History 2011 - Review "Renaissance"

When	Countries Involved	What	Terms Involved	Significance/Explanation
11th c.	Italy	Great Commercial Revival	Venice, Genoa, Milan, etc. Merchant class especially	Northern Italian cities started taking advantage of trade with the Middle East & Northern Europe. As a result, the merchants got richer, moved to the cities (urban nobility, remember?), now had more money to spend on other things besides weapons, so they bought art. Hence, beginning of The Renaissance
12th-15th c.	Florence & other northern Italian cities	The type of ruling in these places	Commercial elite, urban nobles, signori, oligarchy, commune, etc.	For these two centuries, Italian city-states were ruled by either signori or oligarchies. The common people (popolo) weren’t happy about it.
1300s	Florence, Italy	Building boom	Brunelleschi & other artists	Lots of new buildings popping up, due to a revived economy. Florence = second Rome
Late 14th c.	Florence, Italy	Difficult economic period	King Edward III of England & others	Basically during this time, Florence had a lot of issues, whether it be King Edward III forcing Florentine bankers into bankruptcy, or losing half their population due to the Black Death - the point is, Florence pulled through strongly on the basis of their stable economic structure (competitive spirit too).
1491-1494	Florence	Savonarola vs. Medici	Girolamo Savonarola, the Medici family, paganism, corruption	Savonarola, a friar, attacked the Medici banking family and accused them of being undemocratic. He also attacked the whole city of Florence, saying that their pope was corrupt, their city was full of moral vice, etc. At first, he was “winning” because he had the support of regular people. Because of him, the Medici family reached their end as a dynasty. But, everyone eventually got tired of his rants and stopped supporting him. Illustrates the instability of Italian cities - led to invasions such as the one below.
1494	Italy, France	French invasion of Italy	King Charles VIII, city-states, federal system, consolidation	Before the invasion, Italy was split into oligarchies and such (see above), which meant that they weren’t unified and weren’t prepared to fend off attacks successfully. Add on to that the power struggle among the other European countries, and Italy is pretty much screwed. When the French invaded, the Italians suffered. They had no foreign policy, no unification - they were subject to invaders.
1400s-1500s	Italy	The Renaissance	Rebirth, the arts, the rising middle class	Patronage, urban nobility, you know this stuff.
1500-1527	Italy	High Renaissance	Humanism, Christian humanism, secularism, education, The Courtier, The Prince, individualism	Didn’t see a lot of change in terms of class structure, but we do see the middle class rising and getting more interested in the arts. Here we also see “secularization of the sacred”, some humanism stuff, patronage, education (mostly for men, who were supposed to know everything, whether it be dancing and sewing or fighting and looking macho), etc.
1516	England	Publication of “Utopia”	Thomas More, humanism, reason, individualism	When Thomas More published “Utopia” in the 1500s, it was super-revolutionary. It was a place where all children received education (a humanist education - Greco-Roman classics). Adults split days between labor and intellectual stuff. Social equality existed. T-More suggests that greed is the root of all problems in society. Perfect existence is a result of REASON (precursor for the Enlightenment? Interesting...). The point is: Utopia does not exist. It can only be possible if we reform social institutions that mold the individual.