In order to understand the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is important to remember the features of the medioeval period.
 1)In the Middle Ages  everything was focused on religion and salvation because people were afraid of life after death.  The soul was considered more relevant than the human body, and life after death was considered more important than life on eatrh. Therefore, people's efforts were directed to reach salvation and heaven. It follows that the power of the Church was stronger than the power of the emperor, and it goes without saying that religion played a roul of supremacy in political, social and economic feels.
2)THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY WAS feudalism: A PIRAMIDAL STRUCTURE, which had been introduced by William the conqueror, according to the different social classes.
-on the top of the hierarchy there was the Pope ,the representative of god on earth.
-Then came the emperor
-Then came the landed gentry (knight and aristocracy)
-Then came the knights, who saved the emperor during the wars and in exchange had their lands
-Then came the merchants
-and last there were the serves, who worked for the land gentry and who were attacted to the land and depended straight from their master who was the land owmen.
3)As a consequence there was a continuous fight between the Pope, who represented regular power and the emperor, who represented temporal power, because both the Pope and the emperor wanted supremacy. Religion gradually became weeker since the temporal power was growing steadily.
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It follows that, with the growing power of the king, life on earth became more important than life after death.
 This means that in the society there was a gradual transormation of values, in which both the Great Chain of Been and the values coexisted. People tried to find a lesson in the classical culture , to find a possible answers to the questions connected to the human being's sense of life. The period was called humanism: an intellectual movement which represented a shift from the contemplative life to active life . It put an emphasis on human been, on intellect of man and his life on earth. There was a new concept of MAN which refers to an individual who tooks part in the public life of the state.

The Renaissance developed uot of the humanis and it refers to a rebirth of arts and culture in Europe and to a rediscovery of ancient greek and roman authors. It starts in Itlay in the fourteenth century because:
- Europe was more distant from classical culture
-In itlay there was the Pope, so spiritual life of a man was lived in a oppressive way.
Renaissance thinkers tended to dissociated themselves from the middle ages,considering it as aperiod  of disorder and disaster setted in the middle of the antiquity and themselves .
The main features of the Renaissance were:
SCIENTIFIC RENEWAL:In science copernicus altered the cosmic world view of the Middle ages, creating a new model of the solar system in which at the center of the universe there was the sun, around which turned round all planets . He denied the geocentric theory supported by ancient Greek Ptolemy, who regarded the Earth as the centre of the Universe. Not less important, the invenction of the telescopy by Galileo Galilei .
SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:In religion Martin Luter led a new Protestant movement and decleares the church's corruption . Protestantism broke up the Church, the institution that had unified all Europe under the Pope, who was no longer the spiritual leader and the mediator between man and god. According with this religious concept the only way to reach salvation was a direct relationship with god . Martin Luther give more importance on the Bible and he translated it in common languages .
POLITICAL RENEWAL:Political changes were taking place. There was a consolidation of the monarchy, which became strongher.
CULTURAL RENEWAL:New literary doctrine of IMITATION. It was very important because it allowed to learn a lesson by past. The writer translated the moral vision of classical predecessors, by imitating great works. It was foundamental to find a balance, to live better and to avoid caos.
GEOGRAPHICAL RENEWAL: The great voyages and new geographical discoveries had a huge impact on the develpoment of thought in Europe. Infact Europeans extended their intellectual horizon and began to consider things from different poin of view . There was a strong increase in confidence in the human capacity and in science . The old maps were not reliables, therefore people needed to update their position on the map .
GREAT CHAIN OF BEING:
-sets that every existing thing in the universe had its place in a divinely planned hierarchical order. At the top of this order there was god.  
-Chain of being emploied a sense of order which human being needed and it provide people with an idea of where they could stay.
-Within each of theese gruops there were other hierarchies and were ranked from law to high within their respectative segments.
-According to the doctrine of correspondances the different segments reflected other segments.
-the belief in the Chain of being meant that a monarchical governement was ordinated by God.