The Renaissance (HIST 1301 History)

The OTTOMANS, the MAMLUKS, and the MING HIST 1301 | History The Renaissance In Europe, the loss of Constantinople was mourned as a warning that there was no major power left to halt the Muslim drive westward. It also signifies the end of the European Middle Ages for many historians. Many Greeks, particularly affluent merchants and government officials who carried their money with them, fled the crumbling Byzantine Empire and sought safety in other countries. Numerous people settled in Italy, particularly in Rome and Venice. Anna Notaras, a rich Byzantine noblewoman who had settled in Venice prior to the fall of Constantinople, provided assistance to anyone who travelled there. Along with them fleeing westward to Europe were Byzantine philosophers, theologians, painters, authors, and astronomers. They brought with them the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome that had survived in the eastern part of the Roman Empire following the fall of the western half. The whole corpus of Plato and copies of Aristotle's writings in their original Greek were among the books they brought. The Italian Renaissance was significantly impacted by the availability of these and other works, many of which had either not been known in western Europe or had only been available through Arabic translations brought over during the Crusades. The Renaissance, which translates to "rebirth" in French, was a time of creative and intellectual regeneration that heralded the early modern era and was motivated by the artistic and intellectual accomplishments of ancient Greece and Rome. It started in the northern Italian city-states that had become prosperous via commerce, particularly with the Ottoman Empire. Scholars there began looking to Western antiquity—the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans—in the 1300s for guidance and an example of how to live. Among these academics was Petrarch, who urged authors to switch from the mediaeval clergy's style of Latin writing to the "pure" Classical Latin of the Roman poets and legislators. He promoted following in the footsteps of the great Roman poet Virgil and orator Cicero. Some have referred to Petrarch as the founder of humanism. A movement known as humanism emerged in Italy in the fourteenth century, emphasising the study of people—their characteristics, accomplishments, and nature—rather than the study of God. Humanists placed more emphasis on the dignity and beauty of people than on their sinful, "fallen" origins. They felt that individuals today may learn invaluable lessons and find inspiration for living from the classical realms of ancient Greece and Rome. Italian humanists had mostly concentrated on the study of rhetoric and ethics prior to the advent of Byzantine academics and their copies of Plato and Aristotle. The philosophical study of the nature of existence, known as metaphysics, did not pique their attention. That changed when Plato's full works became available, and Byzantine Neoplatonism—an intellectual movement that aimed to combine the concepts of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoic thinkers, and Arabic philosophy—had an impact on a number of intellectuals. Marsilio Ficino, one of the most significant Italian Neoplatonists, combined Christian teachings with Platonic ideas by translating all of Plato's works from ancient Greek into Latin. According to the Neoplatonic theory, the earth was at the bottom of an orderly hierarchy that included God, also known as "the One," at the top and everything else existed as lower-level "emanations" of God. The material world in which people lived was the least perfect, if God was flawless. Ficino countered that because the human spirit blended elements of both the world of gods and the material world, it was the reason why people dwelt at the centre of the cosmos. Humans were the centre of creation because they were sentient beings with souls. Ficino's theories align nicely with the humanist view that humans are unique entities deserving of investigation. Nicholas of Cusa (Nicholas Cusanus), another Neoplatonist, also had a significant influence on the Italian Renaissance and the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, one of its most significant offspring. Empiricism, the approach of studying the universe by firsthand observation, was emphasised by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Plato, on the other hand, believed that the elements of the physical world were inferior to the realm of ideas and abstract notions. As a result, the ultimate understanding of the "truth" of the world might be discovered by mathematical reasoning rather than sensory perception. Nicholas emphasised further that knowledge of the world acquired via mathematics was better to information gained through simple observation. He even went so far as to say that mathematics may reveal God's innermost mind to humanity. Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer, was a proponent of the theory that the physical world could best be understood by mathematical formulae. He thought that the universe's real model was the one that made the most mathematical sense. Kepler used mathematics to uncover three of the laws of planetary motion and provide an explanation for the planets' motions within Nicolaus Copernicus's previous heliocentric, or sun-centered, model of the cosmos. Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer, had this similar understanding of the world, believing that mathematics alone could reveal the fundamental essence of it. Aristotle's empiricism was not valued by the Neoplatonists, but they did not entirely reject his theories either. First, the humanists' conception of human greatness was impacted by his concept of "virtue." Furthermore, scientists from domains other than astronomy were affected by his emphasis on learning via observation. The Renaissance visual artists as well as scientists began to place a premium on natural observation. The first person to use linear perspective ideas to painting was Masaccio, a Florentine painter from the fourteenth century. The Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi, whose designs served as an inspiration for Masaccio, "rediscovered" the use of linear perspective, which had previously been a "secret" known only to the ancient Greeks and Romans. This method gave the visual images a feeling of reality that had been absent from mediaeval painting. Later painters, like Leonardo da Vinci, studied the anatomy of humans and animals to add realism to their paintings. In line with the exalted position into which Renaissance philosophers had elevated mankind, Michelangelo idealised the body rather than merely striving to make people seem realistic.