1350-1550

LEARNING IN EUROPE

Recap: In Middle Ages, learning was focused on the Bible, education was controlled by the Church, there wasn’t a place for the creation of new ideas

ITALY

In Northern Italy, there were city-states ruled by princes: Florence

FLORENCE

Medici family dominated as the rulers and wealthiest people

• Medici weren’t royalty nor nobility; they were middle-class families and came to wealth with modern banking; they charged interest which was first considered a sin (against helping your neighbor)

• Medici’s represented new wealth, new standard of living, ideas on personal behaviour, politics, etc.

Francesco Petrarca

(1304 - 1374) Italy

He was at first part of the clergy but because he lived in Florence, he was able to read other writings not biblically based, and he brought about secular learning;

he wasn’t against Biblical learning but __encouraged secular learnin__g, like Plato, Aristotle

• Petrarca gave up his life and focused on teaching youth to start reading other things than Bible, and the Church didn’t like it and was in a conflict with the Church

• Petrarca claimed that people don’t have to just focus on Biblical studies but also other ones to enrich our lives

• People at first thought that to study other things than Bible was not the path to go to heaven - he is a stepping stone for Renaissance

Christine de Pizan

(1364 – c. 1430) Italy, France

• grew up in Venice, learned from her older brother how to read, and starts to read a lot, her dad is asked to be a doctor to the King of France and she becomes part of the French court and writes a lot about women’s part in society

• her main argument is: Women had the equal intellect to men about educational and political opinions; she brought about these ideas not really bringing about change though

Lorenzo Valla

(1407 - 1457) Italy

Valla was inspired by Petrarca and studied the classics.

• He is going to annoy the Church, who in Middle Ages argued that they should have the power over politics and other secular branches because Constantin in the 300s had said that the Pope should have power over it

• Valla showed that the document that stated this was fake because the words couldn’t have been used then = trying to argue for secular learning and its use in providing truth over religious authority (he wasn’t trying to prove religion wrong, just the corruption within Church)

Leon Battista Alberti

(1404-1472) Italy

• a great architect

• known for Greek and Roman styles of buildings

• humanism in architecture

• Alberti inspired by Petrarca

SUMMARY

💡 The Church was in control of the economy in the Middle Ages, but because the Medici’s and their banking which brought wealth to Florence and this wealth exposed people to new-old ideas of greeks, literacy grew, and then we have people like Petrarca who inspired people, Christine de Pizan, Lorenzo Valla, Leon Battista Alberti.

1453:

The Byzantine empire was conquered by the Turks

This sent a lot of scholars out of the Byzantine Empire to Italian Peninsula. Byzantine empire was known as the world’s library, there was a lot of documents from ancient Greece; one of the scholars brings Plato to Italy and Lorenzo de Medici eventually wants that Plato’s works are translated to Latin.

He pays Marsilio Ficino which brings Neoplatonism - wants to bring back Plato’s teachings but reconciles with Christianity in Renaissance.

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

(1463 - 1494) Italy

• Neoplatonist

• he writes a series of arguments called 900 Theses - debated Neoplatonist ideas in Rome = Church banned and later required them to be burned

• In the intro to that theses he argues why humans are different from other beings on this planet and our connection to God and our human achievement: essentially individualism (the individual pursuit of knowledge for each person and what each person should aspire to be)

• he wasn’t part of the Church and yet was telling people what God wanted - Clergy didn’t like that

Baldassare Castiglione

(1478 - 1529) Italy, Spain

• wrote a book, The Book of the Courtier, a manual, kind of a ==guide for princes or rulers to better find a good help for the government === talks about how men (to be gentlemen) and women (to just be pretty) should behave

• Highlights the individual character of a person

Niccolò Machiavelli

(1469 - 1527) Italy

• The Prince (1532) = he divides politics from religion as the first philosopher; in his book he says that you cannot maintain Christian values and at the same time be a good politician (if the authority lies, they do it for a reason; whatever a politician does is valid as they do it for a reason and the people should always accept it)