Changing Cultural Traditions Class 11 Notes

Changing Cultural Traditions is Renaissance that marked the change of cultural traditions in Europe.  ‘Renaissance’ means ‘rebirth’.  Renaissance was first used by Jacob Burckhardt in 1860. During the 14th to 17th centuries.  Italian universities were centres of legal studies.  The term humanism was first used by Cicero. Florence was recognised for its ‘Renaissance Men’.  Dante and Alighieri were two prominent Renaissance men. The period from the 5th to 14th centuries was the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age started from 15th century.

•  There is a lot of material in the form of documents,printed books,paintings,sculptures ,buildings,textiles etc. 
• Many of these are preserved in archives,art galleries and museums in Europe and America.

Development Of cities and towns

OR

Changes that occurred in Europe between 14th century and 17th century A.D

• FROM the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century,towns were growing in Europe and A distinct ‘urban culture’ also developed in the towns.
• Townspeople began to think of themselves as more ‘civilised’ than rural people.
• Towns like Florence, Venice and Rome – became centres of art and learning  and the  Artists and writers were patronized by the rich and the aristocratic.
• Many towns developed as centres of art and education such as Florence,Venice and Rome of Italy.
• A sense of history also developed in Europe, and people contrasted their ‘modern’ world with the ‘ancient’ one of the Greeks and Romans.
• Religion came to be seen as something which each individual should choose for himself.
• The church’s earth-centric belief was overturned by scientists to understand the solar system,
  and new geographical knowledge overturned the Europe-centric view that the Mediterranean Sea was the centre of the world

What is Renaissance?

‘Renaissance’ means ‘rebirth’.

• From the nineteenth century, historians used the term ‘Renaissance’ (literally, rebirth) to describe the cultural
  changes of this period.
• The historian who emphasised these most was a Swiss scholar – Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) of the University of Basle in Switzerland.

Jacob Burckhardt(1818-97) was a Swiss scholar from the University of Basle of Switzerland.  He was a student of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886).  Ranke had taught him that the primary concern of the historian was to write about states and politics using papers and files of government departments.  The following are his views about Rnaissance.

• To him, politics was not the central concern in history writing. History was also concerned with culture as with politics.
• In his book ‘The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy’,he referred the literature ,architecture and painting to describe how a new humanist culture had flowered in Italian towns from the 14th century to seventeenth century.
• He also wrote the development of new beliefs of this culture as the man of that age was capable of making his own decisions and developing his skills as an individual.
• He further wrote that man was modern in matters of thinking in contrast to the
  medieval man whose thinking was controlled by the Church.

The revival of Italian cities

OR

Factors that led to the revival of Italian Cities

• After the decline of the Roman Empire,the towns of Italy which were political and cultural centres,were fell
  into ruin.
• After the fall of Roman Empire,western Europe was restructured by feudal bonds and unified under the Latin
  Church.
• Eastern Europe went under the rule of Byzantine Empire and Islam was building a common society further
  west.
• At this time, Italy was weak and fragmented.
• All these developments helped in the revival of the Italian culture.
• The ports on the Italian coast revived because of the developments of trade between the Byzantine empire and
  the Islamic countries.

• From the 12th century,the Mongols started trading with china through the Silk Route and as trade increased
  with European countries,Italian cities played a vital role.
• These cities kept their identity as independent city states.
• Florence and Venice were among the republics.
• Many cities came into existence because their administration was in the hands of rich merchants and
  bankers,free from the control of clergy or feudal lords and this helped the idea of citizenshipto strike root.
• Even when these towns were ruled by military despots, the pride felt by the townspeople in being citizens did not weaken.

Universities in Europe

• The earliest universities in Europe had been set up in Italian towns.
• The universities of Padua and Bologna had been centres of legal studies from the eleventh century.
• Commerce being the chief activity in the city, there was an increasing demand for lawyers and notaries possible.
• Law was therefore a popular subject of study, but there was now a shift in emphasis.
• It was studied in the context of earlier Roman culture.
• To Petrarch, antiquity was a distinctive civilisation which could be best understood through the actual words of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
• He therefore stressed the importance of a close reading of ancient authors.

