Group items tagged

leisure time to spend on education and entertainment.

Bankers and accountants needed to understand arithmetic

knowledge of foreign currencies and languages

Reading was essential for anyone who needed to understand a contract.

reading for pleasure, learning to play musical instruments, and studying a variety of topics unrelated to their businesses.

Many Italian coastal cities became centers for trade and commerce, and for the wealth and education that ensued.

the Medici family, made their wealth as business people

Pietistic painting (religious art)

Artists were members of religious houses such as monasteries

There were no sculptures as these were looked upon as a form of idolatry

Sombre tones

Byzantine Art was totally flat - one dimensional. There was no perspective

There were no shadows

Figures in Byzantine Art were generally depicted front-facing

Byzantine Art featured long, narrow and solemn faces

There was no attempt to portray realism in sombre Byzantine Art

Early Middle Ages Art was initially restricted to the production of Pietistic painting (religious art) in the form of illuminated manuscripts, mosaics and fresco paintings in churches. There were no portrait paintings. The colors were generally muted.

The artists and painters were founders of the movement towards greater realism which culminated in the Renaissance art style.

Brighter colorsSculpturesMetal work in the form of bronze artMiddle Ages art in the form of stained glass windowsMove towards realismThe development of perspective and proportion in Middle Ages artThe use of shadows and lightNew ideals of naturalismCreation of a sense of pictorial spaceThe use of symmetry in Middle Ages artChanges in subject matter including the depiction of animals and mythological scenes

The very fact that the curriculum was structured by the church gave it the ability to mould the students to follow its doctrine

Unofficially, education started from a very young age. This sort of early education depended on the feudal class of the child’s parents

Even the children of serfs would be taught the skills needed to survive by their parents. The boys would be taken out into the fields to observe and to help their parents with easy tasks, while the girls would work with the animals at home, in the vegetable garden with their mothers, or watch them weave.

Children of craftsmen and merchants were educated from a very young age in the trade of their fathers. Trade secrets rarely left a family and they had to be taught and understood by all male (and unusually, female) heirs, in order to continue the family legacy.

Young boys of noble birth would learn how to hunt and swing a weapon, while the young ladies of nobility would learn how to cook

The main subject of study in those schools was Latin (reading and writing). In addition to this, students were also taught rhetoric – the art of public speaking and persuasion – which was a very useful tool for both men of the cloth and nobles alike.

Lessons frequently started at sunrise and finished at sunset

University education, across the whole of the continent, was a luxury to which only the wealthiest and brightest could ever aspire

Since the creation of the first university in 1088

Students attended the Medieval University at different ages, ranging from 14 (if they were attending Oxford or Paris to study the Arts) to their 30s (if they were studying Law in Bologna)

The dynamic between students and teachers in a medieval university was significantly different from today. In the University of Bologna students hired and fired teachers by consensus. The students also bargained as a collective regarding fees, and threatened teachers with strikes if their demands were not met

A Master of Arts degree in the medieval education system would have taken six years; a Bachelor of Arts degree would be awarded after completing the third or fourth year. By “Arts” the degree was referring to the seven liberal arts – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric

The sons of the peasants could only be educated if the lord of the manor had given his permission

Any family caught having a son educated without permission was heavily fined

Historians today believe that this policy was another way in which authority figures attempted to control the peasants, since an educated peasant/villein might prove to question the way things were done and upset the balance of power which kept the nobles strong.

Students held the legal status of clerics which, according to the Canon Law, could not be held by women; women were therefore not admitted into universities.