CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. The Consolidation of the State (c. 1350–1500)

A. The Iberian Kingdoms: Ferdinand and Isabella

B. France: Charles VII and Louis XI

C. England: The Yorkists and Tudors

D. The Holy Roman Empire

E. Central and Eastern Europe

III. The New Learning: Learned Culture in the Late
Medieval Italian City-State
A. Humanism: Its Methods and Its Goals
B. The Impact of Renaissance Humanism on the
Arts and Sciences

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CHAPTER 13

THE RENAISSANCE: POLITICAL RENEWAL

AND INTELLECTUAL CHANGE

C

hanges in the conduct of warfare and the

erosion of feudal institutions after 1300 cre-

ated a new kind of state, administered by

salaried bureaucrats and defended by paid

soldiers. Though the policies of these states were gov-

erned by dynastic instead of national considerations

and regional differences were accepted to a degree

unimaginable today, the monarchies that emerged from

this process in the later fifteenth century are the recog-

nizable ancestors of the modern state.

At approximately the same time, a new intellectual

movement began in the Italian city-states and, by the

end of the fifteenth century, had spread throughout Eu-

rope. Under the influence of such writers as Petrarch

and Boccaccio, Italians began to reinterpret the ancient

Greco-Roman past and apply the lessons of that reimag-

ined period to their own times. In the process, they

transformed virtually all of the arts and sciences, gave

birth to the modern study of politics and history, and

created a model for liberal arts education that persisted,

with some modifications, into the early twentieth cen-

tury. They changed the way in which Westerners

thought, not only about human affairs, but also about

the physical sciences. This movement is known as the

Renaissance, and the term has been used conventionally

to describe the entire age in which Western learning

moved away from medieval precedents and began to lay

the foundations of the modern world.

The Consolidation of the State

(c.1350–1500)

Medieval princes had worked, with varying degrees of

success, to improve administration and strengthen royal

authority. Most royal governments remained modest in

size and centered firmly on the royal household until

the later years of the thirteenth century. Under Henry

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