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Brief History of the Renaissance | 5 MINUTES

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The Renaissance was a period in European history when new ideas about art and science were developed and when new technologies, such as paper and gunpowder, were widely adopted. It began in Italy during the 14th century, and it marked the end of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance's influence spread elsewhere in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The word Renaissance means "rebirth" in French, and it reflects the era's rediscovery of ancient Greece and Rome. This rediscovery gave rise to the intellectual movement known as humanism, which valued human beings and their accomplishments, rather than religion and the divine, which had been characteristic of the Middle Ages. Humanism was at the heart of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance reached its height in Italy between the 1490s and the 1520s, a period called the High Renaissance. During this period, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper and the , Michelangelo sculpted and painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael painted School of Athens. Construction also began on St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. All are masterpieces of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance ended in Italy in 1527, when the Holy Roman emperor Charles V attacked Rome. It continued to influence the work of notable Italian painters Tintoretto, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Paolo Veronese, who were active during the middle and late 16th century.

The Dutch scholar Erasmus and the German artist Albrecht Dürer were notable northern Renaissance figures. The Renaissance came to an end outside Italy by the end of the 16th century, as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation raged.

J.E. Luebering

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The Renaissance was a period in European history when new ideas about art and science were developed and when new technologies, such as paper and gunpowder, were widely adopted. It began in Italy during the 14th century, and it marked the end of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance's influence spread

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Humanists celebrated the individual and this was also evident in the artistic techniques of Renaissance painters. The sculptor Donatello used perspective and natural human postures and stances in his St. Mark statue and bronze sculpture The Feast of Herod.

The realistic portrayal of humans and use of depth and perspective is prominent in works such as The Wedding of the Virgin and Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Raphael, as well as in The Last Supper and The Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Michelangelo's works such as The Pieta and The Reaction of Adam show human emotions and have realistic features, a common theme in renaissance humanist art.

Humanism drew its roots from Greek and Roman mythology, and Botticelli included these in his works The Birth of Venus and Venus and Mars, depicting Venus with realistic human features.

Jan Van Eyck's work depicts renaissance humanism in Northern Europe. Examples of his art such as The Arnolfini Portrait and the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin reflect humanism's intricacy with symbolism and detailed textures and lighting.

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A brief overview of Renaissance Humanism

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Art
History >>Renaissance for Kids

Many of the new ideas and attitudes that marked the Renaissance times were portrayed in art. A new idea called humanism put a focus on human interests, needs, and abilities. This new idea changed how artists painted their subjects as well as the choice of subjects they painted.

Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo

Renaissance art is often divided up into two periods:

Early Renaissance (1400-1479) - Artists learned by trying to emulate classical artists focusing on symmetry and creating the perfect form. This era featured such artists as Giotto, Masaccio, and Donatello.

High Renaissance (1475-1525) - A rising interest in perspective and space gave the art even more realism. Great artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rafael flourished during this period.

Change of Subjects

In the Middle Ages the subject of almost all European art was religion, specifically Christianity and the Catholic Church. Although Renaissance artists continued to paint religious paintings, they also branched out to other subjects including Greek and Roman mythology, historical subjects, and portraits of individuals. They also focused on the details of everyday life.

School of Athens by Raphael
featured philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates

Realism

One of the big changes in art was to paint and sculpt subjects realistically. This is called realism and involves a number of techniques that make the subjects and background look like they would in real life. This also meant giving the subjects more emotional qualities.

New Techniques and Styles

Many new techniques were introduced during the Renaissance. These techniques helped to enhance the quality and realism of the art.

Perspective - perspective is drawing or painting a picture such that it looks like there are three dimensions. It gives the illusion that some objects in the painting are further away than others.

Balance and Proportion - Drawing subjects such that they are the correct size when compared to each other.

Use of Light and Dark - Many artists starting using light and shadows in their works to add drama, perspective, and timing to their art.

The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio
Caravaggio used light and shadow to create drama

Sfumato - This was a technique used by Leonardo da Vinci to add additional perspective and dimension to paintings. It was a way of blurring the lines between subjects. This technique was used in Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci used the sfumato technique

Foreshortening - Another technique that added perspective and depth to paintings, foreshortening is a way of shortening lines to give the illusion of depth.

Activities

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Works Cited

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Kids learn about Renaissance art including painting and scupture. What made it unique such as realism and perspective.

