Why did the early Renaissance take place in Italy?
The Renaissance began with people being discontented all over Europe, unhappy with the worldly rule of the Catholic Church’s Pope and Cardinals–in league with infallibility-claiming kings who did whatever they wanted to do to people but claimed to be “god’s deputies on Earth”–mixing otherworldly fantasies with very worldly dictatorship. The Italian peninsula had small cities, but these cities’ rulers had built up a Mediterranean trade with the Arab world, and other cities etc.–so the ruling classes were relatively worldly compared to mainland peasants’ rulers. What started the Renaissance–a desire to live a worldly life as versus monastic ideals, worldly government versus pseudo-religious pretensions, legislatures versus pseudo-Christian kings (and the Pope) was the finding of Greek and Roman statues, and ruins. The heroic, handsome figures of the past inspired thinkers, scholars and artists to reject Medievalism’s secularity haters and to seek a new idea–life only on Earth, more
