Therapist

The Renaissance

*The Causes of the Renaissance*

- The Middle Ages, which began around 500 AD, finally came to an end around 1450 AD.

- Though the beginning of the Renaissance, which signaled the end of the Middle Ages, occurred in the city-states of Italy, the same reasons that caused the Renaissance to begin in Italy caused it to appear in the rest of Western Europe.

- The conditions that led to the Renaissance in Italy are as follows:

1. Because of the Crusades, and the new trade routes, Europeans began to come in contact with other, more advanced civilizations, which influenced them greatly.

2. The Church, due to the scandals that occurred, lost much of its power, and people began to doubt its ultimate authority.

3. Due to trade, the middle class grew, and people began to accumulate vast sums of money. They then wanted to enjoy and show off their wealth, which led to a philosophy of enjoying this life instead of simply waiting for the next one.

4. Competition between wealthy people for status led to developments in education and art, since wealthy people, wanting to be respected, would compete to see who was the most educated or had sponsored the most artists.

*The Definition of the Renaissance*

- The Renaissance (French Term) means the rebirth of culture. However, it would be more accurately put as the rebirth of ancient culture since the Middle Ages did have a form of culture, just not the same culture as the ancients.

- An essential element of the Renaissance was the beginning of humanism, which glorified the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome.

*The Four Aspects of Humanism*

- Humanism was a new philosophy that really defined the Renaissance. Although it was an intellectual movement and didn’t really spread to most people, it had a huge impact on the age.

- Though many believe that humanism replaced religion in the Renaissance, in reality, the two coexisted. Most humanists were actually religious, and the only difference between the beliefs of church and of the humanists had was that the humanists believed that this life was important and should be enjoyed while the church did not, and felt that people should focus on awaiting the afterlife instead.

- Humanism consists of four essential aspects, which are as follows:

1. Admiration and emulation of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

2. Philosophy of enjoying this life, instead of just waiting for the next one.

3. The glorification of humans and the belief that individuals are can do anything.

4. The belief that humans deserved to be the center of attention.

- Humanism also had a subdivision known as civic humanism. The civic humanists believed that participation in public affairs was essential for human development, and that individuals should not cut themselves off from society and study the world. Instead, they should help make changes in it by becoming a part of government. Eventually, the beliefs of the civic humanists spread to the humanists as a whole.

*The Humanists*

- Petrarch фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ (1304 - 1374) was the first humanist of the Renaissance. He greatly admired the Greeks and Romans and preferred them to his own contemporaries, who he saw as barbaric. He even felt that the only true examples of moral and proper behavior could come from the Ancients. Though he was a lawyer and cleric by trade, he devoted himself to writing poetry, papers, and letters, which were often to the famous Greeks and Romans.

- Boccaccio фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ (1313 вЂ" 1375) was a writer who became famous for a collection of short stories called The Decameron that is now thought of as the first prose masterpiece ever written in Italian. The Decameron is a book relating how a group of young Florentines went to a secluded villa to escape the plague and began telling stories. It was one of the first books intended for entertainment and is groundbreaking in its frank treatment of relationships and its creation of ordinary, realistic characters.

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- Baldassare Castiglione фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ writer who is best known for his novel, The Courtier, which, by taking the form of a conversation between the sophisticated men and women of a court in Urbino, became a manual of proper behavior for gentlemen and ladies for centuries to come.

- Guarino da Verona & Vittorino da Feltre фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ were educators who turned the ideals of the humanists into a practical curriculum. They founded a school in which students learned Latin, Greek, mathematics, music, philosophy, and social graces.

- Marsilio Ficino фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ was a member of a new, later group of humanists called the Neoplatonists, who believed in studying the grand ideas in the work of Plato and other philosophers as opposed to leading the “active life” the civic humanists lead. Ficino believed that Plato’s ideas showed the dignity and immortality of the human soul.

- Giovanni Pico фЂÑ"†Ð¿Ð‚ another Neoplatonist who believed