Europe and the Wider World: The Renaissance and Reformation
Europe and the Wider World: The Renaissance and Reformation
Questions ask what changed in art, learning and religion between about 1400 and 1600, and why those changes spread.
Renaissance A 'rebirth' of classical learning that began in the Italian city-states (Florence, Venice, Rome) and was funded by patrons such as the Medici. Humanism placed human experience and ancient texts at the centre; artists used perspective and anatomy (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer); printing with movable type (Gutenberg, c. 1450) multiplied books; Vesalius advanced anatomy and Copernicus challenged the earth-centred universe.
Reformation Luther's 95 Theses (1517) attacked indulgences; his teaching of justification by faith alone and the Bible in the vernacular, spread by printing, fractured Western Christendom. Calvin organised Geneva; Henry VIII broke with Rome through the Act of Supremacy (1534). The Counter-Reformation answered with the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Jesuits (1540) and the Index of Prohibited Books.
Worked example Why did Lutheranism survive? Printing spread pamphlets quickly; German princes protected Luther for political and financial reasons; resentment of papal taxation and clerical privilege ran deep; and the Emperor was distracted by war with France and the Ottomans. Reasoning: ideas need carriers and protectors to become movements.
Traps Treating the Renaissance as a rejection of religion - the Church was a leading patron. Confusing the Reformation with the Renaissance. Forgetting that printing is the link between them.