Mini Unit 1

Francesco Petrarch

Father of humanism; wrote sonnets about moral issues and emotions of the individual; studied the classics; challenged medieval thought; etc.

Niccoló Machiavelli

Questioned government; thought kings were ineffective; wrote The Prince which talks about how in politics, if it works, anything goes.

Leonardo Bruni

Advocated proactivity and participating in voting and politics; realted to civic humanism

Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron; focused on moral dilemmas that people had rather than being perfect (in contrast to an classical “perfect” hero)

Lorenzo de’ Medici/Lorenzo the Magnificent

Was head of the Medici family, who basically ruled Florence; was an advocate of civic humanism

Desiderius Erasmus

The Praise of Folly (1509); thought Christianity should serve as a guiding moral philosophy; thought the Catholic Church was corrupt for simony, nepotism, and indulgences, and questioned power/authority of the Church

Thomas More

Utopia (1516); thought Christianity should serve as a guiding moral philosophy; thought the Catholic Church was corrupt for simony, nepotism, and indulgences, and questioned power/authority of the Church

Jean Bodin

believed the corrupt Church, and the pope in particular, should not be involved in European politics; advocated a strong, centralized government that controlled their own taxes and politics with no Church involvement

Raphael

School of Athens; Italian Renaissance artist

Leonardo da Vinci

The Mona Lisa; Italian Renaissance artist

Rembrant

Anatomy Lesson; Northern (Dutch) Renaissance artist

Michael Angelo

Painted the Sistine Chapel; Italian Renaissance artist

Filipo Brunelleschi

Designed the Cathedral in Florence; Italian Renaissance artist/architect

Julius II

Pope; Patron

Leo X

Pope; Patron

Copernicus

came up with the first heliocentric model of the solar system

Galileo

Confirmed Copernicus’s theory and was put on house arrest by the Church; realized Aristotle was wrong about gravity

Vesalius

dissected cadavers and disproved Galen’s theories

William Harvey

discovered that the human body functions as a system

Isaac Newton

came up with laws of the universe called Newtonian physics *Period 2*; invented calculus which allowed mathematicians to solve complex problems

Francis Bacon

developed inductive reasoning; using strong evidence, patterns, and observations to supply strong evidence for the truth

Rene Descartes

developed deductive reasoning: using logical deduction to make a certain, logical conclusion