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Black Death - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Black_Death

Black Death
The Black Death, also
known as the Great
Plague, the Black
Plague, or the Plague,
was one of the most
devastating pandemics in
human history, resulting in
the deaths of an estimated
75 to 200 million people in
Eurasia and peaking in
Europe from 1347 to
1351.[1][2][3] The bacterium
Yersinia pestis, which
results in several forms of
plague, is believed to have
been the cause.[4] The Black
Death was the first major
European outbreak of
plague, and the second
plague pandemic.[5] The
plague created a number of
religious, social and Spread of the Black Death in Europe and the Near East (1346–1353)
economic upheavals which
had profound effects on the
course of European history.

The Black Death is thought to have originated in the dry plains of Central Asia, where it travelled along the Silk Road,
reaching Crimea by 1343.[6] From there, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that traveled on all
merchant ships, spreading throughout the Mediterranean Basin and Europe.

The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.[7] In total, the plague may have
reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century.[8] It took
200 years for the world population to recover to its previous level.[9][10] The plague recurred as outbreaks in Europe
until the 19th century.

Contents
Chronology
Origins of the disease

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European outbreak
Middle Eastern outbreak
Signs and symptoms
Causes
DNA evidence
Alternative explanations
Consequences
Death toll
Persecutions
Recurrence
Third plague pandemic
Names
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Chronology

Origins of the disease


The plague disease, caused by Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground
rodents, including marmots, in various areas including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, North India and
Uganda.[11] Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried out grasslands to more populated areas,
spreading the disease.[12] Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions
referring to plague and are thought by many epidemiologists to mark the outbreak of the epidemic, from which it could
easily have spread to China and India.[13] In October 2010, medical geneticists suggested that all three of the great
waves of the plague originated in China.[14]

The 13th-century Mongol conquest of China caused a decline in farming and trading. However, economic recovery had
been observed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the 1330s, a large number of natural disasters and plagues
led to widespread famine, starting in 1331, with a deadly plague arriving soon after.[15] Epidemics that may have
included plague killed an estimated 25 million Chinese and other Asians during the fifteen years before it reached
Constantinople in 1347.[16][17]

The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders or it could have come via ship.[18]
By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary,
Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies".[19]

Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from the port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in
1347.[20][21] During a protracted siege of the city by the Mongol army under Jani Beg, whose army was suffering from
the disease, the army catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants. The Genoese
traders fled, taking the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, whence it spread north.[22] Whether or not
this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to

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the severity of the Black Death.

European outbreak
There appear to have been several introductions into
The seventh year after it began, it came to England
Europe. The plague reached Sicily in October 1347, and first began in the towns and ports joining on the
carried by twelve Genoese galleys,[23] and rapidly seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other
spread all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached counties, it made the country quite void of
inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.
Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the
... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to
outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry
Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all
point to northern Italy. Towards the end of January,
England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth
one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in
person of any sort was left alive.
Marseille.[24]
Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae
From Italy, the disease spread northwest across
Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England
by June 1348, then turned and spread east and north
through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship
landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland.[25] Finally it spread to northwestern Russia in
1351. The plague was somewhat less common in parts of Europe that had smaller trade relations with their neighbours,
including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated alpine
villages throughout the continent.[26][27]

Modern researchers do not think that the plague ever became endemic in Europe or its rat population. The disease
repeatedly wiped out the rodent carriers so that the fleas died out until a new outbreak from Central Asia repeated the
process. The outbreaks have been shown to occur roughly 15 years after a warmer and wetter period in areas where
plague is endemic in other species such as gerbils.[28][29]

Middle Eastern outbreak


The plague struck various regions in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and
permanent change in both economic and social structures. It spread from China with the Mongols to a trading post in
Crimea, called Kaffa, controlled by the Republic of Genoa. As infected rodents infected new rodents, the disease spread
across the region, entering also from southern Russia. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt,
through the port's trade with Constantinople, and ports on the Black Sea. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward
to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Ashkelon, Acre,
Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled
to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey.[30]

Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive
epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease.

Signs and symptoms


Contemporary accounts of the plague are often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the
appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened.[31]

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Boccaccio's description:

In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the


emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some
of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg ...
From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo
soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions
indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to
A hand showing how acral gangrene
change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many
of the fingers due to bubonic plague
cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and causes the skin and flesh to die and
large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been turn black
and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such
also were these spots on whomsoever they showed
themselves.[32]

The only medical detail that is questionable in Boccaccio's description is


that the gavocciolo was an "infallible token of approaching death", as, if the
bubo discharges, recovery is possible.[33]

This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died
two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes,[34] An inguinal bubo on the upper thigh
which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another of a person infected with bubonic
potential sign of the plague. plague. Swollen lymph glands
(buboes) often occur in the neck,
Some accounts, like that of Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal armpit and groin (inguinal) regions
Colonna died of the plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease that of plague victims.

infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems[31] and is identified with
pneumonic plague.

It is said that the plague takes three forms. In the first people suffer an infection of the lungs, which leads
to breathing difficulties. Whoever has this corruption or contamination to any extent cannot escape but
will die within two days. Another form ... in which boils erupt under the armpits, ... a third form in which
people of both sexes are attacked in the groin.[35]

Causes
Medical knowledge had stagnated during the Middle Ages. The most authoritative account at the time came from the
medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France that blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three
planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air".[37] This report became the first and most widely circulated of
a series of plague tracts that sought to give advice to sufferers. That the plague was caused by bad air became the most
widely accepted theory. Today, this is known as the miasma theory. The word plague had no special significance at this
time, and only the recurrence of outbreaks during the Middle Ages gave it the name that has become the medical term.

The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century; until then it was common that the streets
were filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding. A transmissible disease will spread

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easily in such conditions. One development


as a result of the Black Death was the
establishment of the idea of quarantine in
Dubrovnik in 1377 after continuing
outbreaks.[38]

The dominant explanation for the Black


Death is the plague theory, which attributes
The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla
the outbreak to Yersinia pestis, also
cheopis) engorged with blood. This cheopis) infected with the
responsible for an epidemic that began in Yersinia pestis bacterium
species of flea is the primary vector
southern China in 1865, eventually which appears as a dark
for the transmission of Yersinia
spreading to India. The investigation of the pestis, the organism responsible mass in the gut. The foregut
pathogen that caused the 19th-century for bubonic plague in most plague (proventriculus) of this flea is
plague was begun by teams of scientists who epidemics. Both male and female blocked by a Y. pestis biofilm;
fleas feed on blood and can when the flea attempts to
visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom
transmit the infection. feed on an uninfected host Y.
was the French-Swiss bacteriologist
pestis is regurgitated into the
Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen wound, causing infection.
was named.[39] The mechanism by which Y.
pestis was usually transmitted was
established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the
bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis
several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage results in
starvation and aggressive feeding behaviour by the fleas, which repeatedly
attempt to clear their blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of
plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host. The
bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of
rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease
endemic, and a second that lack resistance. When the second population
dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a
human epidemic.[39]
Yersinia pestis (200x magnification),
The historian Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in the bacterium which causes bubonic
plague[36]
1893[40] and suggested that "it would appear to be some form of the
ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". He was able to adopt the
epidemiology of the bubonic plague for the Black Death for the second edition in 1908, implicating rats and fleas in the
process, and his interpretation was widely accepted for other ancient and medieval epidemics, such as the Justinian
plague that was prevalent in the Eastern Roman Empire from 541 to 700 CE.[39]

An estimate of the mortality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%,
although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.[41] Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C
(100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated,
of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days.[42] Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate
of 90 to 95 percent. Symptoms include fever, cough, and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum
becomes free-flowing and bright red. Septicemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate
near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular
coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that

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there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.[43]

A number of alternative theories – implicating other diseases in the Black Death pandemic – have also been proposed
by some modern scientists (see below – "Alternative Explanations").

DNA evidence
In October 2010, the open-access scientific journal PLoS Pathogens
published a paper by a multinational team who undertook a new
investigation into the role of Yersinia pestis in the Black Death following
the disputed identification by Drancourt and Raoult in 1998. They assessed
the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from
mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated
archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The
authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from Skeletons in a mass grave from
the south of France and Germany,[44] "ends the debate about the cause of 1720–1721 in Martigues, France,
the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the yielded molecular evidence of the
causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the orientalis strain of Yersinia pestis,
the organism responsible for
Middle Ages".[45]
bubonic plague. The second
The study also found that there were two previously unknown but related pandemic of bubonic plague was
active in Europe from 1347, the
clades (genetic branches) of the Y. pestis genome associated with medieval
beginning of the Black Death, until
mass graves. These clades (which are thought to be extinct) were found to
1750.
be ancestral to modern isolates of the modern Y. pestis strains Y. p.
orientalis and Y. p. medievalis, suggesting the plague may have entered
Europe in two waves. Surveys of plague pit remains in France and England indicate the first variant entered Europe
through the port of Marseille around November 1347 and spread through France over the next two years, eventually
reaching England in the spring of 1349, where it spread through the country in three epidemics. Surveys of plague pit
remains from the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom showed the Y. pestis genotype responsible for the pandemic that
spread through the Low Countries from 1350 differed from that found in Britain and France, implying Bergen op Zoom
(and possibly other parts of the southern Netherlands) was not directly infected from England or France in 1349 and
suggesting a second wave of plague, different from those in Britain and France, may have been carried to the Low
Countries from Norway, the Hanseatic cities or another site.[45]

The results of the Haensch study have since been confirmed and amended. Based on genetic evidence derived from
Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England, Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black
Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist."[46] A study published in
Nature in October 2011 sequenced the genome of Y. pestis from plague victims and indicated that the strain that
caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of the disease.[47]

DNA taken from 25 skeletons from the 14th century found in London have shown the plague is a strain of Y. pestis that
is almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013.[48][49]

Alternative explanations

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The plague theory was first significantly challenged by the work of British bacteriologist J. F. D. Shrewsbury in 1970,
who noted that the reported rates of mortality in rural areas during the 14th-century pandemic were inconsistent with
the modern bubonic plague, leading him to conclude that contemporary accounts were exaggerations.[39] In 1984,
zoologist Graham Twigg produced the first major work to challenge the bubonic plague theory directly, and his doubts
about the identity of the Black Death have been taken up by a number of authors, including Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. (2002
and 2013), David Herlihy (1997), and Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (2001).[39]

It is recognised that an epidemiological account of the plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but
researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of
the plague in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was
undertaken between the time of publication of the Domesday Book and the year 1377.[50] Estimates of plague victims
are usually extrapolated from figures from the clergy.

