Why did the Renaissance first rise in Italy? Why

Medieval Italy was distinguished from the rest of Europe by the early emergence of urban commerce and industry, which flourished rapidly in the Middle Ages.

Most of the cities in Western Europe began in the late 10th century, especially in the 11th century. Most of the medieval cities in Western Europe began to rise in the late 10th century, especially in the 11th century,

while some cities in Italy, especially those connected with the East-West trade, had already risen as early as the 8th century.

In the 12th century, because of the growing development of the commodity economy, the north of Italy, such as Ravenna,

Padua, Vidona, Corfu, Milan, Genoa, Venice, Florence and the city of Milan, Genoa, Venice, Florence and a large number of well-known

Western Europe's cities. 14th century, Western Europe more than 5,000 people in large cities accounted for less than 5% of the total number of cities

and most of the largest cities in Italy, Milan, Venice, Naples, Florence,

Bologna, Rome, Genoa's population are as high as 50,000 or so [1].

From the point of view of several early Renaissance cities in Northern Italy, these cities are industrial and commercial development

Da place. 9 century, Venice has established trade relations with Egypt, Greece, Sicily, has a strong fleet of ships, and its merchants are often in Pavia, Cremona and other places to sell

fur, silk and so on from the East. A century later, Venice's commercial relations extended to the coast and the interior of many

cities such as Pavia, Vicenza, Cesena, Ravenna, and Ancona. From the end of the 11th century

Era, Venice has practically monopolized the right to traffic in the provinces of Europe and Asia

still under the control of the rulers of Constantinople, the Venetian merchants in the late Middle Ages dominated the Mediterranean Sea for 300 years [2].

Florence is the largest crafts city in northern Italy, its prosperity depends on three

economic activities, namely, commercial, industrial and banking. 1306-1308, Florence has 300

workshops, the annual production of tweed more than 100,000 bolts. By the 1570s, Florence had become the center of tweed production in Europe

and was the first to form early capitalist production relations in tweed production. Western Europe

The three major money business capital - the Baldi family, the Peruzzi family and the Azziuri family are all in Florence

Florence.

Genoa has been active in the Mediterranean trade area since the 10th century, engaging mainly in intermediate

trade between Western Europe and the East. During the First Crusade, Genoa gained commercial privileges in some cities on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and in the 13th century Genoese merchants penetrated into the Crimean Peninsula to set up trading posts, using

this as a base to trade with Eastern Europe, Persia, Central Asia, India, China, etc. In the 14th century, Genoa developed into the Mediterranean trading region, which was ruled by rich merchants. The 14th century Within Europe, Genoese and Venetian merchants frequented the international champagne bazaars.

With the rapid growth of commerce and industry in the cities, the Italian civic class grew into a social force that

independently dominated the political scene in the Italian city-states, and in 1266 Florence was divided equally between the nobility and the commoners. In 1296, Florence was divided equally between the nobility and the commoners, and the "Citizens' Assembly" composed of 100 new industrial and commercial citizens had the power to

legislate and supervise the administration. 1293, the Guild of Florentine Industrial and Commercial Workers and Businessmen overthrew the feudal aristocracy and gained the power of the city*** and the state. The enactment of the Statute of Justice by the upper echelons of the citizenry established

the rule of the great merchants and tradesmen over the city*** and the state. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the basic pattern of Italian politics was that, although the northern part of the country retained the remnants of the Kaiser's power, and the central and southern parts of the country were still under papal power, most of the cities of Italy were under the control of elected judges who had already held the power of the executive branch. The elected judges of most Italian cities were already in a position of real power, in contrast to the past, when the power of the city government was in the hands of imperial agents, governors, papal representatives or officials appointed by the King of Naples.

This was especially true in the cities that had gained full autonomy. Especially in the cities of Northern Italy, which had gained full autonomy*** and in the State

, the civic class had become even more largely in control of the urban state. Therefore, although the citizens were the product of the emergence and

development of the city, it was only at the end of the 13th century when the Florentine city*** and the state excluded the nobility from the city councils by law that the civic class as a relatively independent political force was formally

formed. 14th century, the "government of Florence, Lucca and Siena" was the government of the people, and the government of the people was the government of the people. ...... had governments of the people, and the nobility

was excluded from power" [3].

While the strength of the civic class was growing and its political status was rising, civic consciousness began to

awaken. One of the prominent manifestations of the awakening of civic consciousness was the rise of "civic heresy". From the

12th century, Florence became the center of heretics' activities. The Arnoldist civic heresy, founded by Arnold of Brissia, a city in northern Italy, became widespread in Italy. There are many signs

that it was time to refine and sublimate the ideology of the civic class and to construct a new culture.

