AP European History

1. AP European History Chapter 12 Section 2: The Making of Renaissance Society

2. The Making of Renaissance Society • -Manufacturing and trade increased, which helped the European economy recover from the fourteenth century. • -The Mediterranean area had flourishing commerce. • -For almost two hundred years, the Hansa had a monopoly on northern Europe trade in timber, fish, grain, metals, honey, and wines. • Hansa- Hanseatic League, also called Hansa, German Hanse, organization founded by north German towns and German merchant communities abroad to protect their mutual trading interests. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hanseatic-League

3. -Trade recovered dramatically from the economic contraction (A contraction is a phase of the business cycle in which the economy as a whole is in decline) of the fourteenth century. • -The Italians and especially the Venetians, despite new restive pressures on their eastern Mediterranean trade from the Ottoman Turks, continued to maintain a wealthy commercial empire.

4. Side notes • Ottoman Turks - were the one of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history. It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions. It replaced the Byzantine Empire as the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Ottoman Empire reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520-66), when it expanded to cover the Balkans and Hungary, and reached the gates of Vienna. The Empire began to decline after being defeated at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and losing almost its entire navy. It declined further during the next centuries, and was effectively finished off by the First World War and the Balkan Wars.

5. allaboutturkey.com/ottoman.htm

6. -Not until the sixteenth century, when transatlantic discoveries gave new importance to the states along the ocean, did the petty Italian city-states begin to suffer from the competitive advantages of the ever growing and more powerful national territorial states.

7. -Luxury industries expanded especially silk, glassware, and hand worked items in metal and precious stones. • Other new industries, especially printing, mining, and metallurgy, began to rival the textile industry in the importance in the fifteenth century.

8. Especially valuable were the rich mineral deposits in central Europe, Hungary, the Tryol, Bohemia, and Saxony. Tyrol- Austria Bohemia- Czech Republic Saxony- Germany Separating metals from ores- slagging- stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting or refining of ore.

9. -Development of firearms – fourteenth century

10. Medici Family – Banking in Florence • -The Medici family expanded from cloth production into commerce, real estate, and banking. • -During the 15th century, the House of Medici was the greatest bank in Europe, with branches in Venice (Italy), Milan (Italy), Rome (Italy), Avignon (France) Bruges (France), London (England), and Lyons (France).

11. -The Medici were also the principal bankers for the papacy, a position that produced big profits and influence at the papal court. • -At the end of the fifteenth century, the Medici Family suffered a decline due to poor leadership and bad loans, especially to rulers. • -In 1494, when the French expelled the Medici Family from Florence and confiscated their property, the Medici financial edifice collapsed.

12. Social Changes in the Renaissance • The Renaissance inherited its social structure from the Middle Ages. • Society remained divided into three estates. 1. Clergy- believed people should be guided in spiritual ends. 2. Nobility- privileges were based on principles that nobles provided security and justice for society. 3. Peasants and inhabitants of the towns and cities.

13. -A reconstruction of the aristocracy was well underway by 1500. • -The old nobility survived the rising costs, and new blood was infused in its ranks. • -The nobles, old and new, who constituted between two and three percent of the population managed to dominate society as they had done in the Middle Ages serving as military officers holding important political posts and advising the king.

14. The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529). • Nobles should posses fundamental native endowments, such as impeccable character, grace, talents, and noble birth. • Cultivate certain achievements, participate in military and bodily exercises. • Knights during the Renaissance, unlike medieval knights, were expected to have a classical education and to adorn his life with the arts by playing a musical instrument.

15. -A well developed personality became a social ideal of the aristocracy according to Castiglione. • -Nobles were expected to make good impressions; while being modest, they should not hide their accomplishments but show them with grace.

16. -Peasants made up the overwhelming mass of the Third Estate and continued to constitute 85 to 90 percent of the European population, except in the highly urbanized areas of northern Italy and Flanders (Belgium).

17. -The most noticeable trend produced by the economic crisis of the fourteenth century was the decline of the manorial system and the continuing elimination of serfdom.

18. Manorial system • -an economic and social system of medieval Europe. -All legal and economic power belonged to the lord of the manor, who was supported economically from his land and from contributions from the peasant population under his authority. -Tenants' obligations could be paid to the lord in the form of labor, goods, or coin. -The manor was also a judicial and administrative unit. -There were manorial courts, where lords were responsible for the administration of justice.

