World History and Geography

World History and Geography

RENAISSANCE

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1.  Renaissance - It means “rebirth.” It was a secular movement starting the Western World away from religion. It emphasized ideas from Greek and Roman culture and the importance of human beings and life on earth. People aimed to perfect themselves through study and form a perfect society. The arts and literature of the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy and elsewhere in Europe show the rebirth of culture change from the bare survival times of the Middle Ages.

2.  Italian City-State Economic Wealth - It was the most important reason the Renaissance started in Italy. The reason was the wealth from the growing trade that northern Italy conducted. They met the converging Asian trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean, carried the goods to Italy, and then relayed them either over the Alps or by ship to the Atlantic coast of Europe. The riches earned in this trade supported the arts and earning.

3.  Venice - It was “Queen of the Adriatic” and the most powerful of the Italian city-states. By the 15th century they were the center of the East-West trade routes and had a fleet of 3,000 ships. They controlled most of the trade in the Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean.

4.  Florence - It is an Italian city famous for its art. It was a Renaissance era industrial and banking center run by the Medici family. One of its rulers Lorenzo di Medici employed many famous talented people such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael.

5.  Capitalism - It is an economic system in which private individuals or companies, own businesses, control production and distribution of goods and services. Banking was a new enterprise and it helped merchants protect, invest and borrow money.

6.  Republican Government - It is a government in which the supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote. The citizens vote for officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to the law. A number of Italian city-states adopted this form of government and became less willing to accept the authority of the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor.

7.  Italian Despots - They were leaders with unlimited power. Lorenzo di Medici was one. Cesare Borgia was another. In Borgia’s case he conquered a number of cities in central Italy through extreme treachery and terror. In his moment of weakness, his enemies including Pope Julius II managed to defeat and imprison him.

8.  Condottieri - It is the term for the leader of a private band of soldiers or mercenaries. Italy had lots these in the 14th and 15th centuries.

9.  Niccolo Machiavelli - He was a scholar, writer and diplomat for Florence. He wrote a guide for rulers on how to maintain their power. In his book The Prince (1532), he gives advice that to get and maintain power a ruler had to forget ideals and use every possible means including lying, cheating, murder, etc. to gain his ends. Political acts were measured by only one standard—success. His suggestions have been followed by rulers ever since.

10.  The Prince - It is the book written by Machiavelli. It was essentially a set of rules by which a strong ruler could create and hold a state. It described political affairs as they really were, controlled by ruthless men who sought power and how they ruthlessly kept power. The book gives such advice as, “. . . to be feared is much safer than to be loved.” The book is still in print and still guides some rulers today.

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11.  Humanism - It is a new movement that became one of the chief elements of the Renaissance. It was a system of thought and action concerned with human interests and values. It had a major aspect of study of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Another aspect was the new belief that humans are noble creatures and people should change the world to make it a better place for all.

12.  Petrarch - He inspired Italians to collect copies of ancient literature surviving from Greece and Rome. He himself did, and his ideas about the classical literature became popular. He found that the ancient Romans believed that this world on earth as important for people and he thought the Church wrong to ignore the real world in which people lived. He said the educated person should study humans i.e. history, languages, literature and ethics.

13.  Giovanni Boccaccio - He was a noted humanist who wrote both poetry and prose. He used the Black Death as a setting for his book the Decameron that has a series of short stories. This book is important because the stories have clear beginnings, middle parts and endings. This new type of literature had great influence on all writing after it.

14.  “Renaissance Man”- It was the ideal outcome of education. Education was to make a man well rounded in many aspects of learning and experience. The ideal was to be well off economically, well mannered and witty. He should understand good literature, painting, and music, be athletic, good at sports, know the arts of war, and be brave. To reach this goal, Italian schools taught less theology and more literature.

15.  Leonardo Da Vinci - He was one of most brilliant minds of all time. He was a many-sided person with studies in such areas as motion, sound, water, geology, plants, weather, astronomy, eye sight, mathematics, mechanical design, machine construction, horses, human flight, painting, sculpture, etc. His talent for painting was such that his works like the Mona Lisa, Last Supper and the Madonna of the Rocks are still wonders.

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16.  Giotto Di Bondone - He was the Florentine painter of the 13th and 14th centuries, who was the first painter since classical time to make figures appear to move and to be alive. He is the founder of the Renaissance style of art. He innovated in art such things as a blue sky, placement of people, shading, showing people having real emotions, etc.

