works of Sophocles, Euripides, and Thucydides. After the fall of Constantinople in there was a great exodus of classical scholars to Western Europe which gave a fillip to classical learning. (iv) The Byzantine world not only gave Christendom the stimulus of its scholars and philosophers, it also gave it paper. Though paper originated in China in second century BC (BCE)., it reached Germany only by the fourteenth century.
Thereupon, the invention of moveable type and the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg followed. With printing, the intellectual life of the world entered a far more vigorous phase. Knowledge spread swiftly. Italy as the birthplace of Renaissance Renaissance began in Italian cities and later spread to western Europe.
Italians preserved the belief that they were descendants of the ancient Romans. They looked back upon their ancestry with pride. Italy had a more secular culture than most other parts of Latin Christendom. The old cathedrals and paintings seemed to them gloomy and the old traditions irksome.
So in their search for something more to their liking, they discovered books written in Latin. They learnt to write Latin as the ancient Romans did. They also learnt Greek and thereby discovered wonderful works of the Athenians of the time of Pericles and facilitated a rebirth of the ancient and the bygone era of Greek and Roman culture. Italian universities were established primarily for the study of law and philosophy.
The Medici Family: Florence is one of the city states in Italy which was influenced by a powerful merchant family called Medici. Cosimo de Medici who was engaged in banking with many branches across Italy had indirect control over the functioning of the government between and . After his death, his grandson Lorenzo took over and controlled the government. He was known as Lorenzo, the Magnificent.
During this period, the Medici family patronised many artists including Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Italy was situated in the centre of Mediterranean Sea and hence the Italian cities were the main beneficiaries of the revival of trade with the East. By the fourteenth century Italian cities engaged