Table of Contents
Introduction
How did the majestic age of the Renaissance reshape the world and people forever? From the pages of history, we can remember that in the 1400s the Middle Ages came to an end and the Renaissance era was born. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the church exercised absolute power over the majority of people. In those distant times, ordinary people possessed very few rights. The Renaissance was a completely new page that took place in Europe and which continued for 300 years. People began to learn modern forms of art, literature and science. In my opinion, the human view of the world evolved significantly as a result of three key aspects of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was built on the foundation of art, literature, and science.
How art evolved during the Renaissance
A person’s view of the world improved thanks to an innovative way of looking at art. A vivid example would be when we compare two separate artworks from two distinct time frames to recognize the differing patterns of artistic expression. In the first example, the painting “Madonna Enthroned Between two Angles” by Duccio di Buoninisce was made for religious reasons and commissioned by the church. The second painting is “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci, which gave rise to a new form of artistic style characterized by landscapes and three-dimensional images. Art has revolutionized the way people look at the world, certainly revealing new kinds of art styles and artistic freedom of artists.
Literary achievements of the Renaissance
The Renaissance’s view of the world was also significantly adjusted by literature. For instance, when we analyze the outstanding works of distinct eras, we see that in the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare wrote: “in apprehension how like a god!”. Back in the Renaissance, people were considered to be either God-like/angelic beings or pieces of art. With the advent of a new period, people began to realize that they were brilliant by nature. In another literary work, Every Man, the author wrote: “Ye [man] thinks sin in beginning full sweet”. During the Middle Ages, people were believed to be the sinners that God had initially designed us to be. Man became a sinning god from a sinning creation. Literature introduced an alternative perspective to human beings, teaching people that they were magnificent and divine.
The scientific component of the great Renaissance
Over the course of the Renaissance, the view of the world evolved thanks to astronomy. An excellent proof of this is fundamental Copernicus’ idea of the “Heliocentric Universe”, which promptly presented a significant obstacle to the Medieval idea of a geocentric universe. The geocentric universe implied that all the planets and the Sun revolved around the Earth. The Heliocentric Universe, which is the idea that everything revolves around the Sun, undoubtedly constituted a direct challenge to the Church. In the Middle Ages, denying the geocentric universe would have certainly resulted in tragic death.
Conclusion
In summary, we can observe a significant evolution of human beliefs about our world. Fortunately, thanks to reason, the church could not murder people because it was aware that they were mistaken. Astronomy revolutionized the way humans considered the world, weakening the church’s control over them. The human view of the world has shifted because of art, literature, and astronomy. While mankind has the freedom to prefer to have faith in what they want, and I know it’s difficult to accept something new after you’ve spent the majority of your life with it. However, people are entitled to believe what they want to believe, and the church has been preventing that. It is meaningful for people to take care of it because it makes sense of the history and the present.
