Changes

Perhaps the great impact of the Papacy on Italy and beyond was on religious belief. The increasing secular outlook and policies of the Pope were viewed with disgust and outrage by many religious people, especially outside Italy.<ref> Duffy, Eamon. <i>Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes. </i> Yale University Press, 1997), p. 211</ref>. Many people in Christendom were worried that if the Pope was corrupt, was the church also corrupt and what did this mean for their salvation . <ref>Duffy, p. 334</ref>. The Church at this period needed reform, all over Europe. Successive Popes did not attempt to reform the clergy as they were too preoccupied with their interests in Italy and especially in the Papal States. The lives of the Popes scandalized many and led to many becoming disenchanted with the Catholic Church. Prior to the Counter-Reformation religious observance was lax and the Inquisition which was found to enforce Church doctrine, fell into abeyance.<ref> Duffy, p. 335</ref>

The increasing secularism of the Italian elite and also of the emerging class of traders and bureaucrats was to prove decisive in the Renaissance. No longer was the world seen just as a vale of tears but it was a place where men and women could find meaning and even beauty. During the Renaissance, people were quite willing to celebrate this life and not just wait for happiness in the next life. People came to see something special and unique in the human experience. In Renaissance society, the body was not seen as a source of sin but under the influence of secular ideas, it came to be something to be celebrated and not scorned. Evidence of this is seen everywhere in the works of the great artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo, that celebrate the human form. This increasingly, secular outlook and the optimism about the human condition led to what Jacob Burckhardt has called the ‘discovery of man and the world.’<ref> Burkhardt, p. 115</ref> Influenced by classical ideas, many in the Renaissance became more aware of the potential of humans and began to investigate the world. A new worldview emerged in Renaissance Italy, which affirmed the dignity of men and women and their capabilities.