10 characteristics of the RENAISSANCE

Renaissance, period in European civilization immediately after the Middle Ages that has been characterized by an increased interest in scholarship and classical values. The Renaissance also saw the discovery and exploration of new continents, the replacement of the Copernicans by the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of trade, and the invention or application of potentially powerful innovations such as paper, printing, the sailor's compass, and gunpowder. For the scholars and thinkers of the time, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.

Renaissance Characteristics

1. Humanism: Humanism refers to glorifying the human elements in man in opposition to the supernatural or divine, on the one hand, and the animal, on the other. With respect to the Renaissance, humanism had a special effect or use: it was applied to those scholars who followed the studies that helped produce civilized man. Humanism, in general, is the attitude that emphasizes the dignity and worth of the individual. A basic premise of humanism is that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness.
2. translations: The Renaissance introduced a large number of translations of the classics from Latin and Greek.
3. The Renaissance emphasized the reason and logic instead of sensation, as the guide to knowledge and the means to solve problems.
4. Naturalism: The shift in emphasis from the supernatural to the natural world of the here and now.
5. The emphasis on importance of imagination as the faculty that would create ideal images and not simply imitate general qualities.



6. curiosity and objectivity: is the intense interest in the visible world and in the knowledge derived from concrete sensory experience. The focus during the Renaissance shifted from abstract discussions of religious issues to the morality of human actions.
7. Individualism: Man was not seen as an element of the social unit (feudalism) in which he occupied a subordinate position to the system itself, but as an individual of considerable importance in himself and in his potentialities. Man was seen as a creature capable of perfection for whom anything was possible. Shakespeare called for this very concept in his line from Hamlet: “What work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and in movement, in how express and admirable, in action, like an angel, in understanding, like a god! The beauty of the world, the model of animals. . . ”(Hamlet, II, ii, 286-289).
8. Interest in the classical thought of the Greeks and Romans . This revival of classical thought was a rejection of the "barbarism" and "corruptions" of the centuries since Greek and Roman times.
9. The commercial revolution It started when feudalism died and different areas of the European countries developed important urban commercial centers. Regional self-sufficiency also began when the areas concentrated on what they produced best, such as raw materials, cereals and other foods, or the creation of necessary tools, etc. By the middle of the period, small-scale trade became commercial capitalism, and the revolution had certainly begun when trade was conducted abroad.
10. The creation of the Renaissance state it came after the decline of papal and imperial rule left Italy and a warlike condition began as larger states absorbed smaller ones. As a result, the forerunners of the modern state began as medieval republican city governments ruling outlying territories and were replaced by an individual despot in Milan, a powerful and wealthy oligarchy in Venice and Florence, and by the pope in the papal states. close.

Yes ok the spirit of the Renaissance eventually took many forms, was expressed earlier by the intellectual movement called humanism. Humanism was pioneered by secular men of letters rather than the scholar-clerics who had dominated medieval intellectual life and developed scholastic philosophy.

Humanism began and managed to bear fruit first in Italy. His predecessors were men like Dante and Petrarch, and his main protagonists were Gianozzo Manetti, Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla, and Coluccio Salutati. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 provided a great boost to humanism, as many eastern scholars fled to Italy, bringing with them important books and manuscripts and a tradition of Greek scholarship.

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