Why Did The Renaissance Occur In Italy

The Renaissance was a period in time between the mid-fourteenth century and mid-sixteenth century in which art, engineering, architecture, and music flourished, especially because of famous engineers and artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Galileo. One of the most important questions that historians debate is why the Renaissance started in Italy. The reason why the Renaissance started in Italy is because the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarch and his methods of learning which set the path for humanism, and the Italian wealth.

The creation of humanism helped set the path of the Renaissance and humanism had started because of the Italian scholar and poet Francesco Petrarch. Francesco Petrarch completely detested the medieval way of thinking and denied Scholasticism. Instead, he had significant interest towards the classic way of thinking and he looked back to the classical texts and

Because of his denial of the medieval ways of thinking and his insistence of using thought and reason and his opinions became the basis of humanism. “These [humanists] sought out and delved into classical texts and believed that education could improve not only the individual, but also society” (Blackwell). In general, most Italian humanists did want to look at the literary and philosophical works of the Ancient Romans and Grecians. The humanists believed that the ancient works were the best guides for living and more importantly, learning. From inspecting the ancient world, Italian humanists could rate their own civilization and gave them a basis in which they could form opinion and criticize where they could have made mistakes. Because of this, the habit of criticism emerged. Eventually, most people during the Renaissance reverted to the ways of skepticism. This impacted people such as Niccolò Machiavelli, who criticized people in their