The Renaissance
Beginning And Progress Of The Renaissance
Edited By: R. A. Guisepi
Fourteenth To Sixteenth Century
Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns
art. All else is science.
The Italian Renaissance had placed human beings once
more in the cente of life's stage and infused thought and art with humanistic
values. In time the stimulating ideas current in Italy spread to other areas
and combined with indigenous developments to produce a French Renaissance, an
English Renaissance, and so on.
The term Renaissance, literally means
"rebirth" and is the period in European civilization immediately
following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by a
surge of interest in classical learning and values. The Renaissance also witnessed
the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the
Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal
system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such
potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner's compass, and
gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a
time of the revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of
cultural decline and stagnation.
Title: Beginning And Progress Of The Renaissance
Beginning And Progress Of The Renaissance
Fourteenth To Sixteenth Century
Beginning And Progress Of The Renaissance
Fourteenth To Sixteenth Century
The new birth of resurrection known as the
"Renaissance" is usually considered to have begun in Italy in the fourteenth
century, though some writers would date its origin from the reign of
Frederick II, 1215-1250; and by this Prince - the most enlightened man of his age
- it was at least anticipated. Well versed in languages and science,
he was a patron of scholars, whom he gathered about him, from all parts
of the world, at his court in Palermo.
At all events the Renaissance was heralded through
the recovery by
Italian scholars of Greek and Roman classical
literature. When the movement
began, the civilization of Greece and Rome had long
been exerting a partial
influence, not only upon Italy, but on other parts
of mediaeval Europe as
well. But in Italy especially, when the wave of
barbarism had passed, the
people began to feel a returning consciousness of
their ancient culture, and a
desire to reproduce it. To Italians the Latin
language was easy, and their
country abounded in documents and monumental records
which symbolized past
greatness.
The modern Italian spirit was produced through the
combination of various
elements, among which were the political
institutions brought by the Lombards
from Germany, the influence of chivalry and other
northern forms of
civilization, and the more immediate power of the
Church. That which was
foreshadowed in the thirteenth century became in the
fourteenth a distinct
national development, which, as Symonds, its most
discerning interpreter,
shows us, was constructing a model for the whole
western world.
The word "renaissance" has of late years received
a more extended
significance than that which is implied in our
English equivalent - the
"revival of learning." We use it to denote
the whole transition from the
Middle Ages to the modern world; and though it is
possible to assign certain
limits to the period during which this transition
took place, we cannot fix on
any dates so positively as to say between this year
and that the movement was
accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name
the days on which spring
in any particular season began and ended. Yet we
speak of spring as different
from winter and from summer.
The truth is that in many senses we are still in
mid-Renaissance. The
evolution has not been completed. The new life is
our own and is progressive.
As in the transformation scene of some pantomime, so
here the waning and the
waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first
shadowy and filmy, gain
upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old
scene fades into the
background; still, who shall say whether the new
scene be finally set up?
In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena
of the Renaissance to
any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within
the field of any one
department of human knowledge. If we ask the
students of art what they mean
by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the
revolution effected in
architecture, painting, and sculpture by the
recovery of antique monuments.
Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see
in the Renaissance that
discovery of manuscripts, that passion for
antiquity, that progress in
philology and criticism, which led to a correct
knowledge of the classics, to
a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought,
to more accurate analysis,
and finally to the Lutheran schism and the
emancipation of the conscience.
Men of science will discourse about the discovery of
the solar system by
Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and
Harvey's theory of the
circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly
scientific method is the
point which interests them most in the Renaissance.
The political historian,
again, has his own answer to the question. The
extinction of feudalism, the
development of the great nationalities of Europe,
the growth of monarchy, the
limitation of the ecclesiastical authority, and the
erection of the papacy
into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place the
gradual emergence of that
sense of popular freedom which exploded in the
Revolution: these are the
aspects of the movement which engross his attention.
Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal
fictions based upon the
False Decretals, the acquisition of a true text of
the Roman code, and the
attempt to introduce a rational method into the
theory of modern
jurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of
international law. Men
whose attention has been turned to the history of
discoveries and inventions
will relate the exploration of America and the East,
or will point to the
benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of
printing and engraving, by
the compass and the telescope, by paper and by
gunpowder; and will insist that
at the moment of the Renaissance all the instruments
of mechanical utility
started into existence, to aid the dissolution of
what was rotten and must
perish, to strengthen and perpetuate the new and
useful and life-giving.
Yet neither any one of these answers, taken
separately, nor indeed all of
them together, will offer a solution of the problem.
By the term
"renaissance," or new birth, is indicated
a natural movement, not to be
explained by this or that characteristic, but to be
accepted as an effort of
humanity for which at length the time had come, and
in the onward progress of
which we still participate. The history of the
Renaissance is not the history
of arts or of sciences or of literature or even of
nations. It is the history
of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the
human spirit manifested in
the European races. It is no mere political
mutation, no new fashion of art,
no restoration of classical standards of taste. The
arts and the inventions,
the knowledge and the books which suddenly became
vital at the time of the
Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores
of the dead sea which we
call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery
which caused the
Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the
spontaneous outburst of
intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment
to make use of them. The
force then generated still continues, vital and
expansive, in the spirit of
the modern world.
How was it, then, that at a certain period, about
fourteen centuries
after Christ, to speak roughly, humanity awoke as it
were from slumber and
began to live? That is a question which we can but
imperfectly answer. The
mystery of organic life defeats analysis. Whether
the subject of our inquiry
be a germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the
commencement of a new
religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a
new phase in civilization,
it is alike impossible to do more than to state the
conditions under which the
fresh growth begins, and to point out what are its
manifestations. In doing
so, moreover, we must be careful not to be carried
away by words of our own
making. Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution are
not separate things,
capable of being isolated; they are moments in the
history of the human race
which we find it convenient to name; while history
itself is one and
continuous, so that our utmost endeavors to regard
some portion of it,
independently of the rest, will be defeated.
A glance at the history of the preceding centuries
shows that, after the
dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there
was no possibility of any
intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had
deluged Europe had to
absorb their barbarism; the fragments of Roman
civilization had either to be
destroyed or assimilated; the Germanic nations had
to receive culture and
religion from the effete people they had superseded.
It was further necessary
that the modern nationalities should be defined,
that the modern languages
should be formed, that peace should be secured to
some extent, and wealth
accumulated, before the indispensable milieu for a
resurrection of the free
spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation
which fulfilled these
conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era.
The reason why Italy took
the lead in the Renaissance was that Italy possessed
a language, a favorable
climate, political freedom, and commercial
prosperity, at a time when other
nations were still semibarbarous. Where the human
spirit had been buried in
the decay of the Roman Empire, there it arose upon
the ruins of that Empire;
and the papacy - called by Hobbes the ghost of the
dead Roman Empire, seated,
throned, and crowned, upon the ashes thereof - to
some extent bridged over the
gulf between the two periods.
Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real
quality of the
Renaissance was intellectual - that it was the
emancipation of the reason for
the modern world - we may inquire how feudalism was
related to it. The mental
condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant
prostration before the idols
of the Church - dogma and authority and
scholasticism. Again, the nations of
Europe during these centuries were bound down by the
brute weight of material
necessities. Without the power over the outer world
which the physical
sciences and useful arts communicate, without the
ease of life which wealth
and plenty secure, without the traditions of a
civilized past, emerging slowly
from a state of utter rawness, each nation could
barely do more than gain and
keep a difficult hold upon existence. To depreciate
the work achieved for
humanity during the Middle Ages would be ridiculous.
