Summary+-+Chapter+12+(Renaissance)


 * __Recovery and Rebirth: The Age of the Renaissance__**

//PS: This is taken STRAIGHT from the study guide.//

The Age of the Renaissance has a distinct image in most people's minds [remember Jacob Burkhardt?]. It is one of our most recognized eras, populated with artists and writers of great genius, vivid imagination, and amazing skill. Yet the violence of its rising political leaders and daring of its financiers made it, as one historian said, an age characterized by "the mixed scent of blood and roses" [mmm]. The strong economic recovery of the day, prefiguring the modern world, created a refined courtly society which supported the arts but planted seeds of envy in the hearts of peasants and city laborers who did not share the wealth. Strong Italian merchants and European kings held seats of power. Writers and artists, widely honored for their work, served at the pleasure and taste of wealthy patrons. Renaissance popes, freeing themselves from the fourteenth century's chaos, used their offices to enrich themselves and their families [simony, hint hint]. Heresy loomed, and intellectuals called for reform. Still the roll call of personalities--Castiglione, Machiavelli, Ficino, Pico, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael--confirms that the Renaissance was indeed an age of genius and achievement, a high point in Western Civilization.