The Renaissance

he Renaissance developed in Italy in fourteenth century and in North Europe in sixteenth century. In Italy the Renaissance developed before than in North Europe because North European culture was more distant from the classical culture that was an important aspect of the Renaissance. Then in Italy there was the Pope who was the head of the Church and the representative of God on earth.
    To understand what the Renaissance is and the main aspects of it we have to look at the previous period: the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people considered religion the main aspect of life, in particular the salvation and the soul’s life after death. It followed that religious contemplation had a supreme role while the concept of active life wasn’t conceived: everything verged towards God.
This rigidity of thought also reflected the organization on the society, for this the medieval society was organized into specific classes:
-    The Pope who was the head of the Church and the Emperor who was the king of a State head of an Empire
-    the Emperor’s knights who often were land owner, and the clergy
-    the merchants who was the active class of the society
-    the serf who had to work in the land of landed gentry to feed themself
     The Middle Ages were characterized by a continuous fight between the Pope, who represented the religious, spiritual or regular power and the Emperor who represented the temporal or secular power. These fights created a chaotic situation that caused social, economic and especially political instability. Therefore between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there was a period of transition when men tried to combine the philosophy of the Great Chain of Being with their social political order , to overcome the condition of instability and to find an answer about the sense of life, man’s role in the universe and new values based on the valorisation of active life and Classical values: this period was called Humanism.
The study of the Renaissance can be organized into five issues:
1.    Humanism (that we have faced before)
2.    political changes
3.    the Great Chain of Being
4.    the “imitation”
5.    the Reformation
    After the period of Humanism people were in need of social and politic stability. The only way to create a social and politic stability was the reinforcement of the central power. Only if a state was cohesive and it had a centralized power it could be strong and competitive. Therefore the monarchy was the solution.
    During the Renaissance the social and political order was influenced by the hieratical order of the Great Chain of Being. Everything had to be organized into a specific order. At the top of this order there was God but man acquired a more important role than in the Middle Ages.
    The “imitation” did not specify a passive transcription of classical works but it specified an accurate study of the classical works directed to capture the spirit of these works and to adapt of this spirit to the new type of work. Therefore in this period there was the rebirth of classical works (like comedy and tragedy).
    The Reformation can be censisered under two main aspects: religious aspect and political aspect. As to the religious aspect  Martin Luther started a process of reform. He criticized the glitzand, the corruption of the Church, he refused the authority of the Church and its priets to mediate between man and God and he questioned the Pope’s role and the role of the Catholic Church. As to the political aspect the Pope lost power because the Emperor’s knights, becoming protestant, could take control of the lands of the Church.