Historic Replicas

Renaissance costumes  and Medieval festivals commemorate an era that was famous for its great minds and is remembered as a time of widespread cultural evolution.  Brilliant painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci created some of history’s most famous works of art.  Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy, his epic saga of a mortal’s journey through the afterlife.  Philosophers Niccolo Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne were making giant leaps in political and social thought, gradually reshaping European notions of society and the human condition.  The image of the Renaissance in the history books is overwhelmingly positive, a shining beacon of progress and civility that emerges like a lighthouse from the roiling black sea of Europe’s Dark Ages.  So much good was done that it’s easy to overlook the darker side of life during the Renaissance. 

While Europeans were liberating themselves from the cruelty and superstition of previous centuries, they were rediscovering slavery.  It had been declining gradually since the reign of the Romans soldiers, and had been almost completely abolished in Northern Europe by the end of the Viking Age in 11th century- think horned Viking helmets.  When the Renaissance got going, though, a lot of people were getting rich, and slaves were a mark of status.  Explorers were also discovering new lands across the sea, and when they encountered the Natives, turned to classical philosophers for insight into how to deal with them.  According to Aristotle, slavery was part of the natural order, a suitable form of government for people who were mentally incapable of governing themselves.  With that, the Europeans could justify human bondage, and slavery found new life in an otherwise enlightened era. It became an enduring part of their legacy, to the detriment of all mankind.