In addition to arguing that the rat population was insufficient to account for a bubonic plague pandemic, sceptics of the
bubonic plague theory point out that the symptoms of the Black Death are not unique (and arguably in some accounts
may differ from bubonic plague); that transference via fleas in goods was likely to be of marginal significance; and that
the DNA results may be flawed and might not have been repeated elsewhere or were not replicable at all, despite
extensive samples from other mass graves.[39] Other arguments include the lack of accounts of the death of rats before
outbreaks of plague between the 14th and 17th centuries; temperatures that are too cold in northern Europe for the
survival of fleas; that, despite primitive transport systems, the spread of the Black Death was much faster than that of
modern bubonic plague; that mortality rates of the Black Death appear to be very high; that, while modern bubonic
plague is largely endemic as a rural disease, the Black Death indiscriminately struck urban and rural areas; and that
the pattern of the Black Death, with major outbreaks in the same areas separated by 5 to 15 years, differs from modern
bubonic plague—which often becomes endemic for decades with annual flare-ups.[39]

McCormick has suggested that earlier archaeologists were simply not interested in the "laborious" processes needed to
discover rat remains.[51] Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model,
black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an
epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities.[52] Similarly, Green
has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved
in the transmission of plague.[53]

A variety of alternatives to Y. pestis have been put forward. Twigg suggested


that the cause was a form of anthrax, and Norman Cantor thought it may
have been a combination of anthrax and other pandemics. Scott and
Duncan have argued that the pandemic was a form of infectious disease
that they characterise as hemorrhagic plague similar to Ebola.
Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence
of the extinction of a large number of rats in the archaeological record of
the medieval waterfront in London and that the plague spread too quickly
Anthrax skin lesion
to support the thesis that Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues
that transmission must have been person to person.[54][55] This theory is
supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and human fleas during the
second plague pandemic.[56]

However, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance.[39] Many scholars arguing for Y. pestis as

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the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic
plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection,
others point to additional septicemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the
lungs before the rest of the body) forms of the plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the
seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms.[31] In 2014, Public Health
England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as
of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis.[48]

Consequences

Death toll
There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied
widely by locality. In urban centres, the greater the population
before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of
abnormal mortality.[57] It killed some 75 to 200 million people
in Eurasia.[1][58][3] According to medieval historian Philip
Daileader in 2007:

The trend of recent research is pointing to a


figure more like 45–50% of the European
Citizens of Tournai bury plague victims
population dying during a four-year period. There
is a fair amount of geographic variation. In
Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the
south of France and Spain, where plague ran for
about four years consecutively, it was probably
closer to 75–80% of the population. In Germany
and England ... it was probably closer to 20%.[59]

A death rate as high as 60% in Europe has been suggested by Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow:

Detailed study of the mortality data available points to two conspicuous features in relation to the
mortality caused by the Black Death: namely the extreme level of mortality caused by the Black Death,
and the remarkable similarity or consistency of the level of mortality, from Spain in southern Europe to
England in north-western Europe. The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely
that the Black Death swept away around 60 per cent of Europe's population. It is generally assumed that
the size of Europe's population at the time was around 80 million. This implies that around 50 million
people died in the Black Death.[60]

The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death
rate of about a third.[61] The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population.[62] Half of Paris's population of
100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338
down to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished,[63] and a similar percentage

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of Londoners may have died from the disease as well.[48] In London approximately 62,000 people died between 1346
and 1353.[12] While contemporary reports account of mass burial pits being created in response to the large numbers of
dead, recent scientific investigations of a burial pit in Central London found well-preserved individuals to be buried in
isolated, evenly spaced graves, suggesting at least some pre-planning and Christian burials at this time.[64] Before
1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450.[65] In 1348,
the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins,
about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as
50% of the population to die.[39] The disease bypassed some areas, and the most isolated areas were less vulnerable to
contagion. Monks and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for victims of the Black Death.[66]

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black
Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars,
foreigners, beggars, pilgrims",[67] lepers,[67][68] and Romani, thinking that
they were to blame for the crisis. Lepers, and other individuals with skin
diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated
throughout Europe.

Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans


turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by
Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.[69] The governments
Inspired by the Black Death, The
of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its
Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre,
cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of
an allegory on the universality of
diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed the death, was a common painting motif
epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins. This belief led to the idea in the late medieval period.
that the cure to the disease was to win God's forgiveness.[70]

There were many attacks against Jewish communities.[71] In February 1349, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000
Jews.[71] In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150
smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.[72] These massacres eventually died out in Western Europe, only to
continue on in Eastern Europe. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm
welcome from King Casimir the Great.[73]

Recurrence
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[74]
According to Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671.[75] The
Second Pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–1363; 1374; 1400; 1438–1439; 1456–1457;
1464–1466; 1481–1485; 1500–1503; 1518–1531; 1544–1548; 1563–1566; 1573–1588; 1596–1599; 1602–1611;
1623–1640; 1644–1654; and 1664–1667. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of
Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century).[76] According to Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost
a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31."[77]

In England, in the absence of census figures, historians propose a range of pre-incident population figures from as high
as 7 million to as low as 4 million in 1300,[78] and a post-incident population figure as low as 2 million.[79] By the end

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of 1350, the Black Death subsided, but it never really died out in England. Over the
next few hundred years, further outbreaks occurred in 1361–1362, 1369, 1379–1383,
1389–1393, and throughout the first half of the 15th century.[80] An outbreak in
1471 took as much as 10–15% of the population, while the death rate of the plague of
1479–1480 could have been as high as 20%.[81] The most general outbreaks in
Tudor and Stuart England seem to have begun in 1498, 1535, 1543, 1563, 1589,
1603, 1625, and 1636, and ended with the Great Plague of London in 1665.[82]

In 1466, perhaps 40,000 people died of


the plague in Paris.[83] During the 16th
and 17th centuries, the plague was
present in Paris around 30 per cent of
the time.[84] The Black Death ravaged The Great Plague of
Europe for three years before it London, in 1665, killed up
continued on into Russia, where the to 100,000 people.
disease was present somewhere in the
country 25 times between 1350 and
Plague Riot in Moscow in 1771:
1490.[85] Plague epidemics ravaged London in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625,
during the course of the city's
plague, between 50,000 and 1636, and 1665,[86] reducing its population by 10 to 30% during those
100,000 people died, 17–33% of its years.[87] Over 10% of Amsterdam's population died in 1623–1625, and
population. again in 1635–1636, 1655, and 1664.[88] Plague occurred in Venice 22 times
between 1361 and 1528.[89] The plague of 1576–1577 killed 50,000 in
Venice, almost a third of the population.[90] Late outbreaks in central
Europe included the Italian Plague of 1629–1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty Years'
War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. Over 60% of Norway's population died in 1348–1350.[91] The last plague
outbreak ravaged Oslo in 1654.[92]

In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims in Italy, or about 14% of the
population.[93] In 1656, the plague killed about half of Naples' 300,000 inhabitants.[94] More than 1.25 million deaths
resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.[95] The plague of 1649 probably reduced the
population of Seville by half.[96] In 1709–1713, a plague epidemic that followed the Great Northern War (1700–1721,
Sweden v. Russia and allies)[97] killed about 100,000 in Sweden,[98] and 300,000 in Prussia.[96] The plague killed two-
thirds of the inhabitants of Helsinki,[99] and claimed a third of Stockholm's population.[100] Europe's last major
epidemic occurred in 1720 in Marseille.[91]

The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[101] Plague was
present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year
between 1500 and 1850.[102] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North
Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–1621, and
again in 1654–1657, 1665, 1691, and 1740–1742.[103] Plague remained a
major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th
century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics
were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751
Worldwide distribution of plague-
and 1800.[104] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague,
infected animals, 1998
and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.[105]

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Third plague pandemic


The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents
and killing 10 million people in India alone.[106] Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted
in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which
undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia
pestis.[107]

The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak
in 1907–1908.[108][109][110]

Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. The plague bacterium
could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the
bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995.[111] A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November
2014.[112] In October 2017 the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and
infecting thousands.[113]

Names
The phrase "black death" (mors nigra) was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino or Couvin, a Belgian astronomer, who
wrote the poem "On the Judgment of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which
attributes the plague to a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.[114] In 1908, Gasquet claimed that use of the name atra
mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and
from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocatibant).[115] The name spread
through Scandinavia and then Germany, gradually becoming attached to the mid 14th-century epidemic as a proper
name.[116] However, atra mors is used to refer to a pestilential fever (febris pestilentialis) already in the 12th-century
On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (Latin: De signis et sinthomatibus egritudinum) by French physician Gilles
de Corbeil.[117] In English, the term was first used in 1755.[118] Writers contemporary with the plague described the
event as "great plague"[69] or "great pestilence".[119]

See also
Black Death portal
Plague of Justinian
Black Death (film)
Black Death in England
CCR5, a human gene hypothesised to be associated with the plague
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Cronaca fiorentina (Chronicle of Florence); a literary history of the plague, and of Florence up to 1386, by
Baldassarre Bonaiuti
Danse Macabre
Death
Doomsday Book (novel), a science fiction novel written by Connie Willis
Four thieves vinegar; a popular French legend saying this recipe provided immunity to the plague
Geisslerlieder
Globalization and disease
Last outbreak of bubonic plague in England (1906–1918)

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Plague doctor
Plague doctor costume
Ring a Ring o' Roses
The Seventh Seal, a film directed by Ingmar Bergman
Timeline of plague

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498. doi:10.1111/1469-0691.12706 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1469-0691.12706). Retrieved 2017-01-12. "In the
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Amberley Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 1-84868-087-2.
75. J. N. Hays (1998). "The burdens of disease: epidemics and human response in western history.
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78. The Black Death in Egypt and England: A Comparative Study (https://web.archive.org/web/20080504134636/http:
//eh.net/bookreviews/library/1053), Stuart J. Borsch, Austin: University of Texas
79. Secondary sources such as the Cambridge History of Medieval England often contain discussions of methodology
in reaching these figures that are necessary reading for anyone wishing to understand this controversial episode
in more detail.
80. "BBC – History – Black Death" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_09.shtml). BBC. p. 131.
Retrieved 3 November 2008.
81. Gottfried, Robert S. (1983). The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. London: Hale.
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83. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Plague" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica
/Plague). Encyclopædia Britannica. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 694.
84. Vanessa Harding (2002). "The dead and the living in Paris and London, 1500–1670. (https://books.google.com
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85. Byrne 2004, p. 62.
86. Vanessa Harding (2002). "The dead and the living in Paris and London, 1500–1670. (https://books.google.com
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87. "Plague in London: spatial and temporal aspects of mortality (http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/epitwig.html)", J. A. I.
Champion, Epidemic Disease in London, Centre for Metropolitan History Working Papers Series, No. 1 (1993).
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89. "Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(https://books.google.com/books?id=2DlGaWQBDQEC&pg=PA151)". Brian Pullan. (2006). p. 151.
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90. "Medicine and society in early modern Europe (https://books.google.com/books?id=fQxAkrbksTEC&pg=PA41)".


Mary Lindemann (1999). Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 0-521-42354-6.
91. Harald Aastorp (1 August 2004). "Svartedauden enda verre enn antatt" (https://web.archive.org
/web/20080331003935/http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2004/juli/1090833676.68). Forskning.no. Archived from the
original (http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2004/juli/1090833676.68) on 31 March 2008. Retrieved 3 January 2009.
92. Øivind Larsen. "DNMS.NO : Michael: 2005 : 03/2005 : Book review: Black Death and hard facts"
(http://www.dnms.no/index.php?kat_id=16&art_id=87). Dnms.no. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
93. Karl Julius Beloch, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, volume 3, pp. 359–60.
94. "Naples in the 1600s" (https://web.archive.org/web/20081010145720/http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples
/goldenage.htm). Faculty.ed.umuc.edu. Archived from the original (http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples
/goldenage.htm) on 10 October 2008. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
95. The Seventeenth-Century Decline (http://libro.uca.edu/payne1/payne15.htm), S. G. Payne, A History of Spain and
Portugal
96. "Armies of pestilence: the effects of pandemics on history (https://books.google.com/books?id=djPWGnvBm08C&
pg=PA72)". James Clarke & Co. (2004). p. 72. ISBN 0-227-17240-X
97. "Kathy McDonough, Empire of Poland" (https://web.archive.org/web/20081011134718/http://depts.washington.edu
/baltic/papers/poland.htm). Depts.washington.edu. Archived from the original (http://depts.washington.edu/baltic
/papers/poland.htm) on 11 October 2008. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
98. "Bubonic plague in early modern Russia: public health and urban disaster (https://books.google.com
/books?id=IcljzNyv4EgC&pg=PA21)". John T. Alexander (2002). Oxford University Press US. p. 21.
ISBN 0-19-515818-0.
99. "Ruttopuisto – Plague Park" (https://web.archive.org/web/20080411112934/http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories
/view/409531/). Tabblo.com. Archived from the original (http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/409531/) on 11
April 2008. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
100. "Stockholm: A Cultural History (https://books.google.com/books?id=sB7rtxDpeB4C&pg=PA9)". Tony Griffiths
(2009). Oxford University Press US. p. 9. ISBN 0-19-538638-8.
101. "The Islamic World to 1600: The Mongol Invasions (The Black Death)" (https://web.archive.org
/web/20090721033845/http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/mongols/blackDeath.html). Ucalgary.ca.
Archived from the original (https://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/mongols/blackDeath.html) on 21
July 2009. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
102. Byrne, Joseph Patrick (2008). Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues: A–M
(https://books.google.com/books?id=5Pvi-ksuKFIC&pg=PA519). ABC-CLIO. p. 519. ISBN 978-0-313-34102-1.
103. "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800
(https://books.google.com/books?id=5q9zcB3JS40C&pg=PA18)". Robert Davis (2004). ISBN 1-4039-4551-9.
104. Université de Strasbourg. Institut de turcologie, Université de Strasbourg. Institut d'études turques, Association
pour le développement des études turques. (1998). Turcica. Éditions Klincksieck. p. 198.
105. "The Fertile Crescent, 1800–1914: a documentary economic history (https://books.google.com
/books?id=F2TGkO7G43oC&pg=PA99)". Charles Philip Issawi (1988). Oxford University Press US. p. 99.
ISBN 0-19-504951-9.
106. Infectious Diseases: Plague Through History (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5890/773),
sciencemag.org
107. Bubonic Plague comes to Sydney in 1900 (http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/museum/mwmuseum/index.php
/Bubonic_Plague_comes_to_Sydney_in_1900), University of Sydney, Sydney Medical School
108. Chase, Marilyn (2004). The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco. Random House Digital.
ISBN 978-0-375-75708-2.
109. Echenberg, Myron (2007). Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague: 1894–1901. Sacramento:
New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-2232-9.

