The Enlightenment was a consequential movement that allowed some power to be taken away from the government and the church, and in return gave more power to the people. This movement resulted in the major influence of democracy and completely changed the way nations were governed. However, it took many new ideas and solutions to eventually allow the enlightenment to work efficiently, and it all started with the Renaissance.
The Renaissance was a period of time between the 14th and 17th century where the central idea of life was humanism. Humanism was the belief that people had the potential to achieve excellence and was the beginning of major support for education in the liberal arts. Humanists strongly believed God created the world for a reason and that people could choose their own destiny. The Renaissance forever changed the way that art, music, and literature were portrayed in society. The renaissance artists developed a linear perspective and the idealization of the human body in art. This different style of liberal arts was one of the main reasons art became so popularized during this era. It was viewed very highly by society. Following the Renaissance movement was the Protestant Reformation Revolution which was the second step in the process of achieving the main goals of the enlightenment.
The Protestant Reformation was a revolution that took place in the Western church throughout the 16th century. It initially started to change the beliefs and practices of the Catholic church but eventually ended up establishing Protestant churches instead. Many people believed that the church was not following the practices and other ideas that they supposedly believed. One example of the practices not followed was the sale of indulgences, which was the relief of punishment due to sins that have been committed. When people began noticing the corruption in the Catholic Church, some people saw a need to change the way it worked. A monk, known as Martin Luther became the spokesperson of the reformation regarding the churches and he succeeded because his ideas appealed to people of all classes. The three major outcomes of the reformation were that the Roman Catholic church became more unified, Protestants gave more emphasis to the role of education in promoting their beliefs, and individual monarchs and states gained power. The Protestant Reformation helped trigger the start of the Enlightenment and made people start questioning the teachings and power of the Catholic Church, which made people look to new ideas for the answers to life.
The last movement that led to the enlightenment was known as the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution began in the late 1500s and changed the way that people thought and lived drastically. People began questioning, observing, and experimenting with things they didn't quite understand thoroughly, such as the ideas behind philosophy, astronomy, and biology and how they led to many modern sciences that we now have today. The scientific revolution inevitably led to the enlightenment because it made people think, question, and use reason to argue and gain knowledge on certain subjects. People challenged traditional ideals and began moving towards modernism. The Enlightenment was not just created from one event, or one thought - but instead it is derived from multiple different movements and cultures that eventually made people change their way of life.