Why the Renaissance Began in Italy
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Italian peninsula was not a country. It was a quarrelsome collection of city-states, some ruled by merchant oligarchies, others by…
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Why the Middle Ages Ended and the Renaissance Began
In the 1330s, Florence was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, its wool merchants and bankers extending credit across the continent. By the 1350s, nearly half its…
