The Fifteenth Century was a period of import in art, philosophy, political thought, and literature as the Renaissance developed power and altered the way man was viewed against the backdrop of the universe. Much of what began in the Fifteenth Century would flower in the Sixteenth Century. Both Machiavelli and Erasmus were born in the Fifteenth Century but would not produce their great works until the beginning of the Sixteenth, though they were clearly shaped by the Fifteenth and the forces then developing. The century was a time of contrasts between the richest and the poorest:
Florence, in the fifteenth century, was a city state ruling not only Florence but (with interruptions) Prato, Pistoia, Pisa, Volterra, Cortona, Arezzo, and their agricultural hinterland. The peasants were not serfs but partly small proprietors, mostly tenant farmers, who lived in houses of crude cemented stone much as today, and chose their own village officials to govern them in local affairs. Machiavelli did not disdain to chat and play with these hardy knights of the field, the orchard, or the vine. But the magistrates of the cities regulated sales, and, to appease a troublesome proletariat, kept food prices too low for peasant happiness; so the ancient strife of country and city added its somber obbligato to the songs of hate that rose from embattled classes within the city walls (Will Durant 139).
Humanism and the Renaissance involved similar revivals of classical learning, an elevation of the individual, and a belief in the worth of human thought over authority, whether the latter be the authority of a political body or a church. The essence of humanism is found in the works produced during the Renaissance by writers, artists, and sculptors as they structured their works with humanistic values in mind. The development of humanism in the Renaissance involved a shift in how people thought, and this occurred at the same time that the horizons...