Yet we may point out
that it was done unconsciously - that it was a
gradual and instinctive process
of becoming. The reason, in a word, was not awake;
the mind of man was
ignorant of its own treasures and its own
capacities. It is pathetic to think
of the mediaeval students poring over a single
ill-translated sentence of
Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses
whole systems of logical
science, and torturing their brains about puzzles
more idle than the dilemma
of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at
Constantinople and at Seville, in
Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive,
but sleeping, awaiting only
the call of the Renaissance to bid them speak with
voice intelligible to the
modern mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide
after tide of the ocean of
humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break
in passionate but
unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole
nations laying life down
for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem,
worshipping the sepulchre
whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with
relics and with cargoes of
the sacred earth, while all the time, within their
breasts and brains, the
spirit of the Lord was with them, living but
unrecognized, the spirit of
freedom which ere long was destined to restore its
birthright to the world.
Meanwhile the Middle Age accomplished its own work.
Slowly and
obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being
forged the nations and the
languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England,
Germany took shape. The
actors of the future drama acquired their several
characters, and formed the
tongues whereby their personalities should be
expressed. The qualities which
render modern society different from that of the
ancient world were being
impressed upon these nations by Christianity, by the
Church, by chivalry, by
feudal customs. Then came a further phase. After the
nations had been
moulded, their monarchies and dynasties were
established. Feudalism passed by
slow degrees into various forms of more or less
defined autocracy. In Italy
and Germany numerous principalities sprang into
preeminence; and though the
nation was not united under one head, the
monarchical principle was
acknowledged. France and Spain submitted to a
despotism, by right of which
the king could say, "L'etat c'est moi."
England developed her complicated
constitution of popular right and royal prerogative.
At the same time the
Latin Church underwent a similar process of
transformation. The papacy became
more autocratic. Like the king the pope began to
say, "L'Eglise c'est moi."
This merging of the mediaeval state and mediaeval
church in the personal
supremacy of king and pope may be termed the special
feature of the last age
of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance. It was
thus that the necessary
milieu was prepared. The organization of the five
great nations, and the
leveling of political and spiritual interests under
political and spiritual
despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty
of which the Renaissance
was the first act, the Reformation the second, the
Revolution the third, and
which we nations of the present are still evolving
in the establishment of the
democratic idea.
Meanwhile it must not be imagined that the
Renaissance burst suddenly
upon the world in the fifteenth century without
premonitory symptoms. Far
from that, within the Middle Age itself, over and
over again, the reason
strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in
the twelfth century,
tried to prove that the interminable dispute about
entities and words was
founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the
beginning of the thirteenth
century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed
that man, by use of
nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora,
intermediate between the two,
drank one drop of the cup of prophecy offered to his
lips, and cried that "the
gospel of the Father was past, the gospel of the Son
was passing, the gospel
of the Spirit was to be." These three men, each
in his own way, the Frenchman
as a logician, the Englishman as an analyst, the
Italian as a mystic, divined
the future but inevitable emancipation of the reason
of mankind. Nor were
there wanting signs, especially in Provence, that
Aphrodite and Phoebus and
the Graces were ready to resume their sway. We have,
moreover, to remember
the Cathari, the Paterini, the Franticelli, the
Albigenses, the Hussites -
heretics in whom the new light dimly shone, but who
were instantly
exterminated by the Church.
We have to commemorate the vast conception of the
emperor Frederick II,
who strove to found a new society of humane culture
in the South of Europe,
and to anticipate the advent of the spirit of modern
tolerance. He, too, and
all his race were exterminated by the papal
jealousy. Truly we may say with
Michelet that the sibyl of the Renaissance kept
offering her books in vain to
feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not
yet. The ideas projected
thus early on the modern world were immature and
abortive, like those headless
trunks and zoophytic members of half-moulded
humanity which, in the vision of
Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man.
The nations were not
ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for
venturing to examine what God
had meant to keep secret; Dominicans preaching
crusades against the cultivated
nobles of Provence; popes stamping out the seed of
enlightened Frederick;
Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical
literature to make way for
their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of
the parchment for charms;
a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by
sorcery to the devil; a
clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with
demoniac zeal - these still ruled
the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the
first anticipations of
the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile.
Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a work of
conscious art,
conceived in a modern spirit and written in a modern
tongue, was the first
true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of
the West, had shaken off
her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal of antique
culture as the
everlasting solace and the universal education of
the human race, his lifelong
effort to recover the classical harmony of thought
and speech, gave a direct
impulse to one of the chief movements of the
Renaissance - its passionate
outgoing toward the ancient world. After Petrarch,
Boccaccio opened yet
another channel for the stream of freedom. His
conception of human existence
as a joy to be accepted with thanksgiving, not as a
gloomy error to be
rectified by suffering, familiarized the fourteenth
century with the form of
semipagan gladness that marked the real Renaissance.
In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recovered
the consciousness of
intellectual liberty. What we call the Renaissance
had not yet arrived; but
their achievement rendered its appearance in due
season certain. With Dante
the genius of the modern world dared to stand alone
and to create confidently
after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same genius
reached forth across the
gulf of darkness, resuming the tradition of a
splendid past. With Boccaccio
the same genius proclaimed the beauty of the world,
the goodliness of youth,
and strength and love and life, unterrified by hell,
unappalled by the shadow
of impending death.
It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, when Italy had
lost, indeed, the heroic spirit which we admire in
her communes of the
thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth,
magnificence, and that repose
which springs from long prosperity, that the new age
at last began. Europe
was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay
buried the civilization of
the Old World. Behind stretched the centuries of
mediaevalism, intellectually
barren and inert. Of the future there were as yet
but faint foreshadowings.
Meanwhile, the force of the nations who were
destined to achieve the coming
transformation was unexhausted, their physical and
mental faculties were
unimpaired. No ages of enervating luxury, of
intellectual endeavor, of life
artificially preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had
sapped the fibre of the
men who were about to inaugurate the modern world.
Severely nurtured, unused
to delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance
were like boys in their
capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite
for enjoyment. No
generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical,
disillusioned, trod them down.
Ennui and the fatigue that springs from scepticism,
the despair of thwarted
effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted
senses rendered them keenly
alive to what was beautiful and natural. They
yearned for magnificence and
instinctively comprehended splendor. At the same
time the period of satiety
was still far off.
Everything seemed possible to their young energy;
nor had a single
pleasure palled upon their appetite. Born, as it
were, at the moment when
desires and faculties are evenly balanced, when the
perceptions are not
blunted, nor the senses cloyed, opening their eyes
for the first time on a
world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance
enjoyed what we may term the
first transcendent springtide of the modern world.
Nothing is more remarkable
than the fulness of the life that throbbed in them.
Natures rich in all
capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility
were frequent. Nor was
there any limit to the play of personality in
action. We may apply to them
what Browning has written of Sordello's temperament:
"A football there
Suffices to upturn to the warm air
Half-germinating spices, mere decay
Produces richer life, and day by day
New pollen on the lily-petal grows,
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose."
During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a
cowl. He had not
seen the beauty of the world, or had seen it only to
cross himself, and turn
aside and tell his beads and pray. Like St. Bernard
travelling along the
shores of Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure
of the waters nor the
luxuriance of the vines,nor the radiance of the
mountains with their robe of
sun and snow, but bending a thought-burdened
forehead over the neck of his
mule - even like this monk, humanity has passed, a
careful pilgrim, intent on
the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the
highways of the world, and
had not known that they were sightworthy, or that
life is a blessing. Beauty
is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting
show, man fallen and lost,
death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell
everlasting, heaven hard
to win, ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of
faith and submission,
abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules
of life - these were the
fixed ideas of the ascetic mediaeval Church. The
Renaissance shattered and
destroyed them, rending the thick veil which they
had drawn between the mind
of man and the outer world, and flashing the light
of reality upon the
darkened places of his own nature. For the mystic
teaching of the Church was
substituted culture in the classical humanities; a
new ideal was established,
whereby man strove to make himself the monarch of
the globe on which it is his
privilege as well as destiny to live. The
Renaissance was the liberation of
humanity from a dungeon, the double discovery of the
outer and the inner
world.
