The renaissance is a period in European history marked by a renewed interest in classical Greco-Roman past. The Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and spread throughout Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this period, the fragmented feudal society of the Middle Ages, characterized by a largely agrarian economy and a cultural and intellectual life dominated by the Church, became a society increasingly dominated by central political institutions with an urban and commercial economy in which developed the patronage of education, arts and music. [1] Furthermore, the Italian Renaissance was mainly an urban phenomenon, a product of the cities that flourished in central and northern Italy, including Florence, Ferrara, Milan and Venice, whose wealth funded the Renaissance cultural achievements. The cities themselves were not products of the Renaissance, but the period of great economic and demographic expansion of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Medieval Italian merchants developed commercial and financial techniques such as bookkeeping and bills of exchange. The creation of public debt (a concept unknown in the past) allowed these cities to finance their territorial expansion through military conquest. Their merchants controlled trade and finance in Europe; this fluid mercantile society contrasted sharply with rural society in medieval Europe. It was less hierarchical and more concerned with secular objectives.[1]
Of course, the middle Ages did not end abruptly. However, it would be wrong to regard history as a perpetual continuity and, therefore, the Renaissance as a mere continuation of the middle Ages; there are some areas where a continuation can be seen, and there are other areas where the correlation between the renaissance and the middle ages simply does not exist. One of the most significant breaks with medieval tradition is found in the field of history. The works Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII (Twelve Books of Florentine history, 1420) of Leonardo Bruno, the Istorie Fiorentine (Florentine Histories, 1525) of Niccolo Machiavelli, Storia d'Italia (History of Italy, 1561-1564) and Francesco Guicciardini Methodus ad facile historiarum cognitionem (Method to facilitate knowledge of history, 1566) of Jean Bodin, were written under a secular point of view of time and with a critical attitude toward historical sources. History became a branch of literature rather than theology; and renaissance historians rejected the medieval Christian division of history, which began with the Creation, followed by the incarnation of Jesus, ending with the subsequent Doomsday. The Renaissance vision of history also had three parts: beginning with antiquity, followed by the middle Ages and was completed by the golden age or renaissance, which had just begun.[1]
While medieval scholars looked askance at the pagan Greek and Roman world to believe that they were living in the last age before the Doomsday, their fellow Renaissance people exalted the classical world, condemned the Middle Ages as ignorant and barbaric and proclaimed that their era was the time of the light and return to classicism. This view was expressed by many renaissance thinkers that were called humanists.
The Renaissance idea of humanism was another cultural break with medieval tradition. According to the American scholar Paul Oscar Kristeller, this term often misunderstood, means the general trend of the Renaissance "provide the greatest importance to classical studies and to consider the classical antiquity as the common standard and model in all cultural activityâ€. We studied the classic texts and prosecuted themselves for their own values; from this moment on no longer would be used to beautify and justify Christian civilization. The great interest in antiquity had its expression in the feverish and fruitful search for classical manuscripts; Plato's Dialogues were rediscovered, the historic texts of Herodotus and Thucydides, the works of Greek dramatists, poets, and of the Fathers of the Church, which were published critically for the first time. The study of the Greek language was developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through the migration of Byzantine scholars, after the fall of Constantinople in the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, it was taught in Florence, Ferrara and Milan. The study of ancient literature, history and moral philosophy, which sometimes degenerated into an imitation of the classics, it was meant to create free and civilized human beings, people of taste and opinion, citizens, ultimately, more than priests and monks.[3]
The perfection of the human body through physical training, an ideal rarely met in the middle Ages, became one of the goals of Renaissance education. Humanistic studies, along with the great artistic achievements of the time, were encouraged and supported financially by big families like the Medici in Florence, the Este in Ferrara, the Sforza of Milan, and the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Duke of Urbino, the Bulldogs Venice and the Papacy in Rome. [2]
In the field of law, they tended to replace the abstract dialectical method of the medieval jurists for a philological and historical interpretation of the sources of Roman law. With respect to political ideal, Renaissance theorists reject, but not canceled, the medieval proposition that the preservation of liberty, law and justice was the fundamental goal of political life. The Renaissance asserted that the central mission of the ruler was to maintain security and peace. Machiavelli argued that virtð (creative force) of the ruler was the key to maintaining their own position and the welfare of his subjects.[4]
During the Renaissance, the Italian cities became the territorial states seeking to expand at the expense of others. Territorial unification also took place in Spain, France and England, which led to the formation of modern nation-state. This process had the help of modern diplomacy, configured, while new military tactics, when the Italian city-states established permanent embassies at foreign courts. In the sixteenth century, the institution of the stable embassy was extended to the north of the continent, in France, England and the Holy Roman Empire.[4]
In religion, the Renaissance clergy and particularly its highest hierarchy adjusted their behavior to the ethics and mores of secular society. The activities of the popes, cardinals and bishops barely differed from the usual between merchants and politicians of the time. At the same time, Christianity remained a vital and essential element of Renaissance culture. Preachers such as St. Bernardino of Siena and theologians or bishops as St. Antoninus of Florence, enjoyed great prestige and were venerated. Moreover, many humanists were concerned with theological questions and applied the new philological and historical knowledge to study and interpret the Fathers of the Church. The humanist approach to theology and Scripture can be seen from the Italian scholar and poet Petrarch to the Dutchman Erasmus of Rotterdam, which had a powerful impact on Catholics and Protestants.[5]
Regarding religion, there were many changes For much of the fourteenth and fifteenth early growing corruption of the church (sale and accumulation of charges, enrichments of the papal court and the clergy) led to the release of new concepts, linked with humanism, advocating by the direct approach to God and advocated the need for reform in the religious organization. The movement led by Johann Huss and then Erasmianism, spread these ideas among the intellectual circles of the time. The creator of the new doctrine was Martin Luther (1483-1546) German monk concerned about the corruption of the church and denied the validity of ecclesiastical mediation between God and men and the ability to achieve merit by undertaking external works. Luther was excommunicated by Leo X in 1520 as punishment for their ideas.
The theory of justification by faith, based on an unlimited confidence in the divine, the free examination of the Bible, the reduction of the sacraments, the suppression of the cult of the Virgin and the saints, the elimination of hierarchy church and the simplification of the liturgy, were the key points that Luther focused on reform. These views were answered at the beginning of a peaceful manner. Charles V tried to attract the Lutherans by the Christian humanism of Erasmus, who had held this respect the need for profound reform in the religious and church. Lutheranism spread rapidly through Germany together, particularly in those states whose princes covet the goods of the church and sought independence from Rome and imperial tutelage. Economic and political interests were those that determined the military conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
-Kristeller, Paul The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950.
-Kristeller, Paul ,The Classics and Renaissance Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955.
