The Renaissance

remaining the most powerful institution
in Europe. The church offered eternal life
to believers and threatened eternal damna-
tion to sinners and heretics. It collected
tithes and indulgences (remissions of pun-
ishment for sins) from practicing Catho-
lics, took part in conflicts among the na-
tions, and patronized artists and writers,
who still dedicated many of their works to
religious themes.

An Economic Rebirth

The Middle Ages waned as humanism
flowered and as Europe experienced an
economic revival. Safer roads and sea-lanes
encouraged trade between southern and
northern Europe. Banking houses, such as
that of the Medici in Italy and the Fuggers
in Germany, made loans and investments
that increased credit and the circulation of
money. The manufacturing of luxury
goods, such as silk in Florence and glass in
Venice, and foreign trade enriched even
those without aristocratic titles to their
name. The wealth accumulated by aristo-
cratic families no longer was spent on de-
fensive works and the arming of private
militias. Instead, the display of art and
good taste became paramount, and the pa-
tronage of a skilled artist in his court
marked the Renaissance noble as someone
worthy of admiration and respect.

The expanding economy and improv-
ing technology played a vital role in the
innovations of Renaissance artists. In the
words of Paul Johnson in his bookThe
Renaissance:

As wealth accumulated, those who

possessed it gratified their senses by

patronizing literature and the arts,

and they were joined by sovereigns,

popes and princes, who found ways

of taxing the new wealth of their sub-

jects. But wealth alone would not have

produced the phenomenon we call the

Renaissance.... Europe, in the later

Middle Ages, was entering a period of

... intermediate technology. Especially

in the Low Countries, Germany and

Italy, thousands of workshops of all

kinds emerged, specializing in stone,

leather, metal, wood, plaster, chemi-

cals and fabrics, producing a growing

variety of luxury goods and machin-

ery. It was chiefly the families of those

who worked in these shops that pro-

duced the painters and carvers, the

sculptors and architects, the writers

and decorators, the teachers and

scholars responsible for the huge ex-

pansion of culture that marked the

beginnings of the early modern age.^3

At the same time, scholars were taking

to the roads, seeking out patrons and

spreading their knowledge and their con-

stant questioning of long-held ideas. The

Medici brought the leading humanist

scholars to their palaces in Florence, and

employed them as tutors for their chil-

dren. Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas

More, and Desiderius Erasmus offered the

example of Greek and Roman thinkers in

solving practical problems of the world in

which they lived. Universities in Bologna

and Padua, Italy, educated the young in

the new sciences of medicine and as-

tronomy, and in the philosophies of Plato

and Aristotle. Reasoning was applied to

the study of ancient texts, which were

studied in their original language, and the

medieval scholastic method—which fo-

cused on theological debates—was gradu-

ally left behind. Students examined the

works of ancient philosophers, rather than

sacred texts, and concentrated on worldly

poetry, ethics, rhetoric, and grammar. The

cultural flowering in northern Italy in-

spired native sons such as da Vinci, Mich-

elangelo, and Sandro Botticelli to incorpo-

rate classical concepts and mythology into

their paintings and sculpture.

Preface