Renaissance and Reformation (c. 1300–1600)

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The Renaissance (literally "rebirth", c. 1300–1600) and the Reformation (1517–1648) are the twin movements that closed the medieval era in Western Europe and produced the cultural, religious and intellectual frame of modernity. The first revived classical learning in Italy and diffused it through the printing press; the second shattered the unity of Latin Christendom and ultimately produced the modern sovereign state.

Humanism

The intellectual movement at the core of the Renaissance, emphasising the studia humanitatis (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy) drawn from classical Greek and Roman sources. Its slogan, ad fontes ("to the sources"), called for direct study of original texts rather than scholastic commentaries.

The Italian Renaissance (c. 1300–1527)

The Renaissance began in the wealthy city-republics of late-medieval Italy — Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome, Genoa, Ferrara — where commerce, banking and competitive patronage funded an explosion of art and learning. Three "fathers" anchored its literary phase: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) with the Divine Comedy; Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), the first great humanist; and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) of the Decameron.

Patronage and politics

The Medici of Florence — Cosimo (1389–1464), Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–1492), Popes Leo X and Clement VII — were the era's most lavish patrons. Filippo Brunelleschi designed the dome of the Florence Cathedral (completed 1436). Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince (1513, published 1532), inaugurating modern political theory.

Visual arts: Quattrocento and High Renaissance

Artist	Lifespan	Key works
Donatello	1386–1466	Bronze David (c. 1440)
Sandro Botticelli	1445–1510	Primavera; Birth of Venus
Leonardo da Vinci	1452–1519	Last Supper; Mona Lisa
Michelangelo Buonarroti	1475–1564	David (1504); Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–12); Pietà
Raphael	1483–1520	School of Athens (1509–11)
Titian	c. 1488–1576	Assumption of the Virgin; Venus of Urbino

The Sack of Rome by Charles V's troops on 6 May 1527 is conventionally taken as the end of the Italian High Renaissance.

Northern Renaissance

The movement spread north of the Alps with Johannes Gutenberg's printing press (c. 1450) — the Gutenberg Bible of 1455 being its first major product. Northern humanists included Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) with his Greek New Testament (1516) and In Praise of Folly (1511), Thomas More's Utopia (1516), and the painters Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The Protestant Reformation (1517–1555)

The Reformation began when Martin Luther (1483–1546), an Augustinian friar and professor at the University of Wittenberg, posted Ninety-Five Theses against the sale of indulgences on the door of the Castle Church on 31 October 1517. His attack on Johann Tetzel's indulgence campaign quickly broadened into a critique of papal authority.

Luther's break with Rome

1518: Heidelberg Disputation; meeting with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg.
1519: Leipzig Debate with Johann Eck; Luther denies papal infallibility.
1520: Three foundational tracts — To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, On the Freedom of a Christian. Excommunication bull Exsurge Domine issued in June.
1521: Diet of Worms (April) — Luther refuses to recant: "Here I stand. I can do no other." Edict of Worms outlaws him. Sheltered by Elector Frederick the Wise at the Wartburg, he translates the New Testament into German.
1525: German Peasants' War crushed; Luther sides with the princes.
1530: Augsburg Confession drafted by Melanchthon.

Other reformers

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) in Zurich emphasised a symbolic Eucharist; died at the Battle of Kappel.
John Calvin (1509–1564) at Geneva published Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536, expanded 1559); developed the doctrine of predestination.
John Knox brought Calvinism to Scotland (1560).
Anabaptists (Münster Rebellion 1534–35) rejected infant baptism and state churches.

Henry VIII and the English Reformation

In England, Henry VIII's desire to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon led to the Act of Supremacy (1534) and the dissolution of the monasteries (1536–40). The English Reformation proceeded by statute rather than by Lutheran-style theological revolt; Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer (1549) created a distinctive Anglicanism.

Key Points

c. 1450 — Gutenberg's movable-type press.
1492 — Fall of Granada; Columbus reaches the Americas.
1517 — Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.
1521 — Diet of Worms.
1534 — Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy.
1545–63 — Council of Trent.
1555 — Peace of Augsburg.
1572 — St Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
1598 — Edict of Nantes.
1648 — Treaty of Westphalia.

The Catholic Counter-Reformation

The Catholic Church responded with both internal reform and political confrontation. The Council of Trent (1545–1563), summoned by Pope Paul III and concluded by Pius IV, reaffirmed core Catholic doctrines on the sacraments, justification, and scripture-and-tradition; standardised the liturgy (Tridentine Mass); created seminaries; and prohibited the sale of indulgences for money.

Key Counter-Reformation institutions and figures:

Society of Jesus (Jesuits) — founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540; missionary spearhead in Asia, Africa and the Americas, and educators of Catholic Europe.
Roman Inquisition (1542) and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1559).
St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross — Carmelite mystics and reformers.
Baroque art — Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens — turned religious imagery into emotional spectacle.

Wars of Religion

The doctrinal split produced more than a century of warfare:

Conflict	Years	Key event / outcome
Schmalkaldic War	1546–1547	Charles V briefly crushes Lutheran princes
Peace of Augsburg	1555	Cuius regio, eius religio: princes choose Lutheran or Catholic
French Wars of Religion	1562–1598	St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (24 Aug 1572); Edict of Nantes (1598) grants toleration to Huguenots
Dutch Revolt	1568–1648	Calvinist Netherlands win independence from Spain
Thirty Years' War	1618–1648	German devastation; Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) — comprising the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück — ended both the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt. It recognised the sovereign equality of states, extended the Augsburg formula to include Calvinism, and inaugurated the modern European state system.

Anchor the era on three dates: 1517 (95 Theses), 1555 (Augsburg), 1648 (Westphalia). The whole story is unity → revolt → coexistence. Pair Luther / Calvin / Henry VIII as the three reformation streams; the Council of Trent as the Catholic counter-stream.

Scientific Revolution as Renaissance afterglow

The same intellectual culture produced the early Scientific Revolution:

Nicolaus Copernicus — De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543), the heliocentric hypothesis.
Andreas Vesalius — De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), modern anatomy.
Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler — empirical planetary observations and the laws of planetary motion (1609, 1619).
Galileo Galilei — telescopic discoveries (1610); condemned by the Roman Inquisition (1633).
Francis Bacon and René Descartes — codifiers of inductive and rationalist methodology.

By the early seventeenth century, classical revival, religious upheaval and empirical science had together produced what Jacob Burckhardt called "the modern self".