Table Of ContentTopic Subtopic
History Modern History
Renaissance
The Transformation of the West
Course Guidebook
Professor Jennifer McNabb
Western Illinois University
Published by
THE GREAT COURSES
Corporate Headquarters
4840 Westfields Boulevard | Suite 500 | Chantilly, Virginia | 20151‑2299
[phone] 1.800.832.2412 | [fax] 703.378.3819 | [web] www.thegreatcourses.com
Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2018
Printed in the United States of America
This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company.
Jennifer McNabb, PhD
Professor of History
Western Illinois University
J
ennifer McNabb is a Professor of History and the chair of the
Department of History at Western Illinois University. She received
her PhD in History from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2003.
Since joining Western Illinois University in 2005, Professor McNabb
has received the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the
College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching
and for Service. She also served as the associate director of the university’s
Centennial Honors College.
Professor McNabb has spoken and published widely on social relationships
in early modern Europe, especially courtship and marriage. In addition to
articles in journals such as the Journal of Women’s History and Quidditas, she
has authored material for several textbooks on Western civilization and
European history. Professor McNabb has served as president of the Rocky
Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association and is the former chair
of the program committee of the Midwest Conference on British Studies.
In 2018, she was appointed as the chief reader for the Advanced Placement
European History Development Committee.
Professor Biography i
Table of Contents
Introduction
Professor Biography i
Course Scope 1
Guides
1 The Spirit of Renaissance 3
2 Rebirth: Classical Values Made New 7
3 The Medieval Roots of Italian Renaissance 16
4 The Rise of the Humanists 26
5 Renaissance Florence: Age of Gold 34
6 Renaissance Venice: Most Serene Republic 42
7 Renaissance Rome and the Papal States 50
8 Renaissance Italy’s Princes and Rivals 60
9 Renaissance Man as Political Animal 67
10 Women and the Italian Renaissance Court 74
11 Painting in the Early Italian Renaissance 81
12 Painting in the High Italian Renaissance 88
13 Italian Sculpture, Architecture, and Music 94
14 Letters in the Italian Renaissance 100
15 Renaissance Statecraft: A New Path 106
16 European Renaissance Monarchies 114
17 The Birth of the Christian Renaissance 122
18 Northern Renaissance Art and Music 129
19 Northern Renaissance Literature and Drama 135
ii Renaissance
20 Did Women Have a Renaissance? 141
21 Renaissance Life: The Rural Experience 149
22 Renaissance Life: The Urban Experience 157
23 Renaissance Life: Crime, Deviance, and Honor 165
24 Renaissance Life: Marriage 172
25 Renaissance Life: Home and Hearth 181
26 Renaissance Faith: Medieval Contexts 188
27 Renaissance Faith: The Papacy 195
28 Renaissance Faith: Religious Uniformity 202
29 Luther: Breaking the Christian Consensus 209
30 Radical Reform in Renaissance Europe 216
31 Renaissance and Reformation: Connections 224
32 English Reformation 233
33 Catholic Reformations: The Road to Trent 241
34 Catholic Reformations: Spiritual Revival 248
35 Reformation Culture: Continuity and Change 255
36 Renaissance War and Peace: Diplomacy 260
37 The French Wars of Religion 265
38 The Dutch Revolt 273
39 The Spanish Armada 281
40 The Thirty Years’ War 291
41 Renaissance at Arms: The Military Revolution 298
42 Renaissance and the Birth of Modern Science 306
43 Renaissance and Magic: Witchcraft 312
44 Renaissance Encounters with Islam 318
45 Renaissance and Exploration: Motives 324
46 Renaissance and Exploration: New Horizons 329
47 Early Modern Power: The New Global Rivalries 335
48 Renaissance Legacy: Burckhardt and Beyond 341
Table of Contents iii
Supplementary Material
Bibliography 347
Image Credits 369
iv Renaissance
Renaissance
The Transformation of the West
The Renaissance is perhaps the most famous period in history. Not since
the days of antiquity had such a collection of geniuses and powerful
personalities seemingly been assembled in one place and time.
If it’s accurate to say that Europe’s Middle Ages was one of the many
casualties of the devastating 14th-century catastrophe known as the Black
Death, the Renaissance represented a stunning rebirth that would do more
than bring Europe back to life. While life in the shadow of the plague
represented life at its most uncertain and chaotic, the Renaissance, in
contrast, celebrated the experience of being human and the pursuit of the
good life. The fusion of the quest for the good life with new visions of faith
and governance propelled the West toward modernity.
