Get summaries, questions, answers, solutions, notes, extras, PDF and guide of Class 11 (first year) History textbook, chapter 5 Changing Cultural Traditions which is part of the syllabus of students studying under AHSEC/ASSEB (Assam Board). These solutions, however, should only be treated as references and can be modified/changed.
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Summary
From the fourteenth century onwards, many towns in Europe started growing. A distinct city culture developed, and townspeople saw themselves as more ‘civilised’ than people living in the countryside. Cities like Florence, Venice, and Rome became important centers for art and learning, often supported by rich families and aristocrats. Around the same time, the invention of printing made books much more common and available to people even in distant places. People developed a sense of history, comparing their ‘modern’ times with the ‘ancient’ world of the Greeks and Romans.
Religion began to be seen as something an individual could choose for themselves. The old belief, supported by the church, that the Earth was the center of everything was challenged by scientists who studied the solar system. New geographical knowledge also showed that the Mediterranean Sea was not the center of the world. Historians later used the term ‘Renaissance’, meaning ‘rebirth’, to describe the cultural changes of this time. A scholar named Jacob Burckhardt highlighted how a new ‘humanist’ culture developed in Italian towns. Humanism was a belief that humans, as individuals, could make their own decisions and develop their skills, unlike the medieval view where the church controlled thinking.
After the fall of the western Roman Empire, Italian towns declined, but they revived partly due to increased trade with other regions like the Byzantine Empire and Islamic countries. Cities like Venice and Florence became independent city-states. Rich merchants and bankers were involved in city government, promoting the idea of citizenship. Early universities focused on law, needed for trade, but scholars like Francesco Petrarch shifted attention to understanding ancient Greek and Roman culture through their writings. This led to ‘humanism’, teaching subjects like grammar, history, and poetry, focusing on skills developed through discussion, separate from religion. Arab scholars were important because they had preserved and translated many ancient Greek texts that Europeans later studied.
Artists and architects were inspired by ancient Roman art and buildings discovered in ruins. They aimed for realism and perfect proportions in sculptures and paintings. Artists studied the human body, used geometry for perspective, and oil paints for richer colors. Famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo emerged. Architects revived the classical Roman style. The printing press, introduced by Johannnes Gutenberg, allowed books and ideas to spread much faster and wider than before. This helped humanist culture spread beyond Italy and encouraged reading among more people.
Humanist culture saw a lessening of religious control over daily life. People valued wealth, power, and glory, but also focused on developing themselves through culture and good manners. Thinkers like Machiavelli wrote about human nature. While men dominated public life, some women in merchant families managed businesses, and a few educated women like Cassandra Fedele argued for women’s right to education and a role beyond the household.
Within Christianity, thinkers like Erasmus and Martin Luther criticized the Church’s practices, such as selling documents to forgive sins. Luther started the Protestant Reformation, arguing that faith alone was needed for salvation, leading some churches to break away from the Catholic Church. Science also saw major changes. Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolved around the sun, challenging the old view. Galileo and Kepler supported this idea with further observations, and Isaac Newton later developed the theory of gravitation. This period saw a shift towards knowledge based on observation and experiment, known as the Scientific Revolution. Gradually, people’s private lives became more separate from public life, and distinct regional identities based on language began to form across Europe.
Textbook solutions
Answer in Brief
1. Which elements of Greek and Roman culture were revived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries?
Answer: In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was a revival of interest in the distinctive civilisation of the ancient Greeks and Romans, understood through the actual words of their authors like Plato and Aristotle. Importance was stressed on a close reading of ancient authors. Law began to be studied in the context of earlier Roman culture. The educational programme known as ‘humanism’ focused on subjects like grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy, derived from the Latin word ‘humanitas’ used by the Roman lawyer Cicero to mean culture; these subjects were not connected with religion. Artists and sculptors were inspired by studying the material remains of Roman culture, such as fragments of art discovered in ruins, and admired the ‘perfectly’ proportioned figures of men and women sculpted centuries ago, wanting to continue that tradition. Architecture saw a revival of the imperial Roman style, then called ‘classical’. By 1500, many classical texts, mostly in Latin, were printed and circulated in Italy.