An external event determined the direction which
this outburst of the
spirit of freedom should take. This was the contact
of the modern with the
ancient mind, which followed upon what is called the
Revival of Learning. The
fall of the Greek empire in 1453, while it
signalized the extinction of the
old order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated
forces of the new. A belief
in the identity of the human spirit under all
manifestations was generated.
Men found that in classical as well as biblical
antiquity existed an ideal of
human life, both moral and intellectual, by which
they might profit in the
present. The modern genius felt confidence in its
own energies when it
learned what the ancients had achieved. The guesses
of the ancients
stimulated the exertions of the moderns. The whole
world's history seemed
once more to be one.
The great achievements of the Renaissance were the
discovery of the world
and the discovery of man. Under these two formulas
may be classified all the
phenomena which properly belong to this period. The
discovery of the world
divides itself into two branches - the exploration
of the globe, and that
systematic exploration of the universe which is in
fact what we call science.
Columbus made known America in 1492; the Portuguese
rounded the Cape in 1497;
Copernicus explained the solar system in 1507. It is
not necessary to add
anything to this plain statement, for, in contact
with facts of such momentous
import, to avoid what seems like commonplace reflection
would be difficult.
Yet it is only when we contrast the ten centuries
which preceded these dates
with the four centuries which have ensued that we
can estimate the magnitude
of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new
hemisphere has been added
to civilization.
In like manner, it is worth while to pause a moment
and consider what is
implied in the substitution of the Copernican for
the Ptolemaic system. The
world, regarded in old times as the centre of all
things, the apple of God's
eye, for the sake of which were created sun and moon
and stars, suddenly was
found to be one of the many balls that roll round a
giant sphere of light and
heat, which is itself but one among innumerable
suns, attended each by a
cortege of planets, and scattered - how, we know not
- through infinity. What
has become of that brazen seat of the old gods, that
paradise to which an
ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds,
and hidden for a moment
from the eyes of his disciples? The demonstration of
the simplest truths of
astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were
most significant to the
early Christians by annihilating their symbolism.
Well might the Church
persecute Galileo for his proof of the world's
mobility. Instinctively she
perceived that in this one proposition was involved
the principle of hostility
to her most cherished conceptions, to the very core
of her mythology.
Science was born, and the warfare between scientific
positivism and
religious metaphysics was declared. Henceforth God
could not be worshipped
under the forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a
new meaning had been given
to the words "God is a Spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth." The reason of man was at
last able to study the scheme
of the universe, of which he is a part, and to
ascertain the actual laws by
which it is governed. Three centuries and a half
have elapsed since
Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only by
reflecting on the mass of
knowledge we have since acquired, knowledge not only
infinitely curious, but
also incalculably useful in its application to the
arts of life, and then
considering how much ground of this kind was
acquired in the ten centuries
which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all
able to estimate the
expansive force which was then generated. Science,
rescued from the hands of
astrology, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life
with the Renaissance. Since
then, as far as to the present moment, she has never
ceased to grow.
Progressive and durable, science may be called the
first-born of the spirit of
the modern world.
Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the
one hand the
appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners
of the habitable world, and
on the other the conquest by science of all that we
now know about the nature
of the universe. In the discovery of man, again, it
is possible to trace a
twofold process. Man in his temporal relations,
illustrated by pagan
antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations,
illustrated by biblical
antiquity: these are the two regions, at first
apparently distinct, afterward
found to be interpenetrative, which the critical and
inquisitive genius of the
Renaissance opened for investigation. In the former
of these regions we find
two agencies at work - art and scholarship. During
the Middle Ages the
plastic arts, like philosophy, had degenerated into
barren and meaningless
scholasticism - a frigid reproduction of lifeless
forms copied technically and
without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures
became symbolically
connected with the religious feelings of the people,
formulas from which to
deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing
to the worshipper.
Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy
the almond eyes and stiff
joints of the saints whom he had adored from
infancy; and, even had it been
otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the
natural forms he saw around him.
But with the dawning of the Renaissance a new spirit
in the arts arose.
