The Renaissance: Was it a Thing?

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The Renaissance: Was it a Thing?

This is Crash Course World History and today we're going to talk about something that ought to be more controversial:The Renaissance.

You probably already know about the Renaissance thanks to the work of noted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael.

But that isn't the whole story.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green! What about Splinter?

I think he was an architect.

Me from the past, you're such an idiot.

Splinter was a painter, sculptor AND an architect.

He was quite a Renaissance rat.

(lively music) Right, so the story goes that the Renaissance saw the rebirth of European culture after the miserable Dark Ages and that it ushered in the modern era of secularism, rationality and individualism.

Those are all on the list of things we like here at Crash Course.

Mr. green, I think you're forgetting Cool Ranch Doritos? Yeah, fair enough.

Then what's so controversial? Well, the whole idea of a European Renaissance presupposes that Europe was like an island unto itself that was briefly enlightened when the Greeks were ascendant and then lost its way and then rediscovered its former European glory.

Furthermore, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance didn't even necessarily happen.

But first, let's assume that it did.

Essentially, the Renaissance was an efflorescence of arts primarily visual but also to a lesser extent in literary and ideas in Europe that coincided with the rediscover of Roman and Greek culture.

It's easiest to see this in terms of visual art.

Renaissance art tends to feature a focus on the human form, somewhat idealized as Roman and especially Greek art had.

This classicizing is also rather apparent in the architecture of the Renaissance which featured all sorts of Greek columns and triangular pediments and Roman arches and domes.

In fact, looking at a Renaissance building you might even be able to fool yourself into thinking you're looking at an actual Greek building if you sort of squint and ignore the fact that Greek builds tend to be, you know, ruins.

In addition to rediscovering, that is, copying Greek and Roman art, the Renaissance saw the rediscovery of Greek and Roman writings and their ideas.

That opened up a while new world for scholars.

Well, not a new world actually since the texts were more than 1000 years old but you know what I mean.

The scholars who examined, translated and commented upon these writings were called humanists which can be a little bit of confusing term because it implies they were concerned with, you know, humans rather than, say, the religious world.

Which can add to common but totally incorrect assumption that Renaissance writers and artists and scholars were secretly not religious.

That is a favorite area of speculation on the internet and in Dan Brown novels but the truth is that Renaissance artists were religious.

As evidence, let me present you with the fact that they painted the Madonna over and over and over and over and over and Stan!

Anyway, all humanism means is that these scholars studied what were called the humanities. Literature, philosophy, history.

Today, of course, these areas of study are known as the so-called "dark arts."

What? Liberal arts? Stan, you're always making history less fun!

I want to be a professor of the dark arts.

Voiceover: The Dark Arts job. It's a dangerous position.

John: Yeah, I guess that's true so we'll stick with this.

Right, so here at Crash Course, we try not to focus too much on dates but if I'm going to convince you that the Renaissance didn't actually happen I should probably tell you when it didn't happen.

Traditionally, the Renaissance is associated with the 15th and 16th centuries-ish.

The Renaissance happened all across Europe but we're going to focus on Italy because I want to and I own the video camera.

Plus, Italy really spawned the Renaissance.

What was it about Italy that lent itself to Renaissancing?

Was it the wine? The olives? The pasta? The plumbers?

The relative permissiveness when it comes to the moral lassitude of their leader?

Well, let's go to the thought bubble.

Italy was primed for Renaissance for exactly one reason: money.

A society has to be super rich to support artists and elaborate building projects and to feed scholars who translate and comment on thousand year old documents.

The Italian city states were very wealthy for 2 reasons.

First, many city states were mini industrial powerhouses each specializing in a particular industrial product like Florence made cloth, Milan made arms.

Second, the cities of Venice and Genoa got stinking rich from trade.

Genoa turned out a fair number of top-notch sailors like for instance, Christopher Columbus.

But the Venetians became the richest city state of all.

As you'll remember from the Crusades, the Venetians were expert sailors, shipbuilders and merchants and as you'll remember from our discussions of Indian Ocean trade, they also had figured out ways to trade with Islamic empires including the biggest economic power in the region: the Ottomans.

Without trading with the Islamic world especially in pepper, Venice couldn't have afforded all those painters nor would they have had money to pay for the incredibly fancy clothes they put on to pose for their fancy portraits.

The clothes, the paint, the painters, enough food to get a double chin, all of that was paid for with money from trade with the Ottomans.

