It's to some extent true, if you want to really simplify things, that the Renaissance was a golden age only for Italy and the Western Med, and, as it waned, it turned into a dark age for the German-speaking lands of the HRE.
At the peak of the Renaissance, the Germans were producing Gutenberg-style printing, Dürer’s workshop, and the beginnings of a formidable university network... So it was a time of considerable progress in the arts and sciences, even there, even if that progress was soon turned to rather dark ends. (With the printing press, in a sense, directly responsible for Reformation pamphlets -- leading, thus, to the immense carnage of the 30 Years War -- and popular witch-hunting tomes like the Malleus Maleficarum.)
Universities are "medieval" for whatever that word actually means.
And while burning witches might have been later, the Renaissance certainly burned a fair number of heretics.
And awareness is irrelevant. When I listened to the golden age of punk rock (IMHO) I didn't need to be aware of it: its self awareness changes nothing
And there was no "field" of witch hunting: but even if it is conceded to be so, what's wrong with a good witch burning and hanging now then?
Now we "cancel" or censor (or on HN down vote 'trolls') which is no different. Intolerance and demonizing just takes different forms in different ages.
Literal physical violence and death is VERY different to getting canceled or censored.
You've been asked before to avoid commenting in the flamewar style on Hacker News. If you keep doing it we'll have to ban the account. Please make an effort to show you intend to use HN the way it's intended.
Ban away. I don't need you.
We can do without the defiance, we just need everyone to remember that this is only a good place for discussing anything because enough people make an effort observe the guidelines. Please do you part to make the place better not worse.
We - the Western world, at least - have not had a genuine literal witch hunt in centuries. If you live in Africa, and are speaking locally, you should make that clear.
Otherwise, you are outrightly lying to make your point.
That aside, I agree it wasn't a "golden age". It was, if anything, a diversion in the flow of the river of Western history: humanism, prostestantism, perspective in drawing, and a noticeable increase in technical invention and scientific formalism truly changed the status quo permanently and markedly.
I mean, if you're defining "Renaissance" as "High Renaissance only", and "over" as "sack of Rome", then yes, I suppose that fits. But the High Renaissance is only about 40 years, whereas the Renaissance is much larger.