Chapter 12 ID List- 1300-1500

The New Learning (Italian Renaissance):

2. Rhetoric was a minor branch of the medieval educational curriculum. It was concerned
with the art of good speaking and writing. In Italy, its students and teachers began to turn
to Latin classics for good models of writing. The close relationship between Italian and
Latin, the availability of the manuscripts, and the presence of Italy in classical monuments
helped interest in the classics. Rhetoricians agreed that education should be reformed to
give more attention to the classics. Rhetoricians were also the ones to found the movement
known as Humanism.

3. In the 15th century, a humanista was a professor of humane studies or a Classical student.
Humanism came to mean the ability to read, understand, and appreciate the writings of the
ancient world. Humanists wanted to master the classics to learn the right way to live their
lives as well as how to persuade others to live the same way. Humanism also introduced
concepts of secularism and individualism. Most Renaissance humanists read the Church
fathers as often as pagan authors. Humanism sought to enrich more then undermine
traditional religious attitudes.

4. Petrarch, Fransco Petrarca, as the most influential early advocate of Humanism. Today,
he is considered so influential that he has been nicknamed the Father of Humanism. He
devoted his life to writing poetry, scholarly and moral treatises, and letters. He became
famous for his Italian verse but sought to emulate Virgil by writing a Latin epic poem.
Petrarch concluded that he had to turn to the church fathers and the ancient Romans to
find worthy examples of moral life. By imitating figures from antiquity who knew what
proper values were and pursued them in their own lives, despite temptations and
distractions of public affairs. He felt that his own world would improve if only it tried to
emulate the ancients. He believed that only by restoring the mastery of the written and
spoken word could his peers behave like the ancients.

5. Boccaccio wrote a group of famous short stories known as the Decameron. The group of
stories created new aims in Western literature with its frank approach of sex and vivid
creation of ordinary characters. It was written in 1353 and showed the three main
reactions of people to the Black Death (Bubonic Plague).
6. Humanism, and the change of the Renaissance, became a rallying cry for the intellectual
leaders of Florence. They argued that, by associating their city with the revival of antiquity,
Florentines would be indentified with a distinctive vision. The campaign to return to the
classics started a revolution in education that spread throughout Italy. The writing and
speaking skills that humanist’s emphasized were in demand in every court. The crusade to
study and imitate the ancients transformed art, literature, and political and social values.
Florence was the leader of the revolution with many intellectuals living and teaching there.

7.When Florentines wanted to regain command of the Greek language, they invited a
Byzantine scholar in 1396. In the following decades, ones that were not particularly kind to
the Byzantine Empire, other Eastern scholars joined the exodus to the West and brought
with them hundreds of Greek manuscripts. These helped to fuel the Renaissance by fully
immersing the works of the Greeks into Western culture.

8. Civic humanists stressed that participation in public affairs is essential for full human
development. Salutati and his contemporaries and successors in Florence are and labeled
as this. Petrarch seemed unsure as to whether this good or not but the generations after
him argued that only by participating in public life and seeking higher ends for society as
well as yourself could one be truly virtuous.

9. Humanism affected education through reform and even in some cases complete
restructuring of the educational system. In schools, all students learned Latin and Greek,
mathematics, music, and philosophy. Many believed that education should aid physical,
moral, and social development, so social graces were also taught. A humanist education
gave those who were elite throughout Europe a new way of measuring social distinction by
being able to quote ancient writers. Growing admiration for the humanists and their
teachings gave a boost to the arts and education. It was no longer easy to claim that
physical bravery was the supreme quality of noblemen. Nobles set themselves apart by
getting a humanistic education and patronizing artists and writers.

10. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier, printed in 1516, promoted the new lifestyle of the
nobles in the Renaissance. It took the form of a conversation between the sophisticated
men and women of a noble’s court. This would become a model and manual for proper
behavior for gentlemen and ladies.

11. Neoplatonism was a new movement that emphasized the interest in spiritual values
that that was the heart of contemplative life. A group of Florentine philosophers were the
followers of this new movement that derived from the teachings of the ancient philosopher
Plato. It renewed exploration of grand ideals of truth and perfection, the result of growing
interest in Greek as well as Roman works.

12. Despite European divisions and conflicts, a common humanistic education helped to
preserve the cultural unity of Western Europe. This education was a binding force that
Europe would need in later years.
Art and Artists in The Italian Renaissance:

13. The Italian Renaissance began in Florence because the city was already famous
throughout Italy for its art, its newly wealthy citizens were ready to patronize art, and it
already had a tradition in excellence in design of luxury goods. The greatest painters of the
late 1200s and 1300s were identified with Florence and gained a wide audience for the
sense of realism, powerful emotion, and immediacy.

14.The three disciplines that will produce Italian Renaissance works of art are painting,
sculpture, and architecture. Three friends who were determined to apply the humanists’
lessons to art started the revolutions in these three disciplines. They wanted to break from
the styles of the recent past and create art that would emulate that of Rome’s. These three
artists were Masaccio, Donatello, and Brunelleschi.

