HIS357 Flashcard Review (copy)

Jacob Burckhardt

-        Wrote very important book (the civilization of the renaissance of Italy) in which he discusses:

o   Argued that the renaissance started in Italy

o   Scientific revolution is wrapped up in the renaissance

o   Renaissance laid the foundations for modernity

-        Talked about how the romans were rediscovered during this time, and the greeks after them

-        Talks about Petrarch and his influence over the renaissance

·       Lacking eloquence and artistry of the renaissance, that’s why Petrarch said it’s the dark ages

-        Aristotle believed in the universal, absolute truth, with the use of logic, syllogisms, Petrarch does not like this school of thought, and thought this was barbarism

o   This way of thinking is called scholasticism, Aristotle thinking

-        Dante follows the Aristotle view, and in the inferno he uses syllogisms

-        Renaissance led people to think history is beautiful and unique, and led to free thinking

o   Art created during this time period is due to understanding the importance and beauty of antiquities

Lorenzo Valla

-        He was the one who disproved the donation of Constantine

-        He found the issue of the satraps, which was a word from the 8^th century, but the donation was written in the 4^th century

-        Valla looked at the text and realized that the words do not match the time period, and that this was a fake and the pope did not have absolute power

On the Donation of Constantine

-        The roman empire was divided into 2 parts, east and west, west is the western Europe and had its own capital there, the east was eastern part of Europe and Asia and had its capital in Constantinople

-        Pope Sylvester was like I have full authority over the body and the soul

-        The donation was a document that was written in 4^th century

o   There is a mythic leper, went to see the pope b/c he was sick

o   The pope prayed for him and he was cured miraculously, this was proof of the authority of the pope

o   This document led the eastern part of Rome (Constantine) to pledge allegiance to the pope

o   Emperor of eastern Rome gave allegiance to the pope and any future emporers had to give allegiance to the pope if they wanted to stay in power

-        The donation was bullshit and a sham, which was proved by Valla

Via Media

-        Means the middle way

-        Done by Elizabeth I, appeals to the vast majority of people (the radical protestants do not like this middle way, they are called Puritans, the radical Catholics hate her, the Pope declares the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1571)

-        she has a balance between the militant Protestantism of Edward and the militant Catholicism of Mary

-        creates a broad bottomed religious settlement that creates that appeal to as many people as possible

-        the English people loved her, and supported her, did not let assassination happen

Philology

-        this is when someone studies the origins and the meaning of words

-        Petrarch was a philologist and was able to recognize the differences in time the Romans live in compared to what he lived in

-        Scholastics did not focus on language, actual words used and philology because saw themselves as a part of the Roman empire, the words used had no change in 1000 years

Studia Humanitatis

-        This is the study of humanity, centers around the art of rhetoric and ancient philosophy

-        Petrarch laid the foundation for this

o   Humanism

-        The aim for this was to revive classical literature and ancient ideas

-        It enables one to think about for themselves and question authority

Renaissance Republicanism

-        This is rooted in the political institutions of the Roman republic, this is the idea of self-government

-        This focused on the freedom from tyranny and a focus on law

-        Government in Italy follow the republican period

o   There is an elected counsel

o   Only nobles can run for office

-        Fredrick Barbosa did not like Italy becoming republic, taxed Italy and takes the imperial army to get Italy back

o   Lombard Leage is created to get rid of Barbosa the Pope is invovled, Barbosa loses and signs the treaty of Constance (allows Italy to remain independent, as long as they see Barbosa as the ruler)

o   Pope says you owe me one to the people, the people (popolo, popes army) turn on the pope and take over the government

§  Popolo make Florence the People’s republic

-        Florence is the heart of the renaissance

o   The ordinances of justice (this was their own legislation)

§  Their own constitution

§  People can rid of nobles whenever they want and bell towers (status of wealth of the old rulers and nobility) were destroyed

Francis Bacon

-        Wrote The New Organon or True Direction cornering the Interpretation of Nature

-        Put humanity at the very center of everything

-        Establishes the “program” of useful knowledge, and establishes the purpose of modern science, leading to the industrial revolution

-        Knowledge is good, useful, and contestable

Anachronism

-        This is when a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than which it should be found in, especially a thing that is conspicuously old fashioned

o   Basically something being placed in a setting and time period to which it does not belong

o   Example, Socrates playing a ps4

-        This was being looked very often during the renaissance

-        Valla and Erasmus used anachronisms to disprove the donation of Constantine and the vulgate bible

-        Scholasticism saw the world as continuous and there was an unbroken past

