Renaissance: Birth of the Modern State

The Renaissance: Birth of the Modern World

The late 15th and early 16th centuries witnessed the birth of the modern world. This transformation resulted from various events, primarily geographical, such as the discovery of America, and ideological phenomena. These included overcoming the medieval worldview, which centered on religion, and the emergence of a new mentality.

The term "Renaissance" began to be used in the 19th century by J. Michelet and Burkhardt, who, in 1860, published The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy. The word "Renaissance" has a controversial significance concerning the Middle Ages. Its main feature is secularization: while medieval man was concerned with religion, Renaissance man became emancipated and the center of thought. These ideas were projected in politics, surpassing the medieval idea that the Kingdom of God was the model, leading to secular politics known in Italy as *Stato*. Renaissance man is known for his individualism, his love of art and literature, and a more refined and courtly social life, compared to the old monastic idea. All of this referenced classical antiquity, taking Greek and Roman models.

This sharply contrasting conception has been discarded because there is continuity. These times represent the fall of the Middle Ages, according to Huizinga.

Medievalists try to break such a negative image of this period of nearly 1000 years, highlighting the cathedrals and the authors.

The Emergence of the State

The novelty of the Renaissance is the emergence of the state. It was born around 1500, a little later than Renaissance art, and was created as an excess over the political system. That system was based on two political powers that were intended to be universal, the papacy and the empire, and other local authorities that shaped feudalism. Facing them in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, kingdoms, i.e., country-based monarchies that are neither local nor universal, gained importance. The figure and political power of the king grew. The kingdom gradually assumed several powers, such as currency and the military. These monarchies found social support in the bourgeoisie of the cities, gradually reborn thanks to a strong commodity exchange. Thus, the former aristocracy, based on feudal ownership, lost political importance but not socio-economic power.

Universities, funded by the King and the cities, rose and formed a generation of bureaucrats and lawyers. In their formation, two important elements of classical antiquity were particularly important: Greek philosophy (Aristotle) and Roman law. In these universities (Sorbonne, Salamanca, Bologna), the intellectual climate developed, culminating in overcoming the medieval climate and the emergence of the modern state.

The *Signoria* and the Modern State

The conditions for setting the Modern State were going to give in Italy through the *Signoria*, a tyrannical manner based on efficiency and not on the legality or ethics of wielding power. Although born in northern and central Italy, it did not curdle on a national basis prior to the 19th century, as in Germany, where, under the symbolic power of the emperor, the freedom of cities or small principalities remained with enormous force.

This monarchy developed state would be in France in the 16th century and become the prototype of absolute monarchy; in England, where it maintains the balance between the king, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie; and in Spain, with a less rigid absolutism that leads to the so-called Hispanic monarchy (a more flexible government between the kingdoms of the Middle Ages, unified by Catholic monarchs who have peculiarities).