Transcript The Renaissance
Renaissance Politics and Economics
Essential Questions
1. What factors made Italy the site for the rise of so many wealthy city states in the 14th and 15th centuries?
2. Why was the diplomatic interaction, rivalry, and conflict as intense and complex as it was in Italy during the Renaissance?
3. Why did ruling dynasties, such as the Medici or the Borgias, so often rule over city-states in which the ideal of a republic as a political system was upheld so strongly?
4. Why did the elites of the Italian city-states become such strong patrons of Renaissance scholars, artists, and architects?
5. Why did the Catholic popes in Rome also become such strong patrons of these Renaissance artists and architects?
6. Why did the great powers of Europe—Spain, France, the Holy Roman Empire—so often become involved in wars in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries?
Setting the Stage for the Renaissance:
Economics
Revival of trade: 11th century • Improved agricultural techniques • Population increase • New trade routes • Improved transportation A Renaissance-era moneychanger
Setting the Stage for the Renaissance:
Politics
• City-states • Communes • New economic elite • The
popolo
• • Oligarchies and dictatorships
Condottieri
A group of
condottieri
Italian City-States
Discussion Questions
1. What were some of the factors explaining the rise of trade and a merchant class in Italy and elsewhere in Europe starting in the 11th century?
2. Italy’s city-states grew out of communes formed in the late Middle Ages. In what ways were the new urban elites in these communes a break with the feudal past in most of Europe?
3. The Italian city-states were like little laboratories where European rulers learned to carry out complex foreign policies marked by constantly shifting alliances, diplomatic intrigue, the use of ambassadors, etc. What about the context of Italy in the 1400s encouraged this learning process?
• The Visconti family • Territorial expansion
Milan
Milanese ruler Gian Galeazzo Visconti
The Sforza Family
• Ruled Milan (1450–1535) • Francesco Sforza (1401–1466) • War with Venice (1450) and Peace of Lodi (1454) • Ludovico Sforza (1451–1508) Francesco Sforza
• Major center of trade • Doge • Merchant oligarchy
Venice
Customs House and entrance to the Grand Canal (Venice)