Medieval Vs. Renaissance Literature

There are many contrasts in the art and music of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages was a time of great suffering, including famine and widespread disease, such as the Black Death. The Renaissance was revival of art, learning, and literature. The people’s attitude and fervor for religion had tremendous effects on the art and music produced. The Middle Ages also referred to as “The Age of Faith” was God centered and gave power to the church who dictated how the art should appear, and music should sound. The Renaissance was more concerned with individuals and their talents, the church was not the centralized power, the art exhibited influences from ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.

It is possible to write on the life of Jesus from the information gathered from the bible. I will be dividing my essay into three parts. In the first part of the paper, I will talk about the nature of the gospels, John’s views vs. the Synoptic, discuss if the authors of the gospels are eyewitnesses and how they used written sources. Also I will talk about the Q source. Then I will elaborate on the topic of how Matthew and Luke were similar. Then I will continue on by discussing how the Old Testament uses Moses, Samuel and Elijah to interpret Jesus, and finally whether or not the Sermon on the Mount happened. In the second part of my paper, I will talk about Jesus’s birth and childhood, his miracles, his resurrection, and what Jesus did to cure people, spirits and how they are interpreted to the prophet, magician and the mad man compared to Saul and Elijah. The final part of the paper I will talk about what Jesus talked about as regards to the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of the Romans and what he intended by speaking of the end of the world. I will also speak of the reasons behind the Romans executing him. My sources for this paper will be the New Jerusalem Bible Readers edition as my primary source and lecture notes from Professor Trumbach.

The Renaissance was a time of change and prosperity. The decision was made depending on the difference of two eras. Unlike the Renaissance, the Middle Ages were a thousand years of ignorance and superstition. The Renaissance men were leaders in an era of rebirth and learning looked to the Ancient Greeks and Romans for models of advance. Many historians felt that the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were one era. The debate centers around whether the Renaissance was a unique age or a continuation of the Middle Ages.

There are many contrasts in the beliefs and values of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages was a time of great suffering, including famine and widespread disease. The Renaissance, however, was a revival of art, learning, and literature. Their views of the purpose of life in the present world and man's place in the world was, perhaps, the greatest contrast. However, their views on politics, religion, and education were very different as well.

The shift between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was characterized by great socio-economic, political, and religious changes. Politically, the feudal system of the Middle Ages was exchanged for a more stable centralized republic/monarchy system that gave the people more freedom and input. Religiously, secularism became more important as stability gave people a chance to concern themselves with the “here and now” rather than simply the “hereafter.” Socially, there was a shift from dogma and unshakeable belief to humanism and the ability to interpret things for oneself. The Middle Ages began around 400 CE and lasted until 1400 CE while the Renaissance began around 1200 and continued until 1600. The 200 years that overlap between

The Renaissance was an efflorescence of the arts and changes in many different areas such as political, social, economical, and cultural. It was the rebirth of art, literature, and learning in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from an agricultural to an urban society. The Renaissance ideals emphasized ideas of humanism and human achievement. Artists and writers used realistic techniques, such as perspective, and they believed man should be the subject of study, not God.

When talking about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, many would consider them to be separate eras. Although, some have argued that the Renaissance should be classified as a continuation of the Middle Ages. However, based on evidence found in several documents, it should be concluded that the Renaissance was its own time period because new cultural ideas and developments occurred, the significance of humanism flourished, and the corruption of the church was eliminated.

The end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance brought many shifts to European societal structure. The face of Christianity changed considerably from the fourteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century, beginning with disagreement over who should hold absolute power, the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor. While the corporate Catholic church had once maintained a fairly unified influence on society, a more nuanced form of Christianity began developing, leading to reformed religious groups with opposing views, namely the Protestants and Anglicans. In the wake of differing opinions, people’s group identification mattered significantly, determining what people they sided with and who they couldn’t tolerate. With more complex religious and political perspectives came more opportunities for people to distance themselves from peers, family, and leaders ideologically. Frequent mentions of treacherous actions within the literature of this time demonstrates that these differing views made people feel betrayed by their associates. The idea of betrayal is prominent in the lives and texts of several authors of this period, including Dante, Thomas More, and Niccolò Machiavelli. From a Christian perspective, betrayal was a grave sin befitting serious punishment, while it was irrational from a Humanist perspective and an inevitable, even beneficial part of mankind from an amoral perspective. During the tumultuous political and religious climate of the High Middle Ages and

