How did many of the early developments of the renaissance take place

in contrast to Middle Ages renaissance represents thinking outside the  box. Renaissance thinkers are always inventors, the walk off the beaten path, they use their imagination, they challenge previous modes of thinking, they use their imagination, introducing experiments and new methodologies they ask direct questions to nature and get free from medieval thinking. They enter new territories of knowledge. These people really made a cultural revolution. All that also means opening to different cultures and their knowledge.

Explanation: Nicolas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, Paracelsus, Pico della Mirandola. In English speaking world John Dee, Edward Kelley.

the revolution instituted a short-lived roman republic.