Renaissance Lives

Renaissance Lives: Portraits of an Age By Theodore K. Rabb

The thesis of Renaissance lives is to show the reader a little bit of the Renaissance period. Rabb talks about 15 different people from the Renaissance period. He talks about astrologers to mothers and artists.

Jan Hus

Jan Hus was born in Prague was a religious thinker and reformer. He initiated a religious movement based on the ideas of John Wycliff His followers became known as Hussites. Hus was a dissenter in that time it was frowned upon and dissenters where usually excommunicated because they don't want him spreading around his ideas. The Catholic Church did not condone such uprisings, and Hus was excommunicated in 1411, condemned by the Council of Constance, and burned at the stake. H

Teresa of Avila

Born in Avila, Spain, St. Teresa was the daughter of a Toledo merchant and his wife, who died when Teresa was 15. She was one of ten children. After this event, Teresa was entrusted to the care of the Augustinian nuns. After reading the letters of St. Jerome, Teresa resolved to enter a religious life. She joined the Carmelite Order. She spent a number of relatively average years in the convent, punctuated by a severe illness that left her legs paralyzed for three years, but then experienced a vision of "the sorely wounded Christ" that changed her life forever. St. Teresa left to posterity many new convents, which she continued founding up to the year of her death. She also left a significant legacy of writings, which represent important benchmarks in the history of Christian mysticism.

Galileo Galilee

Galileo Galilei was a Tuscan astronomer, philosopher, and physicist who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. He attended the University of Pisa, but was forced to stop his study there for financial reasons. He got a job working their teaching mathematics. Soon after, he moved to the University of Padua, and worked there too. During this time he explored science and made many discoveries. He made the telescope better, followed copernicanism, and the first law of motion. He had a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church.