today we're going to take a closer look at the Renaissance and at the big impact it had when it happened and the impact that it has on today our objective for today is to explain the political intellectual artistic economic and religious impact of the Renaissance remember the Renaissance stands for rebirth first let's look at the political impact of the Renaissance the main impact came through the exploration of the new world because of this exploration of the new world uh we began to develop colonies and also new markets for trade this led to the development of powerful nation states in Western Europe some of these nation states that still exist today include Spain Portugal France England and the Netherlands the Renaissance also had an impact on the intellectual World there was an intellectual impact of the Renaissance it came in primarily three forms the first was humanism humanism is a focus on human potential and achievements and also included the Revival of Greek and Roman art and literature so we began to move away from the church and started to celebrate human achievements we were less interested in God and more interested in ourselves going along with that is the concept of secularism with secularism there is less focus on religion and more focus on the here and now the idea is that man is perfect or man could at least be made perfect on this world without having to wait for heaven the third big intellectual impact of the renissance was the invention of the printing press because of the printing press new ideas could now spread faster because they didn't have to be copied by hand they could be printed up in many copies and distributed probably one of the biggest impacts of the Renaissance was its impact on art or the artistic impact of the Renaissance for one thing there were new techniques in perspective and it made art and sculpture more three-dimensional instead of looking flat and lifeless things became more three-dimensional and with that we had more focus on realism making the painting or the sculpture look more lifelike or like things were in the real world some of the most famous Renaissance artists and sculptures include Donatello Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo and rapael and you might recognize those from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finally literature began to be written in everyday language instead of using Latin or Greek they actually used the language that people spoke to write the literature the fourth impact was the economic impact of the Renaissance the merchant class began to develop and they developed power through trade and banking Italian city states came to be dominated by merchants and nations with colonies began to grow wealthy with raw materials and this was the beginning the early stages of an economic system called mercantilism finally there was a religious impact of the Renaissance first part of that is the Christian humanists these writers like like arasmus Sir Thomas Moore and rebellis said that you could improve Society with Christian motives but they had less religious ceremony so their emphasis became not worship but rather improving Society also this was a time of great corruption in the Catholic Church including the sale of indulgences and the worldly lifestyles of the clergy including priests and church leaders and this directly led to the Reformation that we'll talk about later