Humanism

• The educational programme implied that there was much to be learnt which religious teaching alone could not give.
• This was the culture which historians in the nineteenth century were to label ‘humanism’.
• By the early fifteenth century, the term ‘humanist’ was used for masters who taught grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.
• These revolutionary ideas attracted attention in many other universities,
• Till the end of the thirteenth century, this city had not made a mark as a centre of trade or of learning,
  but things changed dramatically in the fifteenth century.
• A city is known by its great citizens as much as by its wealth, and Florence had come to be known because of Dante Alighieri

Renaissance Man

•  The term ‘Renaissance Man’ is often used to describe a person with many interests and skills, because many of the individuals who became well known at this time were people of many parts.
• They were scholar-diplomat-theologian-artist combined in one.

The Humanist view of History

• The humanists thought that an age of darkness existed for centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire,which they termed as ‘dark age’.
• Later scholars assumed that ‘new age’ began after the 14th century.
• The period of thousand years(a millennium) after the fall of Roman Empire was considered as ‘Middle Ages’or ‘Medieval Period’.
• About ‘middle ages,they said that religion or church controlled the minds of all men in a way that all the learning of the Greeks and Romans had been washed out.
• The humanists termed the period from the 15th century as ‘modern’.
• Modern historians were debating over labelling of an age as dark which they thought as an unfair thing.

Periodisation used by humanists

Periodisation used by humanists
5th-14th century	The Middle Ages
5 th -9th century	The Dark Ages
9th-11th century	The Early Middle Ages
11th -14th century	The Late Middle Ages
15th century onwards	The Modern Age

What are the Contribution of Arabs’ In Science And Philosophy

• The monks and clergymen were familiar with the works of Greek and Roman scholars from the ‘middle Ages’ but they did not left them get known to other people.
• By 14th century many scholars started to read the translation of Greek writers like Plato and Aristotle.
• They were translated and preserved by Arab translators.
• Some Europeans read Greek works in Arabic translation and the Greek translated Arabic and Persian scholars work in European languages.
• These works were on natural science ,mathematics,astronomy,medicine and chemistry.
• The Almagest of Ptolemy was the work of 140 CE on astronomy in Greek language and was translated into Arabic.
• It carried in Arabic alphabet ‘al’which shows connection with Arabs.
• Ibn Sina,an Arb physician and philosopher of Bukhara and al-Razi the author of medieval encyclopaedia were considered as men of knowledge in Italian states.
• The Christian thinkers adopted the method of Arab philosopher of Spain(Ibn Rushd) who tried to resolve the tension between philosophical knowledge and religious faith.

Artists and Realism

• Formal education was not the only way through which humanists shaped the minds of their age.
• Art, architecture and books were wonderfully effective in transmitting humanist ideas.
• The material remains of Roman culture were sought with as much excitement as ancient texts: a thousand years after the fall of Rome.
• the figures of ‘perfectly’ proportioned men and women sculpted so many centuries ago.
• In 1416, Donatello (1386- 1466) broke new ground with his lifelike statues.
• To  study bone structures, artists went to the laboratories of medical schools. Andreas Vesalius a Belgian and a professor of medicine at  the University of Padua, was the first to dissect the human body.
• Painters did not have older works to use as a model. But they, like sculptors, painted as realistically as possible.
• They found that a knowledge of geometry helped them understand perspective, and that by noting the changing quality of light, their pictures acquired a three-dimensional quality. The use of oil as a medium for painting also gave a greater richness of colour to paintings than before.

• There is of Chinese and Persian art, available to them by the Mongols.
• Thus, anatomy, geometry, physics, as well as a strong sense of what was beautiful, gave a new quality to Italian art, which was to be called ‘realism’ and which continued till the nineteenth century.

