Why weren't people happy with religions during the Italian renaissance?

Question

During the Italian Renaissance, religions kept on geting switched back and forth. Why werent they happy with religions?

Answer 1

There was great religious unrest during this period, in most cases caused by the questioning of Church dogma. This became widespread, not only amongst intellectuals but amongst those furthest from the influence of Rome as well. This unrest lead to the Reformation and the resulting Wars of religion.

Political unrest was rife as well. After a significant flowering of the arts in Italy during the mid to late 15th century, it all changed when Charles VIII of France kicked the door down and began the Italian wars. The resulting conflicts, with all of the stresses of wars, lasted until 1525 or so.

The contrasts of the Renaissance are thus illustrated -- while life in Florence, Italy during the mid to late 15th century could be luxurious, comfortable, and full of learning; life in northern Italy during the Italian wars could be nasty, brutish, and short.

One of the significant effects of the Renaissance was to spread learning and education, largely by the effects of Humanism which extracted learning from being the province of the Church (see Scholasticism) and spreading it more widely. This lead to both educational and political reform in many areas.

Answer 2

During the Renaissance people questioned and developed thier relgious belifs. pPart of this was due to disagreements over the Infalliability of the Pope (as Christ's Reperesntative on Earth) Science was improving at the time and people came to realize that many Relics were fake (Chicken Bones and other animal parts) this made people question whether more about the church was fake also. I don't think every person is happy with every religion at any time, but this was a major timeperiod due to the fracturing of the Catholic Church

Answer 3

Basically the Renaissance was a fundemental shift in thinking. The church wasn't the font of all answers anymore. The idea of sola scriptura meant you could read the bible and interpret it without the church's help (very revolutionary for the time). And the the things the church did were revealed to be not so Christian (plenatary indugences, or pay to get out of hell). And the church often backed unpopular leaders/ movements. But most of the faithful stayed with the church, creating divisions.

Answer 4

Well, they did believe in God/Christ, however, some humanists didn't actually take the Bible word-for-word (Erasmus is an example).

Some artwork in the Renaissance features Christ standing on the ground (as opposed to ascending to Heaven) after He was ressurrected to be more "realistic."

And I doubt that they were switching religions as you commented. It's just that religion was being questioned at the time because that's when science started to pick up.

Answer 5

Scientific discoveries, longer life spans, and the rapid rise of literacy confused many people. Sometimes it's hard to balance so much diverse information at once. Religion has historically been slow to change, and that's as it should be. Change just for change is never wise; change for the good is wise. It will be interesting to see how society will look back on our time period and judge us by our reactions to stem cell research, organ transplant, and other modern miracles of nature.

Answer 6

Would you be happy with the Inquisition, or the Index of condemned books, or the role of the Summoner (who punished you for your sins), or bishops who fined you right and left, or religious fanatics of every stripe who couldn't wait to burn you at the stake?