The Renaissance: The Traditional Views Of The Renaissance

The Renaissance was a time of intellectual growth and rebirth, this new era of enlightenment for Europeans began in Florence. Renaissance means “rebirth” in French. The Renaissance occurred from the early 14th century to the late 16th century. During the Renaissance in Europe, there was a dramatic revolution in philosophy, science and mathematics. The Reformation swept across Europe in the 1500s. Reformation refers to major religious changes that transformed worship, politics, society, and cultural patterns. The Scientific Revolution impacted Europe because they changed the traditional teachings of the Church, the new teaching went against it.

The Renaissance challenged the traditional view of the world for Europeans in many different ways.

The Italian Renaissance occurred first, it focused on the city-states of northern Italy and Rome. It tended to be more worldly with an emphasis on secular pursuits, the humanities, and the art. It also had wealth and power, knowledge was the key. The four major themes of the Renaissance were humanism, secularism, individualism, and skepticism. Humanism focused on both secular and religious; human potential, human progress, and expansion of human knowledge. Secularism had greater emphasis on non-religious values and concerns. Individualism focused on the unique qualities and abilities of the individual person. Skepticism questioned what has been traditionally presented as true. The Renaissance changed the thoughts of many; before they would “focus on afterlife” and after on “focus on this life”, before on “the individual not important” and after “the individual is important”, before on “little focus on learning and the arts” and after “focus on learning the “Classics” to inspire learning and the arts”, before on “dark ages” and after “rebirth”, and before on “age of faith” and after “age of reason”. The Renaissance art was a reflection of

During the Catholic Counter Reformation the Church needed an answer to the Protestant uprisings, the Jesuits helped. They started by Ignatius de Loyola in 1534, they were very militaristic with an emphasis on self-discipline and obedience to the Church, good Catholics were to deny themselves and submit to the higher Church authority, combined with the traditional spirituality and mysticism of the Church. Some political reasons for supporting the reformation were that German princes argued that a church doesn’t need its huge landed estates, envied the property of the Church and its freedom from taxation, way to assert their freedom from the HRE, and priced worked with converted preachers in bringing in new followers. The Renaissance men were Da Vinci, More, Machiavelli and Erasmus. Da Vinci was a secularist, he believed in the usefulness of math and science and he believed that religion was useless. Machiavelli was a secularist, he believed that politics and science explained the world better than religion. More was known as a Christian humanist, a humanist because he had the ability to better society. Erasmus was a humanist in a classical sense. He was also a skeptic, he criticized the RCC and their practices. Many people believed that the sacraments were the only thing they needed for salvation. The rich often gave gifts to the Roman Catholic Church in order to