HIST-308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Italy In The Middle Ages, Petrarch, Middle Ages
12 Mar 2020
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Document Summary
Christianity was still important for italian humanists: framing the renaissance. It"s difficult to envision the later renaissance without dante or petrarch. Italy would not exist until 1871 as a unified nation state. There was no state called "italy" in the middle ages: fragmented peninsula. For most of the medieval and renaissance eras, the italian peninsula was politically and sometimes culturally fragmented. Many different states occupied separate chunks of italian land: shifting borders. The boundaries between these different states could also be quite hard to pin down. Leaders from both within and outside italy often fought over contested territory: europe"s battlefield. Italy would come to be known as europe"s battlefield which tells you how tenuous the situation was. It was rulers from northern europe who led the battles: northern interference. The history of italy in the late middle ages is one of constant northern interference.