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110. Kraut, Alan M. (1995). Silent travelers: germs, genes, and the "immigrant menace" (https://books.google.com
/books?id=EIqwDj9umzYC). JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5096-7.
111. Drug-resistant plague a 'major threat', say scientists (http://www.scidev.net/en/health/antibiotic-resistance
/news/drugresistant-plague-a-major-threat-say-scient.html), SciDev.Net.
112. "Plague – Madagascar" (http://www.who.int/csr/don/21-november-2014-plague/en/). World Health Organisation.
21 November 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
113. Wexler, Alexandra; Antoy, Amir (16 November 2017). "Madagascar Wrestles With Worst Outbreak of Plague in
Half a Century" (https://www.wsj.com/articles/madagascar-wrestles-with-worst-outbreak-of-plague-in-half-
a-century-1510788541). Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0099-9660).
Retrieved 17 November 2017.
114.
On page 22 of the manuscript in Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9078277z/f25.image), Simon
mentions the phrase "mors nigra" (Black Death): "Cum rex finisset oracula judiciorum / Mors nigra surrexit, et
gentes reddidit illi;" (When the king ended the oracles of judgment / Black Death arose, and the nations
surrendered to him;).
A more legible copy of the poem appears in: Emile Littré (1841) "Opuscule relatif à la peste de 1348, composé
par un contemporain" (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article
/bec_0373-6237_1841_num_2_1_451584?_Prescripts_Search_tabs1=standard&) (Work concerning the
plague of 1348, composed by a contemporary), Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, 2 (2) : 201–243; see
especially p. 228.
See also: Joseph Patrick Byrne, The Black Death (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 1.
(https://books.google.com/books?id=yw3HmjRvVQMC&pg=PA1)
115. Francis Aidan Gasquet, The Black Death of 1348 and 1349, 2nd ed. (London, England: George Bell and Sons,
1908), p. 7. (https://books.google.com/books?id=5wMAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA7) Johan Isaksson Pontanus, Rerum
Danicarum Historia ... (Amsterdam (Netherlands): Johann Jansson, 1631), p. 476. (https://books.google.com
/books?id=HaExAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA476)
116. The German physician Justus Hecker (1795–1850) cited the phrase in Icelandic (Svarti Dauði), Danish (den sorte
Dod), etc. See: J. F. C. Hecker, Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert [The Black Death in the Fourteenth
Century] (Berlin, (Germany): Friedr. Aug. Herbig, 1832), page 3. (https://books.google.com
/books?id=LhoqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3)
117. See: Stephen d'Irsay (May 1926) "Notes to the origin of the expression: atra mors," Isis, 8 (2): 328–332.
118. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, s.v. (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/280254)
119. John of Fordun's Scotichronicon ("there was a great pestilence and mortality of men") Horrox, Rosemary (1994).
Black Death (https://books.google.com/books?id=1O_PX2wVD0sC&pg=PA84). ISBN 978-0-7190-3498-5.

Further reading
Armstrong, Dorsey (2016). The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague
(http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-black-death-the-worlds-most-devastating-plague.html). The Great
Courses. ASIN B01FWOO2G6 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FWOO2G6).
Benedictow, Ole Jørgen (2004). Black Death 1346–1353: The Complete History (https://books.google.com
/books?id=ZtjwPOB7aMkC). ISBN 978-1-84383-214-0.
Byrne, J. P. (2004). The Black Death (https://books.google.com/books?id=yw3HmjRvVQMC). London: Greenwood
Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-32492-5.
Cantor, Norman F. (2001), In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, New York, Free
Press.
Cohn, Samuel K. Jr., (2002), The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe,
London: Arnold.
Gasquet, Francis Aidan (1893). The Great Pestilence AD 1348 to 1349: Now Commonly Known As the Black

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Death (https://books.google.com/books?id=CORQjhbgW9QC). ISBN 978-1-4179-7113-8.


Hecker, J.F.C. (1859). B.G. Babington(trans), ed. Epidemics of the Middle Ages (https://archive.org/stream
/epidemicsofmiddl00heck). London, Trübner.
Herlihy, D., (1997), The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press.
McNeill, William H. (1976). Plagues and Peoples. Anchor/Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-11256-7.
Scott, S., and Duncan, C. J., (2001), Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Shrewsbury, J. F. D., (1970), A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles, London: Cambridge University Press.
Twigg, G., (1984), The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, London: Batsford.
Ziegler, Philip (1998). The Black Death. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-027524-7. 1st editions 1969.

External links
Black Death (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bcqt8) on In Our Time at the BBC
Black Death (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_01.shtml) at BBC

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Renaissance
The Renaissance (UK: /rɪˈneɪsəns/, US: /ˈrɛnəsɑːns/)[a] is a period in
European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries
and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The
traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the
Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many
historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an
extension of the middle ages.[1][2]

The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism,


derived from the concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of
classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that "Man
is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art,
architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the
development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of
how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped
the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the
Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe: the very first
traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with the
David, by Michelangelo
writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.
(1501–1504), Accademia di Belle
Arti, Florence, Italy) is a
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative
masterpiece of Renaissance and
flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-
world art.
century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which
contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of linear perspective
and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform.
In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in
science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in
many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic
developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term
"Renaissance man".[3][4]

The Renaissance began in the 14th century in Florence, Italy.[5] Various theories have been proposed to account for its
origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the
time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici,[6][7] and the migration of Greek scholars
and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.[8][9][10] Other major centres were
northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and finally Rome during the Renaissance Papacy.

The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations,
there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and
individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a
historical delineation.[11] The art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance":

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It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously
questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of
civilization – historians of economic and social developments, political and religious situations, and,
most particularly, natural science – but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly ever by
historians of Art.[12]

Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages,
instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity,[13] while social and economic historians,
especially of the longue durée, have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras,[14] which are linked, as
Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties".[15]

The word Renaissance, literally meaning "Rebirth", first appeared in English in the 1830s.[16] The word also occurs in
Jules Michelet's 1855 work, Histoire de France. The word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and
cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.[17]

Contents
Overview
Origins
Latin and Greek phases of Renaissance humanism
Social and political structures in Italy
Black Plague
Cultural conditions in Florence
Characteristics
Humanism
Humanism and libraries
Art
Science
Navigation and geography
Music
Religion
Self-awareness
Spread
England
France
Germany
Hungary
Netherlands
Northern Europe
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Spain
Further countries
Historiography

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Conception
Debates about progress
Other Renaissances
See also
References
Sources
Further reading
Historiography
Primary sources
External links

Overview
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern
period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature,
philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars
employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.[18]

Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary,
historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek
scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West. It is in
their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval
scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural
sciences, philosophy and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts.

In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity;


quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and
the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took
place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many
other areas of cultural life.[19] In addition, many Greek Christian works, including
the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe
and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new
engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original
Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus,
would help pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.

Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture
of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human
Portrait of a Young Woman form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more
(c. 1480–85) (Simonetta naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to
Vespucci) by Sandro describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A critical
Botticelli contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote
the famous text "De hominis dignitate" (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486),
which consists of a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith and magic defended against any opponent on
the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly

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to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of printing, this would allow many more people access to
books, especially the Bible.[20]

In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly,
both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought. Some scholars, such as
Rodney Stark,[21] play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High
Middle Ages, which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism. This analysis argues that,
whereas the great European states (France and Spain) were absolutist monarchies, and others were under direct
Church control, the independent city republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic
estates and set off a vast unprecedented commercial revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance.

Origins
Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had
their origin in late 13th-century Florence, in particular with
the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch
(1304–1374), as well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone
(1267–1337). Some writers date the Renaissance quite
precisely; one proposed starting point is 1401, when the rival
geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed
for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of
the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti won).[22] Others see more
general competition between artists and polymaths such as
Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic View of Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance
commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance.
Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in
Italy, and why it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins.

During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand. Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons
needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding
trade into Asia and Europe. Silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world,
brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa and Venice.[23]

Jules Michelet defined the 16th-century Renaissance in France as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented
a break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world.[24]

Latin and Greek phases of Renaissance humanism


In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages, when Latin scholars focused almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic
works of natural science, philosophy and mathematics,[25] Renaissance scholars were most interested in recovering
and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical, and oratorical texts. Broadly speaking, this began in the 14th century
with a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli
(1364–1437) and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such Latin
authors as Cicero, Lucretius, Livy and Seneca.[26] By the early 15th century, the bulk of the surviving such Latin
literature had been recovered; the Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was under way, as Western European
scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts.[27]

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Unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe
since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval
Western Europe. Ancient Greek works on science, maths and philosophy had been
studied since the High Middle Ages in Western Europe and in the medieval Islamic
world (normally in translation), but Greek literary, oratorical and historical works
(such as Homer, the Greek dramatists, Demosthenes and Thucydides) were not
studied in either the Latin or medieval Islamic worlds; in the Middle Ages these
sorts of texts were only studied by Byzantine scholars. One of the greatest
achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural
works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity. Arab
logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and
the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way
through the Arab West into Iberia and Sicily, which became important centers for
Coluccio Salutati this transmission of ideas. From the 11th to the 13th century, many schools
dedicated to the translation of philosophical and scientific works from Classical
Arabic to Medieval Latin were established in Iberia. Most notably the Toledo School
of Translators. This work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted
one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history.[28] This movement to reintegrate the regular study of Greek
literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts back into the Western European curriculum is usually dated to the
1396 invitation from Coluccio Salutati to the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415) to
teach Greek in Florence.[29] This legacy was continued by a number of expatriate Greek scholars, from Basilios
Bessarion to Leo Allatius.

Social and political structures in Italy


The unique political structures of late Middle Ages Italy have led some to
theorize that its unusual social climate allowed the emergence of a rare
cultural efflorescence. Italy did not exist as a political entity in the early
modern period. Instead, it was divided into smaller city states and
territories: the Kingdom of Naples controlled the south, the Republic of
Florence and the Papal States at the center, the Milanese and the Genoese
to the north and west respectively, and the Venetians to the east. Fifteenth-
century Italy was one of the most urbanised areas in Europe.[30] Many of its
cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; it seems likely
that the classical nature of the Renaissance was linked to its origin in the
Roman Empire's heartland.[31]

Historian and political philosopher Quentin Skinner points out that Otto of
Freising (c. 1114–1158), a German bishop visiting north Italy during the
12th century, noticed a widespread new form of political and social
organization, observing that Italy appeared to have exited from Feudalism
A political map of the Italian
so that its society was based on merchants and commerce. Linked to this
Peninsula circa 1494
was anti-monarchical thinking, represented in the famous early
Renaissance fresco cycle Allegory of Good and Bad Government in Siena
by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (painted 1338–1340), whose strong message is about the virtues of fairness, justice,

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republicanism and good administration. Holding both Church and Empire at bay, these city republics were devoted to
notions of liberty. Skinner reports that there were many defences of liberty such as the Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475)
celebration of Florentine genius not only in art, sculpture and architecture, but "the remarkable efflorescence of moral,
social and political philosophy that occurred in Florence at the same time".[32]

Even cities and states beyond central Italy, such as the Republic of Florence at this time, were also notable for their
merchant Republics, especially the Republic of Venice. Although in practice these were oligarchical, and bore little
resemblance to a modern democracy, they did have democratic features and were responsive states, with forms of
participation in governance and belief in liberty.[32][33][34] The relative political freedom they afforded was conducive
to academic and artistic advancement.[35] Likewise, the position of Italian cities such as Venice as great trading centres
made them intellectual crossroads. Merchants brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the
Levant. Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a producer of fine glass, while Florence was a capital
of textiles. The wealth such business brought to Italy meant large public and private artistic projects could be
commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for study.[35]

Black Plague
One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe
between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy. Italy was particularly badly
hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on
their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife.[36] It has also been argued that the Black Death
prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.[37] However, this does not fully
explain why the Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that
affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the
result of the complex interaction of the above factors.[11]

The plague was carried by fleas on sailing vessels returning from the ports of Asia, spreading quickly due to lack of
proper sanitation: the population of England, then about 4.2 million, lost 1.4 million people to the bubonic plague.
Florence's population was nearly halved in the year 1347. As a result of the decimation in the populace the value of the
working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer the increased need for labor,
workers traveled in search of the most favorable position economically.[38]

The demographic decline due to the plague had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values
declined by 30 to 40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400.[39] Landholders faced a great loss, but for
ordinary men and women it was a windfall. The survivors of the plague found not only that the prices of food were
cheaper but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives.

