AP European History
AP European History
The word Renaissance means rebirth in French. The Renaissance was a period of artistic and cultural achievement in Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. It was characterized by a number of distinctive ideas about life, specifically secularism, individualism, humanism, and materialism. The spirit of the Renaissance influenced European society for generations, making the Renaissance truly a golden age in European history.
If the Renaissance was a rebirth of culture, you might think that the period before the Renaissance was one of gloom and darkness. Actually, historians have shown that the Medieval Era, or Middle Ages, did produce art, architecture, literature, and other ideas in law, languages, and economics that influenced Europe in the fourteenth century and provided the foundation for the Renaissance. However, during the Middle Ages, writers and philosophers viewed society as a preparation for the afterlife. Renaissance writers were interested in the present or secular world.
The table below explains some of the important differences between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: