1st Edition

Sociology of the Renaissance

By Alfred von Martin Copyright 2016
    162 Pages
    by Routledge

    162 Pages
    by Routledge

    This classic work marks the culmination of a definite stage in the socio-economic historiography from the late Middle Ages to the rise of the haute bourgeoisie in the early Renaissance. Here Alfred von Martin attempts to discover and define the spirit or essence of the Renaissance, and with it the spirit of early capitalism as it arose in Florence.

    His analysis focuses on the capitalist haute bourgeois who represented the economically, politically, and culturally dominant class of the Renaissance. As he shows, eventually its decline brings about a new stasis in the aristocratization of the great bourgeoisie as well as the rise of despotism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

    The shift from an agricultural to a commercial economy was unquestionably one of the essential elements in the transition from medieval to Renaissance civilization. This book's republication is a welcome development and will make this classic accessible again to scholars of the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism. In addition to its new introduction, it also includes a bibliography of von Martin's extensive writings.

    Under the Sign of Humanity: Alfred von Martin (1882 1979) In Memoriam Introduction to the Transaction Edition by Gertrud LenzerAuthor's PrefaceIntroduction1 The New Dynamic (a) Changes in Social Structure (b) The New Individualist Entrepreneur (c) New Modes of Thought (d) The Birth of Practical Learning and the Expert (e) New Ways in Art (f) Functions of Erudition and Learning (g) The Propertied Classes and the Intelligentsia2 The Curve of Development (a) Risk and the Spirit of Enterprise (b) The Culture of the New RulingClasses; the New Static and Bourgeois Conservatism (c) Humanism: Romanticism and Restoration (d) The Art of the Full Renaissance (e) The Decadence of the Bourgeoisie and the Call for Dictatorship (f) The Courts3 Renaissance Society and the Church (a) The Alliance of the Church with the New Powers (b) The Adjustment of Economic Ethics (c) Bourgeois Conservatism and Ecclesiastical TraditionalismBibliography Compiled by Gertrud Lenzer Index

    Biography

    Elizabeth Freidheim