What is Architecture

• The city of Rome revived in a spectacular way in the fifteenth century the popes were politically stronger because the weakness caused by the election of two rival popes had ended.
• The ruins in Rome were carefully excavated by archaeologists.
• This inspired a ‘new’ style in architecture, which was actually a revival of the imperial Roman style – now called ‘classical’.
• Popes were wealthy merchants and aristocrats employed architects who were familiar with classical
  architecture.
• Michelangelo Buonarroti  immortalised by the ceiling he painted for the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, the
  sculpture called ‘The Pieta’ and his design of the dome of St Peter’s Church, all in Rome.
• Filippo Brunelleschi (1337-1446), the architect who designed the spectacular Duomo of Florence, had started his career as a sculptor.
• Artists were known individually, by name, not as members of a group or a guild, as earlier.

The First Printed Books

• • The greatest revolution of the sixteenth century was the mastery of the technology of printing.

• Europeans were indebted to other peoples the Chinese, for printing technology, and to Mongol rulers because European traders and diplomats had become familiar with it during visits to their courts.
• 150 copies of the Bible were printed in the workshop of Johannnes Gutenberg, the German who made the first printing press.
•  As printed books became available, it was possible to buy them, and students did not have to depend solely on lecture-notes.
• A printed book promoting new ideas could quickly reach hundreds of readers.
• This also made it possible for individuals to read books, since it was possible to buy copies for oneself. This
  developed the reading habit among people.
• The chief reason that the humanist culture of Italy spread more rapidly across the Alps from the end of
  the fifteenth century is that printed books were circulating.

Concept of Human Beings

• One of the features of humanist culture was a slackening of the control of religion over human life.
• Italians were strongly attracted to material wealth, power and glory, but they were not necessarily irreligious.
• Francesco Barbaro, a humanist from Venice, wrote a pamphlet defending acquisition of wealth as a virtue.
• On Pleasure, Lorenzo Valla, who believed that the study of history leads man to strive for a life of perfection, criticised the Christian injunction against pleasure.
• Humanism also implied that individuals were capable of shaping their own lives through means other than the mere pursuit of power and money.
• This ideal was closely tied with the belief that human nature was many-sided, which went against the three separate orders that feudal society believed in.

The Aspirations of Women

• • The new ideal of individuality and citizenship excluded women.
  • Men from aristocratic families dominated public life and were the decision-makers in their families.
  • Women dowries were invested in the family businesses, women generally had no say in how their husbands should run their business.
  • If an adequate dowry could not be arranged, daughters were sent to convents to live the life of a nun.
  • The position of women in the families of merchants was different and shopkeepers were very often assisted by their wives in running the shop.
  • The early death of a merchant compelled his widow to perform a larger public role than was the case in aristocratic families.

• A handful of women who questioned the idea that women were incapable of achieving the qualities of a humanist scholar.
• Fedele was known for her proficiency in Greek and Latin, and was invited to give orations at the University of Padua.
• Marchesa of Mantua, Isabella d’Este ruled the state while her husband was absent, and the court of Mantua, a small state, was famed for its intellectual brilliance.
• Women’s writings revealed their conviction that they should have economic power, property and education to
  achieve an identity in a world dominated by men.

Debates within Christianity

• In Fifteenth and  sixteenth centuries, many scholars in  universities in north Europe were attracted to humanist ideas.
• They called on Christians to practise religion in the way laid down in the ancient texts of their religion.
• New view of human beings as free and rational agents and philosophers were inspired by distant God who created man but allowed him complete freedom to live his life freely, in pursuit of happiness ‘here and now’.
• Thomas More and Erasmus felt that the Church had  become an institution marked by greed, extorting money at will from ordinary people.
• One of the favourite methods of the clergy was to  sell ‘indulgences’, documents which apparently freed the buyer from the burden of the sins he had committed.
• Christians came to realise from printed translations of the Bible in local languages that their religion did not permit such practices.
• Peasants began to rebel against the taxes imposed by the Church and they were pleased when the humanists pointed out that the clergy’s claim to judicial and fiscal powers originated from a document called the ‘Donation of Constantine’ supposed to have been issued by Constantine, the first Christian
  Roman Emperor.

