Starter quiz
- Which of these were Renaissance humanist?
- Petrarch ✓
- Bracciolini ✓
- Cicero
- Lcretius
-
- The Renaissance takes its name from the French term for...
- reformation
- research
- rebirth ✓
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- Lucretius' De rerum natura argued that the universe was made up of tiny things called...
- 'atoms' ✓
- Which ancient civilisations were humanists mostly interested in?
- Egypt
- Greece ✓
- Rome ✓
- Mesopotamia
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- Starting with the earliest, put these events in chronological order.
- 1⇔Petrarch rediscovers Lucretius' letters.
- 2⇔Bracciolini rediscovers De rerum natura
- 3⇔Bracciolini sends his copy of De rerum natura to Niccoli
- 4⇔Many copies are made of De rerum natura
- Humanists like Petrarch and Bracciolini found classical documents in the libraries of religious buildings such as cathedrals, abbeys and...
- 'monasteries' ✓
Exit quiz
- Before the printing press, most book copying was controlled by the...
- 'Church' ✓
- What impact did the printing press have on the speed of book copying?
- It made it slower
- It had no effect
- It made it faster ✓
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- Holbein's portrait compared Erasmus to which figure from a classical myth?
- Romulus
- Achilles
- Hercules ✓
- Paris
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- What happened to the number of universities in Europe during the Renaissance?
- It grew ✓
- It shrank
- It stayed the same
-
- ______ ideas spread through Europe's universities during the Renaissance.
- 'Humanist' ✓
- Which of the following did not help to spread humanist ideas during the Renaissance?
- The Church ✓
- Universities
- Scholars like Erasmus
- The printing press
-
Worksheet
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Lesson Details
Key learning points
- The printing press allowed humanists to share rediscovered knowledge more easily.
- Humanism was promoted by the universities of Europe.
- New universities were founded in this period.
- Humanism represented a desire to study the classical world.
- Erasmus was an important humanist scholar.
Common misconception
Pupils might think that because printing presses were mechanical, they were as fast and efficient as modern machinery.
Explain to pupils that even though printing presses were much quicker than copying by hand, it could still take a relatively long time to print books.
Keywords
Renaissance - from a French term for ‘rebirth’, the Renaissance was a period of revival in European art and literature under the influence of classical ideas
Printing press - the printing press was a machine used to print words
Humanist - humanists were people who were interested in the classical world and the potential of the human race
Humanism - humanism was the revival of interest in Greek and Roman thought during the Renaissance
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