The transition of Europe from the “Dark Ages” (generally accepted to be from the fall of Rome) to the “Modern World” (the discovery of the New World) is an interesting topic. Historians chose to label the re-discovery of the Classical Ideals to be a “Renaissance” or rebirth. Historians wrote all kinds of stuff about this alleged “rebirth”-one that I was always fond of was like this one (sorry, forgot the author)…“Europe gradually awakened from its millenial-long sleep, and men dreamed of what lay beyond the horizons”.
It is pretty obvious that the “Dark Ages” were not all so dark…, still the idea of rebirth is a powerful one.
Is there any real evidence that europeans woke up one day and said “gee, we’re sick of knighthood and castles and endless wars…let’s break out and see things beyond europe”.
Is the meme still valid? When did western european historians come up with the idea of a “Renaissance” period of history?
The term for the period dates from the 1830s in English, though it was used in French a few years earlier.
The basic design of the Duomo in Florence was settled in the 1290s. The design provided for a large central crossing to be covered by a dome which would be higher and wider than any previously constructed, and with no butressing to keep it up.
The architects of the time had no idea how to design a dome of such a size which would be self-supporting, and they also had no idea how to meet the challenges of constructing such a dome, even given a viable design. Yet they went ahead, apparently confident that they were living in an age in which these problems would be solved by the time they got to the point of actually covering the crossing - as indeed they were.
I doubt that they used the term Rinascente, but it has always seemed to me that they must have understood themselves to be living in an age where a great many new things were happening.
I’ve always heard “Dark Ages” refer to the first half of the Middle Ages–fall of Rome to Charlemagne and the rise of France and Germany as nation/states, maybe the Battle of Hastings or at the very latest, the First Crusade. “Renaissance” (and I’m sure historians began calling it that when RealityChuck says they did) was bookended by some real specific events at its beginning (discovery of America, movable type in Europe, the Protestant reformation, the fall of Constantinople) from 1450 to 1500, and it ended with the “Enlightenment” of the late 17th/early 18th centuries, sometime between Newton and Voltaire. As my old Golden Book Encyclopedia put it, the Renaissance didn’t begin and end everywhere at the same time. Art historians tend to mark its beginnings a lot earlier, like Giotto’s masterwork (1305), and British historians put the line at 1400, the death of Richard II, fall of the York and Plantagenet Houses and the rise of the Tudor dynasty.
The concept first appeared in Italy in the mid 16th century, while the Renaissance, by most accounts, was still in full swing. But it was popularized in its modern form in France and Switzerland in the mid 19th century.
What I was taught, and it matches njtt’s information, is that the term was coined by Italian artists, who viewed the period as a “rebirth” of Classical art. For example, they eschewed color on sculpture because they mistakenly thought the Romans had done so.
Yes, even if the word “renaissance” was not applied to it before the mid 15th century, fairly late in the game (indeed, even if it were not applied until the 19th century), the movement was, from the beginning (and, presumably, even before anyone recognized it as being a movement), self consciously looking backwards, attempting to revive the glories of Rome. This was not only (or even primarily) a matter of the visual arts and architecture. One of the main concerns of early renaissance writers, such as Petrarch (back in the mid 14th century), was to get back to the use of proper classical Latin syntax and vocabulary, as opposed to the (as he saw it) corrupt and barbarous medieval Latin then in use amongst the educated.* This linguistic reform was at the core of what is known as Renaissance Humanism (i.e., scholarship in the humanities). That is why the term renaissance (rebirth) fits so well. It arose from a conscious attempt to revive ancient (and thus, as they saw it, better) ways of doing things. (Tellingly, it also seems to have been Petrarch who coined the term “dark ages”.)
*Score one for curmudgeonly linguistic prescriptivists. They started the renaissance! 