Read the statement below. Explain if you agree or disagree with the statement. “It is more valuable to achieve excellence in several areas than to be the very best at a single activity.”

Essential Question: What is the Renaissance and what type of creativity and reform came out of that era?

What is the Renaissance? It was a rebirth of traditional learning and a rediscovery of ancient Rome and Greece. The Renaissance was a rebirth of the human spirit, and creativity. While taking the past as its model, the Renaissance was one of the most creative periods in human history.

It contained The development of new technologies– including the printing press (1450), a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents–was accompanied by a blossoming of philosophy, literature and especially art. When did it occur? It began in Northern Italy about 1350 right after the Black Death had ravaged the country, killing from a third to half the population.

Humanism: The movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanists would study ancient texts in the original form, and evaluate them through a combination of reasoning, observation and experimental evidence. (5 major characteristics of the Renaissance) Humanists studied grammar, rhetoric (persuasive speaking or writing), poetry, moral philosophy, and history. Today these subjects are called the humanities.

*The style of painting, sculpture and decorative arts identified with the Renaissance emerged in Italy in the late 14th century. Renaissance art captured the experience of the individual and the beauty and mystery of the natural world. *Renaissance artists painted a wide variety of themes. Religious altarpieces and murals (frescos) were very popular. *Mythological and history paintings were also very common.

*The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements. *The Renaissance saw significant changes in the way the universe was viewed and the methods sought to explain natural wonders.

Although the papacy eventually emerged supreme in church matters it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption, most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused variously of nepotism and fathering four illegitimate children while being a Pope. He later married off the children to gain more power. Alexander VI, a Borgia Pope infamous for his corruption

Reform: to make changes in order to improve it. Reformation: a 16th-century movement for the reform of abuses in the Roman Catholic Church that ended in the establishment of the Reformed and Protestant Churches Indulgences: The sale of indulgences was a practice where the church acknowledged a donation or other charitable work with a piece of paper (an indulgence), that certified that your soul would enter heaven more quickly by reducing your time in purgatory.

Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church. It was Luther who in October 1517 published the 95 Theses, challenging papal authority and criticizing its corruption, and sales of indulgences. The 95 Theses led to the Reformation, a break with the Roman Catholic Church that previously claimed control in Western Europe. Humanism and the Renaissance played a huge role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other religious debates and conflicts.

By the 15th century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using ancient Roman words and phrases to describe their work. They were aware that what they were doing was different and spectacular.

In the 15th century, the Renaissance spread with great speed from its birthplace in Florence, first to the rest of Italy, and soon to the rest of Europe. The invention of the printing press by German printer Johannes Gutenberg allowed the rapid transmission of these new ideas.