The Cultural Consumption of the Civic Class

The emerging civic class, as an independent political force, "became the class that embodied

the further development of production, trade, education, and the social and political systems" [4]

and was in urgent need of a cultural ideology different from that of the feudal tradition. cultural thought system different from the feudal tradition to affirm the political status

and economic activities of the class. They consume culture according to the needs of the times and the class [5], reasonably

drawing on the effective nutrients of traditional culture and endeavoring to construct a new culture.

(1) Development of Secular Education in Universities and City Schools

As the pioneers of the new era, the civic class had to enhance its qualities to a level appropriate to the new duties it

assumed. Frequent business and trade operations require multifaceted intellectual talents

and functional organizations, and the production, supply and marketing of commodities are issues that must be approached and dealt with in economic life.

Only people with a certain degree of culture and science and technology can better adapt to social and economic life. In

this social demand driven, all kinds of schools came into being. 12 century, Italy appeared the first European

continental university, such as Salerno medical school (later became Europe's earliest medical university) and

Bologna University (Europe's first formal university). 13-14 century, Italy *** there are 18 universities

the most of any country in Western Europe.

Almost synchronized with the rise of universities, in the 12th-13th centuries, as the

original ecclesiastical schools, established mainly for the training of monks, could no longer meet the cultural needs of the civic class, and therefore in the cities there

were the Guild Schools founded by the Federation of Craftsmen, and the Kirt Schools founded by the Federation of Merchants

The two were collectively known as the city schools and were administered by the municipal authorities. The city authorities determined the amount of tuition,

selected the teachers and paid their salaries. The cities of Rome, Padua, Verona, Venice, and Pavia

have all set aside a sum of money for the permanent or temporary employment of Greek teachers. George of Trebizond was professor of rhetoric in

Venice, with an annual salary of 150 gold coins [6].

(2) Revival of Roman Law

While cities in other countries and regions of Western Europe still retained their rights as cities by "charter", Italian cities, especially those in Northern Italy, which had been granted full autonomy to establish cities*** and states, already

had a city law, a commercial law, and a maritime law. and maritime law. This was mainly due to the development of urban industry and commerce, the growing complexity of the commodity goods

currency economy and property relations, and the increasing importance of movable property, which gave rise to many

new political and economic relations that needed to be legally recognized and regulated, i.e., the civic class needed new

laws and the application of these laws to recognize and safeguard civic ownership, and to regulate the relationship between the civic class and the social class. social

relationships. The Statute of the Italian Cities was the earliest city law in Western Europe, which covered market management, such as taxation, minting, trade, and crafts, as well as civil, criminal, and procedural law, etc. From the 10th to 13th centuries, the cities of Genoa, Bischofshofen, Pisa, Milan, Florence, and Bologna had their own city laws. Around the 11th century, the first maritime law for the defense of maritime

trade in Western Europe during the Middle Ages was established in the Italian city of Amalfi. Under the influence of the Amalfi Code, Pisa and Venice codified their "Maritime Customary Laws" in 1100 and "Nautical Regulations" in 1255, respectively. Afterwards, the Amalfi Code was replaced by the "Conso Dudimer Law" (i.e., the "Customary Law of the Sea"), which can be regarded as a combination of Italian commercial law and maritime commercial law. This code is widely used in European countries and is considered to be the source of modern international law and private international law.

With the changes and development of social and economic life in Italy, the city law, commercial law and maritime law needed to be amended, enriched and perfected, so that on the basis of the city law, commercial law and maritime law, Italy

took the lead in the "revival" of Roman law in Western Europe. For "the further historical development of the ownership of the civic class

could only be, and in fact was, the transformation into purely private ownership. This change deserved to find a powerful force in Roman law

, ...... in which everything that the civil class in the late Middle Ages was still unconsciously pursuing was already readily available" [7]. The civic class borrowed the principles of Roman law

to further develop municipal, commercial and maritime law, such as Article 3 of the Peace of Constantinople

in 1183, which stated that the rivers were a public property, and that their ownership was vested in the city of the Lombardy Plain in Italy

. This was an invocation of the principle of Roman law that navigable rivers were public property and that private rights

applied only to the banks of the river and to the islands in the river.

