Топик на тему The Renaissance на английском языке
Renaissance is the French word for rebirth. It is the time of change that happened in Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries.
It was an age of growth in Europe. New, powerful city states emerged. A new middle class had more and more money to spend. Great artists, writers and thinkers lived during this time.
During the Middle Ages many people who lived in the countryside worked on the land that they got from the noblemen. In return, they were protected by them.
City life changed towards the end of the Middle Ages. There was a small middle class population and people had more freedom than in the countryside.
The Plague
Between the middle and the end of the 14th century, the plague, also called Black Death killed almost half of Europe's population. It spread most rapidly in the larger cities where many people lived.
This led to economic depression. Merchants and traders had fewer people to sell their goods to, so they lost a lot of money.
The new middle class
When the plague slowly decreased in the 15th century, the population in Europe began to grow. A new middle class emerged bankers, merchants and tradespeople had a new market for their services.
People became wealthier and had more than enough money to spend. They began to build larger houses, buy more expensive clothes and get interested in art and literature.
The middle class population also had more free time, which they spent learning foreign languages, reading, playing musical instruments and studying other things of interest.
The Renaissance was especially strong in Italian cities. They became centres of trade, wealth and education. Many cities, like Venice, Genoa and Florence had famous citizens who were very rich and gave the city a lot of money.
Exploration and trade
Exploring the seas and sailing to other continents became very important during this era. Sailors had better instruments and maps, ships were built so that they could endure longer journeys. Most of them had big sails that were driven by strong winds.
Portuguese navigators started to explore the western coast of Africa from which they brought gold and ivory home. Later on they discovered that sailing around the southern tip of Africa would bring them to India and Asia. These places offered spices, valuable cloths and silk. Explorers brought them home and sold them to wealthy families in Europe.
After Columbus had discovered America in 1492, many Spanish, French and Italian explorers followed. The Spanish were the most successful. They conquered much of Central and South America and brought home gold and silver from the Inca and Aztec empires.
Printing
In 1445 the German Gutenberg invented the printing press. He changed the lives of millions of people throughout Europe. For the first time, bookmaking became cheap and Gutenberg was able to print many books very quickly.
In the Middle Ages books were very expensive because they were written by hand. Only priests and monks could read them because most of them were written in Latin.
In the Renaissance the middle classes had the money to buy books but they wanted books that they could read in their own language. A publishing boom broke out and buying and selling books began to prosper in many European countries. People bought travel books, romances, poetry and almanacs. They read more and became better educated.
Humanism
The printing of books led to a new way of thinking. Scholars of the Renaissance returned to the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers. These writings are called the classics. More and more scholars learned to read Greek and Latin and studied old manuscripts on topics like science, art and life.
During the Middle Ages people were guided by the church, which was against wealth, trading goods and other worldly interests. Humanists, however, did not believe that much in religion. They thought that money and trade were important in life and that citizens needed a good general education.
During the Renaissance a churchman named Martin Luther changed Christianity. In 1517 he wrote a list of things that he didn't like about the church and posted them on the door of his church in Wittenberg, Germany.
Luther also wanted the church to hold masses in German instead of Latin so that people could understand them better. Many other Christians agreed that the church was in need of change. Luther and others founded new religions and split away from the Roman Catholic Church.
Art and architecture
In the Renaissance artists and architects used mathematics to plan their works. They discovered that many objects in nature have a certain proportion. They called this the golden mean. It is often found in the shape of a leaf or in the form of buildings. Many of them found out that the human body also displayed proportions. Renaissance architects built new buildings that were symmetrical.
Artists of the Renaissance started to experiment with perspective in their works. They learned that if they made an object smaller and put it in the background of a picture it appeared farther away. They also painted with more realism than earlier artists.
Many great artists of that time started their studies or worked in Florence. Michelangelo was the most famous artist of the Renaissance. He studied painting and sculpture in Florence, where he created his famous sculpture of David for the Florence cathedral. In his later life he painted the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in the Vaticanprobably his most famous painting.