Unit 1: Europe’s Reawakening (1450-1750)

1. Unit 1: Europe’s Reawakening (1450-1750) 1. The Roots of the Renaissance

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic World – 240 BCE

4. The Roman Empire – 117 C.E.

5. The Byzantine Empire – 565 C.E.

6. The Byzantine Empire – 1025 C.E.

7. Ancient Greece • A collection of small city-states lacking political unity. • Because they were not united, the Greeks developed different political systems: - democracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, despotism, tyranny

8. Ancient Greece - Achievements • Political Science Socrates Plato – The RepublicAristotle - Politics

9. Ancient Greece - Achievements 2. History - Greeks were the first to write history as a subject distinct from myth and legend. Herodotus – “The Histories” Thucydides – “History of the Peloponnesian War”

10. Ancient Greece - Achievements 3. Architecture • Made use of exactly measured angles and rows of columns. • The classical “order” or set of carefully wrought pillars placed in a straight line at specific intervals, represented the impression of human reason.

11. Ancient Greece – Achievements – “The Parthenon”

12. Ancient Greece – Achievements – “The Parthenon”

13. Ancient Greece - Achievements 4. Literature and Drama • Homer’sIliad and Odessey – the most famous Greek epic poems. • The dramas of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides – based their plays on myths that presented moral issues. • Comedies that demonstrated a great degree of freedom of speech by criticizing public policy and making fun of politicians.

14. Ancient Greece - Achievements 5. Sports – the Olympics

15. Ancient Greece - Achievements 6. Medicine Hippocrates – “Father of Medicine”. Most responsible for freeing ancient medicine from superstition. • Instead of ascribing diseases to divine origin, he stressed their environmental causes. • “Hippocratic Oath”

16. Ancient Greece - Achievements 7. Philosophy and Science • Thales and Anaximander (6th century BC) concluded that the physical world was governed by laws of nature, not by the gods. • Pythagoras – started the study of Mathematics in Greece. Believed numbers/mathematics could explain the world. • Euclid – advanced geometry • Archimedes – calculated the value of pi. • Aristarchus argued the earth revolved around the sun in the early 3rd century BC. • Eratosthenes – accurately calculated the circumference of the earth.

17. Ancient Greek Values • Valued order, balance, symmetry, clarity and control. • Believed in rational approach to learning. Believed in natural explanations of what was at work in society and the universe. • Believed in logic over superstition. • Believed in the physical beauty and perfection of man.

18. Roman Achievements • Through their conquests they acted as a civilizing force and transferred the Greek achievements to previously backward civilizations. • The major Roman contributions were in organization, administration, government, and law.

19. Roman Achievements Roman Law – Because their empire was comprised of many different ethnicities all with their own customary laws, the Roman legal experts devised a “universal law” which united the empire under one system. • Derived from human nature and reason. • Roman law favored the state or the public interest rather than individual liberties.

20. Early Christianity • Early Christian teachings spread first among the poor – those people at the bottom of society whom the Greek glories and Roman splendors had passed over and enslaved and who had the least to delight in or to hope for in the existing world. • Greeks emphasized the glories of the mind / Christians emphasized the power of the soul. • Christianity taught that all worldly distinctions of greatness, beauty and brilliancy were in the last analysis, superficial. • The Greeks rejected and shrunk from disease as an imperfection and ugliness was something bad. / Christians saw a spiritual beauty in the plainest and the most unpleasant exterior.

21. Early Christianity cont…. • Christianity saw suffering as divine. • Greeks valued self-satisfaction with human accomplishments, the Christians taught humility in the face of the Almighty. • Christianity taught that there is only 1 true god, dispelling the multitude of Greek and Roman gods. (Monotheistic religions are the most violent because of their claim that their god is the only true one). • Christians rejected deifiying emperors (cult of Caesar). Separation of Church and state from the Christian perspective meant that temporal authority was not to think of itself in divine terms.

22. Feudalism: 5th – 12th century C.E. • The medieval “feudal system” was characterized by the absence of public authority and the exercise by local lords of administrative and judicial functions formerly (and later) performed by centralized governments; • general disorder and endemic conflict; • and the prevalence of bonds between lords and free dependents (vassals), which were forged by the lords' bestowal of property called “fiefs” and by their reception of homage from the vassals. These bonds entailed the rendering of services by vassals to their lords (military obligations, counsel, financial support) and the lords' obligation to protect and respect their vassals. • Serfs – agricultural workers that are “bound to the land” and could not leave the manor without the lord’s permission. The lord owed the serfs protection and in turn, they owed him part of their production. • Feudal production was largely AGRICULTURAL / the measure of wealth in feudal society was LAND OWNERSHIP.