If you’ve ever been to Florence, you’ve no doubt paid a visit to the Duomo, the Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. Known as the Duomo. Well we’re NOT going to be talking about that today. Instead we’re going to be talking about the building right next to it – the Baptistery of St […]

The post #28 Ghiberti & The Doors I appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

So let’s talk about The Decameron. The book’s primary title exemplifies Boccaccio’s fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines two Greek words, δέκα, déka (“ten”) and ἡμέρα, hēméra (“day”), to form a term that means “ten-day [event]”. Ten days is the period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales. It was set […]

The post #27 – Boccaccio Part Three appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Let’s talk about the Filocolo The title means “the one struck down by love”. It is considered to be the first novel of Italian literature written in prose. Florio, son of the King of Spain, and Biancifiore, an orphan. They grow up together, get separated, have a lot of adventures, then he searches for her […]

The post #26 – Boccaccio Part Two appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Let’s talk about the other, slightly more creepy and rapey father of the Renaissance. For books in the vernacular to appear in considerable quantities, there must be a demand for them. There must exist a class of people who have had enough education to be considered literate and to have an interest in reading for […]

The post #25 – Boccaccio Part One appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

“Africa” became alternately Petrarch’s obsession and his revulsion, and he left it incomplete at his death. Despite Petrarch’s best efforts to conceal his occupation, word of the Africa spread quickly. It was not long before Petrarch’s fame reached the court of King Robert of Naples, a ruler considered by his contemporaries to be enlightened and […]

The post #24 – The Father Of The Renaissance (part three) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Now that his parents are dead, Petrarch decides to dump law and become a scholar and a poet. But you couldn’t make a living as a poet in the early 14th century. So he took minor orders with the church. In the Catholic Church, you have the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and […]

The post #23 – The Father Of The Renaissance (part two) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

I want to pick up our story in the year 1302 To talk about a man called Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo. Well actually I want to talk about his SON. But we’ll get there. And to get there, we’re going to need to duck in and out of the 800 years we’ve skipped since […]

The post #22 – The Father Of The Renaissance (part one) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Justin was born near modern Skopje, in the fake Macedonia. He started off life as a peasant and a swineherd. But he rose through the ranks of the army and ultimately became Emperor, in spite of the fact he was illiterate and almost 70 years old at the time of accession. So there you go […]

The post #21 – Enter The Lombards appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

In 423, Honorius, the son of Theodosius who ruled the Western part of the empire, died, of natural causes. He had ruled for 30 years. He was only 38 years old. Over the next 50 years, the Western empire had a 11 emperors. Some last for years – others lasted only months. The last emperor […]

The post #20 – The Ostrogothic Kingdom appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

When the Greek author Herodotus, the ‘father of history’, sat down to write the first history he declared that his aim was to make ‘inquiries’ – historias, in Greek – into the relations between the Greeks and the Persians. He was so even-handed with the way he treated both sides, that he was accused by […]

The post #19 – Burn Them in the Fire appeared first on The Renaissance Times.