Humanistic Italy: The Metamorphosis Of Humanist Italy
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The Metamorphosis of Humanist Italy
The Italian Renaissance, beginning around 1360 was a period of great growth. Specific social and political conditions spurred development in trade, travel, warfare, scholarly expansion and education. Inevitably Italians began to reflect differently on the world around them and how they interacted with it. Changing ideas caused a definite shift from medieval values: piety and social seclusion, to humanist values: material and scholarly gain. Time spent in monasteries and convents was no longer the epitome of a worthy existence. Education, exploration, physical strength, wealth, and personal development replaced meditation, contemplation, poverty, and servitude. In Renaissance Italy, a well-rounded education…show more content… These trade centers, established during the medieval time period, had allowed Italy to develop a large amount of wealth while also maintaining strong economic ties with merchants and traders. This wealth supported and created a strong elite population, the most per capita in early modern Europe. Finding little comfort in the ideas and life-ways of the medieval period, Italians yearned for a new set of values, the old ways no longer reflected the world that they saw around them. Men of wealth and success did good and lived well; a contradiction to the medieval condemnation of wealth and material possessions. Italians had accumulated a great deal of wealth and sought a fulfilling life of material gain and worldly activity. The denunciation of prosperity and interaction with the world of the medieval period no longer comforted the Italian populations because it did not reflect the state of modern existence. Changing beliefs from the idealization of pious poverty and withdrawn contemplation meant that modern Italy was increasingly interested in personal growth and worldly…show more content… The advent of gunpowder sparked this change and took war, which had exclusively been an endeavor for nobility, and made it accessible to any layman. The noblest knight could be equally matched against the lowest man with a rifle. This changed the options for everyday men, they could take up arms and fight for a common goal, finding meaning for existence outside of the bible.
Moreover, scholars began to look at the Greek and Roman classics with a new eye. Scholars found new meaning and significance in these pieces because the themes found within mirrored what people in modern Italy were experiencing because of the changing ideas fostered by the Italian Renaissance. These classics became a new guide to living, the opulence and activity of the Roman era were no longer refuted and seen as sin as they were in medieval times. This new attitude was truly the foundation for the enjoyment of and involvement in life characterized in the