Environmental+Factors

//**Spiritual Connections to Nature **//
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 This weblink is all about environmental science of different ages throughout the world; the specific section of the webpage that concerns cities and people during the Renaissance period is listed above. Scholars during this time period believed that the environment existed primarily for humans because "man" was the center of the universe. Anything else in the world, such as plants, animals, and geographic landforms, were created in order to support humanity. Nature was often the topic of books, paintings, and poetry of creative thinkers throughout this time period.

//**Biodiversity in Paris **//

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King Louis XIII created the Royal Garden for Medicinal Plants in 1635. Although this dates to after Paris' Renaissance time period, the reason the garden was built demonstrates that the city of Paris was taking the environment and science into concern and focus during that time period. King Louis XIII created the Royal Garden for Medicinal Plants to support lectures at the School of Medicine that were being given to future doctors. Plant chemistry, botany, and human anatomy were the three disciplines taught at the school, two out of the three are concerned with nature. The garden not only had an educational motivation behind it where students and residents could observe and learn, the garden provided a beautiful place full of nature in the busy city.



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__**Timeline of Environmental History of the Renaissance **__

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(As seen below in the timeline, the residents of the city of France had been through many hardships, especially with the Bubonic plague, before the Renaissance period arrived. Many of these hardships they were experiencing were due to the lack of services, close quarters, air pollution, flea-infested rats, and etc. On this timeline, there were not many environmental events for the city of Paris itself during the Renaissance time period, but the events below show that Paris was experiencing environmental concerns and was finding small ways to start improving the city during this time.)

1347 -- 1350s **Bubonic plague ** kills on third to 75% of the populations Europe and Asia, creating the first attempts to enforce public health and quarantine laws. Reaction to the plague also includes genocidal pogroms against Jews in most cities of Europe. One not very satisfying idea about this is that Jews, with greater understanding of elementary hygiene, may have had a lower infection rate, which in turn might have seemed suspicious. People had no explanation for the Black Death other than rumor, superstition and vague theories about miasmas and air pollution. (Ziegler, Markham). Plague was brought to Europe from Constantinople by returning crusaders, and the flea-infested black rats who stowed away on their vessels, it attacked most virulently after terrified cities blamed it on "witchcraft" and purged from their midst both the majority of people who had medicinal skill (mostly older women) and their "familiars," mostly the cats who had provided rat control. (M. Clifton, 2007)

1366 -- City of Paris forces butchers to dispose of animal wastes outside the city (Ponting); similar laws would be disputed in Philadelphia and New York nearly 400 years later.

1480-1540 -- Life of Bartholomew Chassenee of France, a distinguished jurist whose first case was an impressive defense of rats before the ecclesiastical court of Autuns, making him the first "animal rights attorney" on record. His last case, in defense of a doomed "heretical" sect called the Waldenses, used the same arguments and tactics, and might have saved the Waldenses, in the opinion of observers, had he not died before the trial was over.(M. Clifton, 2007)

1533-1592 -- Life of Michel de Montaigne, a French attorney whose 1588 essay Of Cruelties denounced abuse of animals as "the extremist of all vices."

 __**"Little Ice Age" in Western Europe **__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">

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<span style="font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">__[|http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/little_ice_age.html&edu=high]__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">[|[ [http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node5.html#SECTION00050000000000000000|[[http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node5.html#SECTION00050000000000000000|http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node5.html#SECTION00050000000000000000] ]] ]]

<span style="font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">__[|http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html]__ <span style="font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">

Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850, which are part of the time period of the Renaissance in Paris. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"> Many aspects of western European cities, including Paris, France, were dramatically affected including the agriculture, economics, an increase in storms, geographic land forms, and the sea. Between the warmest and coldest times of these time periods, it is noted by Lamb (1966) that the agricultural growing season changed by 15-20%. Not only did this affect how much food was grown, the cold also affected which types of seeds could be planted because many varieties of seeds could not stand the cold. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">Lamb (1966) points out that the growing season changed by 15 to 20 percent between the warmest and coldest times of the millenium. Another aspect of the environment affected by the "little ice age" was the forests; after the year 1400, beech trees, which were once common in Western Europe because they grew well in warm climates, were replaced in the colder times by oak and pine trees which could withstand the colder climates. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"> Due to the quick drops in temperature, weather became unreliable and unpredictable making finding food sources extremely tough, as well as to protect against sickness and diseases from the cold weather and from being stuck inside in close quarters.