How did Europe shift economically from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance?

The term 'renaissance' first used it in 1855 the French historian Jules Michelet to refer to the "discovery of the world and of man" in the sixteenth century. The Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt extended this concept in his book The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance (1860), which defined the Renaissance to place it in the corresponding period of artistic development painters Giotto and Michelangelo, and defined at this time as the birth of humanity and the modern conscience after a long period of decline(Fletcher, p. 108).

The latest research has put an end to the concept of the Middle Ages as dark and inactive time and shown how the pre-renaissance century was full of accomplishments: Platonism and Aristotelianism were crucial to the Renaissance philosophical thought. Advances in mathematical disciplines (also in astronomy) were indebted to medieval precedents. The schools of Salerno and Montpellier were prominent medical research centers in the Middle Ages.

The Italian Renaissance was primarily an urban phenomenon, a product of the cities that flourished in central and northern Italy, such as Florence, Ferrara, Milan and Venice, whose wealth financed the Renaissance cultural achievements.

The Renaissance was the period of European history that characterized by a renewed interest in classical Roman past. The Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and spread throughout the rest of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this period, the fragmented feudal society of the Middle Ages, characterized by a primarily agricultural economy and a cultural and intellectual life dominated by the Church, society became progressively dominated by centralized political institutions with an urban economy and trade that developed the patronage of education, the arts and music (Grendler, p. 166).

The rise of the bourgeoisie and its corrosive role in the late Middle Ages was the dynamic element of transition between feudalism and modern political spirit. It was the passage of a closed society to an open organically and competitive, in which the individual's values ??become important radical. Essential to this process is the traditional break between servant and master, separation farmer working the land: to survive now offers some of his "work" free and not part of the product of their work as before.

Money becomes desirable and powerful object: the discovery of America offers outstanding precious metals. The bourgeoisie ideology destroyed knightly chivalry-religious myth and revealed the selfishness and rational calculation. The new system acquires its fullest development in Italy with its republics and urban lordships. The old Castilian chivalry honor now appears as "honest" honor bourgeois nobility of blood will be the "nobilitas" and personal courage "virtu". Lay all values ??based on power and material that gives the individual possession of money.

The new revolutionary bourgeoisie against feudalism, but despises the "rabble". The old feudal gentry and now becomes a citizen and courtesan, is linked to the gentry by marriage: and begin the contradictions of the new class and thus the contradictions inherent in the Empire. Carlos I of Spain (1516-1556), Charles V ...