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changing cultural traditions

introduction
from the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, towns were growing in many
countries of europe.

a distinct urban culture was developed.

townspeople began to consider themselves more civilised than rural people.

towns became centres of art and learning

venice

florence

rome

artists and writers were patronised by:

the rich

the aristocratic

the invention of printing made books and prints available to many people.

a sense of history was developed in europe.

people contrasted their ‘modern’ world with the ‘ancient’ one of greeks and romans.

religion came to be seen as something each individual should choose for themself.

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 the church’s earth-centric belief was overturned by scientists who began to understand
the solar system.

new geographic knowledge overturned the europe-centric belief that the mediterranean
sea was the centre of the world.

a vast amount of material on european history from the fourteenth century has been
preserved in archives, art galleries and museums.

documents

printed books

paintings

sculptures

buildings

textiles

from the nineteenth century, historians used the term renaissance to describe the cultural
changes of this period.

renaissance = rebirth

the historian who emphasised these most was a swiss scholar - jacob burckhardt of the
university of basle in switzerland.

in 1860, burckhardt wrote called ‘the civilisation of the renaissance in italy’.

called readers’ attention to literature, architecture and painting.

told a story of how a new ‘humanist’ culture had flowered in italy.

the revival of italian cities

after the fall of the western roman empire:

many of the towns that had been political and cultural centres in italy fell to ruin.

there was no unified government.

the pope in rome was not a strong political figure.

western europe - reshaped by feudal bonds and unified under the latin church.

eastern europe - unified under the byzantine empire.

further west - islam was creating a common civilization.

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 ports on the italian coast were revived due to expansion of trade between the byzantine
empire and the islamic countries.

12th century:

mongols opened up trade with china via the silk route.

trade with western european countries increased.

italian towns played a central role.

florence and venice were republics.

other towns were court-cities.

ruled by princes

in venice and genoa:

the clergy and feudal lords were not politically dominant

rich merchants and bankers actively participated in governing the city.

helped the idea of citizenship to strike root.

pride felt by the townspeople in being citizens dud not weaken even when they were
ruled by military despots.

universities and humanism

the earliest universities in europe had been set up in italian towns.

centres of legal studies in the 11th century:

university of padua

university of bologna

there was an increasing demand for lawyers and notaries to write and interpret rules and
written agreements of trade.

since commerce was the chief activity in the city.

law was studied in the context of earlier roman culture.

francesco petrarch represented this change.

to petrarch, antiquity was a distinctive civilisation which could be best understood

through the words of the ancient greeks and romans.

he stressed the importance of a close reading of ancient authors.

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 by the early 15th century, the term ‘humanist’ was used for masters who taught:

grammar

rhetoric

poetry

history

moral philosophy

humanities - derived from the latin word humanitas, meaning culture.

used many centuries ago by roman lawyer and essayist, cicero, a contemporary of
julius caesar.

humanities subjects:

not drawn from or connected to religion.

emphasised skills developed by individuals through discussion and debate.

florence had not made a mark as a centre of trade or learning till the 13th century but
things changed in the 15th century.

florence had come to be known because of:

dante alighieri - a layman who wrote on religious themes.

giotto - an artist who painted lifelike portraits.

renaissance man - term used to describe a person with many interests and skills.

since individuals who were well known at this time were scholar-diplomat-
theologian-artist combined in one.

the humanist view of history

humanists thought they were restoring ‘true civilisation’ after centuries of darkness.

they believed that a ‘dark age’ had set in after the collapse of the roman empire.

later scholars unquestioningly assumed that a new age had begun from the 14th century.

the term ‘middle ages’/ ‘medieval period’ was used for the millennium after the fall of
rome.

they argued that the church had such complete control over men's minds in the middle
ages that the learning of the greeks and romans had been blotted out.

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 the humanists used the term ‘modern’ for the period from the 15th century.

science and philosophy: the arab's contribution

in the 14th century, many scholars began to read translated works of greek writers like
plato and aristotle.

arab translators carefully preserved and translated ancient manuscripts.

plato - aflatun

aristotle - aristu

the greeks translated works of arabic and persian scholars for further transmission to
other europeans.

natural science

mathematics

astronomy

medicine

chemistry

ptolemy's almagest carries the arabic definite article ‘al’, which brings out the arabic
connection.

muslim writers regarded as men of wisdom in the italian world:

ibn sina - an arab physician and philosopher of bukhara in central asia.

al-razi - author of a medical encyclopedia.

ibn rushd - an arab philosopher of spain who tried to resolve the tension between
philosophical knowledge (faylasuf) and religious beliefs.

his method was adopted by christian thinkers.

humanist subjects slowly began to be introduced in schools in many european countries.

artists and realism

art, architecture and books were wonderfully effective in transmitting humanist ideas.

artists were inspired by studying the works of the past.

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 italian sculptors drew inspiration from the ruins of the figures of perfectly proportioned
men and women in rome.

in 1416, donatello broke new ground with his lifelike statues.

to study bone structure, artists went to the laboratories of medical schools.

andreas vesalius was the first to dissect a human body.

belgian

professor of medicine at the university of padua

beginning of modern physiology

italian art had been given a new quality.

a knowledge of geometry helped them understand perspective.

by noting the changing quality of light, their pictures acquired a 3d quality.

the use of oil as a medium for painting gave a greater richness of colours to
paintings.

there is an influence of chinese and persian art, made available to them by the mongols.

this new style of painting was called ‘realism’ and continued till the 19th century.

architecture
from 1417, the popes were politically stronger.

weakness caused by election of two rival popes since 1378 had ended.

they actively encouraged the study of rome’s history.

a new style in architecture was inspired by the carefully excavated ruins in rome.

revival of the imperial roman style - now called ‘classical’

popes, aristocrats and wealthy merchants employed architects who were familiar with
classical architecture.

artists and sculptors decorated buildings with paintings, sculptures and reliefs.

some individuals were skilled equally as painters, sculptors and architects.

michelangelo buonarroti:

painted a ceiling for the pope in the sistine chapel.

sculpted ‘the pieta’.

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 designed the dome of st peter’s church.

filippo brunelleschi:

designed the duomo of florence.

started his career as a sculptor.

from this time, artists were known individually and not as members of a group or a guild.

the first printed books

in the case of written word, what was written in italy travelled to other countries.

europeans were indebted to:

the chinese for printing technology.

mongol rulers for familiarising it to europeans.

earlier, texts existed in a few handwritten copies.

in 1455, 150 copies of the bible were printed in the workshop of johannes gutenberg, the
german who made the first printing press.

by 1500, many classical texts had been printed in italy.

mostly in latin

advantages of printed books:

students did not have to depend solely on lecture notes.

ideas, opinions and information moved more rapidly.

developed the reading habit among people.

helped spread humanist culture more rapidly across the alps.

a new concept of human beings

italians were strongly attracted to wealth, power and glory, but they were not necessarily
irreligious.

francesco barbaro wrote a pamphlet defending acquisition of wealth as a virtue.

humanist from venice

in ‘on pleasure’, lorenzo valla, criticised the christian injunction against pleasure.

there was also a concern at this time with good manners:

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 the way of speaking politely

the way of dressing correctly

skills to be learnt by a person of culture

humanism implied that individuals were capable of shaping their own lives through
means other than mere pursuit of power and money.

this ideal was closely tied with the belief that human nature was many sided.

went against the three orders of feudal society.

the aspirations of women

the new ideal of individuality and citizenship excluded women.

men from aristocratic families dominated public life and were the decision-makers in
their families.

educated their sons to take their place in the family business.

sent their younger sons to join the church.

dowries were invested in the family business but women had no say in how it was run.

marriages were intended to strengthen business alliances.

if an adequate dowry could not be arranged, daughters were sent to convents to live the
life of a nun.

the public role of women was limited and they were looked upon as keepers of the
households.

shopkeepers were often assisted by their wives in running their shops.

in families of merchants and bankers, wives looked after the businesses while male
members were away on work.

the early death of a merchant compelled the widow to perform a larger public role than
was the case in aristocratic families.

a few women were intellectually creative and sensitive about the importance of humanist
education.

cassandra fedele was one of the handful of women who questioned the idea that women
were incapable of achieving the qualities of humanist scholars.

she was known for her proficiency in greek and latin.