17.  Raphael - He was the most famous painter of religious subjects. He became the favorite artist of two popes and painted lots of work for the Vatican. He lived from 1483-1520. His painting of Mary, the Mother of Jesus is his most famous figure.

18.  Donatello - He was the outstanding sculptor of the early 1400s. He studied ancient Roman sculpture and decided he had to study human anatomy so he could completely understand how the human body moved. His grand statue of the Venetian general Gattemelata was the first large-sized figure on horseback since Roman times.

19.  Revival of Classical Architecture - It was the Renaissance architects basing their buildings on Greek and Roman models and adapting the pillars and domes to structures to suit their own time. Many public buildings constructed in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on Renaissance models.

20.  Michelangelo - He may have been the most outstanding artist of the Renaissance. He did everything well, including painting, sculpting, architecture, and even poetry. He lived for his art, with his painting and sculpture solid, naturalistic and filled with real human expression. Some of his famous works include: Statues of David, Moses and the Pieta. Painted masterpieces include the Sistine Chapel with his story of Genesis and the mural of The Last Judgment. His outstanding architectural challenge was the tomb of Pope Julius.

Page 366 and Video: Western Man…: The Renaissance Part 3

21.  Johann Gutenberg - He was the first European to use moveable type. This German adapted a wine press and constructed movable type to print the first European book about 1455, the Bible. This invention had great impact on increasing the quantity and availability of books and it helped spread the Northern Renaissance. It meant that even peasants could own books and literacy spread throughout Europe.

22.  Gutenberg Bible - It was the first example in printing of the advantages of mass production. It was the first book printed using movable type. It proved that books could be made rapidly, in great quantities, and with much greater accuracy than hand copying. The cost was much less than hand copying.

23.  Desiderius Erasmus (i raz’ mas) - He was the prime example of 15th and 16th century Northern Humanist thought. He was a priest from the Netherlands who studied the Greek and Latin writings and was a prolific writer of books and letters himself, which helped spread humanistic ideals. He said that men and women were misled by ignorance and superstition, but through education people could overcome all the injustices of the world and create more perfect societies. He always spoke for peace, religious reform and social reform.

24.  Sir Thomas More - He was a friend of Erasmus who became a lawyer and served in many government posts under England’s kings Henry VII and Henry VIII. He wrote about his ideas in reforming society and creating a better world in his book Utopia and became England’s leading humanist. He was appointed the first layman lord chancellor of England in 1529. He was an efficient worker, he went after heretics without mercy and was supporter of the Church, but wanted it reformed. He quarreled with Henry VIII over relaxation of the heresy laws and supported the Pope’s refusal of Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon. After Henry withdrew England from the Church, he was charged with treason and beheaded.

25.  Flemish School of Painting - It was the important change in painting style in Northern Europe, which started even before the Italian Renaissance reached there and influenced it. Jan van Eyck painted realistic portraits that were also spiritual and had realistic landscapes. Pieter Brueghel the Elder painted country landscapes and peasant life, in a religious and humanist way. Rembrandt van Rijn painted nature and landscapes and became best known for his painting of human character.

26.  Albrecht Durer - He was a painter and engraver who was the leader of the German Renaissance School of painting. He studied in Italy and noted that the artists there had high social standing and said, “Here I am a lord, at home a parasite.” His woodcuts and engravings illustrated the new printed books.

27.  William Shakespeare - He was an English playwright who had a deep understanding of human beings and he expressed the whole range of human emotions in his plays. His plays seem to sum up the humanist ideals. Some of his works include Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, etc. His plays are still put on today.

28.  Shakespeare’s Influence on English - It is the effect Shakespeare’s plays had on his times, and the development of language. Phrases like “All’s well that ends well” or “Love is blind,” etc. entered into common use. The people of his time in the late 1500s and early 1600s came to see his plays six days a week in the afternoons for entertainment. The printed text of his plays was appreciated and has been in print ever since his death in 1616. His plays expanded people’s vocabularies and established models for grammar.

29.  Miguel De Cervantes - He was the Spanish humanist, nobleman, military man, and writer who wrote Don Quixote. The book was written after knighthood and feudalism had faded toward the end of the 1500s, but the codes of chivalry still appealed to many people. The book is a satire about a 50-year-old Spanish gentleman who loved to read knightly romances. He made a suit of armor and set off with his old horse to seek adventure. His comic servant Sancho Panza goes with him, often commenting on his master’s silly antics such as jousting with windmills. The book laughs at the deals of knighthood chivalry in the funny and absurd adventures of Don Quixote.