Men began to conceive that the human body is noble
in itself and worthy of
patient study. The object of the artist then became
to unite devotional
feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the
utmost beauty and the
utmost fidelity of delineation. He studied from the
nude; he drew the body in
every posture; he composed drapery, invented
attitudes, and adapted the action
of his figures and the expression of his faces to
the subject he had chosen.
In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces and the
cloister frescoes upon which
he worked. In this way the painters rose above the
ancient symbols and
brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and
her son like living
human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history,
they silently substituted
the love of beauty and the interests of actual life
for the principles of the
Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for
the display of physical
perfection, and to introduce un bel corpo ignudo
into the composition was of
more moment to them than to represent the
macerations of the Magdalen. Men
thus learned to look beyond the relique and the
host, and to forget the dogma
in the lovely forms which gave it expression.
Finally, when the clasics came
to aid this work of progress, a new world of thought
and fancy, divinely
charming, wholly human, was revealed to their
astonished eyes.
Thus art, which had begun by humanizing the legends
of the Church,
diverted the attention of its students from the
legend to the work of beauty,
and lastly, severing itself from the religious
tradition, became the exponent
of the majesty and splendor of the human body. This
final emancipation of art
from ecclesiastical trammels culminated in the great
age of Italian painting.
Gazing at Michelangelo's prophets in the Sistine
Chapel, we are indeed in
contact with ideas originally religious. But the
treatment of these ideas is
purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the
sculpture of Phidias.
Titian's "Virgin Received into Heaven," soaring
midway between the archangel
who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn
to follow her, is far
less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of
humanity conceived as a radiant
mother. Throughout the picture there is nothing
ascetic, nothing mystic,
nothing devotional. Nor did the art of the
Renaissance stop here. It went
further, and plunged into paganism. Sculptors and
painters combined with
architects to cut the arts loose from their
connection with the Church by
introducing a spirit and a sentiment alien to
Christianity.
Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the
ideas which art
introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought
for the modern world a
real resurrection of the body which, since the
destruction of the pagan
civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts and
cerements within the tomb
of the mediaeval cloister. It was scholarship which
revealed to men the
wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human
thought, the value of human
speculation, the importance of human life regarded
as a thing apart from
religious rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages a
few students had
possessed the poems of Vergil and the prose of
Boethius - and Vergil at
Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had actually been honored
as saints - together with
fragments of Lucan, Ovid, Statius, Cicero, and
Horace. The Renaissance opened
to the whole reading public the treasure-houses of
Greek and Latin literature.
At the same time the Bible, in its original tongues,
was rediscovered. Mines
of oriental learning were laid bare for the students
of the Jewish and Arabic
traditions. What we may call the Aryan and the
Semitic revelations were for
the first time subjected to something like a
critical comparison. With
unerring instinct the men of the Renaissance named
the voluminous
subject-matter of scholarship Litterae Humaniores
("the more human
literature"), the literature that humanizes.
There are three stages in the history of scholarship
during the
Renaissance. The first is the age of passionate
desire. Petrarch poring over
a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in
his maturity learning Greek,
in order that he might drink from the well-head of
poetic inspiration, are the
heroes of this period. They inspired the Italians
with a thirst for antique
culture. Next comes the age of acquisition and of
libraries. Nicholas V, who
founded the Vatican Library in 1453, Cosmo de'
Medici, who began the Medicean
collection a little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini,
who ransacked all the
cities and convents of Europe for manuscripts,
together with the teachers of
Greek, who in the first half of the fifteenth
century escaped from
Constantinople with precious freights of classic
literature, are the heroes of
this second period. It was an age of accumulation,
of uncritical and
indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were
worshipped by these men, just as
the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by
their great-grandfathers.
The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this
quest of the holy grail of
ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of pagan authors
were valued like
precious gems, revelled in like odoriferous and
gorgeous flowers, consulted
like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a
beloved mistress. The good,
the bad, and the indifferent received an almost
equal homage. Criticism had
not yet begun. The world was bent on gathering up
its treasures, frantically
bewailing the lost books of Livy, the lost songs of
Sappho - absorbng to
intoxication the strong wine of multitudinous
thoughts and passions that kept
pouring from those long buried amphorae of
inspiration.
