Florence and the Renaissance: Crash Course European History #2 (2)

for learning and virtue women have won by their inborn excellence, manifested in every

age as knowledge. . . .”[ii] Also, the rise of Roman legal thinking meant

the rise of the Pater Familias. The idea that the father is the center of every family,

and also the center of power. All of which is to say that the Renaissance

saw tremendously important developments in the intellectual and cultural life of Italian

city-states, developments that would soon be exported to other communities.

But we have to be able to shift perspectives--to the Medicis, the Renaissance was a thing.

To many peasants, it was not. We remember the Renaissance today partly because it's

helpful for historians to periodize history to frame their analyses, and partly because

so much Renaissance thinking shapes our thinking. And I think it's worth remembering how the

ideas of the Renaissance continue to resonate for us today. Consider, for example, the feeling

that the current age is so full of corruption and destruction that we must return to the

purity of some bygone era of greatness. That Renaissance thinking seems very relevant,

indeed. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

credits

Sources Hunt, Lynn et al. The Making of the West:

Peoples and Cultures, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2019.

Donald R. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

[i] Petrarch quoted in Donald R. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism (Boston: Twayne, 1991) 8.

[ii] Laura Cereta, In Defense of the Liberal Instruction of Women,” in M. I. King and

Alfred Rabil, r., eds. Selected Works By and About the Woman Humanists of Quatrocento Italy

(Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), 81-84.