[CoasterFreak]

Hi there felloq TSG Member. I need help on something. I have my history final tomorrow and I am having trouble understanding something. My teacher gave us the questions in advance so that we may study the information. Can anyone tell me what economic prosperity means. If you need the whole question, here it is:
Explain why economic prosperity was essential to the development of the Renaissance in Italy.

There's more but its not important to economic proseperity. Thanks.

Please help QUICKLY!

[CoasterFreak]

pretty please :-d HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mulderator]

It just means doing well economically. As an example, during the Carter years, the US did very poorly ( recession) while during the ensuing Reagan years, there was economic prosperity!

[Paquadez]

Originally Posted by thugedout

pretty please :-d HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chapter and verse. Ignore Mulder: he's a lawyer and they know squat about (i) Economics and (ii) History!

Just jossin', Mulder's OK.

Paq


Renaissance Italy

The decline of the Holy Roman Empire left a power vaccuum in Italy that nobody could fill, for right after the Papacy won, it got entangled in the mess we described earlier, culminating with the Great Schism. After the popes moved to Avignon, towns within the Papal State like Urbino and Bologna had no central authority over them, so their mayors and dukes effectively ruled independent city-states for much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the absence of both pope and emperor, five kingdoms tried to rule the peninsula: Naples(19), the Papal State, Venice, Milan and Florence. Between them were weaker city-states like Genoa, Lucca, Siena, Savoy, Modena, Ferrara and Mantua; their rulers lived and died according to their political skills in an unscrupulous game of diplomacy and skullduggery, where bribery, assassination and usurpation were all likely to happen. A fourteenth-century observer might not have imagined Italy as a good place for the next flowering of human culture, but artists and writers can thrive in political chaos, as classical Greece showed us.
We have met most of these Italian states already; Florence was the newest player on the scene. There had been towns on the site of Florence for two thousand years--the Etruscans had one called Fiesole, the Romans had one called Florentia--but neither had been very important. Medieval Florence began its rise to greatness by replacing feudalism with capitalism in 1228, and by introducing a new constitution which declared that only the guilds would govern the republic. With the "Ordinance of Justice" (1293), all of the old-style nobles were excluded from politics. In 1409 Florence annexed Pisa, a move which eliminated a rival and gave it a port for its growing commerce.

At the same time, the city government engaged in a conscious program of urban renewal, replacing the congestion of dank, flimsy tenements with more open architecture, stone-paved streets, and a new city wall by 1299. Nor did the city's rulers stop there, for they had developed a taste for art and commissioned it on a scale previously unheard of. In the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, thirty-four statues of saints and prophets went up in squares and public buildings, all carved with the kind of skill that had not been seen in a millennium. Above everything else rose a new cathedral, begun in 1296 and completed in 1436 by Filippo Brunelleschi. The cathedral's red dome became the symbol of Florence; Florentines traveling abroad said they suffered from "dome-sickness" when they missed their home city.

Officially Florence was a republic, which in the Middle Ages meant an oligarchy, but the people of Florence talked about their government as if it was a democracy. In practice, however, just one family ran Florence during its best years--the Medicis. This unofficial dynasty began when its first patriarch, Giovanni di Bicci de Medici (1360-1429), founded the family firm in 1397. This was a holding company which controlled a major bank, several local industries, and various trade enterprises. Of these, industry was the least important, producing just ten percent of the profits. The traders did better, especially when they handled imports from the Orient and the Papal alum monopoly, and the bank was the biggest money generator of all. This bank did not grow as large as the fourteenth century banks of the Bardi and Peruzzi families, but it had very important political connections, especially with the court of France and the Papacy. Giovanni used his wealth to make the Medicis more popular than the ruling family, the Albizzis, but unlike his successors, he did not dive completely into the political arena for control of Florence.

Giovanni's son, Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464), was the first member of the clan to dominate Florence. A shrewd businessman, Cosimo greatly enlarged the Medici family firm, building branch offices all over Italy and beyond. In politics, he risked everything more than once; Rinaldo degli Albizzi had Cosimo exiled from Florence in 1433, but one year later Cosimo returned and got the Albizzi patriarch banished. Government loans were a favorite political tool of his; both Venice and Naples suffered military defeats after Cosimo refused to loan the money they needed to fund their armies. A large portion of his company profits were plowed back into the business, but Cosimo also spent a considerable amount on political patronage, bribes--and the arts. Like many other Florentine leaders, Cosimo was a cultured man, who realized that promoting art was a good long-term investment for the city. The Platonic academy he founded in 1440 attracted humanist writers (see below) to Florence, and Cosimo gave them the same toleration he gave to the painters, sculptors and architects: "One must treat these people of extraordinary genius as if they were celestial spirits, and not like beasts of burden." True to character, and to the dismay of his enemies, he lived to a ripe old age, and died peacefully while listening to a reading from Plato.

