renessanssia

Renessanssia, the Finnish term for the Renaissance, denotes a period of broad cultural, artistic, and scientific change in Europe roughly between the 14th and 17th centuries. The term originates in the idea of a "rebirth" of classical antiquity. In Finnish usage it corresponds to renessanssi, while renessanssia is a grammatical form used in sentences to refer to the movement.

Origins in Italian city-states, especially Florence, with humanist scholars who revived Latin and Greek texts. The movement spread northward through trade, scholars, and printed books. Factors include increased wealth, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the invention of the printing press, and patronage by rulers and churches. The Renaissance influenced education, politics, and religion, sowing seeds for reform and modern science.

Key features: revival of classical art, philosophy, and science; innovations in visual arts (perspective), architecture; advances in astronomy, anatomy, and map-making; literature in vernacular languages, shaping national literatures. Important figures include painters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael; scientists such as Copernicus, Vesalius, and Galileo; writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy; Erasmus in Northern Europe. The movement varied by region, with a stronger emphasis on religious reform in some areas.

Impact: laid groundwork for modern science, secular and humanist education, and the modern state; transformed church and education; spurred technological and exploratory advances leading to the Age of Exploration. The Renaissance did not have a single end date; it faded at different times across regions, culminating in the early modern period and giving rise to early modern philosophy, science, and art.