Page 125 - Key to Social Studies 6

The Renaissance • The Renaissance started in Florence, a city in Italy

ruled by the Medici family. They imposed taxes on
• Europeans lived through the Dark Ages, a period of hundreds of years, until living conditions began to
all people and used the money to fund public
improve by the mid-fourteenth century C.E.
works such as building roads and constructing
• Ancient developments by the Greeks and Romans were rediscovered and life became easier. This period
public buildings.
of time has been called “the Renaissance.”
• Florence became one of the wealthiest Western
• The Renaissance started in the Italian peninsula, as it was the home of the Roman Empire.
European cities. The citizens and rulers supported
• After the decline of the Roman Empire, many groups ruled Italy, including the Normans, the Byzantine the humanities and paid money to advance

Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Each group had its own e ect on the cultural growth of the Italian technological and scienti c knowledge.

region. The location of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea also made it easier for the Italians to control
• By the early sixteenth century C.E., Florence had
important world trading routes.
begun to decline, after which Rome became the A painting of an old palace in Florence
• The Byzantines preserved much Roman and Greek culture and technology. They believed that people center of the Renaissance, as the popes started to

should work to increase their standard of living in the areas of health and knowledge. This concept rule the Italian city-states. The popes of Rome built magni cent palaces, churches, and private buildings

became known as “humanism” and the people who studied humanism became known as “humanists.” by collecting taxes from people.

• This philosophy became very popular in Italy by the mid-fourteenth century C.E. • By the late sixteenth century C.E., the center of the Renaissance moved from Rome to Venice because it

• The humanists replaced the clergy, or leader of the church, as a source of education. was a wealthier city, and it was ideal for international trade due to its position on the coast.

• People were encouraged to write in other languages or local languages, rather than Latin and Greek, Renaissance in England

which helped new ideas spread more easily and rapidly throughout Europe. • England was in a civil war, or a war between
citizens of the same country, named the “Wars

of the Roses,” which ended in the late fteenth
Assumption of the Virgin Mary painting in San Petronio Basilica, Bologna, Italy
century C.E. When King Henry VII took the

throne at the end of the war, he invited the

Italian humanists to come to England to teach

people about the arts and sciences.

• The dominant art forms of the English

Renaissance were literature and music. The

English author William Shakespeare became

one of the world’s most famous playwrights and
Re-enactment of the Wars of the Roses at
Warwick Castle, UK poets of this time.

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