I know I talk a lot about trade but that's because it's so incredibly awesome and it really does bind the world together.

While trade can lead to conflicts on balance, it has been responsible for more peaceful contacts than violent ones because, you know, death is bad for business.

This was certainly the case in the Eastern Mediterranean where the periods of trade-based diplomacy were longer and more frequent than periods of wars, even though all we ever talk about is war because it's very dramatic which is why my brother Hank's favorite video game is called Assassin's Creed.

Not some Venetian Guys Negotiate a Trade a Treaty. Thanks thought bubble.

Here's another example of non-European supporting the Renaissance.

The Venetians exported textiles to the Ottomans.

They were usually woven in other cities like Florence and the reason Florentine textiles were so valuable is because their color remained vibrant.

That is because they were dyed with a chemical called alum which was primarily found in Anatolia in the Ottoman Empire.

To make the textiles the Ottomans craved, the Italians needed Ottoman alum at least until 1460.

When Giovanni da Castro, Pope Pius II's godson, discovered alum in Italy in Tolfa and he wrote to his godfather, the Pope:"Today, I bring you victory over the Turk.

Every year they wring from Christians more than 300,000 Ducats for the alum with which we dye wool various colors.

But I have found 7 mountains so rich in this material that they could supply 7 worlds.

If you will give orders to engage workmen, build furnaces and smelt the ore, "you will provide all Europe with alum "and the Turk will lose all his profits.

Instead they will accrue to you.

The Pope was like, "Heck yeah."

More importantly, he granted a monopoly on the mining rights of alum to a particular Florentine family, the Medicis.

You know, the ones you always see painted.

But vitally, Italian alum mines didn't bring victory over the Turks or cause them to lose all their profits, just as mining and drilling at home never obviate the need for trade.

Okay, one last way the Islamic world helped to create the European Renaissance if indeed it happened.

The Muslim world was the source of many of the writings that Renaissance scholars studied.

For centuries, Muslim scholars have been working their way through Ancient Greek writings especially Ptolemy and Aristotle, who despite being consistently wrong about everything managed to be the jumping off point for thinking both in the Christian and Muslim worlds.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 helped further spread Greek ideas because Byzantine scholars fled for Italy taking their books with them.

We have the Ottomans to thank for that, too.

And even after it had become a Muslim capital, Istanbul was still the number 1 destination for book nerds searching for Ancient Greek texts.

Plus, if we stretch our definition of Renaissance thought to include scientific thought, there is a definite case to be made then Muslim scholars influenced Copernicus, arguably the Renaissance's greatest mind.

(wheels rolling) An open letter to Copernicus.

Wow, the heliocentric solar system? Cool.

Earth in the middle, sun in the middle, earth in the middle, sun in the middle.

Ptolemy, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Copernicus. Right, an open letter to Copernicus.

Dear Copernicus, Why you always got to make the rest of us look so bad?

You were both a lawyer and a doctor? That doesn't seem fair.

You spoke 4 languages and discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe? Come on.

But at least you didn't discover it entirely on your own.

Now, there's no way to be sure that you had access to the Muslim scholarship on this topic.

But one of your diagrams is so similar to a proof found in Islamic mathematics treatise that it's almost impossible you didn't have access to it.

Even the letters on the diagram are almost the same.

So, at least I can tell my mom that when she asks why I'm not a doctor and a lawyer and the guy who discovered the heliocentric solar system.

Best wishes, John Green. All right, so now having spent the last several minutes telling you why the Renaissance happened in Italy and not in, I don't know, like India or Russia or whatever, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance did not in fact happen.

Let's start with the problem of time.

The Renaissance isn't like the Battle of Hastings or the French Revolution where people were aware that they were living amid history.

Like when I was 11 and most of you didn't exist yet, my dad made my brother and me turn off the Cosby Show and watch people climbing on the Berlin wall so we could see history.

But no one woke their kids up in a Tuscan village in 1512 like, "Mario, Luigi, come outside.

The Renaissance is here. Hurry, we're living in a glorious new era "where man's relationship to learning is changing.

I somehow feel a new sense of individualism based on my capacity for reason.

No. In fact, most people in Europe were totally unaware of the Renaissance because its art and learning affected a tiny sliver of the European population.

Like life expectancy in many areas of Europe actually went down during the Renaissance.

Art and learning of the Renaissance didn't filter down to most people the way that technology does today.

And really the Renaissance was only experienced by the richest of the rich and those people, like painters, who served them.

I mean, there were some commercial opportunities, like for framing paintings or binding books but the vast majority of Europeans still lived on farms either as free peasants or tenants.

The Rediscovery of Aristotle didn't in any way change their lives which were governed by the rising and setting of the sun, and intellectually, by the Catholic Church.

In fact, probably about 95% of Europeans never encountered the Renaissance's opulence or art or modes of thought.

We have constructed the Renaissance as important not because it was so central to the 15th century.

I mean, at the time Europe wasn't the world's leader in anything other than the tiny business of Atlantic trade.

We remember it as important because it matters to us now.

It gave us the Ninja Turtles.

We care about Aristotle and individualism and the Mona Lisa, and the possibility that Michelangelo painted an anatomically correct brain onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, because these things give us a narrative that makes sense.

Europe was enlightened and then it was unenlightened and then it was re-enlightened and ever since it's been the center of art and commerce and history.

You see that cycle of life and death and rebirth a lot in historical recollection but it just isn't accurate.

It's true that many of the ideas introduced to Europe in 15th and 16th centuries became very important but remember, when we talk about the Renaissance, we're talking about hundreds of years.

I mean, although they share Ninja Turtledom, Donatello and Raphael were born 97 years apart.

The Renaissance humanist Petrach was born in 1304, 229 years before the Renaissance humanist Montaigne.

That's almost as long as the United States has existed.

So was the Renaissance a thing? Not really.

It was a lot of mutually interdependent things that occurred over centuries. Stupid truth always resisting simplicity.

번역 0%

The Renaissance: Was it a Thing?발음듣기

This is Crash Course World History and today we're going to talk about something that ought to be more controversial:The Renaissance.발음듣기

You probably already know about the Renaissance thanks to the work of noted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael.발음듣기

But that isn't the whole story.발음듣기

Mr. Green, Mr. Green! What about Splinter?발음듣기

I think he was an architect.발음듣기

Me from the past, you're such an idiot.발음듣기

Splinter was a painter, sculptor AND an architect.발음듣기

He was quite a Renaissance rat.발음듣기

(lively music) Right, so the story goes that the Renaissance saw the rebirth of European culture after the miserable Dark Ages and that it ushered in the modern era of secularism, rationality and individualism.발음듣기

Those are all on the list of things we like here at Crash Course.발음듣기

Mr. green, I think you're forgetting Cool Ranch Doritos? Yeah, fair enough.발음듣기

Then what's so controversial? Well, the whole idea of a European Renaissance presupposes that Europe was like an island unto itself that was briefly enlightened when the Greeks were ascendant and then lost its way and then rediscovered its former European glory.발음듣기

Furthermore, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance didn't even necessarily happen.발음듣기

But first, let's assume that it did.발음듣기

Essentially, the Renaissance was an efflorescence of arts primarily visual but also to a lesser extent in literary and ideas in Europe that coincided with the rediscover of Roman and Greek culture.발음듣기

It's easiest to see this in terms of visual art.발음듣기

Renaissance art tends to feature a focus on the human form, somewhat idealized as Roman and especially Greek art had.발음듣기

This classicizing is also rather apparent in the architecture of the Renaissance which featured all sorts of Greek columns and triangular pediments and Roman arches and domes.발음듣기

In fact, looking at a Renaissance building you might even be able to fool yourself into thinking you're looking at an actual Greek building if you sort of squint and ignore the fact that Greek builds tend to be, you know, ruins.발음듣기

In addition to rediscovering, that is, copying Greek and Roman art, the Renaissance saw the rediscovery of Greek and Roman writings and their ideas.발음듣기

That opened up a while new world for scholars.발음듣기

Well, not a new world actually since the texts were more than 1000 years old but you know what I mean.발음듣기

The scholars who examined, translated and commented upon these writings were called humanists which can be a little bit of confusing term because it implies they were concerned with, you know, humans rather than, say, the religious world.발음듣기

Which can add to common but totally incorrect assumption that Renaissance writers and artists and scholars were secretly not religious.발음듣기

That is a favorite area of speculation on the internet and in Dan Brown novels but the truth is that Renaissance artists were religious.발음듣기

As evidence, let me present you with the fact that they painted the Madonna over and over and over and over and over and Stan!발음듣기

Anyway, all humanism means is that these scholars studied what were called the humanities. Literature, philosophy, history.발음듣기

Today, of course, these areas of study are known as the so-called "dark arts."발음듣기

