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The Renaissance (, )〔(:ʁənɛsɑ̃s), from (フランス語:Renaissance) "re-birth", (イタリア語:Rinascimento) (:rinaʃʃiˈmento), from ''rinascere'' "to be reborn" (【引用サイトリンク】title=Online Etymology Dictionary: "Renaissance" )〕 is a period in Europe, from the 14th to the 17th century, considered the bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a cultural movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe, marking the beginning of the Early Modern Age. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was humanism, derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said, that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of ''perspective'' in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe. As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".〔BBC Science and Nature, ''(Leonardo da Vinci )'' Retrieved May 12, 2007〕〔BBC History, ''(Michelangelo )'' Retrieved May 12, 2007〕 There is a consensus that the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century.〔Burke, P., ''The European Renaissance: Centre and Peripheries'' 1998)〕 Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time; its political structure; the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici;〔Strathern, Paul ''The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance'' (2003)〕〔(Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, ''Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel'', SLOVO, Moscow, 2006 ). ISBN 5-85050-825-2〕 and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.〔Encyclopædia Britannica, ''Renaissance'', 2008, O.Ed.〕〔Har, Michael H. ''History of Libraries in the Western World'', Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3724-2〕〔Norwich, John Julius, ''A Short History of Byzantium'', 1997, Knopf, ISBN 0-679-45088-2〕 Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Milan and finally Rome during the Renaissance Papacy. The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of ''Renaissance'' as a term and as a historical delineation.〔 The art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance": It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization—historians of economic and social developments, political and religious situations, and, most particularly, natural science—but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly ever by historians of Art.〔Panofsky, ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art'' 1969:38; Panofsky's chapter "'Renaissance— self-definition or self-deception?" succinctly introduces the historiographical debate, with copious footnotes to the literature.〕 Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity,〔Huizanga, Johan, ''The Waning of the Middle Ages'' (1919, trans. 1924)〕 while social and economic historians, especially of the ''longue durée'', have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras〔 which are linked, as Panofsky himself observed, "by a thousand ties".〔Panofsky 1969:6.〕 The word ''Renaissance'', literally meaning "Rebirth" in French, first appears in English in the 1830s.〔''The Oxford English Dictionary'' cites W Dyce and C H Wilson’s ''Letter to Lord Meadowbank'' (1837): "A style possessing many points of rude resemblance with the more elegant and refined character of the art of the renaissance in Italy." And the following year in ''Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal'': "Not that we consider the style of the Renaissance to be either pure or good per se." See Oxford English Dictionary, "Renaissance"〕 The word occurs in Jules Michelet's 1855 work, ''Histoire de France''. The word ''Renaissance'' has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.〔 ==Overview== The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.〔Perry, M. (Humanities in the Western Tradition ), Ch. 13〕 Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West. It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life.〔Open University, ''(Looking at the Renaissance: Religious Context in the Renaissance )'' (Retrieved May 10, 2007)〕 In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, would help pave the way for the Protestant Reformation. Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote the famous text ''"De hominis dignitate"'' (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), which consists of a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of printing, this would allow many more people access to books, especially the Bible.〔Open University, (''Looking at the Renaissance: Urban economy and government'' ) (Retrieved May 15, 2007)〕 In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought. Some scholars, such as Rodney Stark,〔Stark, Rodney, ''The Victory of Reason'', Random House, NY: 2005〕 play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages, which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism. This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and Spain) were absolutist monarchies, and others were under direct Church control, the independent city republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented commercial revolution which preceded and financed the Renaissance. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Renaissance」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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