How Did The Renaissance Influence American Culture

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In the years 1350-1500, the Europeans had a renewed cultural blossoming known as the Renaissance. It represented the renewing of a completely new civilization at the western end of Eurasia. It was not only shaped from within but also with its involvement with a wider world. The Renaissance celebrated and reclaimed a classical Greco/Roman tradition that had been lost in the earlier years. During the Renaissance, educated citizens were inspired in the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. What scholars purposed was not to reconcile these ideas and works with Christianity, but to instead use them as a cultural standard to imitate and then to surpass. The Renaissance not only influenced the worlds of art, music, and literature, but also …show more content…

As the towns in Italy grew, the citizens demanded for self-rule and frequently the cities developed into large city-states. The two most important political powers were the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church. Both the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church started to diminish around 500 CE. The two aspects were called the Christendom. Unfortunately, there were many conflicts between the two. The church kept claiming responsibility over all people, including the emperor, so, in theory, the church was claiming supremacy over the state and administration of the Catholic Church. There was also an uprising between the emperor and the pope in 1197. Pope Innocent III claimed to have a right to choose the new emperor after Henry VI died, which caused conflict between the church and state once again. As personal religion was becoming more popular, the religious leaders responded with persecution of heretics during the 14th and 15th centuries. There was also conflict between central and local power within rising states. During the 11th to the 14th century, Europe became an area of expansion. There was also a “long relationship of conflict, cooperation, and mutual influence between Christendom and the realm of Islam.” Politically, it started to change in the fifteenth century. Despite this, commerce still flourished and grew across both political and religious