What? Liberal arts? Stan, you're always making history less fun!발음듣기

I want to be a professor of the dark arts.발음듣기

Voiceover: The Dark Arts job. It's a dangerous position.발음듣기

John: Yeah, I guess that's true so we'll stick with this.발음듣기

Right, so here at Crash Course, we try not to focus too much on dates but if I'm going to convince you that the Renaissance didn't actually happen I should probably tell you when it didn't happen.발음듣기

Traditionally, the Renaissance is associated with the 15th and 16th centuries-ish.발음듣기

The Renaissance happened all across Europe but we're going to focus on Italy because I want to and I own the video camera.발음듣기

Plus, Italy really spawned the Renaissance.발음듣기

What was it about Italy that lent itself to Renaissancing?발음듣기

Was it the wine? The olives? The pasta? The plumbers?발음듣기

The relative permissiveness when it comes to the moral lassitude of their leader?발음듣기

Well, let's go to the thought bubble.발음듣기

Italy was primed for Renaissance for exactly one reason: money.발음듣기

A society has to be super rich to support artists and elaborate building projects and to feed scholars who translate and comment on thousand year old documents.발음듣기

The Italian city states were very wealthy for 2 reasons.발음듣기

First, many city states were mini industrial powerhouses each specializing in a particular industrial product like Florence made cloth, Milan made arms.발음듣기

Second, the cities of Venice and Genoa got stinking rich from trade.발음듣기

Genoa turned out a fair number of top-notch sailors like for instance, Christopher Columbus.발음듣기

But the Venetians became the richest city state of all.발음듣기

As you'll remember from the Crusades, the Venetians were expert sailors, shipbuilders and merchants and as you'll remember from our discussions of Indian Ocean trade, they also had figured out ways to trade with Islamic empires including the biggest economic power in the region: the Ottomans.발음듣기

Without trading with the Islamic world especially in pepper, Venice couldn't have afforded all those painters nor would they have had money to pay for the incredibly fancy clothes they put on to pose for their fancy portraits.발음듣기

The clothes, the paint, the painters, enough food to get a double chin, all of that was paid for with money from trade with the Ottomans.발음듣기

I know I talk a lot about trade but that's because it's so incredibly awesome and it really does bind the world together.발음듣기

While trade can lead to conflicts on balance, it has been responsible for more peaceful contacts than violent ones because, you know, death is bad for business.발음듣기

This was certainly the case in the Eastern Mediterranean where the periods of trade-based diplomacy were longer and more frequent than periods of wars, even though all we ever talk about is war because it's very dramatic which is why my brother Hank's favorite video game is called Assassin's Creed.발음듣기

Not some Venetian Guys Negotiate a Trade a Treaty. Thanks thought bubble.발음듣기

Here's another example of non-European supporting the Renaissance.발음듣기

The Venetians exported textiles to the Ottomans.발음듣기

They were usually woven in other cities like Florence and the reason Florentine textiles were so valuable is because their color remained vibrant.발음듣기

That is because they were dyed with a chemical called alum which was primarily found in Anatolia in the Ottoman Empire.발음듣기

To make the textiles the Ottomans craved, the Italians needed Ottoman alum at least until 1460.발음듣기

When Giovanni da Castro, Pope Pius II's godson, discovered alum in Italy in Tolfa and he wrote to his godfather, the Pope:"Today, I bring you victory over the Turk.발음듣기

Every year they wring from Christians more than 300,000 Ducats for the alum with which we dye wool various colors.발음듣기

But I have found 7 mountains so rich in this material that they could supply 7 worlds.발음듣기

If you will give orders to engage workmen, build furnaces and smelt the ore, "you will provide all Europe with alum "and the Turk will lose all his profits.발음듣기

Instead they will accrue to you.발음듣기

The Pope was like, "Heck yeah."발음듣기

More importantly, he granted a monopoly on the mining rights of alum to a particular Florentine family, the Medicis.발음듣기

You know, the ones you always see painted.발음듣기

But vitally, Italian alum mines didn't bring victory over the Turks or cause them to lose all their profits, just as mining and drilling at home never obviate the need for trade.발음듣기

Okay, one last way the Islamic world helped to create the European Renaissance if indeed it happened.발음듣기

The Muslim world was the source of many of the writings that Renaissance scholars studied.발음듣기

For centuries, Muslim scholars have been working their way through Ancient Greek writings especially Ptolemy and Aristotle, who despite being consistently wrong about everything managed to be the jumping off point for thinking both in the Christian and Muslim worlds.발음듣기

