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The Renaissance lasted from the 1300s to the late 1600s, and what a time it was to be alive. Even if you don't love Renaissance Faires (and come on, who doesn't?), you should definitely love the Renaissance itself. Where else can you find such an amazing blend of art, philosophy, and science? Things that happened during the Renaissance directly shaped the way we live today, paving the path that led from the Dark Ages to the modern world. Famous inventors, artists, and thinkers made sure the Renaissance influences today more than you'll ever know (at least until you read this article).
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The Renaissance period lasted from the 1300s to the late 1600s
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But its influence is still felt today. And we're not just talking about Ren Fairs
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although we really should talk about those turkey legs. The truth is, Renaissance-era beliefs
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still influence essential parts of modern life, from our banking systems to our sex lives
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So today, we're going to take a look at how the Renaissance shaped the way we live today
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Life is tough, and it was no easier for the people living in the centuries that led up to the
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Renaissance. Those people found their identity and secured survival in the context of a group
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where they played a very specific role. Individualism wasn't really a thing
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and if you wanted a better role, you gotta leave the community. But this attitude started to change around the first half of the 15th century
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in the early Renaissance, when the cultural movement of humanism became the rage
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Humanism in the Renaissance focused on, as its title suggests, humans, their values, agency
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and individual worth. Humanism started as a movement to renew Christianity from the complicated
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theology of the medieval period. It included a belief in the individual's ability to achieve
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excellence, especially through the study of art and literature of classical Greece and Rome
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As a result, literature, art, and philosophy shifted focus from cosmic concerns to the human perspective and individual expression and achievement
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In other words, people began to believe human life and accomplishment had inherent value
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Oh, that's a nice concept. Oh my, sex. Depending on when and where you lived in history, sex could be viewed in many different ways
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ranging from a sacred transcendent union, to a dirty necessity, to just a way to pass the time
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And prior to the Renaissance in Western Europe, for women, sex was often considered just another chore
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Because at that time, the common understanding of anatomy led them to conclude women could not get pleasure from sex
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I wonder if those anatomists knew any actual women. But as the Renaissance progressed, views changed, both by advances in anatomy and, well, practical experience
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and sex was seen as an activity men and women could enjoy. This led to more sex during the Renaissance
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with those alive at the time typically having more partners than did their medieval counterparts
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And the taboo of homosexuality, more common in ancient Greece and Rome, made a minor comeback
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partly due to the emergence of the hedonists known as libertines, who eschewed any restraint in their pursuit of earthly pleasures
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Maybe that's where they got the idea for a hedonism bought from Futurama. Do you like to read
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And we're not just talking about books or newspapers. We also mean road signs or menus or pretty much anything
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that has writing on it Well you can thank your lucky stars and asterisks for the printing press which helped spread the written word It one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind maybe more important
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than bubble wrap. And we owe it to a man named Gutenberg, Johannes Gainsfleisch-Zurladen-Zum-Gutenberg, that
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is, not the guy from the Police Academy movies. Although we do owe that Gutenberg an equally immeasurable debt
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Building on the work of previous inventors, Gutenberg invented his movable type press
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around the year 1440. The printing revolution followed, enabling the mass publication of, well, basically everything
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This made books available to the masses, led to increased literacy, and paved the way for evolution in education
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by allowing for the production of textbooks. As for Gutenberg, his achievements were recognized
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with the title Gentlemen of the Courts. Among other things, the honor included
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2,000 liters of tax-free wine. We can only imagine he celebrated by sipping that wine
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while reading a steamy romance novel in the bath. If someone asks you to picture an artist
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there's a good chance you're picturing someone like Bob Ross. Brush in hand, palette on arm, a working canvas
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and hair like Art Garfunkel. Well, you're picturing a Renaissance artist. But prior to the Renaissance in Europe
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painting was typically done on wood panels. Renaissance artists introduced the idea of painting on canvas
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And that's why you've never seen Bob Ross paint a two-by-four. And prior to the Renaissance, painting often relied on symbolic language
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where the relative size, placement, and depictions of people and objects had more to do with their meaning rather than what they actually looked like
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But advances during the 15th century changed art, and painting became more representative of what a human actually seeks
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exploding advancements such as linear perspective. And that eventually leads us to happy little clouds
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Thermometers are so ubiquitous in modern society, it's weird to think that those handy devices
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weren't readily available to ancient people, although that did make it easier for ancient
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children to skip school by faking being sick. Luckily, the Renaissance came along with its good citizen, Galileo Galilei
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He's mostly known for his contributions to astronomy and being forced to recant his
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contributions to astronomy. But in 1593, he also developed a device we would recognize as a rudimentary thermometer
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which he called the thermoscope. Ooh, so close, Galileo. In 1612, Santorio Santorio
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who perfected Galileo's same name twice style, added a scale to the thermoscope
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transitioning it into what is now recognizable as a thermometer. Is there anything cooler than living close to a branch of your bank
