How Did the Renaissance Change Man's View of the World?

Background Essay
The Renaissance was a period of big change in European history. It was a time of
intellectual excitement, when art and literature blossomed and groundbreaking scientific
advances were made. Over the course of about 300 years, the Renaissance spread from its
home base in Italy to western and northern Europe. The effect was like a sunrise making
its way across the land.
To understand the changes the Renaissance produced, it
helps to review what European society was like before
it arrived. The time period before the Renaissance is
usually called the Middle Ages, which stretched from
the fall of the Roman Empire around 500 CE to about
1350. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic
Church and the Pope were the primary players in
Europe. The custodians of culture - that is, the people
who owned most of the books and made handwritten
copies of the Bible - were priests who often lived a
closed existence inside the walls of monasteries.
Schools were few. Illiteracy was widespread. Most of
the population, more than 85 percent, was peasant
farmers called serfs who worked for a lord and his
estate. Serfs were little more than slaves. Both serfs and their masters looked to the
Catholic Church and the Bible to explain the world. The art and literature that existed
focused on Jesus Christ and the sins of mankind.
In the 1300s, important changes began to happen. Improved farming methods helped
peasants become more self-sufficient. More and more serfs gained their freedom and no
longer depended on lords. Some freed serfs migrated to towns, where they took up trades.
The number of merchants and bankers increased. Since these people needed to have an
education to effectively carry on their work, literacy spread. Eventually, educated people
began to question the teachings of the Church. A movement called humanism developed,
which praised the beauty and intelligence of the individual.
As more people became educated, humanism worked its way into the arts, literature, the
sciences, and medicine. This early Renaissance movement was especially vigorous in the
city-states of Italy - places like Rome, Venice, Florence, and Milan. The invention of the
printing press in the mid-1400s gave the Renaissance and humanism even more
momentum. Primarily, the Renaissance was an upper-middle class movement, but thanks
to the mechanization of printing, shopkeepers and street sweepers were able to afford
books and articles that discussed the new ideas spreading across Europe. As a result,
people started to look at themselves and their world in a new way.
But what, exactly, was this new way? Examine the documents that follow and answer the
question: How did the Renaissance change man's view of the world?
Document A Content Notes
• Duccio di Buoninsegna was born around 1250 in Sienna, Italy. He is considered to be
the first great painter from this city. Duccio's style of painting was strongly influenced
by Gothic and Byzantine paintings. However, his work anticipated the humanistic art of
the Renaissance.
• Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 near the town of Vinci in central Italy. Leonardo
began to work for the Duke of Milan, who assigned him a variety of duties. For example,
Leonardo designed artillery, devised a system of locks for the canals of Milan, and
created paintings, including The Last Supper. Eventually, he settled in Florence, where
he continued to paint. Soon he completed several more great works, including the
Mona Lisa. Leonardo was also fascinated with mechanics and human anatomy.
Leonardo is considered to be one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time, and his
reputation as an artist is even greater. He died in 1519.
• Theodore Rabb is a leading historian of European history. He has been a professor at
Princeton University since 1967. Rabb is the author or editor of almost 20 books and in
1993 he served as an advisor for the television series "Renaissance:'
• Sources: Images: Madonna Enthroned Between Two Angels by Duccio di Buoninsegna,
late 13th century; Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, early 16th century. Text: Theodore
Rabb, The Last Days of the Renaissance & The March to Modernity, Basic Books, 2006.
• Note: Duccio Di Bouninsegna's painting shows The Mother Mary on a throne with the
baby Jesus on her lap. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is believed to be a portrait of Lisa
Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant.

The [clearest] evidence of the break with medieval culture comes from the
visual arts. [It] was the essence of the Renaissance .... One begins to know
the names of the artists ... feel stronger emotions in the subjects ... see well-
defined landscapes, natural folds in drapery, and three-dimensional figures;
and one begins to notice the emphasis on symbolic representation giving
way to depictions of recognizable scenes ... the new artistic styles would
echo the broader movements and interests of the new age .... Neither the
techniques nor the forms of artistic expression were to be the same again.
Document B Content Notes
• Reviled for his political writings that seem to espouse the pursuit of power for its own
sake, Niccolo Machiavelli was a political philosopher best known for his work The
Prince.
• The Prince was probably written in an unsuccessful attempt to gain favor with the
Medici. In the book, Machiavelli recounts the political maneuverings of Cesare Borgia,
including a series of political murders that secured his power. Machiavelli recounts
how those who remain in power are those who are able to accommodate the shifting
circumstances around them, "to turn and turn about as the winds and the variations of
fortune dictate."
From this arises an argument: whether it is better to be loved than to be feared, or the
contrary. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to
join them together, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must
be lacking. For one can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle,
simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for
their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives,
and their sons, as I said earlier, when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you
they turn away. And that prince who bases his power entirely on their words, finding
himself completely without other preparations, comes to ruin; for friendships that are
acquired by a price and not by greatness and nobility of character are purchased but are
not owned, and at the proper moment they cannot be spent. And men are less hesitant
about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared
because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are wretched
creatures, is broken on every occasion in which their own interests are concerned; but
fear is sustained by a dread of punishment which will never abandon you.
Document C Content Notes
• During the Middle Ages, two types of dramas, morality plays and mysteries, were often
performed by trade guilds. The mysteries attempted to inform the unlearned about
Christianity by dramatizing important events in the Bible. Morality plays used allegory
to show the inner conflict between good and evil that Christians believed existed in
every person.
• William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford in England. By 1592, he
was living in London, away from his wife, Anne Hathaway. He became involved in the
theater scene and soon was working as both an actor and a playwright. From 1594 to
1608, Shakespeare wrote about two plays a year; these works made him well known
and financially successful. He died in 1616, but his work remains as relevant as ever.
His brilliant portrayals of the human condition are timeless and speak to men and
women across all cultures.
Note: Though written in 1485, which was during the Renaissance period, these lines carry
a message right out of the Middle Ages.
Source: Excerpt from an English play Source: Excerpt from Act II, Scene II of
called Everyman, written by an unknown Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1601.
author in 1485.
"What a piece of work is a man! how
Ye [man] think sin in the beginning full noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!
sweet, in form and moving how express and
Which in the end causeth thy soul to admirable! in action how like an angel!
weep, in apprehension how like a god! the
When the body lieth in clay. beauty of the world! the paragon*
Here shall you see how fellowship and (perfect model) of animals!"
jollity,
Both strength, pleasure, and beauty,
Will fade from thee as flower in May.
For ye shall hear, how our Heaven-King
Calleth Everyman to a general
reckoning:* (Judgment Day)
Give audience, and hear what he doth
say."