Virgil (medieval and renaissance)

-        Medieval

o   Virgil was thought to be a scribe for a church

o   Was often depicted as a friar/monk during this time period

-        Renaissance

o   Historical context was applied

o   Virgil was not shown as a monk or scribe

o   Given distinguishing features

Spanish Inquisition

-        This is before the crown of the Iberian peninsula

-        This was an issue Christians had regarding the high Muslims and Jewish populations in the peninsula

-        Mainly focused on Jews

o   Either they convert or die, 40% of Jewish populations are forced to convert or are killed

§  The converts are called coversos, they are new Christians

-        Ferdinand asked Pope Sixtus to set up an inquisition due to the negative opinion on the conversos

-        Inquisition set up in 1478 and consisted of 3 people who judged whether or not the Conversos adhered to the Jewish beliefs in secret

o   To test this the judges made the converos do things that would go against their Jewish and Islamic beliefs, such as they made the conversos eat pork and ham

Cicero

-        Petrarch is a big fan of him

-        Roman Republic transitioning to the empire, he is a transitional figure

-        Emphasized the ideas of classical antiquities

-        Was self-sacrificing to the Roman Republic

-        Petrarch saw Cicero and his writing style as the highest manifestation of the kinds of values that he wants to emulate in his writing

-        Was a roman living in times before Christianity

-        Ciceronian ideal that focuses eloquence over philosophy and logic

Aristotelian Scholasticism

-        This was the framework for understanding during the Middle Ages

-        It is all about rigorous, logical, syllogistic reasoning as a way to apprehend the absolute, trans geographic, trans universal truth

o   Seen as barbarism by Petrarch

o   This way of thinking was used by Dante in his writing Monarchy to arrive at his truth

-        There is an unbroken pasts and anachronisms do not bother people who think like this

-        Aren’t interested in textual historical analysis, not critical of source material, not critical of Aristotle and Plato, and Aristotle is the correct method to apprehend the truth

Useful Knowledge

-        Francis Bacon came up with this

-        Knowledge is good = makes us better people

-        Knowledge is useful = research leads to a cumulative body of knowledge and knowledge is created through experimentation and observation of natural phenomenon

-        Knowledge is contestable = there exists criteria to assess competing hypotheses or claims of knowledge; nothing is taken on authority like the ancients

Geo-Centrism

-        This is the belief that the earth is at the center of the universe

-        Believed by Aristotle and the bible

Helio-Centrism

-        Sun is the center of the universe

-        Started with Copernicus and his challenging of Aristotle and the movement of planets

-        Galileo proved the sun is at the centre in his book called The dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Hernan Cortez

-        Thought as the conquistador of Mexico and the Aztecs

-        Cortez was in Cuba and left to explore the new world (Mexico) with 500 other people, but he did not get the permission, and this is seen as an act of rebellion

-        Cortez burns the ships at the coast of Mexico b/c he is a rebel and cannot go back

-        Cortez gets his men to form a council, which is called a cortez, and Hernan is elected the leader

o   Him being elected gives Hernan the authority to take over Mexico and him and his men march towards Tenochtitlan

-        Aztecs meet the Spanish, and the outcome of the meeting is that the Aztecs believe that Hernan is the Quetzalcoatl

o   The white serpent that comes from the east

o   Believed that the Spanish were gods

o   Montezuma II takes this very seriously and showers Hernan with Gold and allows him to get the foot in the door he needs

-        Hernan manages to take over the Aztecs with the help of the other smaller indigenous tribes that the Aztecs had issues with

o   Montezuma II is scared and lets Hernan rule over the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl

-        One of Hernan’s soldiers massacres a bunch of people in Tenochtitlan and Hernan is deposed as ruler and a new leader is elected, a leader who wanted to get rid of Spanish

Primus inter Pares

• “The first among equals”

• Best example of this is King Arthur and the knights of the round table, round table symbolizes that everyone is equal around the round table, every has an equal say in the govey

• Problems with this type of govey, noone has the ability to create national law, lack of stability 

• They get this stability, by vaunting the king as the one ruler

Pope Boniface 8^th

-        Phillip the Fair was taxing the clergy b/c he needed money

-        Boniface passes a papal bowl that said if the crown taxes the church, the king is excommunicated from the church

-        Boniface says Unam Sanctum “the one and only holy church”

o   The pope has claimed all spiritual power, and makes clear that the Pope is the authority of the church

