The Renaissance
(UK: /rɪˈneɪsəns/, US: /rɛnəˈsɑːns/)[1] is a period in European history, covering the span between the
14th and 17th centuries. It is an extension of the Middle Ages,[2] and is bridged by the Age of
Enlightenment to modern history. It grew in fragments, with the very first traces found seemingly in
Italy, coming to cover much of Europe, for some scholars marking the beginning of the modern age.
The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its own invented version of humanism, derived from the
concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of
Protagoras, who said that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art,
architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil
painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal
movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the
Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe: the very first traces appear in Italy as early
as the late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular
literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which
contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of
rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform. In politics,
the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in
science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw
revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best
known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man
Hitler Lives
Hitler Lives (also known as Hitler Lives?) is a 1945 American short documentary film directed by Don
Siegel, who was uncredited. The film won an Oscar at the 18th Academy Awards in 1946 for
Documentary Short Subject.[1] Earlier the same year, Siegel made his directorial debut on another short
film Star in the Night (1945), which also won an Academy Award.
Hitler Lives is based on the film Your Job in Germany, which was produced shortly before the end of the
Second World War. Your Job in Germany was written by Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss).[2]
While retaining some of the original film footage, Hitler Lives was written by Saul Elkins. The film warns
that the defeated German population still contains Nazi supporters and that the world must stay ever
vigilant against the prospect that a new Hitler will arise within Germany. The film combines dramatized
content mixed with archive footage. However, there is no mention of Jews as victims of persecution.
The crematoriums of a concentration camp are shown, only using "victims" to describe those murdered.
The end of the film warns against fascism in America
A world map
is a map of most or all of the surface of the Earth. World maps form a distinctive category of maps due
to the problem of projection. Maps by necessity distort the presentation of the earth's surface. These
distortions reach extremes in a world map. The many ways of projecting the earth reflect diverse
technical and aesthetic goals for world maps.[3]
World maps are also distinct for the global knowledge required to construct them. A meaningful map of
the world could not be constructed before the European Renaissance because less than half of the
earth's coastlines, let alone its interior regions, were known to any culture. New knowledge of the
earth's surface has been accumulating ever since and continues to this day.
Maps of the world generally focus either on political features or on physical features. Political maps
emphasize territorial boundaries and human settlement. Physical maps show geographic features such
as mountains, soil type or land use. Geological maps show not only the surface, but characteristics of the
underlying rock, fault lines, and subsurface structures. Choropleth maps use color hue and intensity to
contrast differences between regions, such as demographic or economic statistics.
The Age of Discovery,
or the Age of Exploration (approximately from the beginning of the 15th century until the end of the
18th century) is an informal and loosely defined term for the period in European history in which
extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture and was the beginning
of globalization. It also marks the rise of the period of widespread adoption in Europe of colonialism and
mercantilism as national policies. Many lands previously unknown to Europeans were discovered by
them during this period, though most were already inhabited. From the perspective of many nonEuropeans, the Age of Discovery marked the arrival of invaders from previously unknown continents.
Global exploration started with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and
the Azores, the coast of Africa, and the discovery of the sea route to India in 1498; and the Crown of
Castile (Spain) the trans-Atlantic Voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas between 1492 and
1502 and the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519–1522. These discoveries led to numerous naval
expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas, Asia,
Africa and Australia that continued into the late 19th century, and ended with the exploration of the
polar regions in the 20th century.
European overseas exploration led to the rise of global trade and the European colonial empires, with
the contact between the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa) and the New World (the Americas and
Australia) producing the Columbian Exchange; a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human
populations (including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres. This represented one of the most-significant global events concerning ecology, agriculture
and culture in history. The Age of Discovery and later European exploration allowed the global mapping
of the world, resulting in a new world-view and distant civilizations coming into contact, but also led to
the propagation of diseases that decimated populations not previously in contact with Eurasia and Africa
and to the enslavement, exploitation, military conquest and economic dominance by Europe and its
colonies over native populations. It also allowed for the expansion of Christianity throughout the world:
with the spread of missionary activity, it eventually became the world's largest religion.[1][2]
The Renaissance the new world
was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period.
Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in
literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry.
Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human
emotion in art.[18]
Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin
literary, historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a
wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen
into obscurity in the West. It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance
scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who
had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy and mathematics,
rather than on such cultural texts.
Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1480-85) (Simonetta Vespucci) by Sandro Botticelli
In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary,
many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of
Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that
was reflected in many other areas of cultural life.[19] In addition, many Greek Christian works, including
the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged
Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian
works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists
Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, would help pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.
Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano,
Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing
techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò
Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A critical
contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote the famous text "De
hominis dignitate" (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), which consists of a series of theses on
philosophy, natural thought, faith and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason.
In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use
vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of printing, this would allow many more people
access to books, especially the Bible.[20]
In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular
and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought.
Some scholars, such as Rodney Stark,[21] play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations
of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages, which married responsive government, Christianity and
the birth of capitalism. This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and Spain)
were absolutist monarchies, and others were under direct Church control, the independent city
republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast
unprecedented commercial revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus[a] (/kəˈlʌmbəs/;[3] before 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian
explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the
auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean,
Central America, and South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas.
Columbus's early life is somewhat obscure, but scholars generally agree that he was born in the Republic
of Genoa and spoke a dialect of Ligurian as his first language. He went to sea at a young age and
travelled widely, as far north as the British Isles (and possibly Iceland) and as far south as what is now
Ghana. He married a Portuguese woman and was based in Lisbon for several years, but later took a
Spanish mistress; he had one son with each woman. Though largely self-educated, Columbus was widely
read in geography, astronomy, and history. He formulated a plan to seek a western sea passage to the
East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade.
After years of lobbying, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain agreed to sponsor a journey west, in the name
of the Crown of Castile. Columbus left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, and after a stopover in the
Canary Islands made landfall in the Americas on 12 October (now celebrated as Columbus Day). His
landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani; its exact
location is uncertain. Columbus subsequently visited Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what
is now Haiti – the first European settlement in the Americas since the Norse colonies almost 500 years
earlier. He arrived back in Spain early 1493, bringing a number of captive natives with him. Word of his
discoveries soon spread throughout Europe.
Columbus would make three further voyages to the New World, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493,
Trinidad and the northern coast of South America in 1498, and the eastern coast of Central America in
1502. Many of the names he gave to geographical features – particularly islands – are still in use. He
continued to seek a passage to the East Indies, and the extent to which he was aware that the Americas
were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he gave the name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous
peoples he encountered. Columbus's strained relationship with the Spanish crown and its appointed
colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, and later to
protracted litigation over the benefits that he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for
centuries, helping create the modern Western world. The transfers between the Old World and New
World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange, and the period of human
habitation in the Americas prior to his arrival is known as the Pre-Columbian era. Columbus's legacy
continues to be debated. He was widely venerated in the centuries after his death, but public
perceptions have changed as recent scholars have given attention to negative aspects of his life, such as
his role in the extinction of the Taíno people, his promotion of slavery, and allegations of tyranny
towards Spanish colonists. Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name,
including the country of Colombia.
For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation).
"Biblical" redirects here. For the song by Biffy Clyro, see Biblical (song). For the song cycle by Antonín
Dvořák, see Biblical Songs.
Bible
Gutenberg Bible, Lenox Copy, New York Public Library, 2009. Pic 01.jpg
The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed Bible
Information
ReligionChristianity
Language
Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, Aramaic
Period 4000s BC – 96 AD
Chapters
varies; see Books of the Bible
Part of a series on the
Bible
The Malmesbury Bible
Canons and books
[show]
Authorship and development
[show]
Translations and manuscripts
[show]
Biblical studies[show]
Interpretation[show]
Perspectives[show]
Outline of Bible-related topics
Wikipedia book Bible book Bible.malmesbury.arp.jpg Bible portal
vte
The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books")[1] is a collection of sacred texts or
scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the
relationship between God and humans. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, it is widely
considered to be the most influential and best-selling book of all time.[2][3][4][5]
Many different authors contributed to the Bible. What is regarded as canonical text differs depending on
traditions and groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging
contents.[6] The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the
Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early
Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These
early Christian Greek writings consist of Gospels, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian
denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a
list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.
Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, high church
Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred
tradition, while Protestant churches, including Evangelical Anglicans, focus on the idea of sola scriptura,
or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations
today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.
The Bible has been a massive influence on literature and history, especially in the Western World, where
the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type.[2] According to the March 2007
edition of Time, the Bible "has done more to shape literature, history, entertainment, and culture than
any book ever written. Its influence on world history is unparalleled, and shows no signs of abating."[2]
As of the 2000s, it sells approximately 100 million copies annually.