It only touched a small fraction of the population, and in modern times this has led many historians, such as any that follow historical materialism, to reduce the importance of the Renaissance in human history. The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political structure than later epidemics. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors, including Florence's social and civic peculiarities at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici, [10] and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to Italy following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. Humanist education was based on the programme of Studia Humanitatis, the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy, and rhetoric. The city's numerous luxurious palazzi were becoming surrounded by townhouses, built by the ever prospering merchant class.

Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the Duchy of Milan annexed a number of nearby areas including Pavia and Parma. While mathematical precision and classical idealism fascinated painters in Rome and Florence, many Northern artists in the regions of Venice, Milan and Parma preferred highly illusionistic scenes of the natural world. The reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant investment in mining and agriculture. The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those of established Mediterranean ports and eventually the Hanseatic League of the Baltic and northern regions of Europe to create a network economy in Europe for the first time since the 4th century.The main trade routes from the east passed through the Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onward to the ports of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice.

Any unified theory of a renaissance, or cultural overhaul, during the European early modern period is overwhelmed by a massive volume of differing historiographical approaches. These endeavours were greatly aided by the wealth of Italian patricians, merchant-princes and despots, who would spend substantial sums building libraries. Christianity remained a major influence for artists and authors, with the classics coming into their own as a second primary influence.These began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. By the early 16th-century keyboard improvisation came to be greatly valued, and numerous composers of virtuoso keyboard music appeared. Some argue that the Timurid Renaissance in Samarkand was linked with the Ottoman Empire, whose conquests led to the migration of Greek scholars to Italy.