Renaissance in the North

Heyo AP Euro! Let's talk about the Renaissance

How was the Northern Renaissance different to the Italian Renaissance?

The Italians had three mindsets that convinced themselves they were amazing: individualism, secularism, and humanism. They took inspiration from the past and created things for the individual. Northern Europe, however, was slightly different during the Renaissance. They believed in taking inspiration from the classics to improve the social institutions that molded the individuals of society. Northern attitudes were more focused on social reform based on Christian ideals.

Speaking of social reform, how did one go about changing things without being burned at the stake?

If you remember poor Jan Hus from last chapter, you’ll remember that speaking out against the church or other powerful social institutions could lead to death. 

There are three authors to know, and they all used the same loophole: satire.

1. Desiderius Erasmus- Wrote The Praise of Folly, a satirical book criticizing many people in society

“The fact that they can never explain why they constantly disagree with each other is sufficient proof that they do not know the truth about anything.”

1. Thomas Moore- wrote Utopia, a social commentary that described a perfect word that used and silver chamber pots to buy off their enemies to make a point about how greed causes all of society’s problems

1. Rebelais- wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel, a comedic satire

All of these writers were able to escape execution by indirectly criticizing institutions with satire, instead of directly pointing out what they wanted changed.

Martin Luther was one of the first to legitimately criticize the Church without being executed.

Short bit about slaves:

Slaves were considered a status symbol, but they were not really tied to any particular race (Although Francesca mentioned about the origin of the word-- there were a lot of enslaved Slavic people, and so the word slave evolved.)

Onto the Monarchy:

Monarchs were worried about two things:

Gaining power

and aristocrats

The Monarchy in France:

Charles VII:

Established French liberties over the Church with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438

This allowed the French government to appoint bishops, thus giving the French more influence in the Church

The Church was not a huge fan, but that’ll be taken care of later

Louis XI: “The Spider King”

Cut into urban independence-- did not allow people to raise their own armies

This took care of the concern about powerful aristocrats who now had no military backup.

Gained a lot of territory

Rescinded the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges with the Concordat of Bologna in 1516

The Church was appeased and respected the right of the French to appoint bishops and abbots

The French lost a little power, but were able to keep their spoils system inside the Church, which still gave the government an advantage in religious politics.

So to sum up:

The North wanted to reform institutions, but had to be careful about how they said it

There was slavery

The monarchs struggled for power over major institutions-- mostly the Church