The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty. Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly
children. Plagues were easily spread by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation. Children were hit
the hardest because many diseases, such as typhus and syphilis, target the immune system, leaving young children
without a fighting chance. Children in city dwellings were more affected by the spread of disease than the children of
the wealthy.[40]

The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political structure than later epidemics. Despite a
significant number of deaths among members of the ruling classes, the government of Florence continued to function
during this period. Formal meetings of elected representatives were suspended during the height of the epidemic due

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to the chaotic conditions in the city, but a small group of officials was appointed to conduct the affairs of the city, which
ensured continuity of government.[41]

Cultural conditions in Florence


It has long been a matter of debate why the Renaissance began in Florence, and not
elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several features unique to Florentine
cultural life that may have caused such a cultural movement. Many have
emphasized the role played by the Medici, a banking family and later ducal ruling
house, in patronizing and stimulating the arts. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was
the catalyst for an enormous amount of arts patronage, encouraging his countrymen
to commission works from the leading artists of Florence, including Leonardo da
Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti.[6] Works by Neri di Bicci,
Botticelli, da Vinci and Filippino Lippi had been commissioned additionally by the
convent di San Donato agli Scopeti of the Augustinians order in Florence.[42]
Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of
The Renaissance was certainly underway before Lorenzo de' Medici came to power
Florence and patron of arts
– indeed, before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in Florentine society.
(Portrait by Rubens)
Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace of the
Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e. because "Great Men" were born there by
chance:[43] Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in Tuscany. Arguing that such chance seems
improbable, other historians have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to prominence because of
the prevailing cultural conditions at the time.[44]

Characteristics

Humanism
In some ways humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode,
which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, humanists would study ancient texts in the original and
appraise them through a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence. Humanist education was based on the
programme of 'Studia Humanitatis', the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and
rhetoric. Although historians have sometimes struggled to define humanism precisely, most have settled on "a middle
of the road definition... the movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values
of ancient Greece and Rome".[46] Above all, humanists asserted "the genius of man ... the unique and extraordinary
ability of the human mind".[47]

Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. Political philosophers such
as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers and applied them in critiques
of contemporary government. Pico della Mirandola wrote the "manifesto" of the Renaissance, the Oration on the
Dignity of Man, a vibrant defence of thinking. Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475), another humanist, is most known for his
work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528), which advocated civic humanism, and for his influence in
refining the Tuscan vernacular to the same level as Latin. Palmieri drew on Roman philosophers and theorists,
especially Cicero, who, like Palmieri, lived an active public life as a citizen and official, as well as a theorist and
philosopher and also Quintilian. Perhaps the most succinct expression of his perspective on humanism is in a 1465

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poetic work La città di vita, but an earlier work, Della vita civile (On Civic
Life), is more wide-ranging. Composed as a series of dialogues set in a
country house in the Mugello countryside outside Florence during the
plague of 1430, Palmieri expounds on the qualities of the ideal citizen. The
dialogues include ideas about how children develop mentally and
physically, how citizens can conduct themselves morally, how citizens and
states can ensure probity in public life, and an important debate on the
difference between that which is pragmatically useful and that which is
honest.

The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife


with a perfect mind and body, which could be attained with education. The
purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person
combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of
functioning honorably in virtually any situation.[48] This ideology was
Pico della Mirandola wrote the
referred to as the uomo universale, an ancient Greco-Roman ideal.
famous Oration on the Dignity of
Education during the Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient
Man, which has been called the
literature and history as it was thought that the classics provided moral
"Manifesto of the Renaissance".[45]
instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior.

Humanism and libraries


A unique characteristic of some Renaissance libraries is that they were open to the public. These libraries were places
where ideas were exchanged and where scholarship and reading were considered both pleasurable and beneficial to the
mind and soul. As freethinking was a hallmark of the age, many libraries contained a wide range of writers. Classical
texts could be found alongside humanist writings. These informal associations of intellectuals profoundly influenced
Renaissance culture. Some of the richest "bibliophiles" built libraries as temples to books and knowledge. A number of
libraries appeared as manifestations of immense wealth joined with a love of books. In some cases, cultivated library
builders were also committed to offering others the opportunity to use their collections. Prominent aristocrats and
princes of the Church created great libraries for the use of their courts, called "court libraries", and were housed in
lavishly designed monumental buildings decorated with ornate woodwork, and the walls adorned with frescoes
(Murray, Stuart A.P.)

Art
Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the
distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone
(1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of
architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that
perspective was formalized as an artistic technique.[49]

The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts.[50] Painters developed other
techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy. Underlying these
changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics,
with the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were much imitated by

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other artists.[51] Other notable artists include Sandro Botticelli, working for
the Medici in Florence, Donatello, another Florentine, and Titian in Venice,
among others.

In the Netherlands, a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed. The


work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck was particularly influential on
the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction
of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in
representation (see Renaissance in the Netherlands). Later, the work of
Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday
life.[52]

In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains


of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge from the 1st-
century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics,
Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and improved
on classical forms. His major feat of engineering was building the dome of
the Florence Cathedral.[53] Another building demonstrating this style is the
The tomb of Michelangelo in the
church of St. Andrew in Mantua, built by Alberti. The outstanding Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence
architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's
Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo
and Maderno.

During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and


entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types of columns
are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. These can either
be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set
against a wall in the form of pilasters. One of the first buildings to use
pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by
Brunelleschi.[54] Arches, semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style)
segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with
capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the
springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a
monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or
segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently
rectangular.
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man
Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and (c. 1490) demonstrates the effect
kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220– writers of Antiquity had on
Renaissance thinkers. Based on the
c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible. His
specifications in Vitruvius' De
Annunciation, from the Baptistry at Pisa, demonstrates that classical
architectura (1st century BC),
models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly
movement [55] proportioned man. (Museum
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice)

Science

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The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of printing democratized learning
and allowed a faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas. In the first period
of the Italian Renaissance, humanists favoured the study of humanities over natural
philosophy or applied mathematics, and their reverence for classical sources further
enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Writing around
1450, Nicholas Cusanus anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, but in
a philosophical fashion.

Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists
such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature.
1543' Vesalius' studies
Da Vinci set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and
inspired interest in human
systematic study of movement and aerodynamics, and he devised principles of anatomy.
research method that led Fritjof Capra to classify him as the "father of modern
science".[56] Other examples of Da Vinci's contribution during this period include
machines designed to saw marbles and lift monoliths and new discoveries in
acoustics, botany, geology, anatomy and mechanics.[57]

A suitable environment had developed to question scientific doctrine. The discovery


in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical
worldview. The works of Ptolemy (in geography) and Galen (in medicine) were
found to not always match everyday observations. As the Protestant Reformation
and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive
shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological
sciences (botany, anatomy, and medicine).[58] The willingness to question
previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major
Galileo Galilei. Portrait by
scientific advancements.
Renaissance painter
Some view this as a "scientific revolution", heralding the beginning of the modern Tintoretto

age,[59] others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the


ancient world to the present day.[60] Significant scientific advances were made
during this time by Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.[61] Copernicus, in De Revolutionibus, posited
that the Earth moved around the Sun. De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body), by Andreas
Vesalius, gave a new confidence to the role of dissection, observation, and the mechanistic view of anatomy.[62]

Another important development was in the process for discovery, the scientific method,[62] focusing on empirical
evidence and the importance of mathematics, while discarding Aristotelian science. Early and influential proponents of
these ideas included Copernicus, Galileo, and Francis Bacon.[63][64] The new scientific method led to great
contributions in the fields of astronomy, physics, biology, and anatomy.[b][65]

Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century Luca Pacioli published the first work on
bookkeeping, making him the founder of accounting.[67]

Navigation and geography


During the Renaissance, extending from 1450 to 1650 [68], every continent was visited and mostly mapped by
Europeans, except the south polar continent now known as Antarctica. This development is depicted in the large world

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map Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula made by the Dutch cartographer
Joan Blaeu in 1648 to commemorate the Peace of Westphalia.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain
seeking a direct route to Asia. He accidentally stumbled upon the Americas,
but believed he had reached the East Indies.

In 1606, the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon sailed from the East Indies
in the VOC ship Duyfken and landed in Australia. He charted about 300 km
of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. More than thirty
Dutch expeditions followed, mapping sections of the north, west and south Portrait of Luca Pacioli, father of
coasts. In 1642–1643, Abel Tasman circumnavigated the continent, proving accounting, painted by Jacopo de'
that it was not joined to the imagined south polar continent. Barbari,[c] 1495, (Museo di
Capodimonte).
By 1650, Dutch cartographers had mapped most of the coastline of the
continent, which they named New Holland, except the east coast which was
charted in 1770 by Captain Cook.

The long-imagined south polar continent was eventually sighted in 1820. Throughout the Renaissance it had been
known as Terra Australis, or 'Australia' for short. However, after that name was transferred to New Holland in the
nineteenth century, the new name of 'Antarctica' was bestowed on the south polar continent. [69]

Music
From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the
Franco-Flemish school. The development of printing made distribution of music possible on a wide scale. Demand for
music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class.
Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic
practice into the fluid style that culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as
Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria and William Byrd.

Religion
The new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developed against a Christian backdrop,
especially in the Northern Renaissance. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the
Church.[19] However, the Renaissance had a profound effect on contemporary theology, particularly in the way people
perceived the relationship between man and God.[19] Many of the period's foremost theologians were followers of the
humanist method, including Erasmus, Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

The Renaissance began in times of religious turmoil. The late Middle Ages was a period of political intrigue
surrounding the Papacy, culminating in the Western Schism, in which three men simultaneously claimed to be true
Bishop of Rome.[70] While the schism was resolved by the Council of Constance (1414), a resulting reform movement
known as Conciliarism sought to limit the power of the pope. Although the papacy eventually emerged supreme in
ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1511), it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption,
most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused variously of simony, nepotism and fathering four
children (most of whom were married off, presumably for the consolidation of power) while a cardinal.[71]

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Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church,


often based on humanist textual criticism of the New Testament.[19] In
October 1517 Luther published the 95 Theses, challenging papal authority
and criticizing its perceived corruption, particularly with regard to
instances of sold indulgences.[d] The 95 Theses led to the Reformation, a
break with the Roman Catholic Church that previously claimed hegemony
in Western Europe. Humanism and the Renaissance therefore played a
direct role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other
contemporaneous religious debates and conflicts.

Pope Paul III came to the papal throne (1534–1549) after the sack of Rome
in 1527, with uncertainties prevalent in the Catholic Church following the
Protestant Reformation. Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated De revolutionibus
orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) to Paul III, Alexander VI, a Borgia Pope
who became the grandfather of Alessandro Farnese (cardinal), who had infamous for his corruption
paintings by Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael, as well as an important
collection of drawings, and who commissioned the masterpiece of Giulio
Clovio, arguably the last major illuminated manuscript, the Farnese Hours.

Self-awareness
By the 15th century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were well aware
of the transformations that were taking place and were using phrases such
as modi antichi (in the antique manner) or alle romana et alla antica (in
the manner of the Romans and the ancients) to describe their work. In the
1330s Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua (ancient) and to
Adoration of the Magi and Solomon
the Christian period as nova (new).[72] From Petrarch's Italian perspective,
adored by the Queen of Sheba from
this new period (which included his own time) was an age of national the Farnese Hours (1546) by Giulio
eclipse.[72] Leonardo Bruni was the first to use tripartite periodization in Clovio marks the end of the Italian
his History of the Florentine People (1442).[73] Bruni's first two periods Renaissance of illuminated
were based on those of Petrarch, but he added a third period because he manuscript together with the Index
believed that Italy was no longer in a state of decline. Flavio Biondo used a Librorum Prohibitorum.
similar framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the
Roman Empire (1439–1453).

Humanist historians argued that contemporary scholarship restored direct links to the classical period, thus bypassing
the Medieval period, which they then named for the first time the "Middle Ages". The term first appears in Latin in
1469 as media tempestas (middle times).[74] The term la rinascita (rebirth) first appeared, however, in its broad sense
in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, 1550, revised 1568.[75][76] Vasari divides the age into three phases: the first
phase contains Cimabue, Giotto, and Arnolfo di Cambio; the second phase contains Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and
Donatello; the third centers on Leonardo da Vinci and culminates with Michelangelo. It was not just the growing
awareness of classical antiquity that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing desire to study
and imitate nature.[77]

Spread

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In the 15th century, the Renaissance spread rapidly from its birthplace in
Florence to the rest of Italy and soon to the rest of Europe. The invention of
the printing press by German printer Johannes Gutenberg allowed the
rapid transmission of these new ideas. As it spread, its ideas diversified and
changed, being adapted to local culture. In the 20th century, scholars began
to break the Renaissance into regional and national movements.

England
In England, the sixteenth century marked the beginning of the English
Renaissance with the work of writers William Shakespeare, Christopher
Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Sir Philip
Sidney, as well as great artists, architects (such as Inigo Jones who
introduced Italianate architecture to England), and composers such as Leonardo Bruni
Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, and William Byrd.

France
The word "Renaissance" is borrowed
from the French language, where it
means "re-birth". It was first used in the
eighteenth century and was later
popularized by French historian Jules
Michelet (1798–1874) in his 1855 work,
Histoire de France (History of France).
[78][79]

Château de Chambord "What a piece of work is a


In 1495 the Italian Renaissance arrived
(1519–1547), one of the most man, how noble in reason,
in France, imported by King Charles VIII
famous examples of Renaissance how infinite in faculties, in
architecture after his invasion of Italy. A factor that
form and moving how
promoted the spread of secularism was express and admirable, in
the inability of the Church to offer action how like an angel, in
assistance against the Black Death. Francis I imported Italian art and artists, apprehension how like a
including Leonardo da Vinci, and built ornate palaces at great expense. Writers such god!" – from William
as François Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Michel de Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Montaigne, painters such as Jean Clouet, and musicians such as Jean Mouton also
borrowed from the spirit of the Renaissance.

In 1533, a fourteen-year-old Caterina de' Medici (1519–1589), born in Florence to Lorenzo II de' Medici and Madeleine
de la Tour d'Auvergne, married Henry II of France, second son of King Francis I and Queen Claude. Though she
became famous and infamous for her role in France's religious wars, she made a direct contribution in bringing arts,
sciences and music (including the origins of ballet) to the French court from her native Florence.

Germany
In the second half of the 15th century, the Renaissance spirit spread to Germany and the Low Countries, where the

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development of the printing press (ca. 1450) and early Renaissance artists such as
the painters Jan van Eyck (1395–1441) and Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) and the
composers Johannes Ockeghem (1410–1497), Jacob Obrecht (1457–1505) and
Josquin des Prez (1455–1521) predated the influence from Italy. In the early
Protestant areas of the country humanism became closely linked to the turmoil of
the Protestant Reformation, and the art and writing of the German Renaissance
frequently reflected this dispute.[80] However, the gothic style and medieval
scholastic philosophy remained exclusively until the turn of the 16th century.
Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg (ruling 1493–1519) was the first truly
Renaissance monarch of the Holy Roman Empire.

Hungary The Arnolfini Portrait, by


Jan van Eyck, 1434
After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the Renaissance
appeared.[81] The Renaissance style came directly from Italy during the
Quattrocento to Hungary first in the Central European region, thanks to the development of early Hungarian-Italian
relationships—not only in dynastic connections, but also in cultural, humanistic and commercial relations—growing in
strength from the 14th century. The relationship between Hungarian and Italian Gothic styles was a second reason
—exaggerated breakthrough of walls is avoided, preferring clean and light structures. Large-scale building schemes
provided ample and long term work for the artists, for example, the building of the Friss (New) Castle in Buda, the
castles of Visegrád, Tata and Várpalota. In Sigismund's court there were patrons such as Pipo Spano, a descendant of
the Scolari family of Florence, who invited Manetto Ammanatini and Masolino da Pannicale to Hungary.[82]

The new Italian trend combined with existing national traditions to create a particular local Renaissance art.
Acceptance of Renaissance art was furthered by the continuous arrival of humanist thought in the country. Many
young Hungarians studying at Italian universities came closer to the Florentine humanist center, so a direct connection
with Florence evolved. The growing number of Italian traders moving to Hungary, specially to Buda, helped this
process. New thoughts were carried by the humanist prelates, among them Vitéz János, archbishop of Esztergom, one
of the founders of Hungarian humanism.[83] During the long reign of emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg the Royal
Castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. King Matthias Corvinus (r.
1458–1490) rebuilt the palace in early Renaissance style and further expanded it.[84][85]

After the marriage in 1476 of King Matthias to Beatrice of Naples, Buda became one of the most important artistic
centres of the Renaissance north of the Alps.[86] The most important humanists living in Matthias' court were Antonio
Bonfini and the famous Hungarian poet Janus Pannonius.[86] András Hess set up a printing press in Buda in 1472.
Matthias Corvinus's library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collections of secular books: historical
chronicles, philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century. His library was second only in size to the Vatican
Library. (However, the Vatican Library mainly contained Bibles and religious materials.)[87]

In 1489, Bartolomeo della Fonte of Florence wrote that Lorenzo de' Medici founded his own Greek-Latin library
encouraged by the example of the Hungarian king. Corvinus's library is part of UNESCO World Heritage.[88] Other
important figures of Hungarian Renaissance include Bálint Balassi (poet), Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos (poet), Bálint
Bakfark (composer and lutenist), and Master MS (fresco painter).

Netherlands

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Culture in the Netherlands at the end of the 15th century was influenced by the
Italian Renaissance through trade via Bruges, which made Flanders wealthy. Its
nobles commissioned artists who became known across Europe.[89] In science, the
anatomist Andreas Vesalius led the way; in cartography, Gerardus Mercator's map
assisted explorers and navigators. In art, Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting
ranged from the strange work of Hieronymus Bosch[90] to the everyday life
depictions of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.[89]

Northern Europe
The Renaissance in Northern Europe
has been termed the "Northern
Renaissance". While Renaissance ideas Erasmus of Rotterdam in
were moving north from Italy, there was 1523, as depicted by Hans
a simultaneous southward spread of Holbein the Younger
some areas of innovation, particularly in
music.[91] The music of the 15th-century
Burgundian School defined the beginning of the Renaissance in music, and
Pieter Bruegel's The Triumph of the polyphony of the Netherlanders, as it moved with the musicians
Death (c. 1562) reflects the social
themselves into Italy, formed the core of the first true international style in
upheaval and terror that followed
music since the standardization of Gregorian Chant in the 9th century.[91]
the plague that devastated medieval
The culmination of the Netherlandish school was in the music of the Italian
Europe.
composer Palestrina. At the end of the 16th century Italy again became a
center of musical innovation, with the development of the polychoral style
of the Venetian School, which spread northward into Germany around 1600.

The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the Northern Renaissance. Italian Renaissance artists
were among the first to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the purely religious art of medieval painters.
Northern Renaissance artists initially remained focused on religious subjects, such as the contemporary religious
upheaval portrayed by Albrecht Dürer. Later, the works of Pieter Bruegel influenced artists to paint scenes of daily life
rather than religious or classical themes. It was also during the Northern Renaissance that Flemish brothers Hubert
and Jan van Eyck perfected the oil painting technique, which enabled artists to produce strong colors on a hard surface
that could survive for centuries.[92] A feature of the Northern Renaissance was its use of the vernacular in place of
Latin or Greek, which allowed greater freedom of expression. This movement had started in Italy with the decisive
influence of Dante Alighieri on the development of vernacular languages; in fact the focus on writing in Italian has
neglected a major source of Florentine ideas expressed in Latin.[93] The spread of the printing press technology
boosted the Renaissance in Northern Europe as elsewhere, with Venice becoming a world center of printing.

Poland
An early Italian humanist who came to Poland in the mid-15th century was Filippo Buonaccorsi. Many Italian artists
came to Poland with Bona Sforza of Milan, when she married King Sigismund I the Old in 1518.[94] This was supported
by temporarily strengthened monarchies in both areas, as well as by newly established universities.[95] The Polish
Renaissance lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century and was the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the
Jagiellon dynasty, the Kingdom of Poland (from 1569 known as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) actively

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participated in the broad European Renaissance. The multi-


national Polish state experienced a substantial period of cultural
growth thanks in part to a century without major wars – aside
from conflicts in the sparsely populated eastern and southern
borderlands. The Reformation spread peacefully throughout the
country (giving rise to the Polish Brethren), while living
conditions improved, cities grew, and exports of agricultural
products enriched the population, especially the nobility
(szlachta) who gained dominance in the new political system of
Golden Liberty. The Polish Renaissance architecture has three
periods of development. A 16th-century Renaissance tombstone of
Polish kings within the Sigismund Chapel in
The greatest monument of this style in the territory of the former Kraków, Poland. The golden-domed chapel
Duchy of Pomerania is the Ducal Castle in Szczecin. was designed by Bartolommeo Berrecci

Portugal
Although Italian Renaissance had a modest impact in Portuguese arts, Portugal was influential in broadening the
European worldview,[96] stimulating humanist inquiry. Renaissance arrived through the influence of wealthy Italian
and Flemish merchants who invested in the profitable commerce overseas. As the pioneer headquarters of European
exploration, Lisbon flourished in the late 15th century, attracting experts who made several breakthroughs in
mathematics, astronomy and naval technology, including Pedro Nunes, João de Castro, Abraham Zacuto and Martin
Behaim. Cartographers Pedro Reinel, Lopo Homem, Estêvão Gomes and Diogo Ribeiro made crucial advances in
mapping the world. Apothecary Tomé Pires and physicians Garcia de Orta and Cristóvão da Costa collected and
published works on plants and medicines, soon translated by Flemish pioneer botanist Carolus Clusius.

In architecture, the huge profits of the spice trade financed a sumptuous


composite style in the first decades of the 16th century, the Manueline,
incorporating maritime elements.[97] The primary painters were Nuno
Gonçalves, Gregório Lopes and Vasco Fernandes. In music, Pedro de
Escobar and Duarte Lobo produced four songbooks, including the
Cancioneiro de Elvas. In literature, Sá de Miranda introduced Italian forms
of verse. Bernardim Ribeiro developed pastoral romance, plays by Gil
Vicente fused it with popular culture, reporting the changing times, and
Luís de Camões inscribed the Portuguese feats overseas in the epic poem
Os Lusíadas. Travel literature especially flourished: João de Barros,
Castanheda, António Galvão, Gaspar Correia, Duarte Barbosa, and Fernão São Pedro Papa, 1530-1535, by
Mendes Pinto, among others, described new lands and were translated and Grão Vasco Fernandes. A pinnacle
spread with the new printing press.[96] After joining the Portuguese piece from when the Portuguese
exploration of Brazil in 1500, Amerigo Vespucci coined the term New Renaissance had considerable
World,[98] in his letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. external influence.

The intense international exchange produced several cosmopolitan


humanist scholars, including Francisco de Holanda, André de Resende and Damião de Góis, a friend of Erasmus who
wrote with rare independence on the reign of King Manuel I. Diogo and André de Gouveia made relevant teaching
reforms via France. Foreign news and products in the Portuguese factory in Antwerp attracted the interest of Thomas

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More[99] and Dürer to the wider world.[100] There, profits and know-how helped nurture the Dutch Renaissance and
Golden Age, especially after the arrival of the wealthy cultured Jewish community expelled from Portugal.

Russia
Renaissance trends from Italy and Central Europe influenced Russia in many ways. Their influence was rather limited,
however, due to the large distances between Russia and the main European cultural centers and the strong adherence
of Russians to their Orthodox traditions and Byzantine legacy.

Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy, who
brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them, while in general following the
traditional designs of Russian architecture. In 1475 the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti came to rebuild the
Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, which had been damaged in an earthquake. Fioravanti was given
the 12th-century Vladimir Cathedral as a model, and he produced a design combining traditional Russian style with a
Renaissance sense of spaciousness, proportion and symmetry.