2. Compare details of Italian architecture of this period with Islamic architecture.
Answer: Italian architecture of this period was characterized by a revival of classical Roman styles, emphasizing symmetry, proportion, and geometry. Architects like Filippo Brunelleschi and Michelangelo designed structures that featured domes, columns, and arches reminiscent of ancient Rome. The city of Rome was revitalized, and architecture took inspiration from imperial Roman buildings. Wealthy patrons, including popes and aristocrats, commissioned architects and artists to create grand structures decorated with paintings, sculptures, and reliefs.
Islamic architecture, on the other hand, was influenced by Persian, Byzantine, and Central Asian traditions. It was known for intricate geometric patterns, arabesques, calligraphy, and the extensive use of domes, minarets, and courtyards. Mosques, madrasas, and palaces often featured elaborate tilework, muqarnas (stalactite-like decorations), and large iwans (vaulted halls opening onto a courtyard). Unlike Italian architecture, which emphasized a revival of classical antiquity, Islamic architecture maintained and developed its unique aesthetic based on religious and cultural traditions.
3. Why were Italian towns the first to experience the ideas of humanism?
Answer: Italian towns were the first to experience the ideas of humanism because they had early universities such as Padua and Bologna, which had been centers of legal studies since the eleventh century. Commerce was the chief activity in these cities, increasing the demand for lawyers and notaries to manage trade agreements. This led to a shift in education, where law was studied in the context of earlier Roman culture. Francesco Petrarch emphasized a close reading of ancient authors, fostering a new intellectual movement. This culture, later labeled as humanism, promoted subjects like grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy, which were not connected with religion and emphasized individual skills through discussion and debate. The presence of wealthy merchant families and patrons of art and learning in cities like Florence and Venice also played a crucial role in fostering humanist ideals.
4. Compare the Venetian idea of good government with those in contemporary France.
Answer: The Venetian idea of good government, as described by Cardinal Gasparo Contarini in The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1534), was based on a council where all gentlemen of the city above the age of 25 were admitted. The common people were deliberately excluded from governance to avoid popular tumults and instability. Governance was defined by nobility of lineage rather than wealth, ensuring that rule was neither by a few powerful elites nor entirely by the masses but by all who were noble by birth or ennobled by virtue.
In contrast, contemporary France was characterized by a monarchical system where the king exercised absolute authority, often justifying his rule through the doctrine of divine right. Unlike Venice, where governance was shared among the nobility within a republic, France had a centralized government with power concentrated in the hands of the monarch, supported by a bureaucratic structure and an aristocracy that held privileges by virtue of royal favor rather than a republican tradition.
Answer in a Short Essay
5. What were the features of humanist thought?
Answer: Humanist culture, which flowered in Italian towns from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, was characterised by a new belief – that man, as an individual, was capable of making his own decisions and developing his skills. He was seen as ‘modern’, in contrast to ‘medieval’ man whose thinking had been controlled by the church. This educational programme implied that there was much to be learnt which religious teaching alone could not give. By the early fifteenth century, the term ‘humanist’ was used for masters who taught grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. The Latin word humanitas, from which ‘humanities’ was derived, had been used many centuries ago by the Roman lawyer and essayist Cicero to mean culture. These subjects were not drawn from or connected with religion, and emphasised skills developed by individuals through discussion and debate.
Humanists thought that they were restoring ‘true civilisation’ after centuries of darkness, believing that a ‘dark age’ had set in after the collapse of the Roman Empire during which the Church had had such complete control over men’s minds that all the learning of the Greeks and Romans had been blotted out. One of the features of humanist culture was a slackening of the control of religion over human life. Italians were strongly attracted to material wealth, power and glory, but they were not necessarily irreligious. Some humanists, like Francesco Barbaro, wrote pamphlets defending acquisition of wealth as a virtue, while others like Lorenzo Valla criticised the Christian injunction against pleasure. There was also a concern at this time with good manners – how one should speak politely and dress correctly, what skills a person of culture should learn.