In the "revival" of Roman law a secular class of jurists was formed, the jurists of the civic

class. "This new class of jurists belonged essentially to the civic class; and the law which they themselves

studied, taught, and applied was by its very nature essentially anti-feudal

and in some respects civic." [8] "In these

activities associated with the study of law there is a source of humanist thought." [9]

(3) Absorption of Classical and Oriental Culture

The absorption of classical culture by the civic class was highlighted by the acquisition, translation

and study of classical manuscripts. in the 11th century, a Lombard spent 2,000 soledos in gold coins to study and acquire

books [10]. in 1185, the Normans conquered the Greek In 1185, the Normans captured the Greek port city of Salonika and sold many books

to the Italians, who purchased shiploads of Greek manuscripts. 1204, when the Crusaders captured

Constantinople, the invaders, realizing the value of the books in the public*** and private libraries, traded in the manuscripts with the Italians, who were


interested in them. Many Venetian merchant ships returning from Byzantium

often brought back many ancient books and codices.

The demand for classical books and manuscripts by the civic class could not be reduced to a mere vanity to satisfy the need for window dressing and

sophistication. The civic class, which lived in industrial and commercial cities, received a secular education, and was trying to get rid of the feudal tradition, already had the ability to comprehend and appreciate the classics more y.

And they also hoped to learn from the classics. Moreover, they also hoped to find a culture from the classical culture that was more in line with their own interests and attitudes than the medieval culture.

This was the reason for the civil class to buy and sell the classical works, which was the most important thing for them. It is through the acquisition, translation and study of classical books and manuscripts that the civic class draws from classical culture various cultural

factors that are in harmony with the reality of secular life, and even adopts, imitates, refines or absorbs them, thus taking cultural revival as a symptom, and putting "revival of classical culture" under the shell of the Literary and Artistic

Renaissance. The first is the "revival of classical culture", which is the shell of "revival of classical culture".

In 1128, Venice translated and published the Pre-Analytic, Post-Analytic, Orthopraxis, and Sophistical Refutations, four books that made up Aristotle's "New Logic". Many works on Greek

theology and medicine were also translated into Latin, such as the writings of Bazil, John Chrysostom, and John of Damascus, the Greek corpus Digest, and the compendiums of agriculture, Cultivation Techniques and Sciences, and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates.

The first obstacle to the assimilation of classical culture by the civic class was the need to learn the language, i.e., Ancient Greek

and Latin, which was itself a study of classical culture. As a result, many scholars have become experts in ancient Greek and Latin, and have written and published books of great accomplishment. Dante was a famous

expert in ancient Greek and Latin, and his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, was written in Old Tuscan after the ancient Greek masterpiece, the Homeric Hymns of Homer

. Petrarch, a famous classical scholar and poet, wrote the epic poem "Aeneid" in Latin, modeled after the epic poem "Aeneid" by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The achievements of these scholars laid the foundations for the study of classical literature and the creation of a new

culture in Italy, and were of universal significance in launching the known "revival" of classical culture in all disciplines and fields of the humanities and natural sciences.

The externally oriented economic character of medieval Italy led to an early engagement with extra-territorial cultural regions. During the Middle Ages, Latin translations of Arabian

writings, imported by a variety of routes, with Sicily as the main conduit, brought Oriental knowledge, concepts, and ideas to the Italians. Almost

all of the writings of many famous Arab scholars, including Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, al-Farazimi, and others, were printed and studied, and some were reprinted several times in the 16th and 17th centuries. In modern European languages there are still many words of Arabic origin. After the Chinese invention of papermaking came to Italy from Central Asia via Egypt and

Sicily, the Italian paper mill of Montevanno was officially established in 1276.15 By the middle of the century, several major cities in Northern Italy, such as Florence, Venice, and Milan, had already imported the Chinese invention of printing from Germany.16 The Chinese invention of printing was also introduced to Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries.17 In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Chinese invention of paper was introduced to Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The absorption of Oriental culture also became more concrete with the emergence of famous travelers from Italy. Although these travelers were not all citizens in the strict sense of the word, their

travelogues about the Oriental society undoubtedly helped the civic class and even society as a whole to understand and absorb

Oriental culture.

Before and after the thirteenth century, Italian travelers who traveled to the Orient mainly included Marco Polo,

John Monte-Corvino, Erdalic, and Marinori. Based on their travel records into a book

"Marco Polo Travels", "Odoric Travels", "Marinori Travels" and so on, broadened the horizons of the Italian

.

In addition, the Italian cities of Venice, Genoa and other cities involved in the Crusades, objectively also

strengthened the contact with the Eastern culture, influenced by the establishment of learning and academic centers, so that the rich cultural treasures of the East

increasingly affect the West.

The absorption of classical and Oriental culture provided the ideal content and form for the expression of new ideas and the expression and elevation of

civic sentiment by the civic class.