Cosimo's son Piero (1416-69) only ran the family fortune for five years, due to the chronic poor health that earned him the nickname "Piero the Gouty." His heir, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-92), was the family's most talented member. He never held any noble title, but ruled Florence with almost regal power; once he even got away with dipping into public funds to restore the family's credit rating. Under him Florence experienced what some call a "second Periclean age," because Lorenzo was an extravagant patron of the best artists he could find, including Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo. When he added up what the Medicis had spent between 1434 and 1471, for commissions to artists and architects, donations to charities, and taxes, it came to the astounding total of 663,755 gold florins, causing him to remark: "I think it casts a brilliant light on our estate and it seems to me that the monies were well spent and I am very well pleased with this."

Lorenzo's skill with statesmanship brought peace to Italy for most of the late fifteenth century, while his athletic and intellectual talents made him a perfect example of the "Renaissance man." His only weakness had to do with money; somehow he never learned the business education that his predecessors had, and his lavish spending on art and public spectacles drained the accumulated family fortune. Furthermore, he did not seem to have Cosimo's knack for choosing the right people to manage the Medici company's branch offices. Each office was largely autonomous, meaning that it had to be run with little or no direction from Florence, but the men Lorenzo appointed were too hesitant to function well on their own. The result was some bad business decisions. The London office, for example, agreed to bankroll the king of England; that office went bankrupt in 1472 because all hopes of repayment on the loan vanished in the Wars of the Roses. The office in Bruges suffered the same fate; despite stern warnings from Florence, it gave credit to Duke Charles of Burgundy, and we saw what happened to him! Thus, Lorenzo bequeathed a much smaller treasury to his son Piero di Lorenzo.

However, even Lorenzo had enemies. In 1478 the rival Pazzi family tried to assassinate him during a mass in Brunelleschi's cathedral; Lorenzo escaped, but his younger brother Giuliano fell victim to their daggers. Lorenzo showed no mercy in hunting down the perpetrators; within hours he had several of them hanging from the palace windows, and he commissioned Botticelli to do a picture of their dangling bodies. A few years later he had another conspirator dragged back from Constantinople, and a young artist named Leonardo da Vinci depicted that execution. The victims of Lorenzo's wrath included the entire Pazzi family, an archbishop and a teenage cardinal (the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV), resulting in a brief war with the Papacy and its ally, King Ferdinand of Naples. It was bribery, however, rather than a military victory, that decided this conflict; while the Florentine force slowly retreated to Florence, Lorenzo made a secret journey to Naples, and persuaded Ferdinand to drop out of the war with a generous gift of gold. Without his ally, the pope soon had to abandon the struggle.

Nobody in Italy had a large army at this time, so all wars were short. This was because the nature of warfare was changing rapidly, and the nations of the day had a hard time training men fast enough to keep up with it. Since the late fourth century, cavalry had been necessary for victory and usually dominated the battlefield. However, infantrymen now had weapons that allowed them to win battles without the support of knights: longbows, pikes, and (after 1500) guns. The medieval knight was nearly self-sufficient, once he had a horse, arms & armor, and training in their use; he needed only a few peasants and smiths to maintain his lifestyle. Now that feudalism was on the way out, knights were in short supply, and peasant levies were useless against a force the knights couldn't stop. The weapons that drove knights and armed peasants off the battlefield were more complicated than anything used before; they required supplies of gunpowder and shot, oxen and wagons for the movement of cannon, a camp of noncombatants to keep the equipment in good shape, and money to pay for everything. The new weapons also required more training and discipline to use properly, especially when defending against a cavalry charge. All this was too much for most nobles to handle, so they lost their ability to wage organized violence against their fellow barons and dukes. The end result of these changes was more military power concentrated in the hands of the head of state, and the same amount of resources going to support a smaller army.