Humanism also implied that individuals were capable of shaping their own lives through means other than the mere pursuit of power and money. This ideal was closely tied with the belief that human nature was many-sided, which went against the three separate orders that feudal society believed in. Christian humanists like Thomas More and Erasmus called on Christians to practise religion in the way laid down in the ancient texts of their religion, discarding unnecessary rituals. Theirs was a radically new view of human beings as free and rational agents, inspired by the belief in a distant God who created man but allowed him complete freedom to live his life freely, in pursuit of happiness ‘here and now’. Gradually, the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ spheres of life began to become separate; the individual had a private as well as a public role and was seen as a person in his own right, not simply a member of one of the ‘three orders’.
6. Write a careful account of how the world appeared different to seventeenth-century Europeans.
Answer: By the seventeenth century, the world appeared different to Europeans in several significant ways compared to previous centuries. Religion came to be seen by many as something which each individual should choose for himself, moving away from the universal authority previously held by the Catholic Church, particularly with the advent of the Protestant Reformation. Christian humanists promoted a view of human beings as free and rational agents, living life freely in pursuit of happiness ‘here and now’, under a distant God.
The understanding of the cosmos had been revolutionized. The church’s earth-centric belief was overturned by scientists. Following Copernicus, who asserted that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun, astronomers like Kepler and Galileo confirmed this dynamic view of the world, showing planets moved in ellipses and bridging the difference between ‘heaven’ and earth. This scientific revolution, culminating in Newton’s theory of gravitation, showed that knowledge, as distinct from belief, was based on observation and experiments. For sceptics and non-believers, God began to be replaced by Nature as the source of creation, while even those retaining faith might see God as distant, not directly regulating the material world. Scientific societies established a new scientific culture in the public domain.
Geographical knowledge had expanded, overturning the Europe-centric view that the Mediterranean Sea was the centre of the world. New navigation techniques enabled sailing much further, and the expansion of Islam and the Mongol conquests had linked Asia and North Africa with Europe through trade and learning skills. Europeans learned from India, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and China, though these debts were not always acknowledged initially due to a Europe-centric viewpoint.
Socially and politically, the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres of life began to separate, and the individual was increasingly seen as a person in his own right, with a sense of self distinct from being merely a member of a guild or one of the ‘three orders’. Different regions of Europe started to develop separate identities based on language, leading to the dissolution of Europe, earlier united partly by the Roman Empire and later by Latin and Christianity, into states, each united by a common language. Europeans contrasted their ‘modern’ world with the ‘ancient’ one of the Greeks and Romans.
Extras
Additional questions and answers
1. Define the term ‘Renaissance’.
Answer: From the nineteenth century, historians used the term ‘Renaissance’, which literally means rebirth, to describe the cultural changes of the period from the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century.
28. Why did Galileo’s work mark a shift in scientific thinking?
Answer: Galileo confirmed the notion of the dynamic world in his work The Motion. Galileo once remarked that the Bible that lights the road to heaven does not say much on how the heavens work. The work of thinkers like Galileo showed that knowledge, as distinct from belief, was based on observation and experiments. This new approach to the knowledge of man and nature was labelled the Scientific Revolution.
Additional MCQs
1 Which invention made books widely available?
A. Printing press
B. Stone printing
C. Digital screens
D. Scroll copying
Answer: A. Printing press
64 Arab translations were crucial in transmitting the works of which other ancient philosopher?
A. Aristotle
B. Bacon
C. Descartes
D. Hume
Answer: A. Aristotle
Ron’e Dutta is a journalist, teacher, aspiring novelist, and blogger who manages Online Free Notes. An avid reader of Victorian literature, his favourite book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. He dreams of travelling the world. You can connect with him on social media. He does personal writing on ronism.
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