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What Is A Historyscope?

Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to Renaissance history. Since I'm the one-and-only Historyscoper (tm), let me quickly bring you up to speed before you dive into my Master Historyscope.

The Black Death (the original Darth Vader) rockets through Europe's Internet with breathtaking speed? In Oct. 1347 a Genoese trading fleet arrives in Messina, Sicily carrying the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) (Yersinia pestis bacteria), carried by fleas from rats; it also arrives in Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus; by 1351 it kills 20M-30M in Europe (a third of Europe's pop., and up to 60% in some areas), and 75M worldwide by 1361; world. pop. decreases from 450M to 350M-375M by 1400; Europe takes 150 years to return to 1347 pop. levels; it ravages China, halving its pop. from 123M in 1200 to 65M in this cent.; lucky America is not affected, but not toughened up by it either?; rats didn't really spread it, because it spread too fast from person to person? On Sept. 26, 1348 Pope Clement VI issues the bull Quamvis Perfidiam, attempting to dispel the rumor that Jews caused the Black Death by poisoning wells, saying that they too are suffering from the plague, but he is ignored. In summer 1349 the Great Plague reappears in Paris, where it peaks, killing up to 800 a day, and spreads to Picardy, Flanders, and the Low Countries; also in the summer it reappears in London, and spreads to Ireland, killing 25% of the pop. within a year; by the middle of the year half of the pop. of Venice is killed; by the end of the year half of England's pop. is killed, and a truce with France is called; the plague spreads to Norway when an English ship full of corpses floats into Bergen, and reaches Elbing (Elblag), Poland on Aug. 24; the Church and its credibility being challenged head-on, the main solution offered is by the Flagellants, who appear in force all over Europe (especially Germany), torturing themselves publicly, and proclaiming that the Second Coming is 33.5 years away (I been a bad, bad boy, so tan my sinful hide?), while causing trouble for Jews, the rich, the Church, and finally themselves (besides all the wounds), causing Pope Clement VI to pub. a bull condemning them on Oct. 20; "Many persons, and even young children were soon bidding farewell to the world, some with prayers, others with praises on their lips."

In 1350-1 the Great Plague begins clearing, leaving a depopulated Europe where the deck is reshuffled and the entire social order is thrown up for grabs. The intelligentisa begin to smell a rat in the divine pretensions of the Church, and launch the timeless look at the ancient pagan past called the Renaissance via their Greek scholar friends in Constantinople, no longer being satisfied with Arab translations but learning ancient Greek for themselves; meanwhile the workers see the class struggle clearly now, the rain is gone.

About 1350 the Renaissance (It. "Rinascita" = rebirth) Period in Europe begins (ends 1650) as the intelligentsia begin to smell a rat in the divine pretensions of the Church and launch the timeless look at the ancient past called the Renaissance via their Greek scholar friends in Constantinople, no longer being satisfied with Arab translations but learning ancient Greek for themselves; meanwhile the workers see the class struggle clearly now, the rain is gone?; in Europe begins (ends 1650) as the intelligentsia begin to smell a rat in the divine pretensions of the Church and launch the timeless look at the ancient past called the Renaissance via their Greek scholar friends in Constantinople, no longer being satisfied with Arab translations but learning ancient Greek for themselves; meanwhile the workers see the class struggle clearly now, the rain is gone? the Italian Renaissance begins first, spreading outward, with Italian Renaissance painting beginning about 1400, along with Italian Renaissance architecture, Italian Renaissance humanism, Italian Renaissance music, Italian Renaissance philosophy, and Italian Renaissance science. Leading Renaissance figures incl. artists Donatello (1386-1466), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Raphael (1483-1520), writers Petrarch (1304-74), Francois Rabelais (1483-1553), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), scientists Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Paracelsus (1493-1541), Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), philosophers Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).