In 1485 Ivan III commissioned the building of the royal residence, Terem
Palace, within the Kremlin, with Aloisio da Milano as the architect of the
first three floors. He and other Italian architects also contributed to the
construction of the Kremlin walls and towers. The small banquet hall of the
Russian Tsars, called the Palace of Facets because of its facetted upper
story, is the work of two Italians, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario, and
shows a more Italian style. In 1505, an Italian known in Russia as Aleviz
Novyi or Aleviz Fryazin arrived in Moscow. He may have been the Venetian
sculptor, Alevisio Lamberti da Montagne. He built 12 churches for Ivan III,
The Palace of Facets on the
including the Cathedral of the Archangel, a building remarkable for the Cathedral Square of the Moscow
successful blending of Russian tradition, Orthodox requirements and Kremlin
Renaissance style. It is believed that the Cathedral of the Metropolitan
Peter in Vysokopetrovsky Monastery, another work of Aleviz Novyi, later
served as an inspiration for the so-called octagon-on-tetragon architectural form in the Moscow Baroque of the late
17th century.

Between the early 16th and the late 17th centuries, an original tradition of stone tented roof architecture developed in
Russia. It was quite unique and different from the contemporary Renaissance architecture elsewhere in Europe,
though some research terms the style 'Russian Gothic' and compares it with the European Gothic architecture of the
earlier period. The Italians, with their advanced technology, may have influenced the invention of the stone tented roof
(the wooden tents were known in Russia and Europe long before). According to one hypothesis, an Italian architect
called Petrok Maly may have been an author of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye, one of the earliest and most
prominent tented roof churches.[101]

By the 17th century the influence of Renaissance painting resulted in Russian icons becoming slightly more realistic,
while still following most of the old icon painting canons, as seen in the works of Bogdan Saltanov, Simon Ushakov,
Gury Nikitin, Karp Zolotaryov and other Russian artists of the era. Gradually the new type of secular portrait painting
appeared, called parsúna (from "persona" – person), which was transitional style between abstract iconographics and
real paintings.

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In the mid 16th-century Russians adopted printing from Central Europe, with Ivan
Fyodorov being the first known Russian printer. In the 17th century printing
became widespread, and woodcuts became especially popular. That led to the
development of a special form of folk art known as lubok printing, which persisted
in Russia well into the 19th century.

A number of technologies from the European Renaissance period were adopted by


Russia rather early and subsequently perfected to become a part of a strong
domestic tradition. Mostly these were military technologies, such as cannon casting
adopted by at least the 15th century. The Tsar Cannon, which is the world's largest
bombard by caliber, is a masterpiece of Russian cannon making. It was cast in 1586
by Andrey Chokhov and is notable for its rich, decorative relief. Another technology,
that according to one hypothesis originally was brought from Europe by the Italians,
resulted in the development of vodka, the national beverage of Russia. As early as
Theotokos and The Child, 1386 Genoese ambassadors brought the first aqua vitae ("water of life") to Moscow
the late-17th-century and presented it to Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy. The Genoese likely developed this
Russian icon by Karp beverage with the help of the alchemists of Provence, who used an Arab-invented
Zolotaryov, with notably distillation apparatus to convert grape must into alcohol. A Moscovite monk called
realistic depiction of faces
Isidore used this technology to produce the first original Russian vodka c. 1430.[102]
and clothing.

Spain
The Renaissance arrived in the Iberian peninsula through the
Mediterranean possessions of the Aragonese Crown and the city of
Valencia. Many early Spanish Renaissance writers come from the Kingdom
of Aragon, including Ausiàs March and Joanot Martorell. In the Kingdom
of Castile, the early Renaissance was heavily influenced by the Italian
humanism, starting with writers and poets such as the Marquis of
Santillana, who introduced the new Italian poetry to Spain in the early 15th
century. Other writers, such as Jorge Manrique, Fernando de Rojas, Juan The Royal Monastery of San
del Encina, Juan Boscán Almogáver and Garcilaso de la Vega, kept a close Lorenzo del Escorial, by Juan de
resemblance to the Italian canon. Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece Don Herrera and Juan Bautista de
Quixote is credited as the first Western novel. Renaissance humanism Toledo
flourished in the early 16th century, with influential writers such as
philosopher Juan Luis Vives, grammarian Antonio de Nebrija and natural
historian Pedro de Mexía.

Later Spanish Renaissance tended towards religious themes and mysticism, with poets such as fray Luis de León,
Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, and treated issues related to the exploration of the New World, with chroniclers
and writers such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Bartolomé de las Casas, giving rise to a body of work, now known as
Spanish Renaissance literature. The late Renaissance in Spain produced artists such as El Greco and composers such
as Tomás Luis de Victoria and Antonio de Cabezón.

Further countries

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Renaissance in Croatia
Renaissance in Scotland

Historiography

Conception
The Italian artist and critic Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) first used the term
rinascita in his book The Lives of the Artists (published 1550). In the book
Vasari attempted to define what he described as a break with the
barbarities of gothic art: the arts (he held) had fallen into decay with the
collapse of the Roman Empire and only the Tuscan artists, beginning with
Cimabue (1240–1301) and Giotto (1267–1337) began to reverse this decline
in the arts. Vasari saw ancient art as central to the rebirth of Italian art.[103]

However, only in the 19th century did the French word Renaissance
achieve popularity in describing the self-conscious cultural movement
based on revival of Roman models that began in the late-13th century.
French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) defined "The Renaissance" in
his 1855 work Histoire de France as an entire historical period, whereas
previously it had been used in a more limited sense.[17] For Michelet, the
Renaissance was more a development in science than in art and culture. He
asserted that it spanned the period from Columbus to Copernicus to
A cover of the Lives of the Artists by
Galileo; that is, from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th
Giorgio Vasari
century.[78] Moreover, Michelet distinguished between what he called, "the
bizarre and monstrous" quality of the Middle Ages and the democratic
values that he, as a vocal Republican, chose to see in its character.[11] A French nationalist, Michelet also sought to
claim the Renaissance as a French movement.[11]

The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) in his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), by
contrast, defined the Renaissance as the period between Giotto and Michelangelo in Italy, that is, the 14th to mid-16th
centuries. He saw in the Renaissance the emergence of the modern spirit of individuality, which the Middle Ages had
stifled.[104] His book was widely read and became influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the
Italian Renaissance.[105] However, Buckhardt has been accused of setting forth a linear Whiggish view of history in
seeing the Renaissance as the origin of the modern world.[14]

More recently, some historians have been much less keen to define the Renaissance as a historical age, or even as a
coherent cultural movement. The historian Randolph Starn, of the University of California Berkeley, stated in 1998:

Rather than a period with definitive beginnings and endings and consistent content in between, the
Renaissance can be (and occasionally has been) seen as a movement of practices and ideas to which
specific groups and identifiable persons variously responded in different times and places. It would be in
this sense a network of diverse, sometimes converging, sometimes conflicting cultures, not a single, time-
bound culture.[14]

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Debates about progress


There is debate about the extent to which the Renaissance improved on the
culture of the Middle Ages. Both Michelet and Burckhardt were keen to
describe the progress made in the Renaissance towards the modern age.
Burckhardt likened the change to a veil being removed from man's eyes,
allowing him to see clearly.[43]

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness – that


Painting of the St. Bartholomew's
which was turned within as that which was turned without –
Day Massacre, an event in the
lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil
French Wars of Religion, by
was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, François Dubois
through which the world and history were seen clad in
strange hues.[106]

— Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the


Renaissance in Italy

On the other hand, many historians now point out that most of the negative social factors popularly associated with the
medieval period—poverty, warfare, religious and political persecution, for example—seem to have worsened in this era,
which saw the rise of Machiavellian politics, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch
hunts of the 16th century. Many people who lived during the Renaissance did not view it as the "golden age" imagined
by certain 19th-century authors, but were concerned by these social maladies.[107] Significantly, though, the artists,
writers, and patrons involved in the cultural movements in question believed they were living in a new era that was a
clean break from the Middle Ages.[75] Some Marxist historians prefer to describe the Renaissance in material terms,
holding the view that the changes in art, literature, and philosophy were part of a general economic trend from
feudalism towards capitalism, resulting in a bourgeois class with leisure time to devote to the arts.[108]

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive
change. In his book The Autumn of the Middle Ages, he argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the
High Middle Ages, destroying much that was important.[13] The Latin language, for instance, had evolved greatly from
the classical period and was still a living language used in the church and elsewhere. The Renaissance obsession with
classical purity halted its further evolution and saw Latin revert to its classical form. Robert S. Lopez has contended
that it was a period of deep economic recession.[109] Meanwhile, George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both argued
that scientific progress was perhaps less original than has traditionally been supposed.[110] Finally, Joan Kelly argued
that the Renaissance led to greater gender dichotomy, lessening the agency women had had during the Middle
Ages.[111]

Some historians have begun to consider the word Renaissance to be unnecessarily loaded, implying an unambiguously
positive rebirth from the supposedly more primitive "Dark Ages", the Middle Ages. Most historians now prefer to use
the term "early modern" for this period, a more neutral designation that highlights the period as a transitional one
between the Middle Ages and the modern era.[112] Others such as Roger Osborne have come to consider the Italian
Renaissance as a repository of the myths and ideals of western history in general, and instead of rebirth of ancient
ideas as a period of great innovation.[113]

Other Renaissances

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The term Renaissance has also been used to define periods outside of the 15th and 16th centuries. Charles H. Haskins
(1870–1937), for example, made a case for a Renaissance of the 12th century.[114] Other historians have argued for a
Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th and 9th centuries, and still later for an Ottonian Renaissance in the 10th
century.[115] Other periods of cultural rebirth have also been termed "renaissances", such as the Bengal Renaissance,
Tamil Renaissance, Nepal Bhasa renaissance, al-Nahda or the Harlem Renaissance. The term can also be used in
cinema. In animation, the Disney Renaissance is a period that spanned the years from 1989 to 1999 which saw the
studio return to the level of quality not witnessed since their Golden Age.

See also
Age of Enlightenment
Gilded woodcarving
Haskalah
Italian Renaissance
List of Renaissance figures
List of Renaissance structures
Medical Renaissance
Outline of the Renaissance
Renaissance humanism
Scientific Revolution
Weser Renaissance
Western culture

References
Notes

a. French pronunciation: [ʁənɛsɑ̃s], from French: Renaissance "re-birth", Italian: Rinascimento [rinaʃʃiˈmento], from
rinascere "to be reborn" "Online Etymology Dictionary: "Renaissance" " (http://www.etymonline.com
/index.php?search=renaissance&searchmode=none). Etymonline.com. Retrieved July 31, 2009.
b. Joseph Ben-David wrote:

Rapid accumulation of knowledge, which has characterized the development of science since the
17th century, had never occurred before that time. The new kind of scientific activity emerged only in
a few countries of Western Europe, and it was restricted to that small area for about two hundred
years. (Since the 19th century, scientific knowledge has been assimilated by the rest of the world).

c. It is thought that Leonardo da Vinci may have painted the rhombicuboctahedron.[66]


d. It is sometimes thought that the Church, as an institution, formally sold indulgences at the time. This, however,
was not the practice. Donations were often received, but only mandated by individuals that were condemned.

Citations

1. Monfasani, John (2016). Renaissance Humanism, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times
(https://books.google.com/?id=NCKoDQAAQBAJ&pg=PP14&
dq=Modernity+begins+with+the+renaissance#v=onepage&
q=Modernity%20begins%20with%20the%20renaissance). ISBN 978-1-351-90439-1.

