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Decline of the Renaissance
In its later phases in Italy, the Renaissance grew more secular and diverse in character. Christian doctrine and standards of morality were ignored by many. This periodentered its decline with the sack of Rome by the armies of Charles V in 1527. The Renaissance had its excesses and defects. There developed a tendency to regard the classics as the standard ofperfection and at times inferior ancient works won higher esteem than the best works written in modern languages.
Nevertheless, in its overall effect the Renaissance was indeed an intellectual and artisticawakening and rebirth. Western Europe, aroused from its lethargy, was moved by a new desire for knowledge and placed new value on the human being. Manuscript copies of Greek and Latin works that hadlain neglected in monasteries for centuries were brought out and copied diligently. The Greek models of sculpture and architecture were studied. Students filled the great universities at Paris, Bologna,and Oxford. There was increased building of churches, palaces, and civic buildings in a form breaking sharply from medieval Gothic. It was one of the great periods of European art, and the period inwhich music began to take on its modern form.
Spirit of the Renaissance
The Renaissance was to a large degree a revolt against the dogmatism and other-worldliness of the Middle Ages, when scholarsconcentrated on theology and religious matters and almost ignored the classical heritage from Greece and Rome. The Renaissance was a general flowering of the human spirit that brought more concern withman and his earthly interests than with theological abstractions. The scholars who held this viewpoint are called humanists. They believed with the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras that “man isthe measure of all things.”
The new spirit powerfully championed the importance of free inquiry. Under its impulse astronomy was eventually reformed by Copernicus and Galileo, and science began...