*While great watershed moments like the Fall of Constantinople or the discovery of the New World can be considered definitive moments that began modern history, from the point of view of people living in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, modernity developed over the course of centuries.  In many ways, though, it could be said to being in northern Italy.

 

*Italy in the late Middle Ages was a collection of small kingdoms, city states (many of them organised as republics), and the Papal States centred around Rome.

 

*The Republics of Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and the Duchy of Milan all grew wealthy from trade around the Mediterranean, particularly with Asia through the Byzantine Empire.  Spices, silks, and other rare and precious trade goods flowed through Italy's city states to the rest of Europe, and Italy grew rich in the process.  Likewise, Rome was a centre of learning, culture, and wealth due to its function as the seat of the Pope, head of the Catholic Church.

 

*As these cities grew richer, their leading merchants had time for hobbies—collecting curiosities and learning about the wider world, beyond what was needed for mere survival.  As they began collecting antiquities and oddities, they began to develop an interest in their own history, that of the ancient Roman Empire (as well as the Greek culture that had so greatly influenced it).  Likewise, through trade with the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East, Italians became conversant with both ancient and modern Greek scholarship, as well as Muslim science, which was then the most advanced in the world. Later, after the Fall of Constantinople, many of the Eastern Roman Empire's scholars fled to Italy, enlarging a flourishing scientific and artistic community.

 

*These urban people also began to develop values different from those of their rural and clerical cousins.  They became less interested in the spiritual world (although they remained devout Catholics), less interested in military accomplishment and knightly ideals of virtue and honour, less interested in the tight-knit communities of the peasant villages—they no longer quite fit into the First, Second, or Third Estates (and were, at some times, even considered a separate estate of their own).  Being less dependent on the success of the community (and, in many way, being in competition with other members of it), these city dwellers (or burgers, or bourgeoisie) became more focused on themselves and on the world in which they lived (not their neighbours or the world to come).  These ideals also fit together with classical Roman and Greek values, which honoured the educated, enterprising individual, and said that 'man is the measure of all things.'

 

*One of the most influential early scholars of classical literature was the Florentine civil servant Francesco Petrarch.  He sought out ancient Latin documents and read them in the original, translating them into Italian.  He wrote poetry, creating a form known as the sonnet, which many later poets would use.  He, and those who followed him, emphasised the study of what they called the humanities—the works of man:  literature, languages, poetry, public speaking, and later art and architecture and knowledge for its own sake.  This was, many said, a rebirth of classical knowledge, or a Renaissance.  Pleased with their new approach to knowledge and life, Petrarch and those who followed him called the preceding epoch the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages.

 

*Studying the humanities was known as humanism, a focus on the works and possibilities of man.  There are two main types in Western Civilisation:  Christian humanism, which seeks to turn the abilities and works of man to the glorification of God and to doing His will, and secular humanism, which focused on what humanity could accomplish in the world, in some cases saying humanity itself was what we worthy of glorification, rather than God.

 

*Not only was Petrarch from Florence, but so were many of the Renaissance's greatest scholars and artists.  This was due, in part, to Florence's wealth, but in particular to the influence of the most powerful and wealthy family in the city, the Medici family, particularly Cosimo de' Medici, who brought the family to political dominance of the city, and his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent.  He held Florence together, guaranteeing a stable government (which was good for trade and allowed people time to study rather than fight), and served as a patron for many artists. Many popes were also powerful and wealthy patrons.

 

*Art and architecture were reborn during the Renaissance, drawing from classical ruins and concepts of mathematical perfection and symmetry (which the mediaeval mind had found boring) and the concept of Neo-Platonism, derived from the teaching of the ancient Greek Plato, who taught that there were ideal (or perfect) forms of everything, and which sought to depict ideal forms in art.  It also led to an emphasis on realism.  Among other things, this led to the study of the human nude, something previously discouraged by the Church.  It even led to the study of the human body below the skin through dissection of cadavers, something regarded as sacrilege by the Church. This focus on human perfection came from and added to the urban elevation of the individual.

 

*Techniques such as perspective and shading, and the use of new oil paints that reflected light, also allowed artists to make their works more realistic.

 

*Among the great artists of the Italian Renaissance were Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo Buonarotti, Donatello, Fillipo Brunelleschi (all from Florence), Raphael Sanzio, and many others.  Great artists became celebrities, and for the first time began to sign their names to their art (previously artists had been seen as craftsmen who would not sign their work any more than a blacksmith would sign a plow).

 

*Leonardo's fresco The Last Supper is a masterpiece of Renaissance themes:  it is deeply religious in nature; it also emphasises the individual, as each person in the painting has clearly detailed clothing, expression, and physical features; it uses perspective to show the depth of the room; it also uses the lines of the roof to emphasise the centrality of Christ; symmetry is present everywhere, from the windows and ceiling designs to the groups of apostles on either side of Jesus.

 

*The Mona Lisa is considered another of Leonardo's masterworks.  It is, by nature, centred on an individual in a way that was uncommon in those days—it is so focuses on Lisa that she is even painted before an imaginary landscape, not a local scene (as was typical).  The shadows and shading of her face give the portrait a rare sense of depth while the oiled highlights shine for emphasis.

 

*Michaelangelo was a sculptor and painter, most famously of religious scenes.  Among his most famous accomplishments was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II (formerly a general in the Papal armies).  This tremendous fresco took four years to complete, depicts over 300 figures, and nine scenes from the Bible, particularly about Creation, especially the creation of Man.  He also designed the dome on St. Peter's Basilica, although it was not finished by the time he died.

 

*Donatello was one of the first great Renaissance sculptors, being the first to create a life-size equestrian statue since the ancient world.

