Northern Italian Renaissance Politics

Before the Italian Renaissance began in Northern Italy, the city-states belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. However, due to the lack of the empire’s power the northern city-states became politically independent. Northern Italy, trying to find the best form of government, experimented with different variations of government (13-1a). Political and economic transformations by the Northern Italy city-states triggered the Italian Renaissance; however, the political transformations allowed for the economical transformations to transpire therefore politics was the key contributor in constructing an environment ripe for the Renaissance to flourish.
Political experimentation initiated a sequence of events that lead to the Italian Renaissance. The significance politics had on creating the proper environment for the Renaissance to succeed is best exemplified in the book Western Civilization Ideas, Politics, and Society where it states:
The city-states were almost completely independent because of the weakness of church and empire. So the northern Italians were left free to invent new forms of government, in which merchant-oligarchs, humanists, and condottieri played a more important part than priests and nobles, who dominated politics in the rest …show more content…
Scholasticism and humanism focused both focused on the study of ancient literature. However, instead of tailoring classic literature to a Christian worldview, humanism studied ancient literature for what it was (13-2a). The pre-conceived viewpoint of humanism now taken by Italians changed the way classic Greek and Roman literature was interpreted. Now the classics were viewed as a pathway to achieving self-fulfillment instead of supporting Christian principle. The pursuance of self-fulfillment was channeled through the interest of the study of the arts, literature, and architecture; furthermore, this revival is also known as the Italian