WEIGH
EVIDENCE
THE
The Renaissance
Instructions
- Rate each of the following exhibits based on how well it supports the statement:
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
-Each exhibit is rated from -2 (very against the statement) to + 2 (very supportive of the statement)
-A rating of 0 means the source is not useful in either case
-For each write one or two sentences defending your rating.
Set up your paper into columns like this:
Exhibit
Rating
Why?
Z – Photograph
of forest
+1
Stories of bigfoot often say he lives in the forest. This is actually a forest so the stories are somewhat believable.
Not all evidence is equally important. Part of drawing a conclusion is determining how much weight you give to each bit of information.
-2
Heavily against
-1
Slightly against
0
No
value as a source
+1
Slightly for
+2
Heavily for
EVIDENCE
EVIDENCE
Exhibit A:
Online Article, Unknown author, Ducksters.com
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
The daily life of the average person changed as well. People began to enjoy more luxuries, nicer clothes, finer foods, and the arts. There were more craftsmen, artisans, and merchants who developed into people who had money but weren’t nobles. Of course many people still lived hard lives full of work. Their daily life was mostly work with little chance to improve their position.
Exhibit B:
Cathedral Photos
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
Notre Dame Cathedral, 1163
Santa Maria Novella
San Giorgio Cathedral, 1610
Exhibit C:
Da Vinci’s Genius
Textbook
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
Exhibit D:
Personal Testimony
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
The population of Europe increased greatly in later Christendom, with cities and towns getting much larger. People had all kinds of jobs: merchants, salesmen, carpenters, butchers, weavers, foodsellers, architects, painters, jugglers...
In the countryside, it was not at all the case that everyone was a poor serf. Many peasants owned their own land, in fact even some serfs bought and sold land and goods. There certainly were poor serfs, but that wasn’t everyone’s condition.
John H. Arnold, professor of Medieval History, University of London.
Exhibit E:
2 Madonna and Childs
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
~1300 A.D.
1490 A.D.
Exhibit F:
The Great Plague of London 1665
“The total of the burials this week is 8,252 6,978 from plague, an increase of 756. 118 blocks infected. There would have been more dead but a man thought dead was left in an upper room. In the morning he woke up and his daughter brought him clothes. The man got up ate and went to church to thank God for his survival. ”��Henry Muddiman, Journalist, 1665
Exhibit G:
Book Passage
Exhibit M:
Modern book
When people talk about ‘the Renaissance’, they usually mean the return of classical literature, art, architecture and learning found at the end of the Middle Ages. This is usually taken to be one of the ways in which we moved from ‘medieval’ to ‘modern’ ways of thinking.
But, medieval intellectuals also had a ‘renaissance’ of classical learning and rhetoric. This was in the 12th century, and was based on old works by Aristotle and other classical authors via Arabic philosophers and translators.
One of the results was the start of an experimental approach to the physical world, and it led Roger Bacon among others, to think about how one might observe and experiment with the physical world to learn more about it.
Arnold, John H., What is Medieval History? Polity, 2008.
Life in the Renaissance was very different than life in Christendom.
Instructions