Renaissance Europe

Abstract

Europe in the early sixteenth century was still in many respects medieval. Its population was rural and agricultural to the extent of about 80 percent. Cities remained small; craft industries were small-scale and most were carried on domestically. Technology had made little advance during the previous thousand years, and there were few industrial and agricultural processes that would not have been understood by the year 1000. Over much of Europe the rural population was still unfree, bound to the soil and subject to heavy and arbitrary labor demands. One of the complaints made in the German Peasants' War of 1524–5 was of “labor services which … daily increase and daily grow.” Yet there was change; people were becoming more critical and enquiring. It is too early to speak of a scientific attitude, but institutions and beliefs were being questioned; new forms of organization were being adopted, and, in a slow and halting way, a spirit of innovation and experimentation was beginning to develop and spread.