ap euro

The northern Italian communes

• started before: Northern Italian Communes built on trade, merchants have money & power

  • poorer people eventually oust

• northern italian communes — world trade (D)

communes

• sworn associations of free men (merchants mainly) seeking complete political and economic independence from local nobels; build and maintained city walls, regulated trade, raised taxes, kept civil order

ommunes in Milan, Florence, Genoa, Siena, Pisa

•  fought/won independence from surrounding feudal nobles

signori

• (despots/one man rulers) 

  • despots manipulated the law 

• Milan (despots)

  • "republic" but ruled by despots of the Sforza family

Venice (oligarchs)

• international power b/c trade

• "republic" but ruled by an oligarchy

Florence (patrician elitists)

• "republic" but ruled by Medici banking family

  • banking &financed trade

  • Cosimo (1434-1464) and Lorenzo (1460-1503)

Papal States

Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) reasserted control after Babylonian captivity

Naples

• controlled by Aragon (1435)

Millan

• despots

• S. Borga

The Commercial Revolution

• growing merchant class (money)

• intertwined with the Renaissance

  • led to the Renaissance (not B)

• opened up trade

• growing merchant class (money)

  • different from the nobility

Women during the Italian Renaissance

• only improvement… education

• trained to at keeping the home entertaining (ie. show guests how wealthy the husband is, taking care of servants)

• backwards step… more jobs outside the home in the Middle Ages vs. Renaissance

Francesco Petrarch

• his death marked the beginning of the Renaissance in 1374

• he believed the Ancient times were perfect

• something new is happening!

• humanist

Boccaccio

dirty stuff

Castiglione

how to marry a rich woman

venice

• Enormous trade with a vast colonial empire

• Had a sophisticated constitution and was a republic in name

• Oligarchy of merchant aristocrats actually ran the city

• Venice went to war against Milan in protest against Francesco Sforza’s acquisition of the title: Duke of Milan

Northern humanism

• Were skeptical of the classic authors’ authority

• Studied the classics to understand human nature (viewed humanity from a Christian perspective)

• Used Christian principles

• Used the classics to reform the Church (NOT the Protestant Reformation)

  • Translated all the texts into the vernacular (local language)

wars of roses

• Donastic quarrel between the houses of York and Lancaster over who would ascend to the English throne

• Weakened the nobility

  • Whichever house lost would lose everything

• The disorder hurt trade, agriculture, and domestic industry

The Medici family

• Banking family that controlled Florence

• Ruled from behind the scenes though it was technically a republican government

Charles VII of France

• French king who sent Joan of Ark into the 100 years war

  • Winning the war led to strong nationalism

• Centralized authority by controlling the nobility and taking control of the church

  • Reorganized the Royal Council to use middle class instead of nobles

  • Passed the Gabelle and Taille taxes on salt and land that everyone had to pay

    • Used the money to form a standing army to stand up to nobles if necessary

  • Passed the Pragmatic Sanction of Borgis, taking control of the church

    • King could name clergy and didn’t send money off to the pope

• Machiavelli

• Thought Cesare Borgia would be perfect to unite Italy because of his ruthlessness

• Cesare Borgia started uniting the peninsula by conquering and exacting total obedience from the rulers of the Papal States

• Wrote The Prince

  • It’s better to be feared and take control and worry about being loved after

• Francesco Petrarch

• Said we were entering into a new modern world, a renaissance

• The start of the Renaissance was when Petrarch died in 1374

• Pico della Mirandola

• Wrote the essay On the Dignity of Man stressing that man posesses great dignity in being made as Adam in the image of God before the Fall and the image of Christ after the Resurrection

  • People have a divine image planted in him (no limits to what we can accomplish 

Lorenzo Valla

• Humanist author

• Wrote On Pleasure defending the pleasures of the senses as the highest good

• Example of critical scholarship to classical writings and secular spirit of Renaissance

• Proved the donation of Constantine was fake

  • Large amount of land donated by Constantine to the church

Boccaccio

• Author writing pervasive and rather scandalous books of sarcasm and humor

Castiglione

• Separated love from sexuality

• Spokesman of renaissance love and manners

• Wrote The Courtier seeking to train and discipline young men into gentlemen

• Believed in the well rounded humanist education

• Erasmus 

• Northern Humanist

  • Incorporated Christianity into Humanist education

• Believed education was the means to reform and key to moral and intellectual improvement

• Believed Christianity is an inner attitude of the heart or spirit

  • Christianity is Christ, his life, and what he said and did (not what theologians have written)

Thomas More

• Wrote Utopia, a utopian story where money was only used to pay off people who wanted to destroy the community

Rabelais

• Wrote Gargantua and Pantagono making fun of France in a satirical way as to not be arrested

• Henry VII

• Set up Royal Court excluding nobility (implemented wool traders and merchants)

  • Negotiated trade agreements

• Didn’t call Parliament where the nobility had power

• Used middle class as Justices of the Peace as his presence in local English towns (tax collectors, sheriff, judge, jury)

• Court of Star Chamber was the king’s unruly court system not following English law

Ferdinand and Isabella – 

• Married in 1469 merging the Aragon and Castille kingdoms

• Hermandades (head crackers to control the nobility) set up their own court system with the middle class and were so effective they were eventually disbanded

• Requested to the pope to set up a separate Spanish church to control the clergy

  • Used the church money to set up a standing army to complete the reconquista against the Muslims (1492 conquered Granada taking back the Iberian peninsula)

  • Part of the deal was to expel the Jews (they could either convert or leave)

Sack of Rome

• 1527 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent Spanish troops into Rome

  • Brought the Rennaisance to an end