The Renaissance: Vocabulary

Question 1

Renaissance

Answer 1

The revival of art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th-16th centuries.

Question 2

Humanism

Answer 2

a Renaissance cultural movement which turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.

Question 2

Vernacular

Answer 2

the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region

Question 3

Florence

Answer 3

city in western central Italy, the capital of Tuscany, on the Arno River, a leading center of the Italian renaissance.

Question 4

Leonardo da Vinci

Answer 4

Italian painter, scientist, and engineer. His paintings are notable for their use of the technique of sfumato and include The Virgin of the Rocks

Question 4

The Medici Family

Answer 4

Italian bourgeois family that ruled Florence and, later, Tuscany during most of the period from 1434 to 1737, except for two brief intervals.

Question 5

Michelangelo

Answer 5

Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet; full name Michelangelo Buonarroti. A leading figure of the High Renaissance, Michelangelo established his reputation with sculptures such as the Pietà and David.

Question 6

Raphael

Answer 6

master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonna’s and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican.

Question 6

William Shakespeare

Answer 6

English playwright. His plays are written mostly in blank verse and include comedies, historical plays, the Greek and Roman plays, enigmatic comedies, the great tragedies, and the group of tragicomedies with which he ended his career.

Question 7

Printing Press

Answer 7

a machine for printing text or pictures from type or plates

Question 8

Johannes Gutenberg

Answer 8

German printer. He was the first in the West to print by using movable type and to use a press. By c.1455, he had produced what later became known as the Gutenberg Bible.

Question 9

Indulgences

Answer 9

a grant by the Pope of remission of the temporal punishment in purgatory still due for sins after absolution. 

Question 10

Martin Luther

Answer 10

German theologian; the principal figure of the German Reformation. He preached the doctrine of justification by faith rather than by works and railed against the sale of indulgences and papal authority.

Question 11

95 Theses

Answer 11

Ninety-five Theses, propositions for debate concerned with the question of indulgences, written in Latin and possibly posted by Martin Luther on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

Question 12

John Calvin

Answer 12

French theologian and reformer. On becoming a Protestant, he fled to Switzerland, where he attempted to reorder society on reformed Christian principles.

Question 13

Predestination

Answer 13

the divine foreordaining of all that will happen, especially with regard to the salvation of some and not others.

Question 14

Protestant

Answer 14

a member or follower of any of the Western Christian churches that are separate from the Roman Catholic Church and follow the principles of the Reformation, including the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches.

Question 15

Henry VIII

Answer 15

A king of Englandin the early sixteenth century. With the support of his Parliament , Henry established himself as head of the Christian Church in England, in place of the Pope, after the pope refused to allow his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be dissolved.

Question 16

Church of England

Answer 16

the English branch of the Western Christian Church, which combines Catholic and Protestant traditions, rejects the pope’s authority, and has the monarch as its titular head.

Question 17

Heliocentric

Answer 17

having or representing the sun as the center, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system.

Question 18

Nicolaus Copernicus

Answer 18

Polish astronomer; Latinized name of Mikołaj Kopernik. He proposed a model of the solar system in which the planets orbit in perfect circles around the sun; his work ultimately led to rejection of the established geocentric cosmology.

Question 19

Tycho Brahe

Answer 19

Danish astronomer. He built an observatory equipped with precision instruments, but despite demonstrating that comets follow sun-centered paths, he adhered to a geocentric system of planetary motions.

Question 20

Johannes Kepler

Answer 20

German astronomer. He discovered the three laws that govern orbital motion.

Question 21

Galileo Galilei

Answer 21

Italian astronomer and physicist. He discovered the constancy of a pendulum’s swing, formulated the law of uniform acceleration of falling bodies, and described the parabolic trajectory of projectiles. He applied the telescope to astronomy and observed craters on the moon, sunspots, Jupiter’s moons, and the phases of Venus.

Question 22

Scientific Method

Answer 22

a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses