Instituto Tecnolgico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Toluca
Arte y literatura moderna
Activity: RENAISSANCE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Name______________________________________________________ ID: ___________________
Date:______________________ Grade:__________
Pair work
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Read about the historical background of Italian Renaissance: Hooker, Richard. The Background to the Italian
Renaissance. http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/REN/BACK.HTM
2. Create a mind map that includes main and secondary ideas.
3. Use
a
web
app
such
as
https://www.mindmeister.com/es?
gad_campaign=Spanish&gclid=CMqL2JHxyscCFQguaQodO2cBkA
4. Be creative: you can use colors, images, etc.
EVALUATION:
50% Information: every main and secondary idea is included in the mind map
30% Mind map design: correct relation between ideas.
10% Creativity.
10% Language Use.
Please include these ideas:
Italian Renaissance
Main idea.

Secondary ideas:

The Italian cities like (Venice) served as intermediaries in the trade between central Europe and the Muslim
and Byzantine states to the east.
Growth of wealth in the cities led to the growth of a series of city-states individual regions ruled centrally
from a single city
This growth in power of the city-states was fuelled by the money pouring into the cities from trade and from
banking.
five major players in city-state politics: the Papal States (or Romagna), the republics of Firenze and Venezia the
kingdom of Napoli and the duchy of Milano
Society Consisted of five classes
1. Old nobility and the merchant class that had traditionally ruled the cities.
2. Capitalist and banker class
3. Less wealthy merchants and tradespeople
4. Poor and destitute. (Fourth to one third of the urban population in Italy during the Renaissance.)
5. Domestic slaves; though few in number,

Urbanizatio
n

Main idea.

Secondary ideas:

Slavery As the Italian city-states grew, their demand for slaves also grew and they became one of the largest consumers of
human slaves.
Almost all the slaves in Italy were domestic servants.
When a slave was acquired, the owner acquired full rights, including the right to sell and "enjoy," that slave. The
slaves were incorporated into the household and their children were always born free.
In many cases when a slaveowner produced a child with a slave, the slaveowner would raise the child as a legitimate
child.
In the Venetian sugar cane plantations in Cyprus and Crete, "plantation slave" was acquired for
purely economical reasons: the cheapest labor possible.
Government Every city-state had his own form of government:
1. Kingdom of Naples monarchy.
2. Milan and Savoy, autonomous duchies
3. Romagna semi-autonomous states under the control of the popethe Papal States
4. Venice and Florence were republics ruled by senates but in reality ruled by a small group of
nobility and wealthy capitalists.
Firenze
Area around Firenze, called Tuscany, center of Italian culture throughout the high middle ages.
Writers as Dante, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli were Tuscans.
After the unification of Italy in the 19, the Tuscan language became the official and widespread
language of Italy.
Rulers, both hidden and explicity, sought to glorify their wealth and power by subsidizing literature,
philosophy, science, architecture, and the arts.
Firenze republic after Ciompi Rebellion Cosimo de' Medici the wealthiest of the
Florentines secretly gained control of the city spent money wildly on poets, scholars, painters,
and sculptors. who founded the Platonic Academy provided both the resources and the
centralization that revived Neo-Platonism in the western tradition.
Treaty of Alliance between Firenze and the states of Milano and NapoliPurpose check the growing power of
Lodi
Veneziafourth party in this alliance was the pope himself who also crossed horns with Venezia over the
northernmost Papal States.
French
invasions
Papal States