-        Pope is killed in Anagni because Phillip sent 2000 soldiers to arrest the pope for being a heretic

o   3 days to die, he was beat to death and was struggling for life for 3 days

-        Cardinal elect Clement V, he is French, and he leaves Rome for France, this starts the Babylonian Captivity

o   This whole leads to the great schism, where there are 3 popes at one time (one in France, one in Rome, and one elected by the cardinals) and the universal church is broken

o   Each pope is excommunicating the other, Sigismund comes in and deposes all 3 popes, a new pope is elected, Martin V, and he resides in Rome

Philip the Fair

-        Wanted to fund the Hundred years war against England

-        Targets the Jewish population, he takes out loans with them and can later not afford to pay them back

-        Philip expels the Jews from France, and takes control of all their property and money

-        He still needs money for the war and goes after the Knights templar, spreads libel and discredits them, says they are heretics and says they are Gay, has 54 burned alive

-        Still needing money he goes after the Clergy and this causes a problem with Pope Boniface

-        Pope says the Unam Sanctum and claims all spiritual power, Philip has him arrested, and the Pope ends up dying in the altercation, this causes the great schism

Ptolemy’s geography

-        This came to Europe from Byzantium in 1410

-        This was the understanding of the world and its layout of land for most during the renaissance

-        The earth is much smaller than it is, about 30%, Columbus used this map to try and find India

o   Believed that Japan was 4500 Km away from Portugal, it is 19000 Km away

Copernicus

-        Discovered that the Ptolemy movement of planets was wrong

o   He looked at what ancient scholars thought about the world, and noticed that some believed the earth was the center of it

-        His research ends up changing how earth is seen in relation to other planets

-        Aristotle believed that planets move in a circular orbit

-        Aristotle also believed that stars were in crystalline sphere that just move around

o   This was also proven wrong when people saw new stars in the sky

-        Copernicus got the ball moving for questioning ancient authority regarding space by looking at planetary movements

Johannes Kepler

-        Was a pupil of Brahe, unlike his teacher, he liked to write and document his research and findings

-        Modified the Copernican understanding of planetary motion, the motion of the planets is not circular, but elliptical

-        There isn’t a uniform speed of planets, their movement is dependent on their distance to the sun

-        Proved that the time it takes for a planet to make orbit around the sun is indirectly related to its distance from the sun

Galileo

-        Creates his own telescope based on the model of Hans Lipperhery

-        Galileo published the starry messenger, and says the heavens (the universe) is not perfect and sees sunspots on the sun, states that all planets are made up of what earth is made of (sees 4 moons of jupiter), and proves earth is not the centre of the universe

-        Proved that gravity is uniform, and disproved all of Aristotle’s equations

-        Wrote In the two chief systems of the world (1632)

o   Stages an argument between 2 people and 1 observer, 1 person against heliocentric view, one for heliocentric view, observer sides with for heliocentric view

-        Book is placed on prohibited books list of Church, Galileo is tried for heresy and is forced to renounce his book

Tzompanti

-        Skull rack Aztecs used

Encomienda

-        Piece of land given to soldiers during the Spanish conquest of the Muslims

-        Same practice happened in Mexico, however the indigenous were split up with the land and given to the conquistadors

-        In theory the conquistador would protect and teach the indigenous about Christianity, and the indigenous would offer labour and offerings to their Spanish master

-        This was in fact a hideous form of slavery, and the indigenous faced severe demographic collapse

Cannibal Butcher Shop

-        Shown in Bartolomé de las Casas book A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies

-        Has an image in the book which depicts the Spanish butchering and selling limbs of the indigenous, this did not really occur, and was more like a metaphor

-        Las Casas wanted to show the horrors of expanding and tried to deter the people by using the most insane imagery possible

Bartolomé de las Casas

-        Responsible for the black legend

-        Writes a very brief account on the destruction of the Indies

-        Talks to the Spanish king, the crown care about sanctity of the new world, wanted to bring the truth (Christianity) to the new world

-        This account by las Casas had people questioning if the Spanish had any right to conquer the new world

-        They could convert the people to Christianity, but beyond this, they did not have much right

-        People said that Las Casas was a protestant and was blowing it out of proportion

New Laws

-        Designed to lower the power of the conquistadors

-        Catholic church ruled that the indigenous were humans, and the sanctity of human life needs to be preserved

o   Argument was whether or not the indigenous were humans or not

-        This made indigenous slavery illegal

-        The encomienda was replaced with repartimiento, a forced labour draft

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

-        Look at Jacob point

Petrarch

-        Was a philologist

-        Did not agree with scholasticism

-         Lays the foundation for studia humanitatis

-        Divided history into 3 parts, modern, Middle Ages, and classical period

-        Big fan of cicero

o   Worked in papal library during Babylon captivity and found letters of Cicero

-        Sees the past as distinct from the present and wants to restore classical antiquity

