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Y305: The Renaissance c.1400–c.1600

Religion and religious change: anti-clericalism and impact of the Renaissance on church music

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on anti-clericalism, clerical advocates of the new learning, the role of Papal patronage, the impact of the Renaissance on church music, including Pallestrina and Monteverdi.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Who and when

How did humanist scholarship threaten church authority?

Who and when

Name two clerical advocates of the new learning and what they did.

Who and when

How did artists reconcile classical subjects with Christian belief?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Explain what anti-clericalism was and what fed it.

    Model answer

    Anti-clericalism was hostility to the clergy as a privileged and worldly order, fed by tithes and mortuary fees, benefit of clergy, clerical ignorance and immorality, and the contrast between church wealth and the poverty of parishioners.

  2. 2

    What was the general attitude of the Church to the Renaissance?

    Model answer

    It was largely welcoming, since the Church remained by far the greatest employer of artists and many clerics were themselves humanists, though some churchmen objected to pagan subjects and to the scrutiny of sacred texts.

  3. 3

    How did humanist scholarship threaten church authority?

    Model answer

    Textual criticism could undermine the Church's claims, as when Valla proved the Donation of Constantine a forgery, and Erasmus's Greek New Testament exposed errors in the Vulgate on which doctrine had been built.

  4. 4

    Name two clerical advocates of the new learning and what they did.

    Model answer

    John Colet, Dean of St Paul's, lectured on the Epistles in their plain historical sense, and Cardinal Bessarion promoted Greek studies and left his manuscript collection to Venice.

  5. 5

    How did artists reconcile classical subjects with Christian belief?

    Model answer

    Neo-Platonists argued that pagan myth contained veiled truths and that physical beauty led the mind upwards to God, so classical figures could be read as allegories of Christian virtues.

  6. 6

    How did church music change across the period?

    Model answer

    It moved from plainchant and simple medieval polyphony to the elaborate imitative polyphony of Franco-Flemish composers, and then, after criticism at the Council of Trent, towards a clearer style in which the words could be understood.

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