19. -Manorialism has its roots in the late Roman Empire, and was the dominant form of rural economics for most of western and central Europe throughout the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries). • -It was slowly replaced by money-based economies and other agricultural agreements.

20. Serfdom • -a member of a servile feudal class bound to the land and subject to the will of its owner -In a feudal system, a peasant or worker known as a vassal received a piece of land in return for serving a lord or king, especially during times of war.

21. -The contraction of the peasantry after the Black Death simply accelerated this process, since lords found it convenient to deal with the peasants by granting freedom and accepting rents. • -By the end of the fifteenth century, serfdom was declining in western Europe, and more and more peasants were becoming legally free.

22. Merchants and artisans from the burghers. • Burghers - a citizen of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie.

23. Examining urban society from the top down. 1. Patricians- wealth from capitalistic enterprises in trade, industry, and banking enabled them to dominate their urban communities economically, socially, and politically. 2. Burghers- shopkeepers, artisans, guild-masters (a small, economically independent artisan producer), and guild members, who were largely concerned with providing goods and services for local consumption. 3.Propertyless- workers earning pitiful wages and the unemployment, living squalid (extremely dirty and unpleasant) and miserable lives; these people constituted thirty to forty percent of the population living in the cities. 4. Slaves- agricultural slavery existed in the Early Middle Ages but had declined for economic reasons and been replaced by serfdom by the ninth century.

24. In many places in Europe in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, urban poverty increased dramatically. • Indolent- lazy or disease/ condition causing little or no pain.

25. -Some domestic slaves did remain, but slavery in European society had largely disappeared by the eleventh century. It reappeared first in Spain, where both Christians and Muslims used captured prisoners as slaves during the lengthy Reconquista. • -Reconquista- English Reconquest, in medieval Spain and Portugal, a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims (Moors), who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century.

26. -In the second half of the fourteenth century, the shortage of workers after the Black Death led Italians to introduce slavery on a fairly large scale. • -In 1363, the government of Florence authorized the unlimited importation of foreign slaves.

27. Slave Occupations • Skilled workers, making handcrafted goods, household workers, girls served as nursemaids and boys as playmates. • Wealthy merchants owned two or three slaves. • Often men of the household took slaves as concubines, which sometimes led to the birth of illegitimate children.

28. -Most slaves came from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea region. • -There were also slaves from Africa. • -Because of the lucrative nature of the slave trade, Italian merchants became involved in the transportation of slaves. • -Between 1414 and 1423, ten thousand slaves were sold on the Venetian market. • -Most slaves were females, especially young girls.

29. By the end of the 15th century, slavery had declined dramatically in the Italian cities. -Many slaves had been freed by their owners for humanitarian reasons, and the major source of slaves dried up as the Black Sea slave markets were closed to Italian traders after the Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire (also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, which had been founded as Byzantium).

30. -Slaves, the domestic enemy, were expensive, and were dangerous and not worth the effort. • -Sixteenth century slaves were kept as curiosities. • -During the fifteenth century, the Portuguese had imported increasing numbers of African slaves from southern European markets.

31. -The family meant the extended household of parents, children, and servants (if the family was wealthy) it could also include grandparents, widowed mothers, and even unmarried sisters. • -Family names could dominate an entire urban district.

32. Vendetta in the Italian Renaissance- a crime committed by one family member fell on the entire family, ensuring that retaliation by the offended family would be a bloody affair involving large number of people.

33. -Marriages were arranged by parents to strengthen businesses or family ties. • Marriage contract/dowry- money presented by the wife’s family to the husband upon marriage. • -With a large dowry, a bride could marry a man of higher status.

34. -The father/husband was the center of the Italian family (his wife had no share in his wealth). • -A father’s authority over his children was absolute. • -Adulthood came to children when the father went before a judge and formally emancipated them. The age of emancipation varied from early teens to late twenties.

35. -The wife maintained the household, which gave women a sense of autonomy (independence). • -Most wives knew the primary function was to have children. • -Upper class women were frequently pregnant. They had wet nurses and did hot have to nurse themselves, so they could become pregnant more often.

36. -Childbirth was fearful. • -Women died during childbirth and many children did not live past the age of twenty. • -Upper class families wanted to have as many children as possible to have a surviving male heir.