| A | B |
|---|
| Renaissance | literally "rebirth"; term used by Burkhardt to describe the transition period from medieval to modern times |
| Jacob Burkhardt | argued that a revival of classical learning gave rise to new secular and scientific values in Italy |
| Petrarch | the "father of humanism" |
| Giovanni Boccaccio | author of the Decameron in 1375 |
| civic humanism | the coalescence of humanism and civic reform |
| 1527 | the sack of Rome by Spanish soldiers; marks an abrupt diminution of the creative expansion of the Renaissance in Italy |
| Guelf | propapal party |
| Ghibbeline | proimperial party |
| grandi | the nobles and merchants who traditionally ruled Florence |
| popolo grasso | rising middle class of guild masters, professionals and shop owners; challenged the gradi for power in Florence |
| popolo minuto | the lower classes of Florence; the "little people" |
| Ciompi Revolt | 1378 uprising of the poor in Florence; ended with the rise of Cosimo de' Medici |
| Cosimo de' Medici | ruled Florence from behind the scenes through wealth and influence |
| Lorenzo the Magificent de Medici | totalitarian ruler of Florence |
| podesta | hired strong man whose role it was to maintain order in Italian city-states |
| condottieri | military brokers responsible for hiring out mercenary armies in Renaissance Italy |
| free companies | mercenary armies that plagued Italy from the 13th to the 15th centuries |
| Visconti | family that ruled Milan after 1278 |
| Sforza | familty that ruled Milan after 1450 |
| Council of Ten | the real power in Venice which ensured the continued rule of the merchant oligarcy |
| Doge | the head of state of Venice |
| humanism | the study of Latin and Greek classics and the ancient church fathers |
| studia humanitatis | liberal arts program; grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy |
| Leonardo Bruni | Florentine scholar who named the humanities |
| Manuel Chrysoloras | Byzantine scholar who opened the world of Greek scholarships to Italy |
| University of Paris | center of scholasticism and later an Aristotelean revival |
| Scholastics | sought to build systematic explanations of everthing based on a rigorous dialectic (debate) |
| Summa Theologica | the pinnacle of Scholatic thought; written by Thomas Aquinas |
| Dante Alighieri | author of the Divine Comedy |
| Italian vernacular | foundations for this were laid by Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio |
| Decameron | one hundred tales told by refugees of the plague; Boccaccio's greatest work |
| Francesco Petrarch | "father of humanism", celebrated Roman culture |
| Italian vernacular language | heavily influenced by the writings of Petrarch and Dante |
| study of classical languages | allowed humanists to directly study ancient texts |
| secularism | placing emphasis on worldly, non-religious subjects |
| Pico della Mirandola | humanist who wrote "Oration on the Dignity of Man" |
| Oration on the Dignity of Man | often called the manifesto of the Renaissance written by Piccolo de la Mirandola |
| l' uomo universale | a polymath; a universal man; a man of great and varied learning |
| virtu | excellence; sometimes used to describe the qualities of a universal man |
| Baldassare Castiglione | humanist author of "The Courtier" |
| The Courtier | Castiglione's advice on how one should behave at court |
| liberal arts | studies of the Renaissance man; the trivium and quadrivium |
| Lorenzo Valla | Renaissance critic who gained fame by proving the Donation of Constantine a fraud |
| Platonism | the philosophy of the Florentine Academy which served to elevate the importance of man |
| Theory of Forms; distinguishes between ideal and real forms | Platonism |
| The Donation of Constantine | Exposed as a fraud by Lorenzo Valla |
| chiaroscuro | the use of shading to enhance the naturalness of a painting's subject |
| linear perspective | the adjustment of the size of the figures of a painting to give the illusion of depth |
| Giotto (1266-1336) | one of the earliest "Renaissance" artists |
| Masaccio | lkj |
| Donatello | klj |
