The humanist movement started in Italy, where the late medieval Italian writers Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarch contributed greatly to the discovery and preservation of classical works. Advertisement Humanist ideals were forcefully expressed by another Italian scholar, Pico della Mirandola, in his Oration on the dignity of man. The movement was further stimulated by the influx of Byzantine scholars who came to Italy after the fall of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) to the Ottomans in 1453 and also by the establishment of the Platonic Academy in Florence. The academy, whose leading thinker was Marsilio Ficino, was founded by the 15th-century Florentine statesman and patron of the arts Cosimo de' Medici. The institution sought to revive Platonism and had particular influence on the literature, painting, and architecture of the times.
Humanism originated in Italy, like many characteristics of the renaissance. It’s the rediscovery of a classical civilization. This cultural movement rehabilitated any interest people had in Greek and Roman civilizations. It also promoted civilized values and guarded against any barbarism human nature threatened to give, in the broadest spectrum. “That the ancient adage nosce teispum – know thyself – is a key principle in humanist thought in general, and in Shakespeare in particular…” The “know thyself” principle is very evident in Hamlet.
To this, the Renaissance should not only be seen as an essential part of European history, but its ideals should also be credited philosophically for improving and influencing different developing societies through the ages. The Renaissance was a series of literary and cultural movements that began in Italy and spread into other parts of Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries; however, the Renaissance may have extended before and beyond these centuries. The term renaissance means "rebirth," from the belief that Europeans rediscovered Greek and Roman, Classical, culture after many centuries of intellectual and Trapasso 2 cultural decline called the Middle Ages. Many philosophers from the Classical Period, along with the new philosophy of humanism, gave ideas that greatly contributed to the Renaissance. The Renaissance was affected by the Classical era in literature and art, curiosity and individualism, and culture.
Both have been broadened to include more than that. The more specific meaning of the Renaissa... ... middle of paper ... ...oser to Erasmus' position. Perhaps Mennonites have tended to teach grace and live by works. Grierson suggests that Spenser's Fairie Queene comes closest to the spirit of Luther because of its emphasis on grace whereas Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained reminds us of Erasmas--of the responsibility of humankind to make "a new earth" (26). In conclusion, I believe that each generation must examine the conflict (real or imagined) between the "desire for amusement" and religion, for the answers are neither simple nor abstract.
During the times 1400s and 1500s primarily in Italy, there was an essential change that encompassed all aspects of life. It is called a Renaissance. The word renaissance means rebirth and it was a response to adversities in middle ages. In Western European history Renaissance or rebirth marks a transition between the times of Medieval and modern era. It is also the beginning of the modern history.
His work demonstrated the intellectuality of his conceptions. His compositions were monumental. His work encapsulated a high degree of naturalism. • The generations that succeeded him pressed forward with research and innovation to create a linear prospective for painting with the integration of the human anatomy which lead to the discovery of a scientific style of naturalism. • Architects of the Italian renaissance were influenced by the classical roman architecture.
During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, a revolutionary shift in the European cultural sphere placed human beings at the center of learning as the thoughts and artworks of man became infused with humanistic ideals. With time, such values, then held current in Italy, began to diffuse into other areas and produce each regions’ individual renaissance. Immediately following the Middle Ages, European civilization had begun to become characterized by interests in classical learning and values. This is evident in the very meaning of the term “renaissance”—rebirth. Italian artists and scholars viewed themselves as revitalizing the standards and achievements of classical Roman culture; some writers such as Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio studied Ancient Rome and Greece and sought to revive these cultures’ values, languages, and intellectual traditions after the long period of stagnation that trailed the fall of the Roman Empire.
Thus, numerous parallels between these subjects exist. Many in the Renaissance devoted themselves to taking old ideas, mainly from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and reintroducing or improving upon them in order to better themselves or society. This was humanism. Italian humanists stressed the study of the classics for what they could reveal about human nature: "[Bruni maybe]." Bruni studied the classics for self-amelioration.
Many Renaissance scholars and artists studied the art and learning from ancient Greece and Rome, attempting to recapture the spirit of those cultures in their philosophies and their works of art and literature. New ideas in art, astronomy, science, literature, mathematics, philosophy, religion, and politics were developed and advanced by a few individuals. But the influence of the Renaissance impacted and shaped the future, leading to a modern era. Of all the practices of Renaissance Europe, nothing is used to distinguish the Renaissance from the Middle Ages more than humanism as both a program and a philosophy. The humanist philosophy stressed the dignity of humanity, and the humanists shifted intellectual emphasis off of theology and logic to specifically human studies.
In theology, the medieval traditions of Scholasticism, Thomism, Scotism, and Ockhamism were continued in the Renaissance. Medieval Platonism and Aristotelianism were crucial to Renaissance philosophical thought. The advances of mathematical disciplines, including astronomy, were indebted to medieval precedents. The schools of Salerno, Italy, and Montpellier, France, were noted centers of medical studies in the middle Ages. The Italian Renaissance was above all an urban phenomenon, a product of cities that flourished in central and northern Italy, such as Florence, Ferrara, Milan, and Venice.