Protest Revolution

• Martin Luther campaign against the Catholic Church and  argued that a person did not need priests to establish contact with God.
• He asked his followers to have complete faith in God, for faith  alone could guide them to the right life and entry into heaven. This movement – called the Protestant Reformation
• Luther did not support radicalism.But radicalism survived, and merged with the resistance of Protestants
  in France, who, persecuted by the Catholic rulers
• Then they started claiming the right of a people to remove an oppressive ruler and to choose someone of their own liking.
• The Catholic Church itself did not escape the impact of these ideas, and began to reform itself from within.
• Churchmen emphasised the need for a simple life and service to the poor.
• Ignatius Loyola, in an attempt to combat Protestantism, set up the Society of Jesus in 1540.
• His followers were called Jesuits, whose mission was to serve the poor and to widen their knowledge of other cultures.

Anabaptists

• Anabaptists were even more radical they blended the idea of salvation with the end of all forms of social oppression.
• They said that since God had created all people as equal, they were not expected to pay taxes and had the right to choose their priests.
• This appealed to peasants oppressed by feudalism.

The Copernican Revolution

• The Christian notion of man as a sinner was questioned from an  entirely different angle by scientists.
• The turning point in European science came with the work of Copernicus a contemporary of Martin Luther.
• Christians had believed that the earth was a sinful place and the heavy burden of sin made it immobile.
• The earth stood at the centre of the universe around which celestial planets moved.
• Copernicus asserted that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun.
• On his deathbed, he gave it to his follower, Joachim Rheticus.
• It took time for people to accept this idea.
• The difference between ‘heaven’ and earth was bridged through the writings of astronomers like Johannes Kepler  and Galileo Galilei.
• The theory of the earth as part of a sun-centred system was made popular by Kepler’s Cosmographical Mystery, which demonstrated that the planets move around the sun not in circles but in ellipses.
• Galileo confirmed the notion of the dynamic world in his work The Motion. This revolution in science
  reached its climax with Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation.

What is Celestial

Celestial was a divine or heavenly, while terrestrial implies having a worldly quality.

Reading the Universe

• Galileo once remarked that the Bible that lights the road to heaven does not say much on how the heavens work.
• The work of these thinkers showed that knowledge, as distinct from belief, was based on observation and experiments.
• Experiments and investigations into what came to be called physics, chemistry and biology expanded rapidly.
• Historians were to label this new approach to the knowledge of man and nature the Scientific Revolution.
• The minds of sceptics and non-believers, God began to be replaced by Nature as the source of creation.
• Ideas were popularised through scientific societies that established a new scientific culture in the public domain.
• The Paris Academy and the Royal Society in London for the promotion of natural knowledge has conducted
  experiments for public viewing.

Was there a European ‘Renaissance’ in the Fourteenth Century?

• Peter Burke of England, have suggested that Burckhardt was exaggerating the sharp difference between this
  period and the one that preceded it, by using the term ‘Renaissance’.
• The Greek and Roman civilisations were reborn at this time, and that scholars and artists of this period substituted the pre-Christian world-view for the Christian one.
• Scholars in earlier centuries had been familiar with Greek and Roman cultures, and religion continued to be a
  very important part of people’s lives.
• To contrast the Renaissance as a period of dynamism and artistic creativity, and the Middle Ages was a period of gloom and lack of development is an over-simplification.
•  The archaeological and literary recovery of Roman culture did create a great admiration of that civilisation. But technologies and skills in Asia had moved far.
• skills. The Europeans learned not just from the Greeks and Romans, but from India, from Arabia, from Iran, from Central Asia and China. These debts were not acknowledged for a long time because when the history
  of this period started to be written, historians saw it from a Europe-centred viewpoint.

Private And The Public

• • The ‘private’ and the ‘public’ spheres of life began to become separate i.e. the ‘public’ sphere meant the area of government and of formal religion; the ‘private’ sphere included the family and personal religion.
  • The individual had a private as well as a public role.
  • He was not simply a member of one of the ‘three orders’; he was also a person in his own right. An artist was not just a member of a guild, he was known for himself.
  • The individual would be expressed in a political form, in the belief that all individuals had equal political rights.
  • The different regions of Europe started to have their separate sense of identity, based on language.
  • Europe, earlier was united partly by the Roman Empire and later by Latin and Christianity.