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Renaissance art was an art movement that came after the medieval art movement and before Baroque art, lasting from 1400 to 1525 approximately. There were some defining features of art in the Renaissance: Artists continued to depict religious scenes, as they had done in the medieval times, but they also began to paint other things, like portraits, Greek and Roman mythology, historical subjects and everyday life details too.
The artwork looked more real. Artists used light and shadow, perspective and more accurate proportions to make their subjects look realistic. They also gave their subjects more emotional qualities.
The Renaissance art movement can be split into two sections. The first is often called the Early Renaissance (1400-1479), where artists were learning by trying to copy classical artists, focusing on symmetry and the perfect form. Some examples of artists from this period are Giotto, Masaccio and Donatello. The second period is referred to as the High Renaissance (1475-1525). In this time, there was an increased interest in how to create realistic paintings by using perspective and space. Some examples of artists include Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Rafael.

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Leonardo da Vinci: Visionary Artist and Inventor

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Kids learn about science during the Renaissance. The inventions and technology of this time in history.

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The Renaissance is one of the most incredible periods in our human history, when significant advancements were made across all aspects of society, including science, literature, philosophy, mathematics and art. During this momentous period in time many exciting inventions were made, all in the quest to better understand the world around us. Of all the inventions that were made during the Renaissance period, which ones stand out as the most significant and important of all time? Let's take a look through some of the best, many of which we still rely on today.

1. The Pencil: Humble Yet Mighty

Ah, the humble pencil, not to be taken for granted. It was invented during the Renaissance in 1560 by an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti, who discovered that graphite sticks could be inserted into a hollowed out stick of juniper wood to keep it neat and handy. This early pencil was intended mainly for carpenters so it was oval in shape, to stop in rolling away. Even today, many carpenter's pencils are still made in this very same shape. Pencils went on to become mass produced items which were, and still are incredibly popular worldwide, often with the hexagon shape we recognise today, an updated version of the early oval which is even less likely to roll away!

2. The Printing Press: Perhaps the Most Significant Tool of the Renaissance

The printing press was one of the most significant inventions of the Renaissance period, allowing for great advancements in communication to take place. It was German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg who invented the first printing press in 1436. He combined moveable panels of metal type with a pressing machine, creating a machine known as the Gutenberg press. Thanks to Gutenberg, newspapers, magazines and books could be reproduced relatively quickly and cheaply, replacing the painstaking scribe work of monks in monasteries. Gutenberg's press was operated entirely by hand, a slow process by today's electronic standards, but he paved the way for the future to come.

3. The Microscope: An Ingenious Discovery

An ingenious spectacle maker of the Renaissance period named Zacharias Janssen is credited with creating the first microscope in 1590. Although Zacharias was a mere teenager at the time, it is thought he and his father created the first microscope prototype together. Their microscope was known as a 'compound' microscope made from at least two lenses, one to pick up the image, and the other to magnify it so we can actually see it with the human eye. The wondrous discovery they made meant we could explore, understand and cultivate the world in a whole new way, and life has never been the same since. When news spread throughout Europe about microscopes, the concept was quickly picked up on and adapted by others, including astronomer, physicist and engineer Galileo Galilei in the early 17th century.

4. The Telescope: Extending the Human Senses

Another canny spectacle maker of the Renaissance era from Holland, named Hans Lippershey, also invented the first telescope in 1608. He initially called his new device a "kijker" (Dutch for "looker"), describing its function, "for seeing things far away as if they were nearby." It was the first instrument of its kind to extend one of the human senses, fascinating and inspiring many to develop his idea further. Following on Lippershey's discovery, Galileo Galilei was quick off the mark again - he went on to make his own updated version of the telescope in around 1609, which he used to make some radical findings about the universe. These include finding Jupiter's four moons, discovering that the sun was the centre of the universe, and that the Earth's moon is not completely spherical - amazing, right? Isaac Newton also succeeded in creating one of the world's first telescopes in 1668, using a reflective mirror mechanism.

