Who began the Renaissance?

[besilarius]

http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/11/16/how-islam-created-the-italian-renaissance/

[JasonPratt]

http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/11/16/how-islam-created-the-italian-renaissance/

In conclusion, I deliberately simplified and exaggerated in this piece and these annotations are all interesting and may change some readers' minds. But I would continue to defend two points: (i) money not art mattered in the renaissance

Still an oversimplification. If art didn't matter there wouldn't have been art; much more ditto engineering reclamations. Some of the latter scientific principles came through Islam, but Islam had picked them up from Christian and Jewish scholars who had been overrun and who were still serving as dhimmi in those lands (although the contributions of Islamic scholars themselves, at the very least in also learning and passing things on, shouldn't be discounted.) The abbey and monastery systems in Europe were accomplishing much the same thing, which is why much of the Renaissance appealed to them as sources for their source material. To say that money mattered and not art, is like (to loosely quote Chesterton from memory) a soldier saying that his leg might be dropping off but he'll go on until it drops off so that, should he or his countrymen ever decide to take up a career in as a South Sea pearl diver, that option will now be open to them.  ::) Excess money allowed the flourishing of what mattered, at least to the people who had the money to spend. (That was also the flourishing of more money of course. But not only that.)

Point (ii) might still be true about the major financial innovations being passed along with some developments by Muslims. Although I have a suspicion the Turks were picking up financial tips from next-door Byzantium: the living relic of the Christian Greco-Roman Empire. And Byzantium wasn't only next door to them. Once Constantinople fell, early or just before the Ren, there would have been significant numbers of wealthy, cultured people fleeing westward with treasures of art and knowledge.

Relatedly, Bruce P among others: "Bruce P writes: As hopefully others will have pointed out to you, a substantial catalyst in the generation of the Renaissance was the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, with a resultant flood of refugees from there carrying manuscripts. The claim that Islam enabled the Renaissance is true – but needs to be completed with the negative side as well as the positive."