It was a time of great suffering, in cluding famine and widespread disease. Lives were viewed as purposeless and aimless. Politics, religion and education were inexplicably forged that didn’t match man’s superior interests. It is called middle ages. During this era, also known as “The Age of Faith,” man’s purpose was to serve God than to search God’s. Life was looked upon as a journey. The focus of life was on the afterlife because there were no guarantees in the present life. The life of highest value was the contemplative life, one devoted to God. The passive virtues such as compassion, suffering, and humility were highly regarded. God was the center of man’s world during the Middle Ages. On the great chain of being, man was completely hapless and ranked below the angels and above the animals, plants and inanimate objects.
During the 1400s and 1500s mainly in Italy there was a major change that took place in all aspects of life. This was called the Renaissance and was a movement that helped give rebirth to culture and the arts. This movement went away from the medieval times that had forced a feudalist system on its people. The Medieval times were a dark period in European history that saw a major decline in arts and government. This declining can be attributed to a number of different reasons. One of which was the Bubonic Plague that spread throughout Europe and Asia and killed millions of its inhabitants. This was the final nail in the medieval coffin.
Throughout these times the major focus for government and the arts were all religion oriented. The Black Death killed with no discrimination and took the lives of priest and thieves alike. This caused many to question their religion. After all, how could one preach that good people will be held in high regards with their lord when they can die from the same vicious disease as hookers or evil people? The term Renaissance has, over the years, become synonymous with ideas of expanding civilization, rebirth, and cultural expansion.
The most renowned example of a country’s cultural renaissance was that of the Italians; however this is only one example of such a cultural and philosophical paradigm. It began with a revolution of the rebirth of ideals within a country’s individuals: self-awareness, art, architecture, religion and science, to name a few. For it is these ideas that have given civilizations the drive and perseverance to rise from a period wrought with fallow and of social, cultural, and economical regression. Many prominent world powers today, and subsequently in the past, have went through a period of renaissance, which was preceded by what many call a dark age; it is through this time of upheaval that the ideas and socio-political philosophies flourished, paving the way towards each nations’ renaissance.
The Renaissance was, essentially, a revival of cultural awareness and learning that took place during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was basically a time of the resurrection of learning followed by increase of nurtured ideas, inventions or developments. It brought many changes to Europe, and the economy was greatly boosted by all the new explorations. The flourishing economy helped to inspire new developments in art and literature, and from that many new beliefs were formed. With the arts the artists began to think on their own and those movements began to spread. It was not just what the church said anymore that was right.
Humanism, one of the new beliefs which were formed during the Renaissance, said that people should read the works of the greats and focus on writing and the arts and emphasized on centrality of men in worldly endeavors. As new scientific discoveries were made many of the churches theories were beginning to be questioned. Some of the new scientific discoveries consisted of theories which went against the church’s beliefs. Many great scientists were sentenced on flawed accusations, only because their findings were contrary to church’s assertions nevertheless conforming to the scientific truth.
This period in art history corresponds to the beginning of the great Western age of discovery and exploration, when a general desire developed to examine all aspects of nature and the world. Art, during this period, became valued - not merely as a vehicle for religious and social identity, but even more as a mode of personal, aesthetic expression. During this era there were many drastic changes in the style of art. Early renaissance artist sought to create art forms consistent with the appearance of the natural world and with their experience of human personality and behavior, and artists studied the way light hits objects and the way our eyes perceive light. These artists made an effort to go beyond straightforward transcription of nature, to provide the work of art with ideal, tangible qualities, giving it a beauty and significance greater and more permanent than that is actually found in nature.
Thus Renaissance is an imprinted philosophy that drives man not only through strife, but also teaches man to be great through the strife, to attain goals and status of recognition; it plays-off man’s greatest vices and turns them into valued and celebrated supreme creature.
The pursuits of these splendid ideological, cultural, political, educational and social changes enabled the Western world attain excellence in every field of human endeavor. Since then, most, if not all the greatest achievements, scientific inventions and significant discoveries are made. Unfortunately, during the same era Muslim world could achieve nothing except fame in terrorism, educational downfall, political deterioration, social degeneration, widening sectarian rifts supported by collective intellectual bankruptcy. The narrow mindedness demonstrated in advocating fringed politics to subdue their self mad religio-political rival, is overwhelmingly well thought-out to be the fault line.
The broadmindedness and elegance lies in perceiving this very universal truth that man’s prominence lies in extending selfless service to human race irrespective of one’s beliefs, race, ethnicity and religion –it is the most valued practice we must pursue.