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 helped further spread Greek ideas because Byzantine scholars fled for Italy taking their books with them.발음듣기

We have the Ottomans to thank for that, too.발음듣기

And even after it had become a Muslim capital, Istanbul was still the number 1 destination for book nerds searching for Ancient Greek texts.발음듣기

Plus, if we stretch our definition of Renaissance thought to include scientific thought, there is a definite case to be made then Muslim scholars influenced Copernicus, arguably the Renaissance's greatest mind.발음듣기

(wheels rolling) An open letter to Copernicus.발음듣기

Wow, the heliocentric solar system? Cool.발음듣기

Earth in the middle, sun in the middle, earth in the middle, sun in the middle.발음듣기

Ptolemy, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Copernicus. Right, an open letter to Copernicus.발음듣기

Dear Copernicus, Why you always got to make the rest of us look so bad?발음듣기

You were both a lawyer and a doctor? That doesn't seem fair.발음듣기

You spoke 4 languages and discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe? Come on.발음듣기

But at least you didn't discover it entirely on your own.발음듣기

Now, there's no way to be sure that you had access to the Muslim scholarship on this topic.발음듣기

But one of your diagrams is so similar to a proof found in Islamic mathematics treatise that it's almost impossible you didn't have access to it.발음듣기

Even the letters on the diagram are almost the same.발음듣기

So, at least I can tell my mom that when she asks why I'm not a doctor and a lawyer and the guy who discovered the heliocentric solar system.발음듣기

Best wishes, John Green. All right, so now having spent the last several minutes telling you why the Renaissance happened in Italy and not in, I don't know, like India or Russia or whatever, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance did not in fact happen.발음듣기

Let's start with the problem of time.발음듣기

The Renaissance isn't like the Battle of Hastings or the French Revolution where people were aware that they were living amid history.발음듣기

Like when I was 11 and most of you didn't exist yet, my dad made my brother and me turn off the Cosby Show and watch people climbing on the Berlin wall so we could see history.발음듣기

But no one woke their kids up in a Tuscan village in 1512 like, "Mario, Luigi, come outside.발음듣기

The Renaissance is here. Hurry, we're living in a glorious new era "where man's relationship to learning is changing.발음듣기

I somehow feel a new sense of individualism based on my capacity for reason.발음듣기

No. In fact, most people in Europe were totally unaware of the Renaissance because its art and learning affected a tiny sliver of the European population.발음듣기

Like life expectancy in many areas of Europe actually went down during the Renaissance.발음듣기

Art and learning of the Renaissance didn't filter down to most people the way that technology does today.발음듣기

And really the Renaissance was only experienced by the richest of the rich and those people, like painters, who served them.발음듣기

I mean, there were some commercial opportunities, like for framing paintings or binding books but the vast majority of Europeans still lived on farms either as free peasants or tenants.발음듣기

The Rediscovery of Aristotle didn't in any way change their lives which were governed by the rising and setting of the sun, and intellectually, by the Catholic Church.발음듣기

In fact, probably about 95% of Europeans never encountered the Renaissance's opulence or art or modes of thought.발음듣기

We have constructed the Renaissance as important not because it was so central to the 15th century.발음듣기

I mean, at the time Europe wasn't the world's leader in anything other than the tiny business of Atlantic trade.발음듣기

We remember it as important because it matters to us now.발음듣기

It gave us the Ninja Turtles.발음듣기

We care about Aristotle and individualism and the Mona Lisa, and the possibility that Michelangelo painted an anatomically correct brain onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, because these things give us a narrative that makes sense.발음듣기

Europe was enlightened and then it was unenlightened and then it was re-enlightened and ever since it's been the center of art and commerce and history.발음듣기

You see that cycle of life and death and rebirth a lot in historical recollection but it just isn't accurate.발음듣기

It's true that many of the ideas introduced to Europe in 15th and 16th centuries became very important but remember, when we talk about the Renaissance, we're talking about hundreds of years.발음듣기

I mean, although they share Ninja Turtledom, Donatello and Raphael were born 97 years apart.발음듣기

The Renaissance humanist Petrach was born in 1304, 229 years before the Renaissance humanist Montaigne.발음듣기

That's almost as long as the United States has existed.발음듣기

So was the Renaissance a thing? Not really.발음듣기

It was a lot of mutually interdependent things that occurred over centuries. Stupid truth always resisting simplicity.발음듣기

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