The Impact of Changed Beliefs

For a moment, think of what comes to mind when the Middle Ages is brought up. There’s a big chance that images relating to heavy religiousness (witches, anyone?) and underdevelopedness came to mind. The Renaissance is when this began to change. Among these changes, the most significant one was how people thought. Sure, masterpieces like the Mona Lisa were and still are monumental, but we see them as relics to be admired, detached from us today. Yet, the effects of these religious, philosophical, and ideological changes can still be seen.

Secularity, or the separation between religion and other parts of daily life, was a big development during the Renaissance and was seen in their art. Moving away from the Byzantine art style used throughout the Middle Ages - we all know it: stiff figures with golden halos, floating in voids of the same colour - painters began depicting saints, biblical figures, and important clergymen in a more realistic style. Once meant to overawe the viewers, religious art now grounded these figures in a real setting and humanised them(Metropolitan Museum of Art). An early example is Duccio’s Maesta, a painted church altarpiece. It retains many of the main aspects of the Byzantine style: a gold background, stiff composition, halos, and a religious subject, but it includes panels depicting scenes in three-dimensional settings, which was highly uncommon up to that point. Works of art began to be unrestricted to religious topics, with more depicting scenes from daily life or mythology, such as Botticelli’s famous Birth of Venus.

The Protestant Reformation was another religious movement during the Renaissance. It all started in 1517, with Martin Luther nailing to a church door, his protests against indulgences, slips of paper you could buy from the Church to reduce a loved one’s time in the area between Heaven and Hell, or Purgatory. Aside from being very vocal about his ideas, mainly the idea that one only needed faith, not anything the Church provided, to reach salvation; he also published the Bible in German. Before this, only priests could read it because it was in Latin, but now any literate person could interpret the Bible for themselves.

Humanism also emerged at this time. Humanists believed in a world with no supernatural background and in humans’ own ability to utilize their skills to benefit themselves and society. The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri in 1321, is an early example of humanist literature and an inspiration to humanists in later years. The story follows Dante himself, travelling through the circles of Hell, terraces of Purgatory, and circles of Heaven. This work was revolutionary as a critique of abuses of power in the Catholic Church (including indulgences) and its use of allusions to Greek mythology.

So: secularity, the Protestant Reformation, and humanism. How do they affect us today? If you haven’t noticed, the Western world is now very secular. It has no theocracies (governments tied to religion) and most of the media we consume is secular too. Secondly, the outcome of Luther’s distribution of the Bible resulted in people having different interpretations of God’s word - and so many new Christian denominations. With over 800 million members today, Protestantism branched into Anglicism, Lutheranism, and more. And finally, humanism. It’s less prominent now, but it played a huge role during the Age of Enlightenment by inspiring people to continue exploring the world and experimenting with the sciences. So, pop artists singing about unrequited love… and your chemistry class… are all thanks to the Renaissance!

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