Chapter 14 Renaissance Europe, 1400-1500

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Chapter 14 Renaissance Europe, 1400-1500
A revolution in the arts and learning was in the
making. Europeans rediscovery of Greek and
Roman writers reflected an expanded interest in
human achievements and glory. New secular voices
celebrating human glory were added to the old
prayers for salvation in the afterlife. While
the intense study of Latin and Greek writings
focused on rhetoric and eloquence in learning,
revolutionary techniques in bookmaking, painting,
architecture, and music created original forms
and expressed a new excitement with the beauty of
nature. In the center of this fascinating nature
was humanity. 491
1) In your own words, explain the significance of
humanism to the revolution discussed above? Give
examples.
2) In your own words, explain the influence of
mechanical printing on the same revolution?
3) T or F. Explain. Expanding interest in human
achievements and worldly things meant that
Renaissance humanists rejected Christianity.
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Primary Source 1
Meat and eggs began to run out, capons and fowl
could hardly be found, animals died of pest,
swine could not be fed because of the excessive
price of fodder. A quarter of wheat or beans or
peas sold for twenty shillings, barley for a
mark, oats for ten shillings. A quarter of salt
was commonly sold for thirty-five shillings,
which in former times was unheard of . . . The
dearth began in the month of May and lasted until
the nativity of the Virgin September 8. The
summer rains were so heavy that grain could not
ripen. It could hardly be gathered and used to
make bread down to the said feast day unless it
was first put in vessels to dry. Around the end
of autumn the dearth was mitigated in part, but
toward Christmas it became as bad as before.
Bread did not have its usual nourishing power and
strength because the grain was not nourished by
the warmth of the summer sunshine . . . There can
be no doubt that the poor wasted away when even
the rich were constantly hungry . . . The usual
kinds of meat, suitable for eating, were too
scarce horse meat was precious plump dogs were
stolen. And according to many reports, men and
women in many places secretly ate their own
children.
SOURCE Johannes de Trokelowe, English chronicle
of Great Famine (1315)
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Primary Source 2
I am a chieftain of war, and whenever I meet your
followers in France, I will drive them out if
they will not obey, I will put them all to death.
I am sent here in Gods name, the King of
Heaven, to drive you body for body out of all
France. If they obey, I will show them mercy.
Do not think otherwise you will not withhold the
kingdom of France from God, the King of Kings,
Blessed Marys Son. The King Charles, the true
inheritor, will possess it, for God wills it and
has revealed it to him through The Maid, and he
will enter Paris with a good company. If you do
not believe these tidings from God and The Maid,
wherever we find you we shall strike you and make
a greater tumult than France has seen in a
thousand years. Know well that the King of
Heaven will send a greater force to The Maid and
her good people than you in all your assaults can
overcome and by blows shall the favor of the God
of Heaven be seen . . .
Letter written on behalf of Joan of Arc to king
of England (1429)
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Primary Source 3
There is not a limb nor a form, Which does not
smell of putrefaction. Before the soul is
outside, The heart which wants to burst the
body Raises and lifts the chest Which nearly
touches the backbone --The face is discolored and
pale, And the eyes veiled in the head. Speech
fails him, For the tongue cleaves to the
palate. The pulse trembles and he pants. The
bones are disjointed on all sides There is not a
tendon which does not stretch as to burst.
Georges Chastellain (ca. 1415-1475), Le Pas de
Mort (The Dance of Death)
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Primary Source 4
I used to marvel and at the same time to grieve
that so many excellent and superior arts and
sciences from our most vigorous antique past
could seem lacking and almost wholly lost. We
know from remaining works and through references
to them that they were once widespread.
Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians,
geometricians, rhetoricians, seers and similar
noble and amazing intellects are very rarely
found today and there are few to praise them.
Thus I believed, as many said, that Nature, the
mistress of things, had grown old and tired. She
no longer produced either geniuses or giants
which in her more youthful and more glorious days
she had produced so marvelously and abundantly.
Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting (1434)
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Primary Source 5
But whoever is born in Italy and Greece . . . Has
good reason to find fault with his own and to
praise the olden times for in their past there
are many things worthy of the highest admiration
whilst the present has nothing that compensates
for all the extreme misery, infamy, and
degradation of a period where there is neither
observance of religion, law, or military
discipline, and which is stained by every species
of the lowest brutality . . . I know not then,
whether I deserve to be classed with those who
deceive themselves, if in these Discourses I
shall praise too much the times of ancient Rome
and censure those of our own day. And truly if
the virtues that ruled then and the vices that
prevail now were not as clear as the sun, I
should be more reticent in my expressions, lest I
should fall into the very error for which I
reproach others. But the matter being so
manifest that everybody sees it, I shall boldly
and openly say what I think of former times and
of the present, so as to excite in the minds of
the young men who read my writings the desire to
avoid the evils of the latter, and prepare
themselves to imitate the virtues of the former
. . .
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), The Discourses