LogFAQs > #976002323

Doe posted...

From History.com since I'm lazy
There's a reason it was a rebirth, not a new birth. People during the Renaissance were obsessed with the writings and sculpture of the Greco-roman people and placed a premium on "old wisdom". They saw the empires before them as a greater, more enlightened time and believed that if they pulled those ideas into the present it would better the world. That included the reintroduction of a bunch of incorrect knowledge and superstition because the writings and practices of the ancients were privileged.

I'm not saying new innovation didn't happen during the Renaissance. I'm saying that this aspect of the Renaissance, the worship of the past and the forms constructed by ancestors, is the apotheosis of conservative art.

They used the rediscovered knowledge to break away from medieval conservatism. It wasn't a return to the past.

It was the intellectual revolution of the Renaissance that lead directly to the Protestant Reformation, challenging the most conservative institution of all.

As did the scientific revolution lead by Galileo. The Renaissance was not a good time for those trying to hold on to the old ways. The conservatives were the ones arguing that Renaissance thought was undermining Christian morals and social structures.