15. Masaccio’s The Expulsion of Adam and Eve brings themes of humanism into art. It shows
Adam and Eve expelled from paradise and walking under a rounded arch that resembles
ancient architecture. The painting also portrays Adam and Eve nude and displaying
powerful, recognizable emotions. This painting displayed the first nudes since the times of
antiquity. Also puts emphasis on the individual human figure,

16.Donatello was primarily a sculptor but his three dimensional figures had the same
qualities as Masaccio’s in paint. The focus of his art was on the individual body once again
because it had been a concern of the ancients. The interest in the nude and accurately
portrayed human body was something that had not been seen for decades. His sculptor,
David, was also a sign of political propaganda, making him a favorite hero of the
Florentines.

17. Brunelleschi was the last of the three friends and he was an architect. For quite some
time, his peers had been building a new cathedral, said to be the largest of Italy. This
church was in the original cross shape. In the area where these two spaces met, there were
still no plans for a ceiling. Brunelleschi proposed placing a dome there; however, the dome
would be largest to have been built in Europe since the times of antiquity. The first reaction
of all of this was that it would be impossible but he eventually got the commission for it. He
built this dome in rings without the use of scaffolding. He erected a structure that became a
fitting climax to the cathedral and the hallmark of Renaissance Florence.

18. Towards the end of the 1400s, Botticelli was presenting the ancient subjects, like The
Birth of Venus, in the way that Romans may have presented it. He used ideas such as
perspective and the modeling of bodies and drapery, so as to create the looks of depth.
Here he depicts the ancient myth as the ancients would have depicted it. This painting
represents the heights of the Renaissance ambitions and the idealized beauty of this work
helped shape the beauty standard that has been admired since then.

19.Leonardo da Vinci was the oldest of the four main artists of the generation known as the
High Renaissance. He was considered to be the epitome of the experimental tradition. He
was constantly looking for new ways to do things and was unable to resist the challenges of
solving practical problems. His paintings are marvel of technical virtuosity, in which he
makes difficult angles, tricks of perspective, and bizarre geographical formations look easy.

20. Raphael’s The School of Athens was his tribute to the ancient world. It places it in a
Classical architectural setting the great philosophers of Greece, many of whom are portraits
of artists of the day. This painting was created from 1510 to 1511 and represents the
triumph of the Renaissance campaign to revive antiquity. That this classical setting and its
subject would be allowed and painted in the Vatican tells of how completely Humanism had
captured intellectual life.

21. Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man shows Adam at the moment of his creation and
though he has not yet received the gift of life from God, he already displays vigor that
Michelangelo gave to human bodies. This work of art was painted on the Sistine Chapel
from 1508 to 1512. This painting pretty much embodies the rebirth associated with the
Renaissance and the power of the creative genius so forcefully as this one.

22.Titian’s Bacchanal of the Adrians takes place in a lush, nude background that displays
earthy realism that was common in Venice as opposed to the idealization that occurred in
Florence. It has been said that this painting represents life at its different stages. Titian was
Europe’s most sought after portraitist because of his mastery of his skill in painting and
showing the characters of nobles and rulers.

23. The patrons of the new Renaissance art that was being commissioned were the
papacy, nobles and their families, and princes. This was because they wanted to show off
their wealth and power by commissioning and associating themselves with certain
painters, sculptors, and architects. As a result of shifting patterns in the commissioning and
buying of art that Renaissance artists created both a new aesthetic and a new social
identity for the artists and their commissioners.

The Culture of the North:

24. Reminders of the ultimate victory of death and treatments of decay are frequent in both
literature and art in the Northern Renaissance. On popular artistic motif was the danse
macabre, or the dance of death. It depicted people from all walks of life (rich and poor,
clergy and laity, good and bad) dancing with a skeleton. This motif came as a result to the
knights and commoners who showed a morbid fascination with death and decay.

25. In 1486, two inquisitors who had been authorized by the pope to prosecute witches
wrote the Malleus Maleficarum. It defined witchcraft as heresy and became the standard
handbook for prosecutors. Came during a time with an unsettled religious spirit of the day
and age was a fascination with the devil, demonology, and witchcraft.

26.Geffory Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was written in the 1390s and recounts the
pilgrimage of about thirty men and woman to a tomb in Canterbury. For entertainment on
the road, each person has to tell two stories; they gave a good picture of English society.
Apart from the grace of his poetry, Chaucer had the ability to tell a good story with good
characters. The Canterbury Tales is a masterly portrayal oh human personalities and
human behavior that can delight any and all readers.

27. Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini’s Wedding is a portrait of an Italian couple that is shot through
with religious symbolism as well as a sly sense of humor about sex and marriage. The dog is
a sign of fidelity and the carving on the bedpost is of the patron saint of childbirth. The
picture displays a combination of earthiness and piety that places it in a tradition that is
unlike any other in Italy at this time.