-        Does not believe in an absolute truth, but that writers should seek to convince with the use of eloquent writing

Leonardo Bruni

-        Write In Praise of Florence

-        Rewrites the history of Florence to justify its democratic institutions

-        Argued that Florence was found during the time of the Roman Republic, not the empire

-        Florence has historical liberty and comes from its founding, founded on a free and open republic

-        Defence of true liberty, Florence has always been and will always be free

Leonardo Da Vinci

-        Not a humanist, was not educated in Latin or classical education

-        Questioned all authority

-        Believed that knowledge was the product of perception and experience, to know something is to experience it

-        His art and his work is lost for the most part

-        He was very curious, but once he found his answer he would move on, would not complete what he started b/c he found the answer

Elizabeth Eisenstein

-        Wrote The Printing Press an Agent of Change

-        Argued that without the printing press the renaissance would not be as important and the scientific revolution would not have happened

-        Books were very costly and laborious to make, and were made of calf skin so they would decay over time

-        Books were hand copied, thus making it time consuming to make and causing there to not be a coherent body of knowledge in Europe

-        Printing allows for mass production of books, allows for mass publication of thoughts of scholars, knowledge becomes transnational

-        Ancient texts can be shared easier and more people can study them, allowing the renaissance to become what it is

The Civilizing Process/Norbert Elias

-        Norbert Elias wrote The Civilizing Process

-        Notes that during the medieval times behaviour was not regulated, like it is in modern society

-        Never a real time or place to do things, if you wanted to do something you can do it whenever

-        Argued that humans must repress their desire for violence to operate as a society

-        Elite behaviour was being formed, which was a move away from the unregulated behaviours seen in the Middle Ages

-        Connected to broader cultural transformation towards modernity

Book of the Courtier

-        Written by Baldassare Castiglione

-        Manners and how to act was redefined

-        Correct public behaviour was important for nobles as kings centralises power, it is important to know how to act accordingly

-        The book is a dialogue which takes place in the court of Duke of Urbino

-        A courtier must be attractive, educated (know Latin and Greek), an accomplished warrior (no war trauma), renaissance man (good at many things), and nonchalant/humble

-        Sprezzatura: an easy superiority

o   Does things but makes it look effortless, nonchalant and not boastful

-        There was a debate regarding the birth of a courtier, whether or not they should be of noble birth

Cortez

• Parliament

• Towns elect officials to sit in the cortez

• Through this institution that conflict between crown (centralized govey) and the cities are arbitrated

• With the cortez, the cites makes decisions with, rather than against the monarchs 

• Creates political stability that mediates and arbitrates problems between city and state

Alcaldes

• police force

• Given extraordinary power

• Given the power to arrest criminals, but ot try, convict and execute justice 

• No real distinction between judge and jury within in spain 

• Sentences were adjusted to what was accepted by the community, the justice was corresponding to the justice of the place they reside in

  • Conforms to basic norms of the community in which they live

General argument in Erasmus’s on the Christian Prince

-        Says that a ruler should be virtuous and responsible for the welfare of every citizen

-        Citizens should not be overtaxed and wealthy should bear the larger burden, infrastructure should be maintained, and war should be avoided at all costs

-        Prince should have a humanist education

-        Laws should support the common good; there should be as few laws as possible, written simply so that they are universally understood

-        Prince should personally see to people’s needs, not live a lavish life

General argument in Thomas More’s Utopia

• Ideal society resembles a republic

• -        Government of Utopia is split into 54 cities, with 30 groups of 200 household

  o   Each group elects a wiseacre, 10 of whom work under a timesaver (a member of senate)

  -        Timesavers elect a prince who serves for life, government matters cannot be discusses outside

  -        Society is agrarian, men and women work in the fields, 6-hour workdays

  -        Everyone eats together in a hall, oldest mentally competent man in house is in charge, children and wives must listen

  -        Slavery exists as a form of punishment

  -        Any religion can be practiced as long as it brings no conflict

General argument in Machiavelli’s Prince

-        Advises prince not to focus on being virtuous, to maintain power at costs

-        Argues that generosity is dangerous, as it means the state runs out of money, requiring the ruler to tax and oppress, whereas a sufficient ruler is respected

-        Argues that cruelty can benefit citizens, as it means citizens will be peaceful and law abiding, helping more people in the long run

-        Councils prince to avoid the money and women of his subjects so they don’t resent him