In the case of Italy, it was hard to recruit soldiers when banking and trade offered more attractive ways to make a living. To fill the manpower gap, each Italian state hired bands of mercenaries, led by captains called condottieri ("contractors"). But mercenaries fight strictly for money, not for patriotism or glory. The condottieri had to be businessmen first and generals second, and they were reluctant to waste expensive men and equipment. Thus, a campaign usually saw more tactical maneuvering than battles, and was likely to end in a negotiated settlement before much bloodshed took place. Mercenaries were also a risky business because they would switch sides when somebody showed them enough gold, and a successful mercenary captain might try to overthrow his employer, as Francesco Sforza did when he seized power in Milan (1450).

Despite the shortcomings of this age, many Italians felt there had never been a better time to live. From their point of view, a great curtain had descended when the Roman Empire fell, and now they were the ones who were joyfully raising it up again. Matteo Palmieri echoed the feelings of many when he wrote in the mid-fifteenth century that every man should "thank God that it has been permitted to him to be born in this new age, so full of hope and promise, which already rejoices in a greater array of nobly-gifted souls than the world has seen in the thousand years which preceded it." And while we would say the political system left much to be desired, the common man had more opportunities for civic involvement in the republics than he did in any monarchy. Because Italian states were so small, the politically active citizen found it easy to keep up with the latest news, something not possible in large nations before the invention of mass media, and the variety of governments allowed political experimentation. All this activity at the end of the Middle Ages encouraged everyone to bring their talents into the open, whether for art or business--and competition sharpened those talents.






The Early Renaissance Men

Several individuals from the Renaissance era are familiar to us, but they aren't the politicians and mercenaries of the previous section. The "Renaissance men" we think of are the self-confident, multi-talented artists and writers who brought classical civilization back to life, after centuries of hibernation. Thus we mainly remember 14th-16th century Italy for individuals like Petrarch, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael, and Niccolo Machiavelli.
Nowadays we put history in compartments marked by time and place, like Ming dynasty China, and the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt. This makes learning the past more convenient for us, but we have to remember that most of the people who lived long ago did not see anything special about their lifetimes. This was especially the case during the Middle Ages, when the average peasant must have found it nearly impossible to imagine a way of life different from the one he had. The men of the Renaissance were the first to see themselves as being in a unique age. These were the inventors of the term "Dark Ages" to describe the period following the fall of Rome, and these people coined the name "Renaissance" (from Il Renascimento, meaning "rebirth") to describe their own time. They were also the first to identify a civilization by the culture it produced, instead of by its religion or system of government. However, they did not see civilization as an evolutionary process where life gradually got better, the way many people do today; rather they saw themselves as the ones who recovered the best things from ancient times. To them, the way to become "modern" was not by inventing something new, but by imitating the Romans.

Several factors worked together to ignite the Renaissance in Italy. We already mentioned the first one, wealth. The others were the re-discovery of classical literature, and memories of better times.(20) The Roman Empire may have been gone for nearly a millennium, but the Italian could still see Roman ruins wherever he went, so he knew that his people had once been great. When he read the works of Virgil or Cicero, he did not see them as the dry writings of long-dead authors, but as the voices of his own ancestors. And those writings were now becoming more available. Previously Greek and Roman literature was limited to what monks had copied and saved in monasteries, or Arabic translations from Spain. In the early fifteenth century this trickle of knowledge became a flood, as Byzantine scholars left the doomed city of Constantinople, taking their ancient Greek manuscripts with them. Most of them went to Italy, because it was the nearest place that had not fallen to the Turks, and those Italians who understood the manuscripts couldn't get enough of them. They also noted that the ancient authors did not blindly accept authority, but argued among themselves; that was both shocking and invigorating. And because these authors were more interested in human affairs than they were in the gods, they encouraged their readers to revive the old philosophy of humanism.

One of the first writers to use the classics for inspiration was Francesco Petrarca (1304-74), known to us as Petrarch. Born in the town of Arezzo, he got his education first at the Papal court in Avignon, and then at the University of Bologna. Petrarch was both a talented scholar and poet, and traveled widely. His favorite hobby was collecting ancient manuscripts, and he told those he entertained that it was time to dispel "this slumber of forgetfulness" and to "walk forward in the pure radiance of the past." He behaved accordingly when he wrote his most famous book, Letters to Ancient Authors, an anthology of the letters he had written to classical authors like Homer and Plato, as if they were still alive. Petrarch had an immense following during his lifetime, and in the fifteenth century most libraries included copies of his works.

