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them as well as their authors during uprisings. Many artists were forced to flee
from their native city. That was the tragic fate of Dante Alighieri who could not
return to his native Florence.
The Italian Renaissance culture would be incomplete without surge of Holy

Inquisition and internal church police ‘Order of Jesuits’ (from the Latin
pronunciation of ‘Jesus’), numerous proceedings against heretics and witches
(treatise ‘The Hammer of Witches’ published by monks Instytor and Sprenger and

in the middle of XV th century). Nonetheless, namely the Italian humanists made
their first attempt to scientifically ponder over culture, politics, state (for example,
H. Machiavelli in his treatise ‘The Emperor’), created a new model of society

based on the ideals of democracy and faith in God (utopia ‘Sun City’ by Tommaso
Campanella).

5. Distinguishing features of the Northern Renaissance
The Northern Renaissance was characterized by several features. First, as in
Germany and the Netherlands the role of cities compared to Italy was much
smaller, therefore, the Renaissance culture progressed slower. In general we can

say that if Italy gave rise to new forms, the rest of Europe just learned from it.
In feudal Europe there remained a big gap between the cultural elite and peasants.

This is where the balance between the ancient and medieval sources of new
spiritual movement has been achieved. The Northern Renaissance was notable not
for external ‘restructuring’ of behavior, life, feelings but for profound internal
changes in worldviews and, consequently, relationships between people, man and

society, and later - between man and God expressed in the powerful religious
movement – Reformation. Despite a large number of technical discoveries,
including the invention of printing by German J. Gutenberg German, development

of metal smelting and metal processing technologies, blowing craft, and
distribution of windmills and many others. The major discovery of the Northern
Renaissance was the discovery of God in a man and the right to communicate

directly with him in the native language of believers, not in little comprehensible
Latin. The Reformation widely known among the elite circles (its ideologues were
scholars – Erasmus, Ulrich von Hutten) quickly captured the consciousness of the

widest circles of society. The struggle for inner piety led to the emergence of
Brotherhood of Universal Spirit uniting non-church believers and then translations
of the Bible into national languages and, finally, to the break-up with the Catholic
Church. The Northern Renaissance was famous for the rhetoric of popular

preachers followed by the crowds of students traveling from city to city (e.g,
Master Johann Eckhard, Antoine Fraden Franciscan, Dominican Vincent Ferrer
and others). The works of art by brothers van Eyke (a legend attributes to them the

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