Terme de Glossaire

Period of European history which is situated at the pivot between two traditionally established major periods, in our regions, to designate the boundaries this history: the Middle Ages (from 476 in our common era: the fall of the western Roman Empire, to 1492: the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus) and the ‘Modern’ era: (from 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789). Historians and the various ‘schools of history’ of the different European countries are not in agreement concerning the dates of the beginning and the end of the Renaissance. In any case, precise dates are often arbitrary, because it is difficult to situate with great precision when a historical period begins and ends. Here we thus suggest that the Renaissance be inscribed between two dates which include the essential of the events and phenomena which have characterised it: the second half of the 15th century (with the beginnings of printing in the 1450s) and the end of the 16th century.
Much more than its ‘boundary marking’ by precise dates, this period is characterised by significant breaks with the previous period. The cradle of the Renaissance was Italy, where artists, authorised to express their discipline more freely, wanted to reconnect with the qualities of the ‘Great Art’ of Antiquity, which underwent an eclipse during the ‘dark centuries’ of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance (Rinascimento) was thus a ‘new birth’, a re-birth after an inglorious ‘Middle Ages.’ This conception, today sidelined thanks to the work of the major Mediaeval historians, gives way to the essential of the Renaissance: an extraordinary intellectual effervescence linked to the humanist movement, which called into question a large number of the certitudes presented up until then as immutable. This cultural renovation extended to the scientific, literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, economic and social domains. It encouraged major new ventures, such as the maritime expeditions initiated by Spain and Portugal. The discovery of America and the circumvention of Africa opened the era of major discoveries. The representation of the world found itself turned upside down, at the same time as the increase of commercial exchanges gave birth to mechanisms and institutions prefiguring modern capitalism.