“Renaissance” literally means “rebirth”. This movement developed in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries because for the people of that period were necessary change model of life.

In the Middle Age the most important value was the religion therefore God and salvation were at the centre of life. However people felt also body's impulses, that were considered wrong, and couldn't be happy only followed the religion. Then they started to search for a balance between material impulses and religion and they found it in the Classical culture that put people at the centre of life.

The Renaissance began in Italy because there was the Pope, therefore people were more oppressed by religion.

In this period remained from the Middle Age the idea of the Great Chain of Being: everything had a definite place in the hierarchical order of the world. People accepted this idea because this was a period of conflicts and disorders and they need to take order against chaos. 

The first Renaissance was called Humanism because humans were put at the centre of life and the new values of society was public and political life (relations between humans).

The humanist scientists studied classical literature and started from ancient theories for discover new things (for example the idea that the sun was at the centre and the Earth rather around it with the other planets).

In the Renaissance also literature change. In the Middle Age existed only religious literature, but in the renaissance people was at the centre, not God therefore renaissance poems deal with humans and their passions. In fact the poems usually had a human name as title. Spread a new literally genre: the sonnet, a poetry of 14 lines that usually deal with love.

At the end in this period there was also religious reforms: the Protestant reform by Martin Luther, the consecutive reform of the Catholic church  and the birth of the Anglican church.

The Church of the Middle Age was corrupted and earthly therefore some theologians need a change and more sober costumes. Martin Luther created a new and more sober church and the official Church, for recall the believers, moderated its costumes.