Othello

Social Classes

For all practical purposes, the Renaissance / Early Modern Period is distinguished from other periods in European history almost entirely in intellectual or cultural terms. As far as larger historical patterns are concerned, the period is more or less considered as playing out what had been set up in the later middle ages. European historians overwhelmingly tend to place Europe’s major break with its medieval and classical past with the discovery of America and the Reformation.\

The historical background against which the intellectual and cultural ferment of the Renaissance / Early Modern period played itself out in its initial stages left its indelible mark on the character of the intellectual and cultural ferment. Set in the city-states of Italy in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the constant uncertainty, both economic and political, and extreme volatility of the historical situation provided the material for new intellectual, cultural, and social experiments that would at their conclusion provide the means of constructing a new European monocultural identity, one focussed on humanistic studies, science, and the arts. This historical background is surprisingly volatile; while one might assume that political stability and economic security are prerequisites for intellectual and cultural experimentation, some of the most radical and far-reaching cultural work in the Renaissance was done in the periods of greatest insecurity.

Social Class

This concentration of wealth and power in the cities led to new configurations of social class which would have wide-ranging effects across the face of Europe. Most of the new wealth had been created by individuals not in the noble class; the bankers, in particular, came from the productive classes. Not only did these commercial activities produce wealth, they also seriously redistributed wealth. At the beginning of the high middle ages, wealth in Italy consisted almost entirely of land and was concentrated in the hands of the nobility. Through the development of commercial interests, wealth began to concentrate in the hands of the non-aristocratic peoples. Because the nobility tended to borrow money only to do non-productive things like gamble, party, and fight wars, they often defaulted on their loans. When they did, part of their property would transfer to the wealthy bankers and merchants. By the end of the fifteenth century, most of the wealth of Italy had been transferred away from the nobility, including the pope in Rome, to this new, commercial class.

In general, Renaissance Italian society consisted of five classes which varied in nature and number depending on which area of Italy you were in. At the top of the class hierarchy were the old nobility and the merchant class that had traditionally ruled the cities. Below them were the emergent capitalist and banker class that identified with the lower classes and wished to become as powerful as the top class. Below them were the less wealthy merchants and tradespeople and below them, the poor and destitute. This final group probably made up one fourth to one third of the urban population in Italy during the Renaissance. Finally, there were the domestic slaves; though few in number, they represent the first attempts by post-classical European society to institute slavery as an economic practice.

The Italy of the Renaissance was a period of simmering class resentments, particularly in the lowest ranks of society. In 1378 these resentments boiled to the surface in the Ciompi Revolt in Firenze. This led to an anarchic four-year rule by the lower classes and several decades of power struggles.

Slavery

While we like to think of the Italian Renaissance as representing the best of Western culture, several less stellar practices were introduced. The rapidly expanding mercantile culture produced class divisions far more destructive than those of earlier periods and the legal status of women declined seriously in the process. The Italian Renaissance was also the period that Europeans rediscovered slavery. The market in human slave labor in southern Europe began as early as the 12th century. Initially the Spaniards were the key traffickers in human life, but as the Italian city-states grew, their demand for slaves also grew and they became one of the largest consumers of human slaves. The slavery that they practiced was not yet racial slavery: most slaves sold in Italy were Muslims from Spain, North Africa, Crete, the Balkans, and the Ottoman Empire. There was a trickle of black slaves into Spain, Portugal, and Italy, but they were only a very small minority.

Almost all the slaves in Italy were domestic servants and most wealthy in most cities had at least one. When a slave was acquired, the owner acquired full rights, including the right to sell and “enjoy,” that slave. For the most part, the slaves were incorporated into the household and their children were always born free. In many cases when a slave owner produced a child with a slave, the slave owner would raise the child as a legitimate child. A more insidious side of slavery was developing, however, in this period. In the Venetian sugar cane plantations in Cyprus and Crete, a new kind of “plantation slave” grew into existence. Since sugar is a labor-intensive industry, this new type of slave was acquired for purely economic reasons: the cheapest labor possible.