5. The Steam Engine: One of the Most Important Inventions of the Renaissance

Today we might think of the steam engine as a symbol of a bygone era, but during the Renaissance, it was one of the hottest discoveries to be made. One of the most important inventions in the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine allowed for major developments to be made in agriculture, mining, manufacture and transportation. So, who do we have to thank for this mighty invention? The great English engineer Thomas Savery made the first practical and effective steam engine, designed for pumping out water in 1698, a process he concisely termed "water by fire." His invention relied on steam pressure, which had a tendency to blow up, so it wasn't entirely foolproof. In 1712, an English ironmonger and inventor named Thomas Newcomen came up with a better version, which contained safety valves, and his nifty invention remained in use for over 50 years.

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What Were the Best Inventions of the Renaissance? (Top 5)

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The Renaissance was an incredible period of artistic and scientific breakthrough, and these are the best inventions of the era.

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Patrons of Renaissance Art: Roles, Influence & Famous Works - Video | Study.com

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In Renaissance society, patrons were an important influence on the works of artists. Explore the role patrons played in the creation of some famous…

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Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici ( Italian: [loˈrɛntso de ˈmɛːditʃi]; 1 January 1449 - 8 April 1492) was an Italian statesman, banker, ruler of the Florentine Republic, and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent ( Lorenzo il Magnifico [loˈrɛntso il maɲˈɲiːfiko]) by contemporary Florentines, he was a magnate, diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets. As a patron, he is best known for his sponsorship of artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. He held the balance of power within the Italic League, an alliance of states that stabilized political conditions on the Italian peninsula for decades, and his life coincided with the mature phase of the Italian Renaissance and the Golden Age of Florence. On the foreign policy front, Lorenzo manifested a clear plan to stem the territorial ambitions of Pope Sixtus IV, in the name of the balance of the Italian League of 1454. For these reasons, Lorenzo was the subject of the Pazzi conspiracy (1478), in which his brother Giuliano was assassinated. The Peace of Lodi of 1454 that he supported among the various Italian states collapsed with his death. He is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.

Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, was the first member of the Medici family to lead the Republic of Florence and run the Medici Bank simultaneously. As one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Cosimo spent a very large portion of his fortune on government and philanthropy, for example as a patron of the arts and financier of public works. Lorenzo's father, Piero di Cosimo de' Medici, was equally at the centre of Florentine civic life, chiefly as an art patron and collector, while Lorenzo's uncle, Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici, took care of the family's business interests. Lorenzo's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, was a writer of sonnets and a friend to poets and philosophers of the Medici Academy. She became her son's advisor after the deaths of his father and uncle.

Lorenzo, considered the most promising of the five children of Piero and Lucrezia, was tutored by a diplomat and bishop, Gentile de' Becchi, and the humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino, and he was trained in Greek by John Argyropoulos. With his brother Giuliano, he participated in jousting, hawking, hunting, and horse breeding for the Palio, a horse race in Siena. In 1469, aged 20, he won first prize in a jousting tournament sponsored by the Medici. The joust was the subject of a poem written by Luigi Pulci. Niccolò Machiavelli also wrote of the occasion, perhaps sarcastically, that he won "not by way of favour, but by his own valour and skill in arms". He carried a banner painted by Verrocchio, and his horse was named Morello di Vento.

Piero sent Lorenzo on many important diplomatic missions when he was still a youth, including trips to Rome to meet the pope and other important religious and political figures.

Lorenzo was described as rather plain of appearance and of average height, having a broad frame and short legs, dark hair and eyes, a squashed nose, short-sighted eyes and a harsh voice. Giuliano, on the other hand, was regarded as handsome and a "golden boy", and was used as a model by Botticelli in his painting of Mars and Venus. Even Lorenzo's close friend Niccolo Valori described him as homely, saying, "nature had been a stepmother to him in regards to his personal appearance, although she had acted as a loving mother in all things concocted with the mind. His complexion was dark, and although his face was not handsome it was so full of dignity as to compel respect."

Lorenzo, groomed for power, assumed a leading role in the state upon the death of his father in 1469, when he was 20. Already drained by his grandfather's building projects and constantly stressed by mismanagement, wars, and political expenses, the assets of the Medici Bank reduced seriously during the course of Lorenzo's lifetime.

Lorenzo, like his grandfather, father, and son, ruled Florence indirectly through surrogates in the city councils by means of payoffs and strategic marriages until 1490. Rival Florentine families inevitably harboured resentments over the Medicis' dominance, and enemies of the Medici remained a factor in Florentine life long after Lorenzo's passing. The most notable of the rival families was the Pazzi, who nearly brought Lorenzo's reign to an end.

