MU #1 Italian Renaissance

What happened to kings, nobles, and peasants?

Local, decentralized

-lived in fear of Roman Catholic Church and Pope

What was everything about in the Middle Ages?

God, Church

-education, celebrations, wars, medicine, law

How were classical texts reintroduced?

Crusades, Arabs, Mongols

-entered through Italian city states

What were the centers for the Italian Renaissance?

Florence and Venice

Who were the three main writers?

Petrarch (father), Machiavelli, Bruni

What did education in the Middle Ages focus on?

Job training and theology

Who was the first person to challenge medieval thinking?

Petrarch

What did classical reading and writing focus on? 

Being well-rounded in art, philosophy, science, and languages

What was Renaissance humanism?

Emphasis on regular life, not religion

Focused on life of individual and developing well-rounded set of skills

-Greek Roman writers predated Christianity

What is humanism?

Valuing the agency of humans using critical thinking and evidence

What did Petrarch write about?

Dismissed perfect humans and Christian morality

-focused on moral issues of characters

-wrote sonnets

-love, admiration, sadness, hate (realistic picture of life)

What did Bocaccio write about?

-individual, non-heroic themes

-Decameron (collection of stories)

-focused on moral dilemmas and regular people