Oh hey and welcome to the first video on my series on AP European History. In this video we begin in the beginning and we talk about that massive, honking cultural movement called the Renaissance. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, then let's get to it. Oh, by the way, I am Steve Heimler and if this is our first time meeting, then mucho gusto.
I'm here to help you get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. So let's do that. Alright the Renaissance.
What in the fresh heck is it? Well by definition, the word itself means re- birth. So the Renaissance was a European movement that grew out of the rediscovery of the classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome.
It was those texts that had died to Europe and were now being, in a sense, reborn. Much of the teaching of the Classical Age had fallen out of European memory by this point, partly because they lacked access to them, and partly because they were busy dying by the millions thanks to the Black Plague. Anyway, once the Renaissance got underway, it constituted a major change in the political, economic, and cultural fabric of Europe.
But it wasn't all changed during the Renaissance. There was an awful lot of continuity with the Middle Ages that persisted but we'll talk about that more in later videos. Now the Renaissance itself began in Italy, and since that was mostly a phenomenon that occurred among the elite of that society, let's start by talking about the thinky thinky people, and for that let me introduce you to a guy named Petrarch.
Technically, Petrarch lived before 1450, which is the beginning of this course, but still he's considered by many to be the father of the Renaissance because he laid the intellectual framework for it. Specifically, he developed a new philosophy called humanism, which focused on the unlimited potential of human beings as an end in themselves. He was also the first major figure to go rooting around in classical texts, and when he found the writings of the ancient Roman orator Cicero, he found a model for the eloquence in Latin that would define the intellectual output of other Renaissance thinkers.
This emphasis would lead to a new discipline called philology, which was an inquiry into the history and development of language, especially Latin. And the poster boy for philological studies was Lorenzo Valla, who identified several different stages in the development of the Latin language. Now, that may not seem like a big deal to you, but because Valla could discern the differences between Latin written in the 4th century versus Latin written in the 12th century, for example, he was able to demonstrate that various documents that were held as authoritative for the Church precisely because of their antiquity were were actually written closer to the present age and thus their authority could be questioned.
You know, questioning the authority of documents was kind of a big deal, especially when you're dealing with documents of the church, which he was. Anyway, eventually Renaissance thinkers self-consciously understood themselves as humanists in the vein of Petron. For example, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote one of the most widely read humanistic books called Oration on the Dignity of Man, in which he waxed eloquently about the unlimited potential bound up in the human being. Okay, so you're starting to taste the sauce of the Renaissance.
You might even say the Renaissance. Oh, that's funny. Anyway, we've got a revival of classical texts and the defining philosophy of humanism.
Some Renaissance humanists continued to believe in God, but others championed secularism, which refers to the decoupling of religious belief from society, and individualism, which emphasized the triumph of the individual as opposed to the community. Now, as I mentioned before, all these new ideas were largely confined to a handful of elite folks at the beginning, but in the 1440s, with the invention of the printing press, the ideas spread. widely and with great speed.
So much so that these new ideas started challenging the institutional power of universities and other power centers. For example, education underwent a significant change during this period. Since humanism was the flavor of the age, education became even more important. Remember, humanism was the idea that human beings had unlimited potential.
But if that potential was going to be reached, you had to get yourself educated. And if you wanted to get yourself educated, then you needed to submit yourself to the new emphasis on liberal studies. These subjects included rhetoric, grammar, logic, and history, and moral philosophy. The idea was that these disciplines would shape that fleshy ball in your skull into a virtuous thinking machine.
And the emphasis on rhetoric meant that you could express those ideas eloquently. Now, this humanistic manner of thinking also led to changes in how people understood their interactions in the public sphere. This started among the Italian city-states, which you should know was just a handful of regional kingdoms at this point and not the unified Italian state that we know today. Anyway, the result of applying humanism to the public sphere became known as civic humanism.
The idea here was that all the work that a person did to shape their minds into a virtuous piece of meat ought to be applied to the political and economic realities of the state in which they live. In this vein, you had Baldassare Castiglione, whose book, the courtier served as a guide for how an educated young man should behave in courtly society, namely to be a gentleman. Castilione argued that an educated man should be skilled in all the humanistic disciplines, write and speak with eloquence, be physically strong, and most of all, mentally awake. Another example was Leonardo Bruni, who wrote The New Cicero, in which he argued that the intellectual man was duty-bound to deploy his education in service of the state. And then there was our boy Niccolo Machiavelli.
And this guy's going to show up a lot throughout this course, so let's spend a little time with him. Machiavelli's preoccupation with the proper method of wielding political power was laid out in a little book called The Prince. Here, Machiavelli argued that a ruler's main goal was to preserve power at all costs, and in that way the ruler could ensure order and And because Machiavelli believed that human beings were essentially self-interested turds, the ruler had to wield power in accordance with their nature. So if, to maintain power, the prince had to be brutal, then so be it. If the prince, on the other hand, had to be kind, then so be it.
The point is, maintain power at all costs. This was a huge departure from older writings on what it took to be a good ruler. In those, a ruler's behavior was measured against the virtues established in the Bible. Machiavelli was like, Oh, that's cute, but naw man, if a turd needs flushing... You flush it.
And you know, he wrote that in Latin. That was a rough translation. And of course, the Renaissance marked a new expression of artistic endeavors as well. And the emphasis in art followed the same contours as everything else—classical revival and humanist inspiration.
Now artists in the Middle Ages, before our time period begins, portrayed almost exclusively religious themes rich with symbolism. Renaissance artists also portrayed religious themes, but also branched out into personal, political, and classical themes as well. And Renaissance artists also emphasized naturalism, which was the style that portrayed the world as it was. was not in the mysteries of symbolic figures and the flatness that usually characterized art in the Middle Ages.
No, Renaissance artists pursued their realistic depiction of nature as their primary goal. Which is why there's so many dang naked people in Renaissance art. Because what's more natural than your birthday suit?
Anyway, in addition to an emphasis on naturalism, there was also a new technique employed, namely geometric perspective, and this was a way to portray realistic depth in a scene. For example, you see this in Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Last Supper. Notice how the lines in the room slope so that it creates the illusion of depth.
Now, in addition to da Vinci, let me introduce you to a few important artists during this time. You had Michelangelo, whose sculpture of the biblical David gives you an example of a religious theme, but notice the humanist influence. The guy is sculpted like a Greek God, which is to say, in the image of perfected humanity.
Also you should know Raphael, who's painting the school of Athens, puts all of this on display as well. You've got classical themes, not least with Plato and Aristotle here in the middle, and notice the geometric perspective of the whole thing, which suggests balance and order. In the world of architecture, you had Filippo Brunelleschi, who was the chief architect on the rebuilding of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. Notice how he tossed out the Gothic conventions of medieval cathedrals and designed it instead with Roman columns and arches.
Most of these artists were patronized by wealthy individuals or those in power, and probably the most significant of these patrons was the Medici family, but we'll save them for a later video. Click right here for more of my Unit 1 videos on AP European history. And if you need even more help than that, then click right here and grab my AP Euro Rapid Review Pack and all your dreams will come true. Heimler out.