On Sunday, 26 April 1478, in an incident known as the Pazzi conspiracy, a group headed by Girolamo Riario, Francesco de' Pazzi, and Francesco Salviati (the archbishop of Pisa), attacked Lorenzo and his brother and co-ruler Giuliano in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in an attempt to seize control of the Florentine government. Shockingly, Salviati acted with the blessing of his patron Pope Sixtus IV. Giuliano was killed, but Lorenzo escaped with only a minor wound, having been defended by the poet Poliziano. News of the conspiracy spread throughout Florence, and it was brutally put down by the populace through such measures as the lynching of the archbishop of Pisa and members of the Pazzi family who were involved in the conspiracy.

In the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy and the punishment of supporters of Pope Sixtus IV, the Medici and Florence earned the wrath of the Holy See, which seized all the Medici assets that Sixtus could find, excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire government of Florence, and ultimately put the entire Florentine city-state under interdict. When these moves had little effect, Sixtus formed a military alliance with King Ferdinand I of Naples, whose son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, led an invasion of the Florentine Republic, still ruled by Lorenzo.

Lorenzo rallied the citizens. However, with little support from the traditional Medici allies in Bologna and Milan, the war dragged on, and only diplomacy by Lorenzo, who personally traveled to Naples and became a prisoner of the king for several months, ultimately resolved the crisis. That success enabled Lorenzo to secure constitutional changes within the government of the Florentine Republic that further enhanced his own power.

Thereafter, Lorenzo, like his grandfather Cosimo de' Medici, pursued a policy of maintaining peace, balancing power between the northern Italian states and keeping major European states such as France and the Holy Roman Empire out of Italy. Lorenzo maintained good relations with Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire, as the Florentine maritime trade with the Ottomans was a major source of wealth for the Medici.

Efforts to acquire revenue from the mining of alum in Tuscany unfortunately marred Lorenzo's reputation. Alum had been discovered by local citizens of Volterra, who turned to Florence to get backing to exploit this important natural resource. A key commodity in the glassmaking, tanning and textile industries, alum was available from only a few sources under the control of the Ottomans and monopolized by Genoa before the discovery of alum sources in Italy at Tolfa. First the Roman Curia in 1462, and then Lorenzo and the Medici Bank less than a year later, got involved in backing the mining operation, with the pope taking a two-ducat commission for each cantar quintal of alum retrieved and ensuring a monopoly against the Turkish-derived goods by prohibiting trade in alum with infidels. When they realized the value of the alum mine, the people of Volterra wanted its revenues for their municipal funds rather than having it enter the pockets of their Florentine backers. Thus began an insurrection and secession from Florence, which involved putting to death several opposing citizens. Lorenzo sent mercenaries to suppress the revolt by force, and the mercenaries ultimately sacked the city. Lorenzo hurried to Volterra to make amends, but the incident would remain a dark stain on his record.

Lorenzo's court included artists such as Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Michelangelo Buonarroti, who were instrumental in achieving the 15th-century Renaissance. Although Lorenzo did not commission many works himself, he helped these artists to secure commissions from other patrons. Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo and his family for three years, dining at the family table and participating in discussions led by Marsilio Ficino.

Lorenzo was an artist and wrote poetry in his native Tuscan. In his poetry, he celebrates life while acknowledging with melancholy the fragility and instability of the human condition, particularly in his later works. Love, feasts and light dominate his verse.

Cosimo had started the collection of books that became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library), and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's agents retrieved from the East large numbers of classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy his books and disseminate their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism through his circle of scholarly friends, including the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They studied Greek philosophers and attempted to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity.

Apart from a personal interest, Lorenzo also used the Florentine milieu of fine arts for his diplomatic efforts. An example includes the commission of Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Cosimo Rosselli from Rome to paint murals in the Sistine Chapel, a move that has been interpreted as sealing the alliance between Lorenzo and Pope Sixtus IV.

In 1471, Lorenzo calculated that his family had spent some 663,000 florins (about US$460 million today) on charity, buildings and taxes since 1434.

Marriage and children

Lorenzo married Clarice Orsini on 7 February 1469. The marriage in person took place in Florence on 4 June 1469. She was a daughter of Giacomo Orsini, Lord of Monterotondo and Bracciano by his wife and cousin Maddalena Orsini.

