes and Giotto,an artist who painted lifelike portraits from them. it developed as the most exciting intellectual city in Italy and a center of artistic creativity.
Renaissance Man
The term’ Renaissance men’ is often used to describe a person with many interests and skills because many of the individuals who became well known at this time were people of many parts. they were scholar-diplomat-theologian-artists combined in one.
The Humanist view of history
The humanist thought that an age of darkness existed for centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire, which they termed as ‘dark age’ ; later scholars assumed that ‘new age’ began after the 14th century.
The period of the thousand years after the fall of the Roman empire was considered as ‘middle ages’ or ‘medieval period’. About ‘middle ages’ they said that religion or Church controlled the minds of all men in a way that all the learning of the Greeks and Romans had been washed out.
The humanist termed the period from the 15 century as ‘modern’. modern historians were debating over labeling an age as dark which they thought as an unfair thing.
Science and Philosophy and Arabs’ contribution
The monks and clergymen were familiar with the works of Greek and Roman scholars from the ‘middle ages.’ By the 14th century, many scholars started to read the translation of Greek writers like Plato and Aristotle. They were translated and preserved by Arab translators. Some Europeans read Greek works Arabic translation and the Greek translated Arabic and Persian scholars work in European languages. These works were on natural science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and chemistry.
The Almagest of Ptolemy was the work of 140CE on astronomy in Greek language and was translated into Arabic. It carries the Arabic alphabet ‘al’ which shows connection with Arabs. Ibn Sina, an Arab physician and philosopher of Bukhara and ‘al-Razi The other of medieval encyclopedias were considered as men of knowledge in the Italian States.
The Christian thinkers adopted the method of the Arab philosopher of Spain (Ibn-Aushd) who tried to restore the tension between philosophical knowledge and religious faith.
Artists and Realism
Humanism was not only propagated through education but also by art, architecture and books. The artists were inspired by studying the works of the past. The material remains were influenced by perfectly proportioned male and female figures. Donatello initiated the new ground with his life like statues. The artists were helped by the scientist by making accurate human figures. The artist went to laboratories of medical schools for studying bone structures.
A professor of medicine Andreas Vesaliusl at the University of Padua first dissected the human body which was the beginning of modern physiology. painters did not have any older work. so they painted realistically and their pictures had a three-dimensional effect due to the use of eight effects of colours. The use of anatomy, geometry and physics together with logic of ‘what is beautiful’ created a quality called ‘realism’ introduced in Italian art which continued up to the 19th century.
Architecture
In the 15th century, Rome made its mark in a spectator way, since the popes were politically stronger by 1417, after the weakness caused by the election of two rival popes in 1378, they actively encouraged the study of Rome’s history. The new classical architecture was actually a revival of the imperial Roman style. The wealthy merchants, popes and aristocrats employed architects who were familiar with classical architecture. Artists and sculptors began to decorate buildings with paintings, sculptures and reliefs.
Several persons were expert equally as painters, sculptors and architects. Michelangelo Buonarroti is remembered for his immortal work in Rome such as the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the sculpture called ‘The Pieta’ and his design of the dome of St Peter’s Church.
Filippo Brunelleschi started his career as a sculptor but became famous for designing the Duomo of Florence. By this time artists were famous individually by their name instead of being a member of a group of a guild.
The First Printed Books
Europeans borrowed the idea of printing technology from Chinese people because the Europeans traders and diplomats became familiar with it during their visits to the Mongol rulers’ courts. Earlier taxes were found in handwritten form. Johannes Gutenberg, a German, made the first printing press and printed 150 copies of the Bible in 1455.
With the availability of printed books, the dependency of students over lecture notes was ended. The ideas, opinion and information spread widely and rapidly. The printed books were the chief factor to spread humanist culture quickly by the end of 15th century.
The New Concept of Human Beings
One of the features of humanist culture was a loosening of the control of religion over human life. Italians remained religious though they were attracted by material wealth, power and glory. A humanist from Venice, Francisco Barbosa wrote a pamphlet in defence of the possession of wealth and called it a virtue. Lorenzo Valle, who thought that the study of history leads a man to attempt for a life of perfection, he in his book on pleasure condemned the Christian restrictions against pleasure.