While writers tried to imitate the styles of the classics, artists ventured into new realms. The examples we have of ancient Roman painting, like the murals of Pompeii, show natural-looking figures, and we can believe real people posed for them. By contrast, most medieval painters imitated the style of the icon-makers in the Byzantine Empire, where symbolism mattered more than substance. Medieval art has a two-dimensional look; the figures are stiffly posed, and their feet do not touch the ground. They only look realistic when they cause an adult to imagine a certain scene, in the same way that a child can see people in the stick figures he draws. The artists got no respect, either; working in the shops of craft guilds, they were paid by the amount of work they put out, and had to follow strict guidelines on how paintings, armor, wooden chests, etc. should look. They couldn't even sign their creations. It would have been unthinkable for an artist to put a self-portrait in his work, the way Lorenzo Ghiberti did when he made the bronze doors for the baptistry of Florence.

As the artists' work improved, so did their social standing. Leon Batista Alberti came from an aristocratic family, Michelangelo's father was a city magistrate, and Brunelleschi and Leonardo had respectable middle-class backgrounds--but most of the rest were rank commoners, coming from families of barbers, butchers, farmers, tanners, poultry dealers and tailors. At first they didn't have much income, and they had to join a guild and follow its rules. In 1434 Brunelleschi was thrown into prison when he refused to pay the dues of his guild, and Church officials had to get him out so he could finish the cathedral of Florence. However, as their status changed from that of craftsman to that of genius, their expectations grew; some studied the classics and made it a point not to overindulge in drinking and chasing women, so that they would become still more respectable. Donatello, the great sculptor of Florence, was too embarrassed to wear the fine clothes that Cosimo de Medici gave him, but a century later, Titian, Donato Bramante and Raphael lived like princes. They also grew more confident. A goldsmith named Bernardo Cennini, for example, had no training as a printer, but designed, cut and cast the type for a superb edition of a commentary on Vergil. At the end of the book he wrote Florentinis ingeniis nihil ardui est--"nothing is beyond the powers of the Florentines." Such an attitude had not been spoken since the days of classical Greece.

The Middle Ages were still going strong when the artist who broke tradition appeared. This was Giotto di Bondone in Colle di Vespignano (1267-1337), Giotto for short. The son of a goatherd near Florence, he became an apprentice of Giovanni Cimabue, the greatest artist of the day, when he was twelve years old, but eventually the student outshone the teacher.(21) All of Giotto's paintings dealt with religious subjects; the difference was that he experimented with new techniques to portray people as realistic as possible. One legend asserts that he did this because he spent his childhood with livestock, rather than cooped up in a monastery. Thus, like the Cro-Magnon artists (see Chapter 1), he had a deep knowledge of how animals should look. Late in life, he was placed in charge of building and decorating the campanile (bell tower) of Florence; he did not live to see it completed, but it is still called Giotto's Tower in his honor.

Few of Giotto's works remain in good condition, because seven hundred years have passed since their creation. He rejected the bright, jewel-like colors and stiff poses of the Byzantine style, preferring a gradual shading of the faces and limbs of his characters, and he placed them in active, natural poses. Because nobody had discovered the techniques of perspective yet, Giotto's style still looks two-dimensional to us, but to fourteenth-century observers his work was marvelous. For example, when Pope Boniface VIII decided to employ Giotto in Rome, he sent a letter asking for a sample of his work. Giotto responded by dipping a brush in red paint, and made a perfect circle with a single stroke; he told the pope's messenger to take that, stating that someone with an eye for talent will recognize that a true master painted that circle. The pope did, and Giotto was hired.

Not much happened in Italian art for a century after that; the artists of those days mainly repeated what Giotto had done. As Leonardo da Vinci explained: "Afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done . . . until Masaccio showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard anyone but nature--the mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain." Masaccio (1401-28) did not live long, but he led the way in technical development. By adding the effects of light and shading (chiaroscuro), Masaccio successfully duplicated the effect of draping clothing and made his figures stand out from the background, which was now painted with less detail so that it would not distract the eye from the main subject. Meanwhile, Filippo Brunelleschi scientifically plotted the laws of linear perspective for the first time. Masaccio used perspective in his works right away, and other artists found the concept so interesting that they eagerly learned geometry, until even second-rate painters knew enough mathematics to draw the relative size of objects correctly. The same quest for realism also encouraged artists to study human anatomy; a few overcame their revulsion and dissected dead bodies, so that they would literally know their subjects inside and out.

