The Renaissance Period {1485-1660​}

What Was the Renaissance?

Here, reduced to a small list, are the major characteristics of that great era called the Renaissance:

• People expanded their worlds by reading classical Greek and Roman writers rather than only religious writings that promoted Christian doctrine.

• Humanism spread, focusing attention on human life here and now, as well as on eternal life.

• A new technology—printing—made books widely available.

• A growing merchant class, rich with wealth plundered from the Americas, began to challenge the power of the bishops and the pope.

• The spread of scholarly Latin throughout Europe made possible the sharing of ideas.

• Around 1660, Renaissance values, which were primarily moral and religious, gradually eroded, and Renaissance energies gradually gave out.