Clarice and Lorenzo had 10 children, all except Contessina Antonia born in Florence:

Lucrezia Maria Romola de' Medici (1470-1553), who married Jacopo Salviati on 10 September 1486 and had 10 children of her own, including Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, Cardinal Bernardo Salviati, Maria Salviati (mother of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany), and Francesca Salviati (mother of Pope Leo XI)

Male twins who died after birth (March 1471)

Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici (1472-1503), called "the Unfortunate", was ruler of Florence after his father's death; grandfather of Catherine de' Medici, queen of France

Maria Maddalena Romola de' Medici (1473-1528) married Franceschetto Cybo (illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII) on 25 February 1487 and had seven children

Contessina Beatrice de' Medici, died shortly after her birth on 23 September 1474

Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (1475-1521), ascended to the papacy as Leo X in 1513

Luisa de' Medici (1477-1488), also called Luigia, was betrothed to Giovanni de' Medici il Popolano, but died young

Contessina Antonia Romola de' Medici (1478-1515), born in Pistoia, married Piero Ridolfi (1467-1525) in 1494 and had five children, including Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi

Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici (1479-1516) was created Duke of Nemours in 1515 by Francis I of France

Lorenzo adopted his nephew Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici (1478-1534), the illegitimate son of his slain brother Giuliano. In 1523, after serving four years as ruler of Florence, Giulio ascended to the papacy as Pope Clement VII.

Later years, death, and legacy

During Lorenzo's tenure, several branches of the family bank collapsed because of bad loans, and in later years he got into financial difficulties and resorted to misappropriating trust and state funds.

Toward the end of Lorenzo's life, Florence came under the influence of Savonarola, who believed Christians had strayed too far into Greco-Roman culture. Lorenzo played a role in bringing Savonarola to Florence.

Lorenzo died during the late night of 8 April 1492, at the longtime family villa of Careggi. Savonarola visited Lorenzo on his deathbed. The rumour that Savonarola damned Lorenzo on his deathbed has been refuted in Roberto Ridolfi's book Vita di Girolamo Savonarola. Letters written by witnesses to Lorenzo's death report that he died peacefully after listening to the Gospel of the day. Many signs and portents were claimed to have taken place at the moment of his death, including the dome of Florence Cathedral being struck by lightning, ghosts appearing, and the lions kept at Via Leone fighting one another.

Lorenzo was buried with his brother Giuliano in the Church of San Lorenzo in the red porphyry sarcophagus designed for Piero and Giovanni de' Medici, not, as might be expected, in the New Sacristy, designed by Michelangelo. The latter holds the two monumental tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano's less known namesakes: Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. According to Williamson and others, the statues of the lesser Lorenzo and Giuliano were carved by Michelangelo to incorporate the essence of the famous men. In 1559, the bodies of Lorenzo de' Medici ("the Magnificent") and his brother Giuliano were interred in the New Sacristy in an unmarked tomb beneath Michelangelo's statue of the Madonna.

Lorenzo's heir was his eldest son, Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, known as "Piero the Unfortunate". In 1494, he squandered his father's patrimony and brought down the Medici dynasty in Florence. His second son, Giovanni, who became Pope Leo X, retook the city in 1512 with the aid of a Spanish army. In 1531, Lorenzo's nephew Giulio di Giuliano - whom Lorenzo had raised as his own son and who in 1523 became Pope Clement VII - formalized Medici rule of Florence by installing Alessandro de' Medici the city's first hereditary duke.

In Spanish: Lorenzo de Médici para niños

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Types of renaissance patronage (article) | Khan Academy

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By Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Heather Graham

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The Black Death | Bubonic Plague | For Kids

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The plague hit hard and fast. People lay ill little more than two or three days and died suddenly....He who was well one day was dead the next and being carried to his grave," writes the Carmelite friar Jean de Venette in his 14th century French chronicle. From his native Picardy, Jean witnessed the disease's impact in northern France; Normandy, for example, lost 70 to 80 percent of its population. Italy was equally devastated. The Florentine author Boccaccio recounts how that city's citizens "dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed on a ship.

"God is deaf nowadays and will not hear us"

Did the Black Death contribute to the Renaissance?