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2. Boia, Lucian (2004). Forever Young: A Cultural History of Longevity (https://books.google.com


/?id=bdIBlQXSKi8C&pg=PA63&dq=renaissance+as+extension+of+middle+ages#v=onepage&
q=renaissance%20as%20extension%20of%20middle%20ages). ISBN 978-1-86189-154-9.
3. BBC Science and Nature, Leonardo da Vinci (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/) Retrieved May 12, 2007
4. BBC History, Michelangelo (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/michelangelo.shtml) Retrieved May 12,
2007
5. Burke, P., The European Renaissance: Centre and Peripheries 1998
6. Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003)
7. Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel, SLOVO, Moscow, 2006
(http://www.florentine-society.ru/Medici_Chapel_Mysteries.htm). ISBN 5-85050-825-2
8. Encyclopædia Britannica, Renaissance, 2008, O.Ed.
9. Har, Michael H. History of Libraries in the Western World, Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999,
ISBN 0-8108-3724-2
10. Norwich, John Julius, A Short History of Byzantium, 1997, Knopf, ISBN 0-679-45088-2
11. Brotton, J., The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, 2006 ISBN 0-19-280163-5.
12. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art 1969:38; Panofsky's chapter "'Renaissance – self-
definition or self-deception?" succinctly introduces the historiographical debate, with copious footnotes to the
literature.
13. Huizanga, Johan, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919, trans. 1924)
14. Starn, Randolph (1998). "Renaissance Redux". The American Historical Review. 103 (1): 122–124.
doi:10.2307/2650779 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2650779). JSTOR 2650779 (https://www.jstor.org/stable
/2650779).
15. Panofsky 1969:6.
16. The Oxford English Dictionary cites W Dyce and C H Wilson’s Letter to Lord Meadowbank (1837): "A style
possessing many points of rude resemblance with the more elegant and refined character of the art of the
renaissance in Italy." And the following year in Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal: "Not that we consider the style
of the Renaissance to be either pure or good per se." See Oxford English Dictionary, "Renaissance"
17. Murray, P. and Murray, L. (1963) The Art of the Renaissance. London: Thames & Hudson (World of Art), p. 9.
ISBN 978-0-500-20008-7. "...in 1855 we find, for the first time, the word 'Renaissance' used – by the French
historian Michelet – as an adjective to describe a whole period of history and not confined to the rebirth of Latin
letters or a classically inspired style in the arts."
18. Perry, M. Humanities in the Western Tradition (http://college.hmco.com/humanities/perry/humanities/1e/students
/summaries/ch13.html), Ch. 13
19. Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Religious Context in the Renaissance (http://www.open.ac.uk
/Arts/renaissance2/religion.htm) (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
20. Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Urban economy and government (http://www.open.ac.uk
/Arts/renaissance2/economic.htm#urban) (Retrieved May 15, 2007)
21. Stark, Rodney, The Victory of Reason, Random House, NY: 2005
22. Walker, Paul Robert, The Feud that sparked the Renaissance: How Brunelleschi and Ghiberti Changed the Art
World (New York, Perennial-Harper Collins, 2003)
23. Severy, Merle; Thomas B Allen; Ross Bennett; Jules B Billard; Russell Bourne; Edward Lanoutte; David F
Robinson; Verla Lee Smith (1970). The Renaissance – Maker of Modern Man. National Geographic Society.
ISBN 978-0-87044-091-5.
24. Brotton, Jerry (2002). The Renaissance Bazaar. Oxford University Press. pp. 21–22.
25. For information on this earlier, very different approach to a different set of ancient texts (scientific texts rather than
cultural texts) see Latin translations of the 12th century, and Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe.

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26. Reynolds and Wilson, pp. 113–123.


27. Reynolds and Wilson, pp. 123, 130–137.
28. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society (https://books.google.com/books?id=kKGgoNo4un0C&
pg=PA261&lpg=PA261), Marvin Perry, Myrna Chase, Margaret C. Jacob, James R. Jacob, 2008, 903 pages, pp.
261–262.
29. Reynolds and Wilson, pp. 119, 131.
30. Kirshner, Julius, Family and Marriage: A socio-legal perspective, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300–1550
(https://books.google.com/books?id=x9grA0fWpDMC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&
dq=italy+urban+population+15th+century&sig=7QjemnDKllytG-1qNFygZFmlUD0), ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford
University Press, 2004) p. 89 (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
31. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Revival of Antiquity, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (http://www.boisestate.edu
/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/3-2.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20070407181825/http:
//www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/3-2.html) April 7, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (trans. by
S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878)
32. Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol I: The Renaissance; vol II: The Age of
Reformation, Cambridge University Press, p. 69
33. Stark, Rodney, The Victory of Reason, New York, Random House, 2005
34. Martin, J. and Romano, D., Venice Reconsidered, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, 2000
35. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Republics: Venice and Florence, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
(http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/1-7.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org
/web/20070407035616/http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/1-7.html) April 7, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine, translated by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878.
36. Barbara Tuchman (1978) A Distant Mirror, Knopf ISBN 0-394-40026-7.
37. The End of Europe's Middle Ages: The Black Death (https://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle
/bluedot/blackdeath.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130309162102/http://www.ucalgary.ca
/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/bluedot/blackdeath.html) March 9, 2013, at the Wayback Machine University of
Calgary website. (Retrieved on April 5, 2007)
38. Netzley, Patricia D. Life During the Renaissance.San Diego: Lucent Books, Inc., 1998.
39. Hause, S. & Maltby, W. (2001). A History of European Society. Essentials of Western Civilization (Vol. 2, p. 217).
Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
40. "Renaissance And Reformation France" Mack P. Holt pp. 30, 39, 69, 166
41. Hatty, Suzanne E.; Hatty, James (1999). Disordered Body: Epidemic Disease and Cultural Transformation
(https://books.google.com/books?id=V0yJQXmGODgC&pg=PA89). SUNY Press. p. 89.
42. Guido Carocci, I dintorni di Firenze, Vol. II, Galletti e Cocci, Firenze, 1907, pp. 336–337
43. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Development of the Individual, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
(http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/2-1.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org
/web/20081003000844/http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/2-1.html) October 3, 2008, at
the Wayback Machine, translated by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878.
44. Stephens, J., Individualism and the cult of creative personality, The Italian Renaissance, New York, 1990 p. 121.
45. Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) wsu.edu (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader
/world_civ_reader_1/pico.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110104024142/http://www.wsu.edu:8080
/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/pico.html) January 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
46. Burke, P., "The spread of Italian humanism", in The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe, ed. A. Goodman
and A. MacKay, London, 1990, p. 2.
47. As asserted by Gianozzo Manetti in On the Dignity and Excellence of Man, cited in Clare, J., Italian Renaissance.

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48. Hause, S. & Maltby, W. (2001). A History of European Society. Essentials of Western Civilization (Vol. 2, pp.
245–246). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
49. Clare, John D. & Millen, Alan, Italian Renaissance, London, 1994, p. 14.
50. Stork, David G. Optics and Realism in Renaissance Art (http://sirl.stanford.edu/~bob/teaching/pdf/arth202
/Stork_SciAm04.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20070614023308/http://sirl.stanford.edu
/~bob/teaching/pdf/arth202/Stork_SciAm04.pdf) June 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (Retrieved May 10,
2007)
51. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists, translated by George Bull, Penguin Classics, 1965, ISBN 0-14-044164-6.
52. Peter Brueghel Biography (http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/bio/b/bruegel/pieter_e/biograph.html), Web Gallery
of Art (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
53. Hooker, Richard, Architecture and Public Space (http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec
/RenaissanceArchitecture/ArchitectureandPublicSpace/ArchitectureandPublicSpace.htm) Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20070522160730/http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec
/RenaissanceArchitecture/ArchitectureandPublicSpace/ArchitectureandPublicSpace.htm) May 22, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
54. Saalman, Howard (1993). Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings. Zwemmer. ISBN 978-0-271-01067-0.
55. Hause, S. & Maltby, W. (2001). A History of European Society. Essentials of Western Civilization (Vol. 2, pp.
250–251). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
56. Capra, Fritjof, The Science of Leonardo; Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, New York,
Doubleday, 2007. Exhaustive 2007 study by Fritjof Capra shows that Leonardo was a much greater scientist than
previously thought, and not just an inventor. Leonardo was innovative in science theory and in conducting actual
science practice. In Capra's detailed assessment of many surviving manuscripts, Leonardo's science in tune with
holistic non-mechanistic and non-reductive approaches to science, which are becoming popular today.
57. Columbus and Vesalius – The Age of Discoverers. JAMA. 2015;313(3):312. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.11534
(https://doi.org/10.1001%2Fjama.2014.11534)
58. Allen Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
59. Butterfield, Herbert, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800, p. viii
60. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 1.
61. "Scientific Revolution" in Encarta. 2007. [1] (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_701509067
/Scientific_Revolution.html.)
62. Brotton, J., "Science and Philosophy", The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction Oxford University Press, 2006
ISBN 0-19-280163-5.
63. Van Doren, Charles (1991) A History of Knowledge Ballantine, New York, pp. 211–212 (https://books.google.com
/books?id=Tzmou_a0CCMC&pg=PA211), ISBN 0-345-37316-2
64. Burke, Peter (2000) A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot Polity Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, p. 40 (https://books.google.com/books?id=fbGuxIsGjwsC&pg=PA40), ISBN 0-7456-2484-7
65. Hunt, Shelby D. (2003). Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity
(https://books.google.com/books?id=07lchJbdWGgC&pg=&dq#v=onepage&q=&f=false). M.E. Sharpe. p. 18.
ISBN 978-0-7656-0932-8.
66. MacKinnon, Nick (1993). "The Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli". The Mathematical Gazette. 77 (479): 143.
doi:10.2307/3619717 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3619717).
67. Diwan, Jaswith. Accounting Concepts & Theories. London: Morre. pp. 1–2. id# 94452.
68. Woodward, David (2007). The History of Cartography, Volume Three: Cartography in the European Renaissance.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-90733-8.
69. Cameron-Ash, M. (2018). Lying for the Admiralty: Captain Cook's Endeavour Voyage. Sydney: Rosenberg.
pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-0-6480439-6-6.

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70. Catholic Encyclopedia, Western Schism (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13539a.htm) (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
71. Catholic Encyclopedia, Alexander VI (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01289a.htm) (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
72. Mommsen, Theodore E. (1942). "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages' ". Speculum. 17 (2): 226–242.
doi:10.2307/2856364 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2856364). JSTOR 2856364 (https://www.jstor.org/stable
/2856364).
73. Leonardo Bruni, James Hankins, History of the Florentine people, Volume 1, Books 1–4 (2001), p. xvii.
74. Albrow, Martin, The Global Age: state and society beyond modernity (1997), Stanford University Press, p. 205
(https://books.google.com/books?id=ZwmdxMMjOd4C&pg=PA205) ISBN 0-8047-2870-4.
75. Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, New York: Harper and Row, 1960.
76. The Open University Guide to the Renaissance, Defining the Renaissance (http://www.open.ac.uk
/Arts/renaissance/defining.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090721070445/http://www.open.ac.uk
/Arts/renaissance/defining.htm) July 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
77. Sohm, Philip. Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
ISBN 0-521-78069-1.
78. Michelet, Jules. History of France, trans. G.H. Smith (New York: D. Appleton, 1847)
79. Vincent Cronin (30 June 2011). The Florentine Renaissance (https://books.google.com/books?id=aU8z-
Sge6WgC). Random House. ISBN 978-1-4464-6654-4.
80. Strauss, Gerald (1965). "The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists". English Historical Review. 80
(314): 156–157. JSTOR 560776 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/560776).
81. Peter Farbaky; Louis A. Waldman (November 7, 2011). Italy & Hungary: Humanism and Art in the Early
Renaissance (https://books.google.com/?id=urT_tgAACAAJ&dq=Italy+and+Hungary%22+in+the+Renaissance).
Harvard University Press. Retrieved March 6, 2012.
82. Title: Hungary (4th edition)Authors: Zoltán Halász / András Balla (photo) / Zsuzsa Béres (translation) Published by
Corvina, in 1998 ISBN 963-13-4129-1, 963-13-4727-3
83. "the influences of the florentine renaissance in hungary" (http://www.fondazione-delbianco.org/inglese/relaz00_01
/mester.htm). Fondazione-delbianco.org. Retrieved July 31, 2009.
84. History section: Miklós Horler: Budapest műemlékei I, Bp: 1955, pp. 259–307
85. Post-war reconstruction: László Gerő: A helyreállított budai vár, Bp, 1980, pp. 11–60.
86. Czigány, Lóránt, A History of Hungarian Literature, "The Renaissance in Hungary (http://mek.oszk.hu/02000
/02042/html/5.html)" (Retrieved May 10, 2007)
87. Marcus Tanner, The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of his Lost Library (New Haven: Yale U.P., 2008)
88. Documentary heritage concerning Hungary and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World
International Register (https://web.archive.org/web/20051105150132/http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-
URL_ID%3D15976%26URL_DO%3DDO_TOPIC%26URL_SECTION%3D201.html). portal.unesco.org
89. Heughebaert, H.; Defoort, A.; Van Der Donck, R. (1998). Artistieke opvoeding. Wommelgem, Belgium: Den
Gulden Engel bvba. ISBN 978-90-5035-222-2.
90. Janson, H.W.; Janson, Anthony F. (1997). History of Art (http://www.abramsbooks.com) (5th, rev. ed.). New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8109-3442-9.
91. Láng, Paul Henry (1939). "The So Called Netherlands Schools". The Musical Quarterly. 25 (1): 48–59.
doi:10.1093/mq/xxv.1.48 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fmq%2Fxxv.1.48). JSTOR 738699 (https://www.jstor.org
/stable/738699).
92. Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd
/optg/hd_optg.htm), Metropolitan Museum of Art website. (Retrieved April 5, 2007)
93. Celenza, Christopher (2004), The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin's Legacy. Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins University Press

