Europe During The Middle Ages

"The Renaissance was a period of big change in European history. It was a time of intellectual excitement, when art and literature blossomed and groundbreaking scientific advances were made."(Background Essay).Before the Renaissance Age was the Middle Ages, which lasted from 500CE to about 1350CE. During this time the Roman Catholic Church played a huge role on everyone's daily life. Priests who often lived inside of monasteries were the ones who owned most of the books and made handwritten copies of the Bible. Illiteracy was wide spread because there weren't many schools and more than 85% of the population were peasant farmers, called serfs. Serfs also worked for a lord and his estate. In the 1300s, improved farming methods helped peasants to become for independent. Serfs no longer relied on their lords and started to gain more freedom.
This helped to increase the number of merchants and bankers. Since people need to have an education to efficiently complete their work, more people could now read. Literate people began to questioning the Church. Humanism started to develop because of this, and humanism praised the beauty and intelligence of the individual. As the education of more people started to grow, humanism worked its way into the arts, literature, the sciences and medicine. Then in the mid-1400s the invention printing press helped to change our world forever. New ideas, inventions, and discoveries also spread. This brings us back to the question in what ways did the Renaissance change how people looked at the world around them? Some ways that the Renaissance changed how people viewed the Earth around them are it's written word, visual arts, and science