The Renaissance was a period of rapid artistic and cultural development that celebrated the capacity and worth of each individual and returned the learning and beliefs of the classical world to a central position in European life. Given that much of the cultural accomplishments of the Renaissance were based upon the earlier work of the classical world, it was both appropriate and logical that the Renaissance should begin in Italy before it spread across the continent. This paper examines why the cultural, social and artistic elements of the Renaissance spread across Europe.
The Renaissance began - as is probably true of so many large-scale social changes - both as the result of the accumulation of a number of small changes made by many people acting independently in a range of different arenas of society - merchants and artists, princes and sculptors, prostitutes and winemakers. But it was also given needed impetus by the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Although it is of course an oversimplification of history to argue that the fall of Rome brought about the Dark Ages and the fall of Constantinople brought about the Renaissance it is not entirely inaccurate to use the destruction of these two great cities as markers for the beginnings of two eras. When Rome was overrun, many of its scholars and artists decamped to the Rome of the East, to the Byzantine Empire. And when Byzantium fell in turn, a millennium later, its scholars gathered together their most valuable possessions - including a number of Greek texts - along with their learning and came back to Italy (Norman, 1995).
And what they found there was a country beginning to revel in the philosophy of humanism. After centuries of belief in the inherent wickedness of human beings, Italian and especially Florentine writers, artists, and social leaders were beginning to argue for the essential goodness of their fellow humans - at least if those fellow humans were properly educa...