The English

Renaissance

LICEO “T. TARAMELLI” PAVIA

10th JUNE, 2011

Elisa Bernazzani,Camilla Gammeri, Martina Cassinera

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

THE QUEEN ELIZABETH ITHE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD

Henry VII Tudor, the clever sovereign

Enforced LAW and ORDER

Encouraged COMMERCE

Pursued PEACE with neighbouring countries

Started the ROYAL NAVY to protect the shores of England

Supported the MERCHANT CLASSES and the gentry Taxed nobles and limiting their power

Avoided the risk of further civil wars

Consolidated the power of the king1485

-160

3

Henry VIII

he is mainly remembered

for the break with Rome

The reasons for the break

Religious reasons: England became a protestant country, while in Rome there was the Catholic Church.Economic reasons: The king needed money for his court, monasteries contained treasures, people had to pay taxes to the Church.Political reasons: The power of the Church wasn’t subject to the autority of the king.Personal reasons: The Pope denied the request of the King to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon.

The Act of Supremacy

In 1534 with the Act of Supremacy the king Herny VIII proclaimed himself the Head of the Church of England

With the Treasons Act those who denied the king’s supremacy had been

charged with high treason.

An example was Thomas More, the king’s chacellor, who was killed in 1535.

The Treasons Act

They were killed and the King annexed their estates and sold their lands to

the nobles. Many fine buildings were demolished, libraries were sacked.

Shrines wich attracted pilgrims, like that of Thomas Becket in

Canterbury, were suppressed.

Family and Succession HENRY VIII

CATHERINE OF ARAGON ANNE BOLEYN One of the

other wives

MARY ELIZABETH EDWARD

The king married six times and had only three children. The first wife was Catherine of Aragon who gave him a daughter, Mary. Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth. An other wife gave him also a male, Edward

Edward Succeded the father but died after a few years

Mary TudorBecame queen after Edward. She tried to restore catholicism and harshly persecuted Protestants, thus creating a deep-rooted, fierce hatred of Roman Catholicism amongst the English.

Mary StuartShe was the Roman Catholic queen of Scotland, she married with the heir to the French throne.The queen Elizabeth never married so she remained the closest heir, because her mother was the elder sister of Henry VIII.

She aspired to the English throne, particularly after the birth of her son, as a legitimate successor to Elizabeth, but because of a series of intrigues that led to a war was forced to flee to England where the execution took place in 1587.

New Discoveries and Development

The discovery of America in 1492

New interest to the west benefits for the geografical position

Challenged the naval supremacy of Spain.

Exploration to find gold and voyages of discovery

Colonization and commercial expansion consolidation of the

maritime power of England

Chartered Companies

Mechants founded trading companies which recived the royal charter. They have exclusive right to trade in a particular geographycal area or in a specific commodity, and part of their profits went to the Crown.

• Estland Company Baltic

• Africa Company Morocco and African Coast

• Levant Company Mediterranean

• East India Company India, Japan and Persia

England and Spain

Relationship between England and Spain was becoming tense.

British ships attacked and plundered the Spanish.

Philip II invaded Spain with the “Invincible Armada”.

A naval battle broke out and the heavy Spanish galleons couldn’t withstand the fast English ships, so

they were defeated

Religious problems

When Protestans,escaped abroad during Mary’s reign,returned to

England they pretended to purify Anglicanism.

They were supported by the Parliament but the Queen refused to modify the

Anglican Church.

For the queen, religious doctrine was a “matter of state”

Other problems

• The army was badly organised• The cost of the war with Spain gave a blow to the

finances• There was widespread corruption in bureaucracy

James I Elizabeth left her crown to James I,

Mary Stuart’s son, in 1603

ELIZ

ABET

H

What was desirable at the time? Face painted in white with

Ceruse, a mixture between lead, ground marble, figs and vinegar

Enhanced the blue of their veins, Wear a mask to go out in the

sun. Other face pigments for cheeks

and lips (from minerals or insects such as ladybirds)

The most desirable woman at court, even in old age!

ClothesThe queen owned over three thousand dresses, full of gold and jewels.Her ladies were to look less attractive to her, so they could wear only black and white placing in extreme evidence the queen.Personal HygieneThe hygiene of the body was in contrast to the sumptuous look that they wanted to have, in fact they bathed only three times a year. Elizabeth was slightly cleaner than other and she carried a portable bath during her travels. The teeth were brushed with pumice stone powder and thisresulted in a rapid decay and erosion. Strong-scented Perfumes wer used to mask breath and body odours.

Queen Elizabeth’s Personality

Elizabeth was known as Good Queen Bess, the Virgin Queen and “Gloriana”, epithets wich

reflected her popularity with her subjects and her refusal to

marry.With the speech that the Queen gave at Tilbury in 1558, before the

fight with Spain, we can see the Queen through her own eyes.She said she knew that she had the body of a feeble woman but

she had also the heart and the stomach of a king, a king of England too; so she herself would take up arms and would be her

troop’s general and judge. The poet Grace Nichols wrote a poem when she looked a picture

of Elizabeth I This poem presents two contrasting aspects of the Queen’s

personality: her vanity and her courage and stamina. We can know some of her qualities like pride, dynamism and

assertiveness.

The chain of Being

The angels GodSociety King/Queen

Animals Lion

Plants Oak

Minerals Gold

God created everything in a strict hierarchy, like a chain, that went from God himself down to the lowest living

thing.Some humans were higher in the chain

than others: the monarch was the highest, followed by nobles and

churchmen.All women where considered inferior than men, with the exceptionof Elizabeth I,

because she was a monarch.

If someone didn’t accept his place in the chain there would have

been chaosEach category had his head

MYTH AND MAGIC• Elizabethans belived in: faires, magic, witches,

spells and prophecies.

• Supertitions and folklore were on the same level of religion.

• People belived that spirits came out at night and played tricks on people.

• Witches, associated to disease and disaster, according to popular belief, were women who didn’t partecipate in society were accused for working for the evil and sentenced to death.

• People belived in astrology more than today; John Dee was the personal astrologer .

WITCHES

People blamed unexplainable events on witches.Those were accused of witchcraft.

They were generally old, poor and unprotected single women.

Popular beliefs considered witches able to fly and their and their home was believed to be in a wood with animals like cats, frogs, pigs,

ravens, goats, crows, bats, belived to be used to perform evil deeds and cast malevolet spells.

Some Superstition: The evil could enter your bod when you opened your mouth to sneeze. The blessing kept away the

evil. An eclips was seen as an omen of evil. It was unlucky for a black cat to cross your path. It was unlucky to keep the feather of a peacock. Touch wood to guard against bad luck; tree posseded magipal powers Not to walk under ladders, associated to executions. Shoes on a table inviting an imminent death. Spilling salt or peppers

The four HumoursThe Elizabethans believed that the human body was a miniature

representation of the universe: various part of the body were linked to the planets and the sign of zodiac.

For example, Gemini the shoulders, Leo the back and the hearth, Cancer the chest, stomach and lungs.

What happened in the universe, called Macrocosm, happened on a smaller scale in the human body, called Microcosm.

The Greek physician Galen believed that the human body contained

FOUR HUMOURS or FLUIDwich were responsible for a person’s temperament