The Northern Renaissance Northern Renaissance Main Points More

The Northern Renaissance

Northern Renaissance – Main Points • More of a blend between old & new worlds = religious element was stronger than in Italy. • Christian humanists studied Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible to deepen their understanding of the Bible. The purpose was to restore morality to the Catholic Church. • Belgium/Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany & England.

Factors That Led to The Northern Renaissance 1. Economic – Flanders (northern France, Belgium, Netherlands) was a thriving center of trade for northern Europe. flourished. - Cities along the Rhine River (German cities) also - German banking families accumulated lots of wealth (Fuggers). 2. Invention of the Printing Press (1455) – Johannes Gutenberg - 888 The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, was the first dated example of block printing. - 1041 Bi Sheng in China invented movable clay type - By 1500, 15 -20 million volumes of books produced. - Printed the Bible

Flanders

Rhine River

Gutenberg and the Printing Press

Northern Renaissance Artists – Jan van Eyck (1380/90 -1441)

Van Eyck – Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (1434)

Northern Renaissance Artist – Peter Paul Rubens (1577 -1640)

Northern Renaissance Artists – Albrecht Durer (1471 -1528)

Northern Humanists and Writers • Stressed education and classical learning to bring about religious and moral reform. • Most wrote in Latin / Some began writing in the vernacular.

Northern Humanists: Desiderius Erasmus (1466 -1536) • Born in Rotterdam, Holland • Forced to study in a monastery for 6 years by his guardians. • Became a priest • Professor in Paris • the aim of Erasmus was to introduce a more rational conception of Christian doctrine. • During the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus found himself between Church conservatives who blamed him for inspiring Luther and Luther himself for being a coward and not joining his movement. • First Humanist to earn a living by his writing.

Erasmus on the Clergy: from In Praise of Folly (1509) • . . . Next to theologians in happiness are those who commonly call themselves the religious and monks. Both are complete misnomers, since most of them stay as far away from religion as possible, and no people are seen more often in public. They are so detested that it is considered bad luck if one crosses your path, and yet they are highly pleased with themselves. They cannot read, and so they consider it the height of piety to have no contact with literature. . Most of them capitalize on their dirt and poverty by whining for food from door to door. . These smooth fellows simply explain that by their very filth, ignorance, boorishness, and insolence they enact the lives of the apostles for us. It is amusing to see how they do everything by rule, almost mathematically. Any slip is sacrilege. each shoe string must have so many knots and must be of a certain color. . They even condemn each other, these professors of apostolic charity, making an extraordinary stir if a habit is belted incorrectly or if its color is a shade too dark. . The monks of certain orders recoil in horror from money, as if it were poison, but not from wine or women. They take extreme pains, not in order to be like Christ, but to be unlike each other. Most of them consider one heaven an inadequate reward for their devotion to ceremony and traditional details. They forget that Christ will condemn all of this and will call for a reckoning of that which He has prescribed, namely, charity.

Erasmus on the Clergy: from In Praise of Folly (1509) • Perhaps it would be wise to pass over theologians in silence. That short-tempered and supercilious crew is unpleasant to deal with. . They will proclaim me a heretic. With this thunderbolt they terrify the people they don't like. Their opinion of themselves is so great they behave as if they were already in heaven; they look down pityingly on other men as so many worms. A wall of imposing definitions, conclusions, corollaries, and explicit and implicit propositions protects them. They are full of big words and newly-invented terms. .

William Shakespeare (1523 -1616) • The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.

William Shakespeare - Works Tragedies • Titus Andronicus first performed in 1594 (printed in 1594), Romeo and Juliet 1594 -95 (1597), Hamlet 1600 -01 (1603), Julius Caesar 1600 -01 (1623), Othello 1604 -05 (1622), Antony and Cleopatra 1606 -07 (1623), King Lear 1606 (1608), Coriolanus 1607 -08 (1623), derived from Plutarch Timon of Athens 1607 -08 (1623), and Macbeth 1611 -1612 (1623).

William Shakespeare - Works Histories • King Henry VI Part 1 1592 (printed in 1594); King Henry VI Part 2 1592 -93 (1594); King Henry VI Part 3 1592 -93 (1623); King John 1596 -97 (1623); King Henry IV Part 1 1597 -98 (1598); King Henry IV Part 2 1597 -98 (1600); King Henry V 1598 -99 (1600); Richard II 1600 -01 (1597); Richard III 1601 (1597); and King Henry VIII 1612 -13 (1623)

William Shakespeare - Works Comedies Taming of the Shrew first performed 1593 -94 (1623), Comedy of Errors 1594 (1623), Two Gentlemen of Verona 1594 -95 (1623), Love's Labour's Lost 1594 -95 (1598), Midsummer Night's Dream 1595 -96 (1600), Merchant of Venice 1596 -1597 (1600), Much Ado About Nothing 1598 -1599 (1600), As You Like It 1599 -00 (1623), Merry Wives of Windsor 1600 -01 (1602), Troilus and Cressida 1602 (1609), Twelfth Night 1602 (1623), All's Well That Ends Well 1602 -03 (1623), Measure for Measure 1604 (1623), Pericles, Prince of Tyre 1608 -09 (1609), Tempest (1611), Cymbeline 1611 -12 (1623), Winter's Tale 1611 -12 (1623).