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Intro to the Renaissance: The Late Middle Ages. c. 1300 – c. 1500. 1. Review of the High Middle Ages. Government : centralized? Economy: agriculture? Commerce? Role of the Church Values: among the lords, vassals, towards women, code of chivalry? Views of the Classical world: positive? .
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Intro to the Renaissance: The Late Middle Ages c. 1300 – c. 1500
1. Review of the High Middle Ages • Government : centralized? • Economy: agriculture? Commerce? • Role of the Church • Values: among the lords, vassals, towards women, code of chivalry? • Views of the Classical world: positive?
1. Review of the High Middle Ages • Government: • Economy: • Role of the Church: • Religious: • Political: • Cultural: decentralized (rival lords) agriculture (wealth: land) • salvation, fight against heresy • upper clergy: aristocrats, landowners • education, keepers of Classical knowledge
1. Review of the High Middle Ages • Values: • among the lords and vassals: • Code of chivalry • Warrior’s code: values honor, loyalty and courage • Towards women: • Courtly love: idealization of aristocratic women
1. Review of the High Middle Ages • Views of the Classical world: • Classical world is PAGAN in a world dominated by Christian values. • Some aspects of the Classical world are imitated but Christianized, others are suppressed.
2. The Late Middle Ages • 14th century: an age of change • Disastrous event? • Economy: commerce or agriculture? • Political situation? • Church?
2. The Late Middle Ages • The Black Death • First appeared in Italy in 1347 and spread to the rest of Europe. • It killed more than a third of Europe’s seventy million people.
2. The Late Middle Ages Consequences of the Black Death: • Depopulation • Migration to cities: revitalization of urban life • Opportunities for class mobility: demand of workers • Dislocation of social order and social clashes • Rising secularism • End of feudalism in many areas
2. The Late Middle Ages • Political situation: • Raising of constitutional monarchies (parliament). • Political and territorial consolidation of the French, English, and Spanish monarchies. • Creation of a national identity.
2. The Late Middle Ages • The Church: • Religious and cultural leadership in the High Middle Ages. • Great economic and political power • The raising of national monarchies diminishes the power of the Church
2. The Late Middle Ages • As rivals to other kings the Popes make political alliances. • Sell pardons (indulgences) and offices (simony) to increase their revenue. • Appoint family members to office.
2. The Late Middle Ages • Repression and religious intolerance: • Holy Inquisition suppressed “heretic” movements though torture and executions. • In Spain it was used to forcibly convert Muslims and Jews into Christianity.
2. The Late Middle Ages • Consequences • Lost of prestige for the institution. • Rise of anticlericalism/ secularism • Rise of devotional piety and mysticism: individual experience of God.
2. The Late Middle Ages • Literature: • New patrons and audiences: urban nobles and middle class. • Rise of literature in vernacular languages. • A revolutionary technological invention? • Invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg (1450): production and distribution of literature.
3. High vs. Late Middle Ages High Middle Ages • Rural society • Agriculture • Decentralized power • No national identity • Social stability • Predominance of religion in all aspects of life. Late Middle Ages • Increasingly urban • Raise of trade • Unified monarchies: France, England, Spain • National pride • Social unrest: middle class, Black Death • Raise of secularism
4. Terminology • Medieval? Middle Ages? • Renaissance?
2. Terminology • Medieval: (Lat) medium aevum middle age • Renaissance: Re-birth (of the Classical World) • (It: Rinascimento, <Lat nascor, natum (to be born), French: Renaissance) • From the point of view of the people of the Renaissance the Middle Ages is the period between the Classical World and its rebirth in their time.