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The Black Death (article) | Khan Academy

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The outbreak of plague in Europe between 1347-1352 - known as the Black Death - completely changed the world of medieval Europe. Severe depopulation upset the socio-economic feudal system of the time but the experience of the plague itself affected every aspect of people's lives.

Disease on an epidemic scale was simply part of life in the Middle Ages but a pandemic of the severity of the Black Death had never been experienced before and, afterwards, there was no way for the people to resume life as they had previously known it. The Black Death altered the fundamental paradigm of European life in the following areas:

Socio-Economic

Medical Knowledge and Practice

Religious Belief and Practice

Persecution and Migration

Women's Rights

Art & Architecture

Before the plague, the feudal system rigidly divided the population in a caste system of the king at the top, followed by nobles and wealthy merchants, with the peasants (serfs) at the bottom. Medical knowledge was received without question from doctors who relied on physicians of the past and the Catholic Church was considered an even higher authority on spiritual matters. Women were largely regarded as second-class citizens and the art and architecture of the time reflected the people's belief in a benevolent God who responded to prayer and supplication. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas on rodents, and the actual cause of the plague, was unknown to the people of the time and so did not factor into this world view.

Life at this time was by no means easy, or even sometimes pleasant, but people knew - or thought they knew - how the world worked and how to live in it; the plague would change all that and usher in a new understanding which found expression in movements such as the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance.

Arrival, Spread, & Effect of the Plague

The death toll rose so quickly that the people of Europe had no time to grasp what was happening & what they should do about the situation.

The plague came to Europe from the East, most probably via the trade routes known as the Silk Road overland, and certainly by ship oversea. The Black Death - a combination of bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic plague (and also possibly a strain of murrain) - had been gaining momentum in the East since at least 1322 and, by c. 1343, had infected the troops of the Mongol Golden Horde under the command of the Khan Djanibek (r. 1342-1357) who was besieging the Italian-held city of Caffa (modern-day Feodosia in Crimea) on the Black Sea.

As Djanibek's troops died of the plague, he had their corpses catapulted over the city's walls, infecting the people of Caffa through their contact with the decomposing corpses. Eventually, a number of the city's inhabitants fled the city by ship, first arriving at Sicilian ports and then at Marseilles and others from whence the plague spread inland. Those infected usually died within three days of showing symptoms and the death toll rose so quickly that the people of Europe had no time to grasp what was happening, why, or what they should do about the situation. Scholar Norman F. Cantor comments:

The plague was much more severe in the cities than in the countryside, but its psychological impact penetrated all areas of society. No one - peasant or aristocrat - was safe from the disease, and once it was contracted, a horrible and painful death was almost a certainty. The dead and dying lay in the streets, abandoned by frightened friends and relatives. (Civilization, 482)

As the plague raged on, and all efforts to stop its spread or cure those infected failed, people began to lose faith in the institutions they had relied on previously while the social system of feudalism began to crumble due to the widespread death of the serfs, those who were most susceptible as their living conditions placed them in closer contact with each other on a daily basis than those of the upper classes.

The plague ran rampant among the lower class who sought shelter and assistance from friaries, churches, and monasteries, spreading the plague to the clergy, and from the clergy it spread to the nobility. By the time the disease had run its course in 1352, millions were dead and the social structure of Europe was as unrecognizable as much of the landscape since, as Cantor notes, "many flourishing cities became virtual ghost towns for a time" ( Civilization, 482) and crops lay rotting in the fields with no one to harvest them.

Socio-Economic Effects

Before the plague, the king was thought to own all the land which he allocated to his nobles. The nobles had serfs work the land which turned a profit for the lord who paid a percentage to the king. The serfs themselves earned nothing for their labor except lodging and food they grew themselves. Since all land was the king's, he felt free to give it as gifts to friends, relatives, and other nobility who had been of service to him and so every available piece of land by c. 1347 was being cultivated by serfs under one of these lords.

Europe was severely overpopulated at this time and so there was no shortage of serfs to work the land and these peasants had no choice but to continue this labor - which was in essence a kind of slavery - from the time they could walk until their death. There was no upward mobility in the feudal system and a serf was tied to the land he and his family worked from generation to generation.