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 she was invited to give orations at the university of padua.

she criticised the republic for creating a highly limited definition of freedom that
favoured the desires of men over women.

the marchesa of mantua, isabella d’este, ruled the state while her husband was absent.

the court of mantua was famed for its intellectual brilliance.

debates within christianity

italian towns were linked to the world beyond through:

trade

travel

military conquest

diplomatic contacts

the new culture was admired and imitated by the educated and wealthy.

very few of the new ideas filtered down to the ordinary man.

in the 15th and early 16th centuries, many scholars in universities in northern europe
were attracted to humanist ideas.

unlike italy, north europe humanism attracted members of the church.

called on christians to practise religion in the way laid down in the ancient texts,
discarding unnecessary rituals.

christian humanists like thomas more in england and erasmus in holland felt that the
church had become an institution marked by greed.

the clergy sold ‘indulgences’, documents which apparently freed the buyer from the
burden of their sins.

christians realised that this was not permitted through printed translations of the
bible.

peasants began to rebel against the taxes imposed by the church.

princes found the interference of the church in the work of the state irritating.

humanists pointed out that the clergy’s claim to judicial and fiscal powers came from a
document called the ‘donation of constantine’.

issued by constantine, the first christian emperor.

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 not genuine

had been forged later

in 1517, a young german monk named martin luther launched a campaign against the
catholic church.

argued that a person did not need priests to establish contact with god.

asked his followers to have complete faith in god, for faith alone could guide them
to heaven.

this movement led the churches in germany and switzerland to break their connection
with the pope and the catholic church.

protestant reformation.

luther’s ideas were popularised in switzerland by:

ulrich zwingli

jean calvin

the reformers had greater popular appeal in towns.

the catholic church managed to retain its influence in rural areas.

other german reformers, like anabaptists, were even more radical:

they blended the idea of salvation with the end of all forms of social oppression.

they said that they were not expected to pay taxes as god had created them all as
equals.

they argued for the right to choose their priests.

luther did not support radicalism.

called upon german rulers to suppress the peasants’ rebellion.

radicalism survived and merged with the resistance of protestants in france.

eventually, in france, the catholic church allowed the protestants to worship as they
chose.

in england, the rulers ended their connection with the pope.

the king/queen was the head of the church from then.

the catholic church began to reform itself.

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 in spain and italy, churchmen emphasised the need for a simple life and service to
the poor.

in spain, ignatius loyola set up the society of jesus in 1540 in an attempt to combat
protestantism.

his followers called jesuits.

their mission was to serve the poor and widen their knowledge of other cultures.

the copernican revolution

the turning point in european science came with the work of copernicus.

christians had believed that the heavy burden of sins made earth immobile.

believed that the earth stood at the centre of the universe around which the celestial
planets moved.

copernicus asserted that the planets rotate around the sun.

he was afraid of the possible reaction to his theory by traditionalist clergymen.

he did not want his manuscript, de revolutionibus (the rotation) to be printed.

on his deathbed, he gave it to his follower joachim rheticus.

more than half a century later, the difference between heaven and earth was bridged
through the writings of astronomers like:

johannes kepler

galileo galilei

the theory of the earth as part of a sun-centred system was made popular by kepler’s
‘cosmographical mystery’.

demonstrated that the planets moved around the sun in ellipses.

galileo confirmed the notion of the dynamic world in his work ‘the motion’.

the scientific revolution reached its climax with isaac newton’s theory of gravitation.

reading the universe

once the scientists had shown the way, experiments and investigations into physics,
chemistry and biology expanded rapidly.

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 historians were to label this new approach to the knowledge of man and nature the
scientific revolution.

in the minds of sceptics and non-believers, god was replaced by nature as the source of
creation.

those who retained their faith in god started speaking of a distant god who did not
directly regulate the act of living in the material world.

such ideas were popularised by scientific societies that established a new scientific
culture in the public domain.

the paris academy established in 1670

the royal society in london formed in 1662

conclusion
recent writers, like peter burke of england, have suggested that burckhardt was
exaggerating the sharp difference between the middle ages and the modern period.

the term ‘renaissance’ implies that:

the greek and roman civilisations were reborn at this time.

the scholars and artists of this period substituted the pre-christian world-view for the
christian one.

scholars in earlier centuries had been familiar with greek and roman culture.

religion continued to be a very important part of people’s lives.

many elements associated with the renaissance in italy can be traced back to the 12th and
13th centuries.

some historians suggest that there had been similar artistic and literary bloomings in
france in the 9th century.

technologies and skills in asia had moved far ahead of what the greeks and romans had
known.

the expansion of islam and the mongol conquests had linked asia and north africa with
europe.

the europeans learnt from:

india

arabia

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 iran

central asia

china

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