Renaissance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Renaissance - Essay ExampleHis history reveals those factors which played a major role in the lives of Florentines as they stood on the threshold of the Renaissance. The Chronicle of Giovanni Villani demonstrates that Florence exemplified Renaissance Italy with its emphasis on commerce and the advancement of aesthetic creativity and was greatly affected by the devastation caused by the plague. Villanis account of Florence as a thriving commercial center demonstrates that it was this economic prosperity which was one of the driving factors of the Renaissance in Italy. As typical of Renaissance Italian city-states, Florence is a flourishing center of commerce and an integral part of the passel network with the Eastern Empire. As fitting in any description of a commercial center, Villani holds the income and white plague of the commune of Florence in this period to be one of the great features of our city (41). He goes on to shew a detailed account of the income generated by the cit ys manufacturing guilds, which are obviously the power houses of Florences economy and the foundation of its wealth and power. Villani demonstrates the dominance of the citys too largest industry, the woolen cloth makers by assert that their workshops were 200 or more(prenominal), and they made from 70,000 to 80,000 pieces of cloth which were worth more than 1,200,000 gold florins --- and more than 30,000 persons lived by it (42). In addition to the manufacture of cloth, the importers and sellers of Transapline cloth imported yearly more than 10,000 pieces of cloth, worth 300,000 gold florins (42). Villani glosses over the overlord magnates and knights and gives the greater importance to the merchants, mercers, bankers, bakers, stone and carpentry masters and legion(predicate) other masters in many crafts (42) who make up the guilds. This supports our knowledge of Renaissance Florence, in which the members of a craft or merchant composition formed the commune which wielded auth ority over the political and economic affairs of the city. Villani confirms the erosion of the power of the traditionalistic landed aristocracy in the Italian Renaissance, saying, but from the time that the people began to rule, the magnates no longer had the precondition and authority enjoyed earlier (41). Villani makes it clear that it is the members of the manufacturing guilds and professionals who are at the top of the social hierarchy. Renaissance Florences predominant position in the trade network is supported by Villanis account of the citys ability to meet the famine. Unlike other towns which ejected their beggars at this time of want, the commune of Florence --- received and provided for a large fraction of the poor mendicants of all Tuscany (39). The commune arranges for grain to be bought from Sicily and the regions surrounding the city (Romagna and Arezzo), to be transported at great expense and used to feed all the citizens. Villani pays tribute to Florences economic power by asserting that in mitigation of this famine the commune of Florence spent in those two years more than sixty thousand golden florins (39). Villanis chronicle bears testimony to economic power and trade be the main cause for Florence