Wealthy merchants like the Medici family helped spur the renaissance because

The Medici family gained their wealth from the Medici Bank which financed merchants in Italy. Eventually the family came to rule Florence. They funded works of art throughout the city and became influential when family members became the Pope (4 of them) and they married into royal families throughout Europe.

Explanation:

The Medici family gained their wealth from the Medici Bank which financed merchants in Italy. Eventually the family came to rule Florence. They funded works of art throughout the city and became influential when family members became the Pope (4 of them) and they married into royal families throughout Europe.

1. international: struggle for hegemony and empire outstrips the fiscal resources of the state

2. political conflict: conflict between the monarchy and the nobility over the “reform” of the tax system led to paralysis and bankruptcy.

3. the enlightenment: impulse for reform intensifies political conflicts; reinforces traditional aristocratic constitutionalism, one variant of which was laid out in montequieu’s spirit of the laws; introduces new notions of good government, the most radical being popular sovereignty, as in rousseau’s social contract [1762]; the attack on the regime and privileged class by the literary underground of “grub street; ” the broadening influence of public opinion.

4. social antagonisms between two rising groups: the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie

5. ineffective ruler: louis xvi

6. economic hardship, especially the agrarian crisis of 1788-89 generates popular discontent and disorders caused by food shortages.

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