The Renaissance has no set starting point or place. It happened gradually at different places at different times and there are no defined dates or places for when the Middle Ages ended. The starting place of the Renaissance is almost universally ascribed to Central Italy, especially the city of Florence. One early Renaissance figure is the poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the first writer to embody the spirit of the Renaissance.
Petrarch (1304–1374) is another early Renaissance figure. As part of the humanist movement he concluded that the height of human accomplishment had been reached in the Roman Empire and the ages since have been a period of social rot which he labeled the Dark Ages. Petrarch saw history as social, art and literary advancement, and not as a series of set religious events. Re-birth meant the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek Latin heritage through ancient manuscripts and the humanist method of learning. These new ideas from the past (called the "new......
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