Once the plague had passed, the improved lot of the serf was challenged by the upper class who were concerned that the lower classes were forgetting their place. Fashion changed dramatically as the elite demanded more extravagant clothing and accessories to distance themselves from the poor who could now afford to dress more finely than in their previous rags and blankets. Efforts of the wealthy to return the serf to his previous condition resulted in uprisings such as the peasant revolt in France in 1358, the guild revolts of 1378, the famous Peasants' Revolt of London in 1381. There was no turning back, however, and the efforts of the elite were futile. Class struggle would continue but the authority of the feudal system was broken.

Effect on Medical Knowledge & Practice

The challenge to authority also affected received medical knowledge and practice. Doctors based their medical knowledge primarily on the work of the Roman physician Galen (l. 130-210) as well as on Hippocrates (l. c. 460 - c. 370 BCE) and Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE), but many of these works were only available in translations from Arabic copies and, often, poor ones. Even so, the works they had were put to the best use they possibly could be. Scholar Jeffrey Singman comments:

Medieval science was far from primitive; in fact, it was a highly sophisticated system based on the accumulated writings of theorists since the first millennium BCE. The weakness of medieval science was its theoretical and bookish orientation, which emphasized the authority of accepted authors. The duty of the scholar [and doctor] was to interpret and reconcile these ancient authorities, rather than to test their theories against observed realities. (62)

Doctors and other caregivers were seen dying at an alarming rate as they tried to cure plague victims using their traditional understanding and, further, nothing they prescribed did anything for their patients. It became clear, by as early as 1349, that people recovered from the plague or died from it for seemingly no reason at all. A cure that had restored one patient to health would fail to work on the next.

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After the plague, doctors began to question their former practice of accepting the knowledge of the past without adapting it to present circumstances. Scholar Joseph A. Legan writes:

Medicine slowly began changing during the generation after the initial outbreak of Plague. Many leading medical theoreticians perished in the Plague, which opened the discipline to new ideas. A second cause for change was while university-based medicine failed, people began turning to the more practical surgeons...With the rise of surgery, more attention was given to the direct study of the human body, both in sickness and in health. Anatomical investigations and dissections, seldom performed in pre-plague Europe, were pursued more urgently with more support from public authorities. (53)

The death of so many scribes and theoreticians, who formerly wrote or translated medical treatises in Latin, resulted in new works being written in the vernacular languages. This allowed common people to read medical texts which broadened the base of medical knowledge. Further, hospitals developed into institutions more closely resembling those in the modern-day. Previously, hospitals were used only to isolate sick people; after the plague, they became centers for treatment with a much higher degree of cleanliness and attention to patient care.

Change in Religious Attitude

the extravagant lifestyle of the clergy & the mounting deaths from the plague generated widespread distrust of the Church's vision & authority.

Doctors and theoreticians were not the only ones whose authority was challenged by the plague, however, as the clergy came under the same kind of scrutiny and inspired the same - or far greater - doubt in their abilities to perform the services they claimed to be able to. Friars, monks, priests, and nuns died just as easily as anyone else - in some towns, religious services simply stopped because there were no authorities to lead them - and, further, the charms and amulets people purchased for protection, the services they did attend, the processions they took part in, the prayer and the fasting, all did nothing to stop the spread of the plague and, in some instances, encouraged it.

The Flagellant Movement, in which groups of penitents would travel town to town whipping themselves to atone for their sins, began in Austria and gained momentum in Germany and France. These groups, led by a self-proclaimed Master with little or no religious training, not only helped spread the plague but also disrupted communities by their insistence on attacking marginalized groups such as the Jews.

Increased Persecution & Migration

The frustration people felt at their helplessness in the face of the plague gave rise to violent outbursts of persecution across Europe. The Flagellant Movement was not the only source of persecution; otherwise peaceful citizens could be whipped into a frenzy to attack communities of Jews, Romani (gypsies), lepers, or others. Women were also abused in the belief that they encouraged sin because of their association with the biblical Eve and the fall of man.

The most common targets, however, were the Jews who had long been singled out for Christian hostility. The Christian concept of the Jew as "Christ Killer" encouraged a large body of superstition which included the claim that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in unholy rituals, that this blood was often spread by Jews on the fields around a town to cause plague, and that the Jews regularly poisoned wells in the hopes of killing as many Christians as possible.

