Ap Euro Dbq Essay On Renaissance

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Man’s view of the world changed greatly in a blink of an eye during the Renaissance, and for good reasons. The Middle Ages (which stretched from about 500 CE to 1350 CE), were a time of little schools, widespread illiteracy, and the Catholic Church ruling everything in Europe, meaning almost everyone had to look up to them to explain the world. During this time period, many of the population were peasant farmers named serfs under the rule of a lord who they worked for. However, At the backend of this period, the world started to change. Improved farming methods meant serfs depended less on their lords, meaning they could gain freedom and migrate to different towns to do different jobs such as being a banker or merchant. From there, literacy …show more content…

In Document A, there are two paintings; one from the Middle Ages and one from the Renaissance. The first image by Duccio di Buoninsegna depicts Mary holding a baby Jesus in her arms. The second painting by Leonardo da Vinci displays a famous painting by the Mona Lisa, which is a woman standing in front of a fairly bland background. The Mona Lisa’s bland background makes you focus more on the person and her emotion rather than a very religious and holy background that has almost no emotion involved in it. Also, Document B presents two quotes that oppose each other in many ways. The first quote though written in the Renaissance sounds like it is straight out of the Middle Ages. It states that the pleasure you get from sinning all goes away at the time of judgement which implies you should only focus on religion and sinning but not the world around you. Oppositely, the second quote is from Hamlet by William Shakespeare and the quote praises the perfection of humans and animals as well as how they are god like. This shows how people in the Renaissance mostly valued individuals and the beauty of nature and not just what the Church shows. Humanism and individualism was one of the main reason man changed his view of the world in the Renaissance, and in this time period, the Church was not as

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