Renaissance and Age of Exploration Key Terms and Key People

Renaissance

Means rebirth, references the period of time in Europe following the Middle Ages in which the country underwent artistic, cultural, and intellectual revival, based on ancient Greek and Roman texts

City-states

Republic of Florence (cultural center of Renaissance), Republic of Genoa, Duchy of Milan, Rome, the Papal States, Naples, Kingdom of the Two Siciles, Venice, Venetian Republic, Genoa, Pisa. Ideas from many cultures present, bankers financed people who shaped European life, merchants and bankers in control, secularism

Elizabethan Age

Period of English history during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I

Secularism

A belief that life was more than a preparation for the hereafter (not religious)

Christian humanism

Blended Christian faith with classic Humanism principles, human dignity, individual freedom, but happiness with Christian framework

Humanism

Literary and educational movement, dealt with issues of politics and personal concern outside of religion, shaped Renaissance

Individualism

“Man in the measure of all things,” a sense of human power, pleasure and accomplishment, valued involvement

Mannerism

Transition between the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the baroque era, Art of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation focused on new ideas and how to express them

Manorialism

A system in which the nobility and monarchs held all political power and everyone else had power based upon only their income

Open-field system

Divided arable land available to a farming community into narrow strips that were assigned to the individual families of the community

Credit

Interest

Usury

Mercantilism

A system developed by various European states to guarantee a favorable balance of trade with other European nations or with their American colonies

Deism

Religious ideal in which God was a kind of cosmic clock maker who created a perfect universe in which He does not have to intervene

Scientific Revolution

The idea of studying the universe through scientific experimentation and observation emerged as the ultimate form of gathering knowledge, began to explain mysteries of the universe

Crop rotation

The planting of nitrogen-fixing crops, such as beans and grasses, in soil that had been used for other crops, two-crop near Mediterranean and three-crop in the North

Treaty of Tordesillas

Agreement of Spain and Portugal that established a line of demarcation in the Atlantic Ocean, Spain got everything to the West and Portugal got everything to the East

Triangle trade

Transantlantic trade route that connected Africa, Asia, and the Americas, primarily driven by the transatlantic slave trade

Columbian Exchange

Global exchange of valuable goods, flora, fauna, cultural practices, and disease.

North America to Europe and Africa: peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, corn, vanilla, cacao

Europe and Africa to North America: peaches, pears, sugar cane, honey bees, citrus fruits, onions, olives, turnips

Potosi and Zacatecas

Held mines that flooded the gold and silver markets

Encomienda

Spanish labor system where Spanish colonists were granted control over indigenous populations in the Americas, allowing them to demand tribute and labor in exchange for protection and religious instruction

Fall of Constantinople

Viceroyalty system

Middle passage

Medici family

Most famous dynasty of those merchants and bankers who used their vast wealth both to govern the city-states and to patronize illustrious creators in the arts

Leonardo da Vinci

Painter of The Last Supper, Mona Lisa, and many other masterpieces, an engineer who designed flying machines and tanks, a rival of Michelangelo, patrons were Lorenzo the Magnificent and Lodovico Sforza

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Great sculptures: the Pieta, David, and Moses, famous for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II, the greatest sculptor of hands, part of the Trinity of great 15th-century artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael

Petrarch

The first great humanist thinker and a scholar of Latin, known as the “Father of Humanism”, major works: Triumps and On the Solitary Life

Boccaccio

Friend of Petrach and a major contributor to the development of classic Italian prose, wrote Decameron, a classic bawdy tale of love in all its forms

Niccolo Machiavelli

Wrote The Prince, his application for employment with Lorenzo Medici, the most important work on political science for centuries

Desiderius Erasmus

Created new Greek and Latin translations of the New Testament, wrote The Praise of Folly and Handbook of a Christian Knight, enemy of Martin Luther, ally of Thomas More, wanted reform within the Catholic Church, leader in field of Renaissance learning in Northern Europe

Leon Battista Alberti

Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, etc.

Lorenzo Valla

Leading Italian Renaissance humanist most famous for On Pleasure, about the Epicurians

Thomas More

Author of Utopia, as lord chancellor of England, opposed Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church, beheaded for sticking to his principles

Johann Gutenberg

Popularized the printing press, first to make interchangeable movable type, had a major impact on the Renaissance and the knowledge that spread

Albrecht Durer

German Renaissance artist and printmaker, helped advance Renaissance art towards natural realism

Baldassare Castiglione

Author of The Book of the Courtier, the first book of etiquette for nobles

Donatello

Created the first freestanding bronze statue of a human, David, in Europe since antiquity

Filippo Brunelleschi

Created Il Duomo, the first Italian freestanding dome since antiquity, credited with bringing perspective to Renaissance artists

Raphael

Chief architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, master of painting in pieces such as The School of Athens, part of the Trinity of great 15th-century artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

Fuggers

Powerful banking family in Germany, similar to Medici’s

Marsiglio Fuinicio

One of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, Italian scholar and Catholic priest

Pico Della Mirandola

Leading humanist of the Italian Renaissance and author of Oration on the Dignity of Man

Sir Francis Bacon

English thinker who advocated the inductive or experimental method; observation of natural phenomena, accumulating data, experimenting to refine the data, drawing conclusions, formulating principles that are subject to continuing observation, and experimentation

Rene Descartes

French philosopher who wrote Discourse on Method, and argued that everything that is not validated by observation should be doubted but that his own existence was proven by the proposition “I think, therefore I am”

Nicolaus Copernicus

Revived ideas of a heliocentric (sun-centered) solar system from the ancients, shocked Europe when On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was published posthumously, but Galileo’s support of his ideas later caused a bigger controversy

Galileo Galilei

Made telescopic observations that validated Copernican theory, his advocacy of Copernicus that earned him condemnation by the Inquisition

Johannes Kepler

Proved Copernicus’ theories, German who plotted the elliptic orbits of the planets, thereby predicting their movements

Christopher Columbus

Sailed for the Spanish crown to find a direct route to Asia, encountered the Western Hemisphere, and reported its existence to other Europeans

Henry the Navigator

Leader of the Portuguese, supported expedition to the South Atlantic

Vasco de Gama

First European to reach India by sea, Portuguese explorer and nobleman

Hernan Cortez

Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that led to the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of Mexico under King of Castile

Francisco Pizarro

Spanish conquistador, best known for expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire

John Cabot

Italian explorer who sailed for England, where he claimed land for England in Canada

Bartholomew Dias

Led the first European expedition to sail around Africa’s southern coast, Portuguese explorer and navigator

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese explorer who led an exploration to the West Indies

Sir Francis Drake

Made second circumnavigation of the world, English explorer and privateer