After the Black Plague crippled Europe, a new period of time erupted known as the Renaissance slowly developed. The Renaissance is known as the “rebirth” for Humans. The reason for this meaning during the 14th century was because of the radical changes in the culture of Europe. The Middle Ages was surrounded by religion in many aspects. The Black Plague helps stimulate the idea that religion is through the individual. Religion in Europe was starting to becoming not so literal, but more of a personal connection with God, instead of a strict public connection. The starts of the renaissance, commoners or nobility were not focused on taking over the family business, but focusing on other career options of interest. The ideas and the development of Humanism were established during the renaissance through the idea of religion being more personal.

Before the years of the Medieval or Dark Ages, medicine and the study of human anatomy was at an all time high with physicians like Galen who discovered much about what the human body was and what diseases were. By 750 AD, the progress in the medical field came to almost a complete stand-still due to the lack of ideas going around and no way of learning. During the Dark Ages, no one knew exactly who illnesses happened, or why, and it was like that for over three hundred years, no fresh ideas coming up until the Renaissance took over. The Church heavily influenced the way medical care was taken, and most scholars depended on Galen and a few famous physicians’ work.

In the Middle Ages, art was centered around the Church. The purpose of art was to glorify the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Altshuler, 2009, p. 127). Art was not made to produce a feeling it was made simply to tell a story. Artists were usually sanctioned by the church to complete specific works. All artists were male with the exception of some women who did embroideries (Altshuler, 2009, p. 127). Many different types of media was used during this time including; paint, embroidery, stain glass, relief statues and more.

As the rigidity of the Roman Catholic Church’s power, influence, and corruption reached a climax during the Romanesque period, humanity’s desire for a more pleasurable life began to increase. The Middle Ages brought about a transition that began to replace spiritual emphasis in life and highlighted intellectualism and religious skepticism. Though the church’s power was not necessarily undermined, it was certainly revolutionized and dampened. Examples of this humanistic transformation were represented through the union of Gothic and Scholastic ideals. Rather than simply scare the population into being religious and pious, the Gothic era welcomed the population- beginning with France, followed by the rest of Europe through the airy, dream-like, colorful, and uplifting beauty of the Gothic Cathedrals. This radical change would not have come about were it not for Aristotle’s nominalist philosophy during Antiquity, which pioneered the future revival of this somewhat liberal thinking.

Religion in the Middle Ages takes on a character all of its own as it is lived out differently in the lives of medieval men and women spanning from ordinary laity to vehement devotees. Though it is difficult to identify what the average faith consists of in the Middle Ages, the life told of a radical devotee in The Book of Margery Kempe provides insight to the highly intense version of medieval paths of approaching Christ. Another medieval religious text, The Cloud of Unknowing, provides a record of approaching the same Christ. I will explore the consistencies and inconsistencies of both ways to approach Christ and religious fulfillment during the Middle Ages combined with the motivations to do so on the basis of both texts.

A man walked out of the doctors office, he had just been told that he had an incurable kind of cancer, and was given 15 years to live. Most people who had this cancer didn’t know they had it until it was too late, this man was lucky. The doctors wouldn’t have been able to do this without the advancement in technology, machines, etc. That man was my grandpa, and he is still living with that cancer. The medicine and technology used to diagnose my grandpa was prefaced by the medical advancements of the Renaissance. Although being a doctor during the Renaissance period would’ve been a life changing experience, being a doctor in modern time would be far superior. Modern doctors are trusted, do to having

The Medieval Era was a time dominated by belief. People lived with such great superstition and fear of God. Many people were focused not on their lives her on earth, but rather their life after death. During the Renaissance people became more humanistic and focused more on their lives in the moment rather than their afterlife. We can see these changes of Ideas by studying the works of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, and Caesarius of Heisterbach from the Medieval Era and compare it to the works of Marsilio Ficino, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Desiderius Erasmus of the Renaissance period we can see