There was a concern over good manners how one should speak politely and dress properly. Humanism stressed that individuals were able to shape their own lives through resources rather than the mere search of power and money. This belief was linked with the view that humans were many-sided which went against the three separate orders that feudal society believed in. Machiavelli believed that “all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature partly because of the fact that human desires are insatiable”.
The aspiration of women
The new ideas like individuality and citizenship regarding human beings excluded women. men from aristocrats families led the public life and were the decision makers of their family; the sons were provided with education to lead the family business or public life. Women had no say in business matters whether their dowry was invested in family business.
Marriages were a means to support business alliances. Those girls whose dowry was not arranged were sent to a convent to live the life of a nun. The women were looked upon as keepers of households. Only the condition of women in the family of merchants was different in contrast to that of the restricted family. The wives of merchants and bankers looked after the business when they were away. the early death of the merchant, post his widow to play a bigger public role rather than women of aristocratic family.
Debates within the Christianity
In the 15th and 16 centuries the north European universities scholarship attracted humanist ideas. Like Italian scholars they also paid attention to classical Greek and Roman texts together with the sacred book of the Christians.
The professional scholarship led the humanist movement which also influenced the members of the church. They discarded the meaningless rituals, which they considered as later additions and directed the Christian to follow the religion mentioned in ancient texts of their religion.
Christian humanists like Thomas More of England and Erasmus of Holland assumed that the church had become a centre of greed and extortion money forcibly from common man and selling of “indulgences”, document was one of the methods of the clergy to obtain money. They indulged in promises to free the people from the sins committed by them. The printed translations of the Bible in local languages disclose to the Christian that their religion did not allow such practices. Commons and peasants began to rebel against taxes imposed by the church. Princes found their interference in the work of the state irritating .
In 1517,Martin Luther a German monk started the protest ‘Protestant Reformation ‘against the catholic Church. he said that a person did not need priests to set up contact with God that led to the breakup of Germany and Switzerland with the Pope and catholic Church. in Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Calvin followed Martin Luther’s ideas. These reformers had greater popular support in towns and rural areas. Other German reformers like Anabaptists were more radical; they blended the idea of salvation to all kinds of oppression. They argued that God had created all men as equal, they were not expected to pay taxes and had the right to choose their priests.
These ideas appealed to peasants oppressed by feudalism.
Martin Luther did not support radicalism. He called upon German rulers to suppress the peasants ‘ rebellion in 1525. In England, the king or queen was the head of the church from then onwards. In 1540, Ignatius Loyola established the Society of Jesus. His followers were called Jesuits, the aim of the society was to serve the poor and to widen their knowledge of other cultures.
The Copernican Revolution
The scientist has questioned the notion of men as sinners. The Christians believed that the Earth was a place of sin and the burden of sin made it stationary. The earth was the center of the universe around which celestial planets moved.
Copernicus developed the theory that Earth together with the other planets revolve around the sun. He handed over his manuscript, De revolutionibus (the rotation) to his follower, Joachim Rheticus. It took time for people to accept this idea.
The astronomers Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei theory that the earth is a part of the sun-centered solar system in Cosmographical mystery. He demonstrated the planet revolved around the sun not in circles but in ellipses. Galileo Galilei in his work The Motion from proved the notion of the dynamic world. This revolution in science reached its climax with the theory of gravitation by Isaac Newton.
This work expanded rapidly in physics, chemistry and biology. Historians were to label this new approach to the knowledge of men and nature as the Scientific Revolution
Was there a European “Renaissance” in the 14th century??
Modern writers, like Peter Burke of England, suggested that Burckhardt exaggerated the sharp distinction between this period and that one, by turning it as ‘Renaissance’ the term implied that the Greek and Roman civilization and the substitution of the pre-Christian world-view for the Christian one.
This period referred to by scholars as artistic creativity, and the middle ages as a period of darkness is easy generalization. In Italy the theme Renaissance already from the 12th and 13th century, even in the 9th century in France the same type of literary and artistic efforts flourished. The archaeological and literary findings of Roman culture showed the technology and skills in Asia had contributed to the cultural changes.
In the 18th century an important change happened in the period that gradually the’ private’ and the’ public’ sphere of life began to become separate; all individuals had equal political rights and separate identity based on language.
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