Using an interdisciplinary approach, John Jeffries Martin collects thirty four illustrated essays from leading field scholars, and presents a sweeping survey of Europe in the Renaissance, and the foundations this complex era laid for the modern world.

John Jeffries Martin is Professor of History at Duke University, North Carolina. He is editor of The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad.

Introduction The Renaissance: A World in Motion Part 1: Three Preludes 1. Rome at the Center of a Civilization 2. Framing and Mirroring the World 3. The Black Death, Tragedy, and Transformation Part 2: A World in Motion 4. The Manufacture and Movement of Goods 5. Cities, Towns, and New Forms of Culture 6. European Expansion and a New Order of Knowledge 7. The Invention of Europe 8. Jose de Acosta: Renaissance historiography and New World humanity Part 3: The Movement of Ideas 9. The Circulation of Knowledge 10. Virgil and Homer in Poland 11. Montaigne in Italy 12. 'Shared Studies Foster Friendship': Humanism and History in Spain 13. Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More: Parallel Lives Part 4: The Circulation of Power 14. Courts, Art, and Power 15. An Imperial Renaissance 16. Renaissance Triumphalism in Art 17. The Ottoman Empire 18. Religious Authority and Ecclesiastical Governance 19. Mothers and Children 20. The Renaissance Goes Up in Smoke Part 5: Making Identities 21. Human Exceptionalism 22. Worthy of Faith? Authors and Readers in Early Modernity 23. The Renaissance Portrait: From Resemblance to Representation 24. Objects and Identity: Antonio de'Medici and the Casino at San Marco in Florence 25. Food: Pietro Aretino and the Art of Conspicuous Consumption 26. Shakespeare's Dream of Retirement Part 6: Beliefs and Reforms 27. Speaking Books, Moving Images 28. Religious Minorities 29. Humanism and the Dream of Christian Unity 30. Christian Reform and its Discontents 31. A Tale of Two Tribunals 32. Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Brazil 33. Toward a Sacramental Poetics Part 7: A New Order of Knowledge 34. The Sun at the Center of the World