II.

Background

The term renaissance, meaning literally “rebirth”, was first employed in 1855 by the French historian Jules Michelet to refer to the “discovery of the world and of man” in the 16th century. The great Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt, in his classic The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), expanded on Michelet's conception. Defining the Renaissance as the period between the Italian painters Giotto and Michelangelo, Burckhardt characterized the epoch as nothing less than the birth of modern humanity and consciousness after a long period of decay.

Modern scholars have exploded the myth that the Middle Ages were dark and dormant. The thousand years preceding the Renaissance were filled with achievement. Because of the scriptoria (writing rooms) of medieval monasteries, copies of the work of Latin writers such as Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and Seneca survived. The legal system of modern continental Europe had its origin in the development of civil and canon law in the 12th and 13th centuries. Renaissance thinkers continued the medieval tradition of grammatical and rhetorical studies. In theology, the medieval traditions of Scholasticism, Thomism, Scotism, and Ockhamism were continued in the Renaissance. Medieval Platonism and Aristotelianism were crucial to Renaissance philosophical thought. The advances of mathematical disciplines, including astronomy, were indebted to medieval precedents. The schools of Salerno in Italy, and Montpellier in France, were noted centres of medical studies in the Middle Ages. See also Astronomy; Medicine; Philosophy.