The Renaissance: summary

The word “Renaissance” refers to a cultural movement which developed between XIV and XVII century in Italy and then spread in Northern Europe.

It was an age of changes: during the Middle Ages, earthly life was strictly connected to God. In time life acquired a certain importance: so, earthly life, and therefore human beings, became the center of the attention. People wanted to know how life worked and notions provided by the Middle Ages culture weren’t enough to find answers. This is why Renaissance thinkers went back to read again the classical culture, in particular Greek culture, where there were body worship and polytheistic religion. Indeed the word “Renaissance” means “rebirth”, in this case rebirth of learning, which brought radical changes and new discoveries in different areas: geography, science, religion, politics, and so on.

Re-reading classics meant “imitation”, understood as following predecessors (classical authors). Renaissance authors’ purpose was not to copy or create something new: they wanted to learn from classical works and genres (such as tragedy, comedy, satire, etc.) and then use teachings for their own purposes. However, during the Renaissance, “imitation” was more popular as imitation of the human behavior.

The Renaissance also kept some concepts from the Middle Ages. The “Great Chain of Being” is one of them. According to this concept, everything in the universe has its own specific position in a hierarchic scale. The higher it was placed, the more important was a thing. God was on the top, while humans were between animals and angels. The hierarchical scale implied a breakable balance, which caused fear. This happened because people’s disorder also corresponded to a disorder in politics. This is why rules were more strict.

As said before, the Renaissance brought changes but it also preserved some ideas from the Middle Ages. This happened because the transition between the two ages was gradual and it did not happen in only one day. The period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is known as Humanism. Humanism thinkers valued an active life more than a spiritual life only dedicated to God and so they valued people’s participation to social and public life.

Anyway, the accession of the Renaissance did not imply the disappearance of religious values. They just coexisted with the new ones. Religion had changes like every other area, and its change consisted of the Protestant Reformation (XVI century): it saw the division of the Church into Catholic and Protestant Christianity. The main personality of this movement was Martin Luther, who didn’t approve the corruption of the Church. One of the changes brought by the religious reformation was the rejection of the Pope, as a spiritual leader, and of the priests as means between men and God. People wanted to have a direct contact with God, in order to assure their salvation with faith. Printing also helped this to happen, because it allowed circulation of translated copies of the Bible. The process of translation was not approved by the Church, which wanted to preserve the Latin language, but on the other side it allowed the Bible to became a new inspiration.