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94. Bona Sforza (1494–1557) (http://en.poland.gov.pl/Bona,Sforza,%281494,%E2%80%93,1557%29,1958.html).


poland.gov.pl (Retrieved April 4, 2007)
95. For example, the re-establishment (http://www.uj.edu.pl/dispatch.jsp?item=uniwersytet/historia/historiatxt.jsp&
lang=en#narodziny) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20021120144715/http://www.uj.edu.pl
/dispatch.jsp?item=uniwersytet%2Fhistoria%2Fhistoriatxt.jsp&lang=en) November 20, 2002, at the Wayback
Machine of Jagiellonian University in 1364.
96. University, Brown, The John Carter Brown Library. "Portuguese Overseas Travels and European Readers"
(http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/Portugal/Overseas.html). Portugal and Renaissance
Europe. JCB Exhibitions. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
97. Bergin, Speake, Jennifer and Thomas G. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation
(https://books.google.com/books?id=VOb4hIp7EE8C&lpg=PP1). Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-5451-0.
98. Bergin, Speake, Jennifer and Thomas G. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation
(https://books.google.com/books?id=VOb4hIp7EE8C&lpg=PP490). Infobase Publishing. p. 490.
ISBN 978-0-8160-5451-0.
99. Bietenholz, Peter G.; Deutscher, Thomas Brian (2003). Contemporaries of Erasmus: a biographical register of the
Renaissance and Reformation, Volumes 1–3 (https://books.google.com/books?id=hruQ386SfFcC&lpg=RA1-
PA22&dq=Portuguese%20Factory%20in%20Antwerp%20Thomas%20More&pg=RA1-PA22#v=onepage&
q=Portuguese%20Factory%20in%20Antwerp%20Thomas%20More&f=false). University of Toronto Press. p. 22.
ISBN 978-0-8020-8577-1.
100. Lach, Donald Frederick (1994). Asia in the making of Europe: A century of wonder. The literary arts. The scholarly
disciplines (https://books.google.com/books?id=hhE3sPY78s0C&lpg=PA6) (University of Chicago Press, 1994
ed.). ISBN 978-0-226-46733-7. Retrieved July 15, 2011.
101. The first stone tented roof church and the origins of the tented roof architecture (http://www.rusarch.ru
/zagraevsky19.htm) by Sergey Zagraevsky at RusArch.ru (in Russian)
102. Pokhlebkin V.V. / Похлёбкин В.В. (2007). The history of vodka / История водки. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraph /
Центрполиграф. p. 272. ISBN 978-5-9524-1895-0.
103. "Defining the Renaissance, Open University" (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/renaissance2/defining.htm). Open.ac.uk.
Retrieved July 31, 2009.
104. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309
/docs/burckhardt/burckhardt.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080921145058/http:
//www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/burckhardt.html) September 21, 2008, at the Wayback
Machine (trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, London, 1878)
105. Gay, Peter, Style in History, New York: Basic Books, 1974.
106. Burckhardt, Jacob. "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20081003000844
/http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/2-1.html). Archived from the original
(http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/2-1.html) on October 3, 2008. Retrieved August 31,
2008.
107. Savonarola's popularity is a prime example of the manifestation of such concerns. Other examples include Philip II
of Spain's censorship of Florentine paintings, noted by Edward L. Goldberg, "Spanish Values and Tuscan
Painting", Renaissance Quarterly (1998) p. 914
108. Renaissance Forum (http://www.hull.ac.uk/renforum/v2no2/siar.htm) at Hull University, Autumn 1997 (Retrieved on
May 10, 2007)
109. Lopez, Robert S. & Miskimin, Harry A. (1962). "The Economic Depression of the Renaissance". Economic History
Review. 14 (3): 408–426. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.1962.tb00059.x (https://doi.org
/10.1111%2Fj.1468-0289.1962.tb00059.x). JSTOR 2591885 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591885).

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110. Thorndike, Lynn; Johnson, F.R.; Kristeller, P. O.; Lockwood, D.P.; Thorndike, L. (1943). "Some Remarks on the
Question of the Originality of the Renaissance". Journal of the History of Ideas. 4 (1): 49–74.
Bibcode:1961JHI....22..215C (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961JHI....22..215C). doi:10.2307/2707236
(https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2707236). JSTOR 2707236 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707236).
111. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Edited by
Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
112. Stephen Greenblatt Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, University of Chicago Press, 1980.
113. Osborne, Roger (November 1, 2006). Civilization: a new history of the Western world (https://books.google.com
/books?id=oFZ3M8N73b0C&pg=PA180). Pegasus Books. pp. 180–. ISBN 978-1-933648-19-4. Retrieved
December 10, 2011.
114. Haskins, Charles Homer, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927
ISBN 0-674-76075-1.
115. Hubert, Jean, L'Empire carolingien (English: The Carolingian Renaissance, translated by James Emmons, New
York: G. Braziller, 1970).

Sources
Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), a famous classic; excerpt and text search
2007 edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426400934); also complete text online (https://books.google.com
/books?id=kLkNAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1).
Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, Nigel, Scribes and Scholars: A guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin Literature,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974.

Further reading
Cronin, Vincent (1969), The Flowering of the Renaissance, ISBN 0-7126-9884-1
Cronin, Vincent (1992), The Renaissance, ISBN 0-00-215411-0
Campbell, Gordon. The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. (2003). 862 pp. online at OUP
Davis, Robert C. Renaissance People: Lives that Shaped the Modern Age. (2011). ISBN 978-1-60606-078-0
Ergang, Robert (1967), The Renaissance, ISBN 0-442-02319-7
Ferguson, Wallace K. (1962), Europe in Transition, 1300–1500 (https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&
d=11874730), ISBN 0-04-940008-8
Fisher, Celia. Flowers of the Renaissance. (2011). ISBN 978-1-60606-062-9
Fletcher, Stella. The Longman Companion to Renaissance Europe, 1390–1530. (2000). 347 pp.
Grendler, Paul F., ed. The Renaissance: An Encyclopedia for Students. (2003). 970 pp.
Hale, John. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. (1994). 648 pp.; a magistral survey, heavily illustrated;
excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684803526)
Hall, Bert S. Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (2001); excerpt
and text search (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801869943)
Hattaway, Michael, ed. A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. (2000). 747 pp.
Jensen, De Lamar (1992), Renaissance Europe, ISBN 0-395-88947-2
Johnson, Paul. The Renaissance: A Short History. (2000). 197 pp.; excerpt and text search
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002NKDU2); also online free (https://archive.org/details/renaissance00paul)
Keene, Bryan C. Gardens of the Renaissance. (2013). ISBN 978-1-60606-143-5
King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance (1991) excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com

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/dp/0226436187)
Kristeller, Paul Oskar, and Michael Mooney. Renaissance Thought and its Sources (1979); excerpt and text search
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231045131)
Nauert, Charles G. Historical Dictionary of the Renaissance. (2004). 541 pp.
Patrick, James A., ed. Renaissance and Reformation (5 vol 2007), 1584 pages; comprehensive encyclopedia
Plumb, J.H. The Italian Renaissance (2001); excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618127380)
Paoletti, John T. and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy (4th ed. 2011)
Potter, G.R. ed. The New Cambridge Modern History: Volume 1: The Renaissance, 1493–1520 (1957) online
(https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-new-cambridge-modern-history
/1F3A455FF6D62052CBCFF0DBFD109803); major essays by multiple scholars. Summarizes the viewpoint of
1950s.
Robin, Diana; Larsen, Anne R.; and Levin, Carole, eds. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France,
and England (2007) 459 pp.
Rowse, A.L. The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society (2000); excerpt and text search
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/156663315X)
Ruggiero, Guido. The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (Cambridge
University Press, 2015). 648 pp. online review (https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43204)
Rundle, David, ed. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. (1999). 434 pp.; numerous brief articles
online edition (https://www.questia.com
/read/95888138?title=The%20Hutchinson%20Encyclopedia%20of%20the%20Renaissance)
Turner, Richard N. Renaissance Florence (2005); excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com
/dp/0131344013/)
Ward, A. The Cambridge Modern History. Vol 1: The Renaissance (1902) (http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo
/camenaref/cmh/cmh.html); older essays by scholars; emphasis on politics

Historiography
Bouwsma, William J. "The Renaissance and the drama of Western history." American Historical Review (1979):
1–15. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1855657)
Caferro, William. Contesting the Renaissance (2010); excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com
/Contesting-Renaissance-William-Caferro/dp/1405123702/)
Ferguson, Wallace K. "The Interpretation of the Renaissance: Suggestions for a Synthesis." Journal of the History
of Ideas (1951): 483–495. online in JSTOR
Ferguson, Wallace K. "Recent trends in the economic historiography of the Renaissance." Studies in the
Renaissance (1960): 7–26.
Ferguson, Wallace Klippert. The Renaissance in historical thought (AMS Press, 1981)
Grendler, Paul F. "The Future of Sixteenth Century Studies: Renaissance and Reformation Scholarship in the Next
Forty Years," Sixteenth Century Journal Spring 2009, Vol. 40 Issue 1, pp. 182+
Murray, Stuart A.P. The Library: An Illustrated History. American Library Association, Chicago, 2012.
Ruggiero, Guido, ed. A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance. (2002). 561 pp.
Starn, Randolph. "A Postmodern Renaissance?" Renaissance Quarterly 2007 60(1): 1–24 in Project MUSE
(http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ren/summary/v060/60.1starn.html)
Summit, Jennifer. "Renaissance Humanism and the Future of the Humanities." Literature Compass (2012) 9#10
pp: 665–678.
Trivellato, Francesca. "Renaissance Italy and the Muslim Mediterranean in Recent Historical Work," Journal of

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Modern History (March 2010), 82#1 pp: 127–155.


Woolfson, Jonathan, ed. Palgrave advances in Renaissance historiography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)

Primary sources
Bartlett, Kenneth, ed. The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook (2nd ed. 2011)
Ross, James Bruce, and Mary M. McLaughlin, eds. The Portable Renaissance Reader (1977); excerpt and text
search (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140150617)

External links
"The Renaissance" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546tq) In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with
Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke and Evelyn Welch (Jun 8, 2000).
Notable Medieval and Renaissance Women (http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_list_medieval.htm)
Renaissance Style Guide (http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/british_galleries/bg_styles/Style01a
/index.html)
Interactive resources

Florence: 3D Panoramas of Florentine Renaissance Sites(English/Italian) (http://www.compart-multimedia.com


/virtuale/us/florence/florence.htm)
Interactive Glossary of Terms Relating to the Renaissance (https://web.archive.org/web/20081218130540/http:
//renaissancethorne.wetpaint.com/)
Multimedia Exploration of the Renaissance (http://www.renaissanceconnection.org/main.cfm)
RSS News Feed: Get an entry from Leonardo's Journal delivered each day (http://interconnected.org/home/more
/davinci/)
Virtual Journey to Renaissance Florence (http://www.activehistory.co.uk/Miscellaneous/free_stuff/renaissance
/frameset.htm)
Exhibits Collection – Renaissance (http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/)
Lectures and galleries

Leonardo da Vinci, Gallery of Paintings and Drawings (http://www.elrelojdesol.com/leonardo-da-vinci/gallery-


english/index.htm)
The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum (http://www.museobagattivalsecchi.org/)
Renaissance in the "History of Art" (http://www.all-art.org/history214_contents_Renaissance.html)
The Society for Renaissance Studies (http://www.rensoc.org.uk/)
Inquiring Eye: European Renaissance Art (http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/education/teachers/teaching-
packets/ie-european-renaissance.html/)

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