The Challenge of the Renaissance (^) ‹ 59
geographic, economic, and social, the Renaissance began in Italy, where expanded trade with
the East flowed into Europe via the Mediterranean Sea and, therefore, through the Italian
city-states. The Renaissance flowered for approximately 200 years, and, as a result of increased
military, economic, and cultural interactions with the rest of Europe, made its way north.
Italian Society of the Renaissance
The society of the Italian peninsula between 1350 and 1550 was unique in Western civilization.
The most outstanding characteristic of Italian society was the degree to which it was urban. By
1500, seven of the ten largest cities in Europe were in Italy. Whereas most of Western Europe
was characterized by large kingdoms with powerful monarchs and increasingly centralized
bureaucracies, the Italian peninsula was made up of numerous independent city-states, such as
Milan, Florence, Venice, and Genoa. These city-states were, by virtue of their location, flourish-
ing centers of commerce in control of reviving networks of trade with Eastern empires.
Social status within these city-states was determined primarily by occupation, rather than
by birth or the ownership of land, as was common in the rest of Europe during this period.
The trades were controlled by government-protected monopolies called guilds. Members of
the manufacturing guilds, such as clothiers and metalworkers, sat at the top of the social hier-
archy. The next most prestigious were the professional groups that included bankers, admin-
istrators, and merchants. They were followed by skilled laborers, such as the stone masons.
Because the city-states of Italy developed as commercial centers, wealth was not based
on the control of land as it was in the rest of Europe during this period. Instead, wealth
was in the form of capital, and power was the ability to lend it. Accordingly, the traditional
landed aristocracy of the Italian peninsula was not as politically powerful as their other
European counterparts. Rather, powerful merchant families dominated socially and politi-
cally. Their status as the holders of capital also made the commercial elites of Italy powerful
throughout Europe, as the monarchs of the more traditional kingdoms had to come to
them when seeking loans to finance their wars of territorial expansion.
The city-states of Renaissance Italy were set up according to a variety of models. Some,
like Naples, were ruled by hereditary monarchs; others were ruled by powerful families,
such as the Medicis of Florence; still others, specifically Venice, were led by the doge, the
elected civil, ecclesiastical, and military head of the Venetian Republic.Renaissance Values
Before the Renaissance, the values of European civilization reflected the beliefs of
Christianity and the social relations of traditional feudal hierarchy. During the Renaissance,
these traditional values were transformed to reflect both the ambition and pride of the com-
mercial class that dominated Renaissance Italian society. In contrast to traditional European
noblemen, who competed for prestige on the battlefield or in jousting and fencing tour-
naments, successful Renaissance men competed via displays of civic duty, which included
patronage of philosophy and the arts.
At the center of the Renaissance system of values was humanism. Renaissance human-
ism combined an admiration for classical Greek and Roman literature with a newfound
confidence in what modern men could achieve. Accordingly, Renaissance humanism was
characterized by the studia humanitas, an educational program founded on knowledge
of the classical Latin and Greek languages and scholarship. Once the languages had been10_Bartolini_Ch10_057_064.indd 59 27/04/18 1:54 PM