The Renaissance

"Renaissance" means literally "rebirth". The Renaissance is a movement that develops after the
middle-ages. It develops first in Italy in the fourteenth century and then in
all Europe in the sixteenth century. In the middle-ages people had sense of
their lives in religion and salvation. The middle-ages were characterised by chaos
in society because there was a continues fight between the Pope and the King.
The King and the Pope wanted both supremacy in the power. People thought that
the only sense of live was religion and salvation. The main values were
religion and salvation indeed spiritual power became more important than
temporal power. It follows that in this country people were oppressive by the Pope,
so people wanted to change. In Italy the power of Church is more oppressive indeed
the Renaissance develops first and then in all Europe. When the Renaissance
develops the Church's power was greatly weakened and the King's power was record and there was the consolidation of the Monarchy.

In the period from the middle-ages and the Renaissance man understood that his power
and his dignity were most important. People need order against chaos. People are
afraid of chaos, are afraid of darkness that it is a generally metaphor. The
Human was afraid of life after death. Whenever there is a change between an ages
of another people need a direction to follow. People understood God was not in
the centre but in the centre there was human. People tried to conciliates body
human and soul. They tried these things in the Greek Scriptures. The soul therefore did not
consider more relevant than the human body and life on Earth.

The Renaissance was an age of new discoveries, both geographical and intellectual. The Renaissance was center on
five issues:

-First, although Renaissance thinkers often
tried to associate themselves with classical antiquity and to dissociate
themselves from the Middle Ages, important continuities with their recent past,
such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were still much in evidence.

-Second, during this period, certain
significant political changes were taking place.

-Third, some of the noblest ideals of the
period were best expressed by the movement known as Humanism. Fourth, and
connected to Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of
"imitation," important for its ideas about how literary works should
be created.

-Finally, what later probably became an even
more far-reaching influence, both on literary creation and on modern life in general,
was the religious movement known as the Reformation.

The concept Great Chain of Being was that every existing thin in the universe had
its place. Indeed it was a hierarchical chain where
every existing thing in the universe had its proper place. An object's place
depended on the relative proportion of his "spirit" and "matter". At the bottom
there were inanimate objects like metal and stone. Higher up were various
members of the vegetative class like trees and flowers. Then came animals,
humans and angels. At the very top there was God.

Reference to the political
situation of the period is also important. Differently from the Middle
Ages, in the Renaissance the consolidation of the Monarchy was recorded and it
became a stronger power.

The third feature was Humanism that is the transition from the Middle
Ages to the Renaissance. This period is called Humanism because mankind was
considered now at the centre of the universe ; so humanists started to
re-discover classical literature.

The last one was Protestantism.
In the sixteenth century the monk Martin Luther reacted against Church
corruption and he founded a new religious movement that was called
Protestantism.