In what way did the renaissance affect European society

It created a major shift in mentality which was masterly illustrated, according to my view, by Johan Huizinga in his seminal work"The Autumn of the Middle Ages". While mediaeval man lived with the almost constant consciousness of the futility of human condition, of the impending death and burdened by the obsession of after-life, the Renaissance changed the focus on the beauty of the terrestrial dimension as embodied in the art of classical Greece and Rome. Starting as a current cultured among artists and academics in Northern Italy, the Renaissance was soon adopted by the ruling classes generating iconic patterns of aestheticism and refinement endowed with a considerable power of propagation and contamination leading, eventually, to the demise of scolasticism.