An Age Of Intellectual And Artistic Rebirth Of The Middle Ages

The light that broke through the bleak emptiness of the Dark Ages— the Renaissance, an age of intellectual and artistic rebirth, was here. It all started with “The Black Death”, the dreaded bubonic plague of the 14th century that killed nearly one-third of the population within Western Europe. Along with the Hundred Years War between England and France, Western Europe experienced a great decline in population, allowing the surviving serfs to demand much higher wages. At the same time, the crusades opened trading routes to the Middle East, contributing to the growth of middle class merchants, thus, bringing the end of the feudal system. The Middle Ages ended not long after with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, bringing many ancient Greek and Roman books and manuscripts. Many scholars began studying and translating these texts, developing a fondness towards antiquity in the elitist society. These scholars, referred to as humanists, popularized humanism and secularism by discovering the ideology of human greatness through the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This era of cultural enlightenment and rebirth that followed the decades of lost literature that humanists called the Dark Ages was the Renaissance. Influenced by these newly rediscovered values, many works of literature and art were created, further encouraging the bigger population, to an extent of upper class boundary, to be educated of these ancient literatures. …show more content…
However, the Renaissance education system focused solely on the studies of the classics and humanities resulting in it being continuously challenged by men throughout the years as they questioned the fundamental purposes and values of the system for it provided no practical education to help students succeed as individuals nor contribute to the development of society, ultimately leading to the end of the