As a consequence, much has been written about the Renaissance and
its role in the development of the Western tradition. Some of the most
memorable accounts were authored by contemporaries who described
theirs as a new golden age, bequeathing to posterity a period populated
with extraordinary figures whose vision changed the world.
To some extent, that popular perception of the Renaissance is a myth.
This course will seek to uncover a fuller Renaissance, marked as much by
continuities as change. The Renaissance wasn’t the glittering playground
of the famous and the powerful; it was actually much more. In this course,
we’ll see that the ways Renaissance people came to understand their world
left a legacy that continues to inform the way we understand our own times.
This course will define Renaissance expansively, in terms of both topics
and chronology. It will cover the famous educational, literary, political,
and artistic achievements of the Italian states as well as their neighbors
and rivals north of the Alps. It will also take up explorations of the
Reformation, exploration, scientific and military revolution, and daily
Course Scope 1
life. Our Renaissance journey will stretch across three of the most dynamic
centuries in Western history, from the arrival of the Black Death in 1347
to the close of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.
In surveying these transformative centuries, we will take as our guiding
focus the same questions that absorbed Renaissance energies. We will
ask, as they did, what the value of education was, what defined a good
government, what justified war and the application of violence, what
determined the worth and opportunities of individuals, what shaped
personal and collective identities, and what it meant to be a person of faith.
Along the way, we will encounter writers and artists whose work made
them celebrities in their day and our own. We will meet the popes and
princes who served as their patrons, nursing their own ambitions to power
and fame. The less famous and familiar, too, will receive our attention, as
we seek to get a feel for what it was like for an ordinary person living in
extraordinary times.
After our introductions, we begin our investigations on the Italian
Peninsula, identifying the particular preconditions that fostered a
passion for the ancient world and funded a burst of artistic creativity and
achievement that still impresses. We then turn north to the states that
created a Christian Renaissance, where the political focus of the Italian
humanists was replaced with a passion for Christian antiquity and a more
perfect faith.
After a consideration of daily life for men and women during these
European Renaissances, we turn to the Reformation. The Renaissance
didn’t cause the Reformation, but the same questions that animated the
Renaissance shaped the work of and responses to religious reform. New
theories and practices about the arts of war and diplomacy both reflected
and informed the rivalries endemic in these centuries. This time witnessed
Europe’s reaching for new horizons, both real and figurative.
In the process, we will see Europe transformed, no longer medieval and
not yet truly modern, but having established a vision and value for the
experience of being human that serves as a foundation for our world.
2 Renaissance
Lecture 1
The Spirit of
Renaissance
T
he picture of the Renaissance as a
reaction to the preceding centuries
of darkness and a return to the light
of civilization is a construct, and
modern learners are its most recent
audience. It’s a spectacular tale. It’s a
story of great people and their deeds—
in the halls of government, on the
battlefield, in the courts, and in the
universities, both near and far from
home. Like all the best stories, it has
its fair share of truth: The Renaissance
was an age of oils, bronze, ink, and
paper that represented dazzling
human achievement.
Lecture 1 The Spirit of Renaissance 3
A Complicated Picture
Every way in which the Renaissance seems to represent the coming
h
of modern sensibilities, there many ways in which the Renaissance
represents continuity with the preceding centuries. One of this course’s
goals is to help people be discerning customers of the Renaissance
“brand.”
Not everyone was enamored of the Renaissance world, after all. The
h
critical eye some turned on the laws, institutions, and traditions of
their own day can assist modern learners in gaining perspective on
the Renaissance. The methodologies of the rebirth itself—asking
questions, challenging authorities, and understanding the human
condition—actually prepared dissenting voices to launch their salvos
at the Renaissance.
The Renaissance left excluded many from its vaunted celebration of
h
humanity. However, the celebration it did create was truly remarkable.
The Renaissance bequeathed a novel spin on a very old idea: Humans
were capable of living a good life, and the pursuit of that good life was
a truly noble endeavor.
A Shift in Thinking
During the Middle Ages, humanity hardly celebrated itself. Christian
h
theologians focused on sin—the fallen state of humankind. God’s mercy
saved creatures whose innate wretchedness should have damned them.
There was nothing inspiring in the experience of being human in such
a figuration.
In the 14th century, with the birth of the Renaissance, there were
h
stirrings of an alternate way of thinking about humans: not as ruined,
but as worthy. This doesn’t mean that the Renaissance represented a
rejection of religion. However, this shift in thinking about the human
experience allowed for a different kind of redemption of humanity—one
focused on the here and now, rather than the hereafter.
4 Renaissance
