what is renaissance?

[cacian]

linguistically it is a french term for to be born again from renaitre.

[Poetaster]

I guess it refers to any sort of flowering of a new kind of creativity.

[cacian]

I guess it refers to any sort of flowering of a new kind of creativity.

does that suggest that what was afore was not flowered so to speak?

[PeterL]

linguistically it is a french term for to be born again from renaitre.

Precisely, and it means that the knowledge, wisdom, and arts of the Ancients were alive but needed to be born again, because they had been largely swept aside by Christian thinking. Plato and Aristotle had been relegated to the dust bin, while people tried to figure out what the hallucinations of John of the Cross meant. The Ancients were taken from the dust bin during the Renaissance, and coincidentally, more and other art was produced, and there even was some new and better science. Aristotle hadn't been thrown out completely, but some people thought that his was the last word in science, so they had some rather humorous ideas about the world.

[Poetaster]

does that suggest that what was afore was not flowered so to speak?


Well, I don't know what was going on in Harlem before the 'Harlem Renaissance'.

[WolfLarsen]

Renaissance is a period of art where they decided to capture realism instead of painting from their imaginations, like they did in the Middle Ages, which is why I prefer art from the Middle Ages, because it's so much better than Renaissance art, which is virtually devoid of imagination!

[cacian]

Well, I don't know what was going on in Harlem before the 'Harlem Renaissance'.

Harlem??

[Poetaster]

Harlem??

Yes? It is a place in New York.

[PeterL]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Renaissance

[mortalterror]

Precisely, and it means that the knowledge, wisdom, and arts of the Ancients were alive but needed to be born again, because they had been largely swept aside by Christian thinking. Plato and Aristotle had been relegated to the dust bin, while people tried to figure out what the hallucinations of John of the Cross meant. The Ancients were taken from the dust bin during the Renaissance, and coincidentally, more and other art was produced, and there even was some new and better science. Aristotle hadn't been thrown out completely, but some people thought that his was the last word in science, so they had some rather humorous ideas about the world.

Actually PeterL, the Christian church embraced Aristotle and Plato. The early church aside from the obvious exception of Tertullian embraced Greek philosophy and sought to incorporate it into Christian teaching. That is why so much of the early teaching was neo-Platonic by way of Plotinus. The classically trained St. Augustine teaches that secular teaching does not contradict biblical teaching and so they should both be studied to complement one another. Other major Christian philosophers/theologians of the middle ages which were heavily influenced by Aristotle include St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinus. By the thirteenth century the Scholastics had made Aristotle a cornerstone of university curriculum.

The medieval period shouldn't be seen as a period of intellectual stagnation since there were many important advances like stirrups, crop rotation, mills, heavy plows, etc. The first universities are founded by the church and men of science like Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and William of Ockham were laying the foundations for what would later be Renaissance and Enlightenment era science, philosophy, and human rights. Before them there were many learned men such as the Venerable Bede a great English historian, Alcuin of York who helped usher in the medieval Carolingian Renaissance, Rabanus Maurus the teacher of Germany, Lupus Servatus sometimes regarded as the first humanist and admired for his Ciceronian style, Johannes Scotus Eriugena the Irish neoplatonist and Greek scholar who succeeded Alcuin at the Carolingian palace school, Alfred the Great who translated the classics into English, Boethius who wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, Cassiodorus who succeeded him as prime minister and wrote an influential curriculum to rejuvenate learning, the historian William of Malmesbury, the philosopher Peter Abelard, great historians such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Paul the Deacon, Jordanes, Procopius, the writers of Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, the Mabinogion, the Song of Roland, the Song of the Cid, Wolfram von Eschenbach writer of Parzival, Chretien de Troyes author of Arthurian tales, Gottfried von Strassburg who wrote Tristan and Isolt, the lyricist Walther von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue writer of Romances, Cynewulf the Anglo-Saxon poet, Aneirin the Brythonic poet, provencal poets like Bertran de Born, Bernart de Ventadorn, Arnaut Daniel, and William IX, anonymous writers of the Icelandic sagas and Snorri Sturluson, Isidore of Seville who made a sort of encyclopedia of ancient knowledge, Marie de France author of short stories, etc. Let's not forget Dante or Chaucer in our reckoning. Of course, then there were the Jews and Muslims in places like Abassid Spain, Africa, and the middle east with Maimonides, Averroes, Avicenna, Judah Halevi, etc. There was Gregorian chant, the first musical notation, and musicians like Hildegard of Bingen or Guillaume de Machaut.

As far as the art goes I do prefer the Renaissance, but there are many charming medieval pieces and styles: the illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow, the Beatus Facundus, the Byzantine murals in Ravenna and Constantinople, high crosses like the ones at Aberlemno, Bewcastle, Clonmacnois, Dupplin, Kildalton, Muiredachs, and the Northumbrian Easby Cross, various image stones, slabs, and rune stones like the ones at Aberlemno, Ardre, Dunfallandy, Hilton of Cadboll, Meigle, Shandwick, etc. There's the thone of Maximian, the Sutton Hoo Helmet, the votive crown of Visigothic Spain, the Basilewski situla, the viking stone, Hammars image stone, the Rosemarkie stone, Tjangvide image stone, the Upplands runic inscription, the papal stone, Bamberg horseman, Resmo runestone, the smiling angel at Rheims Cathedral, the icons of Andrei Rublev, etc.

[ennison]

It covers a long period. I guess most of us (I note your disagreement Wolf L) would accept readily that strides were made in pictorial art, in science and in technology. I think many of us do not accept the era before as The Dark Ages (I see the last century as a particularly Stygian) and as the great era of European exploration is pretty much co-incident with the Renaissance we might ask one of the indigenous people of the Caribbean how progressive the Renaissance was from their point of view - we might ask had any of the hundreds of thousands of these people survived their contact with European Civilisation and its values.