Why did the Renaissance take so long to reach Northern Europe?

Answer 1

There was very little practical reason for people to take on the new attitudes that were associated with the Renaissance. In some ways, we might think of the Renaissance as more a matter of style than of substance. The arrival of the Renaissance in France or England did not change the lives of ordinary people, or even of the nobility, as much as one might suppose today, and there was no expectation that it would do so at the time.

From an economic point of view, the conditions of Renaissance Italy, with the rise of banking and merchant families to great political power, were reflected by similar changes in northern Europe that happened at the same time. These predated the arrival of the Renaissance in the North. The Hanseatic League was already established in the Baltic when the first Medici bank was opened in Italy.

The educational systems of nearly all of Western Europe were already undergoing radical changes when the Renaissance began. This was partly due to the introduction of the Arabic Number system, which was promoted by partly by Fibonacci, but also promoted by Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire. Also, the Catholic Church's Condemnations of 1210-1277 had the effect of freeing scientists from academic strictures all over Western Europe. Work on the scientific method began before the Renaissance, with the English Roger Bacon being one of its great developers.

One of the things that really made the Renaissance stand apart from the medieval period preceding it included the introduction of linear perspective. This was was investigated from a much more mathematical point of view than it ever had been in ancient times, and impressed people with the idea that things we perceived obeyed laws of mathematics or science that could be investigated and understood. Most of this work was done in Italy, and it happened as the Renaissance was beginning. This was a profound change, but apart from its effect on philosophy, it was also a matter of style.

The idea that the Renaissance was spread as a new style, more than anything else, is supported by history. The Renaissance arrived in France because it was imported by King Charles VIII, when he returned from a war in Italy in 1495. It was similarly spread elsewhere, usually by artists.