(4) Active Cultural Market

Before the Renaissance, the active cultural market in Italy, though not entirely attributable to the cultural consumption of the civic

class, was mainly a manifestation and a result of the civic cultural consumption of the civic class. The civic class

enlivened the cultural market

through the production of commercial books, the organization of book markets and literary salons, and festive celebrations.

Before the 12th century, Europeans did not know how to make paper, and writing was written on parchment or on bone or wooden boards

. Due to the lack of paper, writing is difficult, so the price of books is high, people's purchasing power is relatively low

, book sales market is narrow. With the exception of Italy, the production of commercial books is rare in other regions

. Italy's economic strengths are on full display here. Rome and Bologna were important producers of trade books

and Florence was famous for printing books with illustrations. Virgil's

writings, the Homeric Hymns, the Complete Works of Aristotle, and the Complete Works of Plato were printed and marketed by the Italians.

With the development of the commercialization of books, some cities appeared to specialize in the trading of books -

Book Market or Book Alley. Florence's Book Alley is a collection of booksellers, in addition to Florence

Booksellers, but also Venice, Rome, Genoa, Bologna and other places of booksellers. Most of the items traded

are classical and oriental manuscripts, rare books and so on.

In addition, Italian cities, especially Florence and other places in Northern Italy, there are also literary salons and festivals that help people from all walks of life and different cultural backgrounds to communicate. The "symposia" organized by the salons attracted people from all social classes except the lowest. One of the important results of this cultural fusion was the development of a more open and tolerant cultural atmosphere. In the festivities, the religious, moral and poetic ideals of the Italian people

took concrete and visual form. Such as parades and performances that form part of the festivities

, it is more visual. Because of the need for festival celebrations, a large number of artists, sculptors, costume designers, make-up and decoration workers and other arts and cultural workers who serve the festival celebrations have gradually learned the classification and composition of culture and art through long-term

practice. Festivals and celebrations to the masses, popularized

specific form, the rich and deep cultural connotation of the visual appearance of the Italians from the reality of

life to the art world of the starting point of the transition.

The emergence of humanism

It cannot be denied that Italy has rich cultural resources. However, if one is only satisfied with possessing

the rich cultural resources, "unable to see", "unable to hear", "unable to appreciate", it is impossible to

have a Renaissance. Through the cultural consumption of the public class, Italy's rich cultural resources can be

exploited and utilized, and the advantage of cultural resources can be turned into the advantage of cultural development. The regenerated cultural products after transformation and innovation provided the necessary nutrients for the Renaissance, making it a "source of water"

. A group of people who were trained to understand the new literature, art, philosophy, history and other scientific and cultural knowledge became the initiators, organizers, leaders or participants of the Renaissance, thus making it possible to produce giants in this

era of need for giants. On the basis of the growing awakening of civic consciousness, and with the change of the objective situation, the secularly educated civic scholars further absorbed and digested the humanistic factors in classical and oriental cultures, and relying on the relaxed, harmonious and active cultural market, gradually constructed a system of thought that was different from that of the general civic heresy, and made it clearer, more comprehensive, more systematic, and







The Renaissance of the Civilization of the People's Republic of China.

To express the social ideas and moral sentiments of the class in a more explicit, comprehensive and systematic way, thus giving birth to humanism, which was unique to the civic class and basically broke with the Catholic theological system of thought.

This humanism was the first of its kind in the world, and it was the most important of all.

While it was not until the 19th century that academics really coined the term "humanism" to summarize the worldview of the humanists of the Renaissance, humanism was already

birthed in 13th- and 14th-century Italy and manifested itself in many fields of study. fields of study. In literature, the first works of secular literature, represented by the Divine Comedy, the Songbook and the Decameron; in the field of history, the first

collections of realist historians, such as Bruni, Poggio, and Biondo, began to examine the role of "man" in the development of social history; in the field of art, the Italian sculptor Nino Nicoletta, and the Italian artist Nicoletta, began to study the role of "man" in social history; in the field of art, the Italian sculptor Nicoletta, and the Italian artist Nicoletta, began to study the role of "man" in social history. In the field of art, the Italian sculptor Nicola Bisano used ancient

Greek sculpture as a model for new art creation, which became the beginning of the new art of the Renaissance. It is not difficult to

see that these cultured people of civic origin had already attached unprecedented importance to the value and role of human beings, the emancipation of individuality and the freedom of the will

, the reality of life, and human emotions. Although the humanism at this time

is as tender as a newborn baby, it has already shown that the new cultural movement of the civic class against feudalism with humanism as the guiding ideology - the Renaissance, the earliest in Italy is reasonable and inevitable

.