The sculptors and architects had more classical-era examples to study than the painters did; their challenge was discovering how the ancients did it. Here the main pioneers were Ghiberti (1378-1455), Donatello (1386-1466, his real name was Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) and Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88). Ghiberti's main work was the set of bronze doors we mentioned previously; featuring twenty-eight panels decorated with New Testament scenes, this project took forty-four years to complete. Donatello, a student of Ghiberti, created the first nude statues since ancient times, and now is considered the first modern sculptor. Verrocchio was a master with both anatomy and technique, and he showed it by making a daring statue of a knight on horseback--with one of the horse's legs raised.

One reason why Florence produced so many artists was because the Florentines realized that great art could serve as propaganda. It gave their city a good press when Giotto was employed elsewhere, as far away as Naples. By the time of Lorenzo de Medici, artists were the city's cultural ambassadors. Lorenzo had that in mind when he recommended his favorite architect, Giuliano da Sangallo, to the king of Naples, and suggested that Domenico Ghirlandaio and Botticelli paint frescoes in the Sistine Chapel for Pope Sixtus IV; he probably also supported Leonardo da Vinci's application to work for the duke of Milan. The artists responded in kind; when Botticelli, for example, painted the Adoration of the Magi, he gave the Three Wise Men faces that matched his Medici patrons!

[Gibble]

Your teacher gave you the questions to the final in advance?

Oh dear god...and people wonder why students are getting stupider.

[Rockn]

AND FOR THOSE THAT ARE GIVING OUT THE ANSWERS!! Thanks for letting him research this on his own and get a grade based on his own work.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by Rockn

AND FOR THOSE THAT ARE GIVING OUT THE ANSWERS!! Thanks for letting him research this on his own and get a grade based on his own work.

I guess he couldn't "Google" and find it!

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by Rockn

AND FOR THOSE THAT ARE GIVING OUT THE ANSWERS!! Thanks for letting him research this on his own and get a grade based on his own work.

Rockn, if the teacher gave out the question before hand, they want him/her to research this, which they have done. I rememebr in college, my Spanish teacher gave the class some busy work and said to use whatever means available. I got my cell phone in the middle of class and called my spanish-fluent father and had him give me the answers over the phone. I looked at my teacher and said you told us to use all available resources.

p.s. the teacher will be grading on the way he presents his opinion and thought, it doesn't matter where he got the info, he still has to write it down and convey it in his own words.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by infidel_kast

p.s. the teacher will be grading on the way he presents his opinion and thought, it doesn't matter where he got the info, he still has to write it down and convey it in his own words.

Or he could just Plaguerize Pac--always a bad idea! (not the plaguerizing, but the relying on Pac!)

[Paquadez]

WOT?

Like I did, Mulder?

Hi Chris, how are you all in God's country? Well, I hope.

BTW, In France for 16 whole wonderful days in late August early September!

I shall be some more wine research. I think I have found a local Negociant who can assist me in finding some really good wine at good prices!

Will keep you informed.

Paq

Explain why economic prosperity was essential to the development of the Renaissance in Italy.

I know nothing about the Renaissance, but I would think that economic prosperity would finance the ability to pursue other interests over and above the necessities. For examples Art, Politics, Religion, Civil projects, etc, etc..

[colman77]

Economic prosperity = people have lots of money, they spend lots of money, artisans make lots of money, and traders trade a lot of stuff

I prefer the minimalist approach

Probably too late to give any more advice now.... how'd it go thugedout?

[Paquadez]

Originally Posted by Mulder

Or he could just Plaguerize Pac--always a bad idea! (not the plaguerizing, but the relying on Pac!)

What he could do, Mulder is learn to spell!

And you ought to join his classes!


Paq
(not Pac!!)

[angelize56]

BTW, In France for 16 whole wonderful days in late August early September!

Hey now! you forgot to run that by me Paq!!!

finding some really good wine at good prices!

I'll forgive you for the latter once you've sent me a bottle of the finest wine a few bucks can afford!

Take care! angel

*Wine-Free-Hugs-n-Stuff-For-Now*

[Paquadez]

Hi Angel

Only just fixed, Hon.

I can't wait!

Whoopee!

No work for over a fortnight!!!

Big Hugs Back

Paq