Scholastic Philosophy and Religious Thought:

28. Nominalists were the followers of Aquinas who remained active in the schools but took
a different sort of approach to their studies. They focused on the way we describe the
world, the names we give things, rather than on its reality. The nominalists denied the
existence, or at least the knowability, of the universal forms that supposedly make up the
entire world. The greatest of them was William of Ockham.

29. Marsilius of Padua’s Defender of Thought was written in 1324. It attacked papal
authority and supported lay sovereignty within the Church. His purpose was to endorse the
independent authority of his patron, the king of France, who pursued a running battle with
the pope. His work also had wider implications; he argued that the reality of the universe
consists of the sum of all of its parts. The sovereignty of the Church thus belongs to its
members, who alone can define the collective will of their community. This work was
noteworthy for not only its radical ideas but for its reflections of dissatisfactions. I revealed
a hostile impatience with the papal and clerical domination over Western life. They wanted
laypersons to guide the Church and the Christian community.

30. Jean Buridan proposed an important revision to Aristotle’s theory of motion. Buridan
suggested that the movement of the bow lends the arrow a special kind of motion that stays
with it permanently unless removed by the resistance of the air. Also theorized about other
concepts in physics and these attempts at new explanations started the shift away from the
unquestioned acceptance of the ancient systems.

The State of Christendom:

31.Because the College of Cardinals had split into two factions, each one backing one of the
rival popes, many prominent thinkers supported that a general Council should rule the
Church. These conciliarists also wanted the Church to have a new constitution to confirm
the supremacy of a general council.

32. The three church crises indirectly helped to fuel the Italian Renaissance movement by
adopting the new literary and artistic ideas of the Renaissance. This started a massive
rebuilding movement that was to symbolize the restored honor of the popes. They
commissioned for much artwork and many new buildings in order to assert their separate
culture and Italian identity.
33. A consequence was that mysticism, an interior sense of the direct presence and love of
God, which previously had been only seen in monastic life, began to move out of the
monasteries in the 13th century. The prime mission was preaching to the laity and they
were now communicating some of the satisfactions of mystical religion.

34. Confraternities, which were religious guilds founded largely for laypersons, grew up in
the cities and, through common religious services and programs of charitable activities,
tried to deepen the spiritual live of their members. Humanism had strong overtones of a
movement for lay piety. And hundreds of devotional and mystical works were written to
teach laypersons how to feel repentance, not just how to define it.

35. The commitment to personal piety among the laity was particularly apparent among
women. This ratio between male saints and female saints significantly dropped during this
time period. Female saints were now no longer royalty; they were ordinary charisma
woman who had gained the attention of the Church and the force of their own personality.
Pretty much it benefited women.

36.The Brethren of Common Life was founded in 1384. The Brethren founded schools in
Germany and the Low Countries that used a style of lay piety known as modern devotion.
The believer needed no fasting, pilgrimages, or other acts of piety, only an imitation of the
life of Jesus.

37. They shared their distaste for the abstractions and intellectual arrogance of
Scholasticism, and their belief that a wise and good person will cultivate humility and will
maintain a learned ignorance toward the higher questions of religion. Both movements
directed their message to the layperson to help them lead a higher moral life. The
humanists however drew from both pagan authors and Christian antiquity, while the
modern devotionists looked pretty much only at the Scripture.

38. Erasmus and Thomas More combined elements of both the Humanism and modern
devotion movements to create some new thing that was known as Christian Humanism
because of both of the movements’ involvement.

39. At disputations, students learned by listening to the arguments for and against standard
views. This place encouraged the introduction and discussion of unorthodox ideas and
ideals. It was not impossible for someone to cross the line between a discussion and open
dissent of the Church.

40. Wycliffe argued that the Church was too remote from its people and that he wanted its
doctrines simplified. He sought for less power for priests and a more direct reliance on the
Bible, which he wanted, translated into vernacular to make it easier to understand. He also
had political reasons for this standpoint as he had many noble friends in the courts. He also
argued that the Scriptures alone declared the will of God and that neither the pope and the
cardinals nor the Scholastic theologians could tell what Christians should believe. Also
attacked the special power of the priest known as transubstantiation. He denied the
authority of the pope to hold property and exercise jurisdiction.
41. Wycliffe’s followers were known as the Lollards; they were mostly ordinary people.
They managed to survive as an underground movement until the Protestant Revolution
exploded more then a century later, but were constantly hounded.

42. Hus pretty much argued that all were equal under God. He thought that the Church
should be made up of all of the faithful and that they should be equal. To emphasize, he let
all of the people drink from the wine, something that only the priests of that time could do.
He defied the authority of the pope and when on his way to Rome was killed.

43. The Hussites were able to ensure that both the cup and the wafer were shared by all of
the worshippers at Mass; however, the Church rejected all of their other demands.