When was the Renaissance? What is an exact time period?
As a historian of the Renaissance, I can tell you that there is no definitive dates given. However, many of us agree that the Renaissance began sometime around 1350 in Italy. It is at this time that the Greek and Roman classics and their ideas (such as humanism) began to take hold. On the other end of the spectrum, we still have exhausting debates over the “official end of the Renaissance”. The consenus is that the end of the Reformation on the European Continent (some say with the declaration of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555). I say that the Renaissance actually did not end until 1648, with the end of the Religious wars in Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia brought religious tolerance to the continent, signaling an end to the Reformation. In short, the consensus amongst historians is that the Renaissance occurred between 1350 and about 1600. I provide an alternate view saying the wars of religion ends the Renaissance/Reformation period around 1648. For your purposes, I would go with the
