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European Society

in the Renaissance

Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Worth Publishers.
1350–1550 this sample.

For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
Uncorrected proofs have been used in

While the Hundred Years’ War gripped northern Europe, a new culture emerged in
southern Europe. The fourteenth century witnessed remarkable changes in Italian
by Bedford, Freeman &
intellectual, artistic, and cultural life. Artists and writers thought that they were living

in a new golden age, but not until the sixteenth century was this change given the
label we use today — the Renaissance, derived from the French word for “rebirth.”
That word was first used by art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) to describe the
art of “rare men of genius” such as his contemporary Michelangelo. Through their
works, Vasari judged, the glory of the classical past had been reborn after centuries
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of darkness. Over time, the word’s meaning was broadened to include many aspects
Distributed
of life during that period. The new attitude had a slow diffusion out of Italy, so that the
Renaissance “happened” at different times in different parts of Europe. The Renais-
sance was a movement, not a time period.

Later scholars increasingly saw the cultural and political changes of the Renaissance,
along with the religious changes of the Reformation (see Chapter 4) and the European
voyages of exploration (see Chapter 3), as ushering in the “modern” world. Some histori-
ans view the Renaissance as a bridge between the medieval and modern eras because
it corresponded chronologically with the late medieval period and because there were
many continuities with that period along with the changes that suggested aspects of the
modern world. Others have questioned whether the word Renaissance should be used at

all to describe an era in which many social groups saw decline rather than improvement.
The debates remind us that these labels — medieval, Renaissance, modern — are intellec-
tual constructs devised after the fact, and all contain value judgments. ■

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