Jewish communities were completely destroyed in Germany, Austria, and France - in spite of a bull issued by Pope Clement VI (l. 1291-1352) exonerating the Jews and condemning Christian attacks on them. Large migrations of Jewish communities fled the scenes of these massacres, many of them finally settling in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Women's Rights

Women, on the other hand, gained higher status following the plague. Prior to the outbreak, women had few rights. Scholar Eileen Power writes:

In considering the characteristic medieval ideas about women, it is important to know not only what the ideas themselves were but also what were the sources from which they spring...In the early Middle Ages, what passed for contemporary opinion [on women] came from two sources - the Church and the aristocracy. (9)

Neither the medieval Church nor the aristocracy held women in very high regard. Women of the lower classes could work as bakers, milkmaids, barmaids, weavers, and, of course, as laborers with their family on the estate of the lord but had no say in directing their own fate. The lord would decide who a girl would marry, not her father, and a woman would go from being under the direct control of her father, who was subject to the lord, to the control of her husband who was equally subordinate.

Women's status had improved somewhat through the popularity of the Cult of the Virgin Mary which associated women with the mother of Jesus Christ but the Church continually emphasized women's inherent sinfulness as daughters of Eve who had brought sin into the world.

After the plague, with so many men dead, women were allowed to own their own land, cultivate the businesses formerly run by their husband or son, and had greater liberty in choosing a mate. Women joined guilds, ran shipping and textile businesses, and could own taverns and farmlands. Although many of these rights would be diminished later as the aristocracy and the Church tried to assert its former control, women would still be better off after the plague than they were beforehand.

Art & Architecture

The plague also dramatically affected medieval art and architecture. Artistic pieces (paintings, wood-block prints, sculptures, and others) tended to be more realistic than before and, almost uniformly, focused on death. Scholar Anna Louise DesOrmeaux comments:

Some plague art contains gruesome imagery that was directly influenced by the mortality of the plague or by the medieval fascination with the macabre and awareness of death that were augmented by the plague. Some plague art documents psychosocial responses to the fear that plague aroused in its victims. Other plague art is of a subject that directly responds to people's reliance on religion to give them hope. (29)

The most famous motif was the Dance of Death (also known as Danse Macabre) an allegorical representation of death claiming people from all walks of life to come with him. As DesOrmeaux notes, post-plague art did not reference the plague directly but anyone viewing a piece would understand the symbolism. This is not to say there were no allusions to death before the plague, only that such became far more pronounced afterwards.

Architecture was similarly influenced, as noted by Cantor:

In England, there was a parallel increased austerity in architectural style which can be attributed to the Black Death - a shift from the Decorated version of French Gothic, which featured elaborate sculptures and glass, to a more spare style called Perpendicular, with sharper profiles of buildings and corners, less opulent, rounded, and effete than Decorated...The cause may have been economic - less capital to spend on decoration because of heavy war taxation and reduction of estate incomes because of labor shortage and higher peasants' wages. (Wake, 209)

Since peasants could now demand a higher wage, the kinds of elaborate building projects which were commissioned before the plague were no longer as easily affordable, resulting in more austere and cost-effective structures. Scholars have noted, however, that post-plague architecture also clearly resonated with the pervasive pessimism of the time and a preoccupation with sin and death.

Conclusion

It was not only the higher wages demanded by the peasant class, nor a preoccupation with death that affected post-plague architecture, however, but the vast reduction in agricultural production and demand due to depopulation which led to an economic recession. Fields were left uncultivated and crops were allowed to rot while, at the same time, nations severely limited imports in an effort to control the spread of the plague which only worsened their economies as well as those of their former trading partners.

The widespread fear of a death one had not earned, could not see coming, and could not escape, stunned the population of Europe at the time and, once they had somewhat recovered, inspired them to rethink the way they were living previously and the kinds of values they had held. Although little changed initially, by the middle of the 15th century radical changes - unimaginable only one hundred years before - were taking place throughout Europe, notably the Protestant Reformation, the agricultural shift from large-scale grain-farming to animal husbandry, the wage increase for urban and rural laborers, and the many other advances associated with the Renaissance.

Plague outbreaks would continue long after the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century but none would have the same psychological impact resulting in a complete reevaluation of the existing paradigm of received knowledge. Europe - as well as other regions - based its reactions to the Black Death on traditional conventions - whether religious or secular - and, when these failed, new models for understanding the world had to be created.

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The outbreak of plague in Europe between 1347-1352 - known as the Black Death - completely changed the world of medieval Europe. Severe depopulation upset the socio-economic feudal system of the time...