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Oh, yeah, there definitely is. But it's still pretty convenient that you don't have to drive
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all the way to your bank national headquarters to deposit your paycheck And one reason banks have branches is because of a famous Renaissance family the House of Medici The Medici were a powerful family from Florence Italy
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who rose to prominence at the end of the 14th century. They were all about increasing their wealth
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And one way the wealthy get wealthier is to give loans to people and to track their finances
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The Medicis opened their first bank in 1393 and began expanding soon after
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opening branches in different cities. The rest of the world knew a good thing when they saw it
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and today, that's pretty much how everyone does it. Incidentally, the Medici were also major patrons of the arts
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a gig you can really only get if you're super filthy rich. The family commissioned some of the most important works of art and architecture in history
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including Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, and the Uffizi Gallery in Tuscany
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So thank them for that, too, when you order your custom Birth of Venus checks
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One of the best parts of modern life is that when you have to relieve yourself
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you don't have to go find a hole in the ground or a bush you dislike. You go to the bathroom, do your business, and then whisk the evidence away down a toilet
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And this is all courtesy of the Renaissance. In particular, you can thank the failed poet Sir John Harrington
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the godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Harrington had been banished from court for telling too many dirty jokes
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And it was in 1591, while he was in so-called exile at Kelston near Bath
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that he invented a strange device that could flush waste away to another location
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He first called it Ajax. And if you call it the John, well, Sir John Harrington is why
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The queen got over her distaste for dirty jokes and got one for herself
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But strangely, toilets didn't catch on until centuries later. No one even bothered patenting it for another 200 years
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flushing away lots of potential dough. If you're watching this video through a pair of glasses or contact lenses, guess what
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You have the renaissance to thank. Throughout the era, eyeglasses were changed, adapted, and tested to be more effective
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Not only was this a huge deal for people with eye problems, but it also tipped the fashion world on its head
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Elton John was far from the first person to discover what a pair of glasses can do for your appearance
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Innovators in the field also messed around with tinting lenses. in an effort to cure or at least alleviate various visual problems and impairments
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Some of these developments were due to increased contact with the Far East, where the Chinese were responsible for a number of ocular innovations
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including the use of cords or loops to fasten the glasses to the ears and keep them on the face
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So in many ways, modern eyeglasses are kind of the result of a globalized effort
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Go Team Earth! Once upon a time, teachers insisted that students need to do math in their heads
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under the theory that they wouldn always have a calculator available to them Of course that was before everyone really did start carrying calculators with them everywhere they went Calculators that can also be used as phones How handy If you like typing numbers better than adding them
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you'll want to thank a fellow named Blaise Pascal. In the mid-1600s, he was the first to develop
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and manufacture a mechanical calculator because he wanted to help his dad with some tricky math
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Unfortunately, his dad was a tax collector, so he's a little hard to root for
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But Pascal himself was a mathematical genius, physicist, and philosopher, so just root for him. He developed that mechanical calculator when he
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was just 18, and then did important work on conic sections and projective geometry
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Today, his name is widely known thanks to being attached to a computer programming language
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We're guessing he would approve. Also known as the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare was quite possibly the most
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influential writer to ever wield the English language, and he wielded it like Jean-Claude
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Van Damme and a good pair of boots. In addition to being classics in their own right, his works are
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the foundation of numerous contemporary dramas. House of Cards is just Macbeth, West Side Story
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is just Romeo and Juliet, and don't even get us started on The Lion King being Hamlet, which it
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kind of is, but really mostly isn't. Shakespeare was also the innovator and inventor of many words
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that are now commonplace, including alligator, bedroom, downstairs, critic, fashionable, gossip, puppy dog, worthless, and zany, among dozens and dozens of others. He also gave us expressions like
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too much of a good thing, rhyme or reason, all that glitters isn't gold, the world is my oyster
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and so many more. In fact, odds are that you've already used a Shakespearean word or phrase today
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sounds, and that's one too. The Renaissance also led to major changes for the church and state
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which were in a hopelessly codependent relationship for centuries. Martin Luther was a priest-slash-monk-slash-academic
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who turned husband-slash-father-slash-revolutionary and rose to theological fame in Germany during the 1500s
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for lots of theological reasons. One reason was that Martin Luther expanded on 5th century writings of St. Augustine
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to articulate the Two Kingdoms Doctrine. The doctrine outlined that religious leaders should not involve themselves in the administration of states
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you know, like the pope raising armies and choosing or deposing kings. And the state should stay out of dictating spiritual affairs, such as King Henry VIII
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who is famous for having eight wives, inspiring that song Patrick Swayze sings in Ghost
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and splitting with the Catholic Church to be declared the supreme head of the Church of England
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Because Pope Clement VII wouldn't grant him an annulment, Martin Luther's two kingdoms doctrine reverberated down through history
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and those ideas evolved in different forms through the likes of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the United States Constitution