Renaissance Yasmin G. A01363874 Yolanda F. A01364306

1. Social class

1.1. In general, Renaissance Italian society consisted of five classes which varied in nature and number depending on which area of Italy you were in

1.1.1. In general, Renaissance Italian society consisted of five classes which varied in nature and number depending on which area of Italy you were in

1.2. At the top of the class hierarchy were the old nobility and the merchant class. Below them were the emergent capitalist and banker class. Below them were the less wealthy merchants and tradespeople and below them, the poor and destitute

2. The Papal States

2.1. From the mid-fourteenth century to the Reformation years, the popes and the Papal States government pursued three central objectives: 1.) reasserting the supreme authority of the pope over Christians; 2.) bringing about a uniformity of Christian belief by stamping out heresy; 3.) recovering political power of the Papal States so that the papacy could remain politically neutral and unaffected by European and Italian power politics; 4.) protecting Christianity from Islam primarily by driving the Ottoman Turks out of Europe and freeing Constantinople from Turkish domination

2.2. At the end of 1500, the only major Italian players left were Venezia and the Papal States. In 1503, the Papal States came under the rule of Giuliano delle Rovere, or Julius II

2.3. Julius allied himself with Venice and with Ferdinand of Aragon in the second Holy League. With their combined strength, they drove the French out of Italy by 1512; the French were finally defeated by a Swiss army in 1513.

3. The Treaty of Lodi

3.1. On of the first alliances was struck between Firenze and the states of Milano and Napoli, both bitter enemies of each other, in the Treaty of Lodi

3.2. The purpose of the alliance was to check the growing power of Venezia; a frequent fourth party in this alliance was the pope himself who also crossed horns with Venezia over the northernmost Papal States.

4. The French Invaions

4.1. The speed and efficiency of Charles' march through Italy, as well as the seemingly unstoppable power of an alliance between France and Milano, struck terror in the hearts of all the other city-states.

4.2. The French, however, were not finished and returned under the leadership of Louis XII . They were assisted by Alexander VI, the pope from the Borgia family that had originally supported the Neapolitan invasion of Milano.

4.3. The power of France allowed Alexander VI to conquer all the cities of Romagna and quell any rebellion that might happen in the future.

5. Firenze

5.1. Tuscany, had long been the center of Italian culture throughout the high middle ages.

5.2. The most significant writers of the high middle ages and the Renaissance were Tuscans, including Dante, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli.

5.3. the rulers, both hidden and explicity, sought to glorify their wealth and power by subsidizing literature, philosophy, science, architecture, and the arts.

5.4. Cosimo de' Medici, the wealthiest of the Florentines, secretly gained control of the city. He exercised his power behind the scenes and spent money wildly on poets, scholars, painters, and sculptors. It was Cosimo who founded the Platonic Academy and provided both the resources and the centralization that revived Neo-Platonism in the western tradition.

6. Government

6.1. The Kingdom of Naples, consisting of the entire southern half of the Italian peninsula, was a standard monarchy

6.2. Milan and Savoy, however, were autonomous duchies; the area around Rome and the northeastern Italian peninsula, Romagna, were a series of semi-autonomous states under the control of the pope

6.3. Venice and Florence were republics, nominally ruled by senates but in reality ruled by a small group of nobility and wealthy capitalists.

7. Urbanization of Italy

7.1. Italy saw a resurgence of urban living which grew into a flood in the thirteenth century

7.2. The growth in power of the city-states was fueled by the money pouring into the cities from trade and from banking.

7.3. By the beginning of the Renaissance, there were five major players in city-state politics: the Papal States (or Romagna) ruled by the Pope, the republics of Firenze (Florence) and Venezia (Venice), the kingdom of Napoli (Naples), and the duchy of Milano (Milan).

8. Slavery

8.1. While we like to think of the Italian Renaissance as representing the best of Western culture, several less stellar practices were introduced

8.2. The market in human slave labor in southern Europe began as early as the 12th century. Initially the Spaniards were the key trafficers in human life, but as the Italian city-states grew, their demand for slaves also grew and they became one of the largest consumers of human slaves.