 

*Brunelleschi was an artist and architect, famous for designing Florence's cathedral.  He is also considered the inventor of perspective.

 

*Although not from Florence, Raphael was also a true Renaissance artist.  He was famous for his gentle portrayals of the Madonna, but The School of Athens, painted in the Vatican, is emblematic of the Renaissance:  it shows classical and Mediaeval scholars gathered in a Roman-style chamber debating philosophy.  The building is in the shape of a Greek cross, which some have suggested was intended to show a harmony between pagan philosophy and Christian theology.  There are two sculptures in the background. The one on the left is the god Apollo holding a lyre. Apollo is the god of the Sun, medicine/healing, light, truth, archery, and music. The sculpture on the right is Athena, in her Roman guise as Minerva. Athena was the goddess of wisdom.

 

*Eventually, Renaissance ideas moved northwards, and great Dutch and German artists began working with new methods.  One of these was Albrecht Dürer of Germany.  He became a master of engraving (etching a design on metal with acid, then making prints with those metal plates), and printed both traditional religious scenes and, like a good Renaissance man, scientific discoveries as well.

 

*The Renaissance was also a time of literary development, that was spread throughout Europe after 1455 thanks to Johannes Gutenberg's development of movable type for a printing press in Germany.  In the space of fifty years, Europe went from owning a few thousand books to 15 to 20 million. Of course, the first book Gutenberg printed was the Bible.

 

*Perhaps the book that best links the middle ages with the Renaissance is Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy (published 1308-1321). It is not called a comedy because it is funny, but because it features a mixture of epic, tragic, and dramatic plot with a happy ending.  It describes Dante's journey through the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.  It thus follows Mediaeval religious topics, but it details individuals (Dante put his enemies in Hell) and their relationships (Dante is guided through Heaven by his ideal woman, Beatrice; he was guided through Hell and Purgatory by Virgil, a classical Roman poet).  Furthermore, it was written, not in Latin, but in Italian (at least, the dialect of Florence).  In many ways, it bridges the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

 

*Another important Italian writer was Giovanni Boccaccio, whose The Decameron collected 100 short stories supposedly told by a group of travellers fleeing the Black Death to pass the time.  The stories tended to depict everyday life, common folk songs, and traditional stories.  Many of them were pretty saucy, too.  Besides collecting and treating as literature the tales of regular folks (but still individuals), it also inspired many later writings, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

 

*As the individual became important, many writers tried to describe how individuals should live.  One of the most influential of these was Baldassare Castiglione, author of The Book of the Courtier.  This book described the ideal aristocrat or wealthy merchant—a man who is well-educated in many fields, a good speaker, athletic, poetic, knowledgeable, but not arrogant.  Such a well-rounded, multi-talented person came to be known as a Renaissance Man.  The ideal woman offered a balance—she would be kind and graceful, lively but not overbearing or showy.  She should be beautiful, because in this neo-Platonic world, beauty was a mark of goodness.

 

*Other writers tried to describe the nature of government.  The most famous was Niccolo Machiavelli of Florence, author of The Prince, designed to teach a ruler to gain and maintain his power (although this did not, he said, apply to republics).  A prince should be loved and feared, but not hated.  If need be, though, it is better to be feared than loved, because people will obey someone they fear, and that obedience leads to a stable, healthy, safe state in the long run.  Machiavelli did believe that a good state would be moral, self-sufficient, and capable of self-defence (without using mercenaries or the soldiers of allies).  However, his work was also seen as cynical and heartless by many, and Machiavellian has come to mean sneaky, manipulative, and self-serving.

 

*In Germany, Thomas a Kempis wrote Christian devotionals collected as The Immitation of Christ.  His works were about trust in Christ and adoration of Him, but also about a personal relationship with Him, not just a relationship managed by the Church.  He encouraged education, but also meditation, faith, and humility:  "If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity and faith, and seek not at any time the fame of being learned."  "At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done."

 

*In the Netherlands, Desiderius Erasumus spread humanism to Northern Europe.  He encouraged scholarship, and used his knowledge to produce a new Greek translation of the Bible.  This formed the basis of later efforts at translating the Bible into English, German, and other languages.  He also wrote Paraphrases of the New Testament, which summarised parts of the Bible for those who could not read the whole thing.  Even though he was a devout Catholic himself, he became famous for publishing In Praise of Folly, which satirised many flaws in the Catholic Church as well as the eccentricities of pedantic scholars like himself.  Fortunately, the pope at the time (Leo X) thought it was funny, but later opponents of the Church would use it against future Popes.

 

*In England, a friend of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More described Utopia (or 'No Place') as an ideal society based on logic, reason, and justice.  It was orderly, rational, fair (justice was used to eliminate the causes of crime rather than to punish criminals), not avaricious (gold was used as chains to hold slaves in place so that people would not value it but the government could still use it to trade with other lands), and tolerant.  However, this stability came at the price of liberty, as there was no private property and the government strictly controlled society.  Some things in it, such as easy divorce, euthanasia, and female priests, communal land-ownership, and engaged couples seeing each other nude before marrying to make sure they liked what they were getting were completely opposite what More believed and acted upon in his daily life.  Overall, the book was a satire of government and society, demonstrating both what could be better in society and how it could never truly be perfected.

 

*One of the most enduring of English Renaissance writers is William Shakespeare—poet, playwright, actor, and director.  With a wide cast of unique characters, a great command of the English language (to which he added hundreds of expressions and even many (perhaps 20,0000) invented words and for which he helped standardise grammar and diction), and a range of stories both invented and adapted from other writers of fiction and history, his plays are still performed and enjoyed to this day.  Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered the play that made romances a respectable subject for drama.  Hamlet is probably the most discussed character in English literature.