What is most remarkable about this age of
scholarship is the enthusiasm
which pervaded all classes in Italy for antique
culture. Popes and princes,
captains of adventure and peasants, noble ladies and
the leaders of the
demi-monde alike became scholars. There is a story
told by Infessura which
illustrates the temper of the times with singular
felicity. On April 18,
1485, a report circulated in Rome that some Lombard
workmen had discovered a
Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way.
It was a marble tomb,
engraved with the inscription "Julia, Daughter
of Claudius," and inside the
coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of
fifteen years, preserved by
precious unguents from corruption and the injury of
time. The bloom of youth
was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and
mouth were half open; her
long hair floated round her shoulders. She was
instantly removed - so goes
the legend - to the Capitol; and then began a
procession of pilgrims from all
the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this saint of the
old pagan world. In the
eyes of those enthusiastic worshippers, her beauty
was beyond imagination or
description. She was far fairer than any woman of
the modern age could hope
to be. At last Innocent VIII feared lest the
orthodox faith should suffer by
this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried
secretly and at night by
his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol
but her empty marble coffin.
The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in
Matarazzo and in Nantiporto
with slight variations. One says that the girl's
hair was yellow, another
that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation
for the legend may really
have existed need not here be questioned. Let us
rather use the mythus as a
parable of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the
men of that age to
discover a form of unimaginable beauty in the tomb
of the classic world.
Then came the third age of scholarship - the age of
the critics,
philologers, and printers. What had been collected
by Poggio and Aurispa had
now to be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and
Erasmus. They began their task
by digesting and arranging the contents of the
libraries. There were then no
short cuts of learning, no comprehensive lexicons,
no dictionaries of
antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of
mythology and history. Each
student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of
classical erudition. The
text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and
the tragedians had to be
decided. Greek type had to be struck. Florence,
Venice, Basel, and Paris
groaned with printing-presses. The Aldi, the
Stephani, and Froben toiled by
night and day, employing scores of scholars, men of
supreme devotion and of
mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the
right reading of sentences,
to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the press,
and to place, beyond the
reach of monkish hatred or of envious time, that
everlasting solace of
humanity which exists in the classics. All
subsequent achievements in the
field of scholarship sink into insignificance beside
the labors of these men,
who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of
Europe for the
accomplishment of their titanic task. Vergil was
printed in 1470, Homer in
1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1512. They then
became the inalienable
heritage of mankind. But what vigils, what anxious
expenditure of thought,
what agonies of doubt and expectation, were endured
by those heroes of
humanizing scholarship, whom we are apt to think of
merely as pedants! Which
of us now warms and thrills with emotion at hearing
the name of Aldus Manutius
or of Henricus Stephanus or of Johannes Froben? Yet
this we surely ought to
do; for to them we owe in a great measure the
freedom of our spirit, our
stores of intellectual enjoyment, our command of the
past, our certainty of
the future of human culture.
This third age in the history of the Renaissance
scholarship may be said
to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this
time Italy had handed on
the torch of learning to the northern nations. The
publication of his Adagia
in 1500 marks the advent of a more critical and
selective spirit, which from
that date onward has been gradually gaining strength
in the modern mind.
Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and
sifting, is one of the
points which distinguish the moderns from the
ancients; and criticism was
developed by the process of assimilation,
comparison, and appropriation, which
was necessary in the growth of scholarship. The
ultimate effect of this
recovery of classic culture was, once and for all,
to liberate the intellect.
The modern world was brought into close contact with
the free virility of the
ancient world, and emancipated from the thraldom of
improved traditions. The
force to judge and the desire to create were
generated. The immediate result
in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of
the learned, not merely
from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of
Christianity. The minds of
the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred
of mediaeval ignorance, in
their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they
flew to an extreme, and
affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This
extravagance led of
necessity to a reaction - in the North, of
Puritanism; in the South, to what
has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected
under Spanish influences in
the Latin Church. But Christianity, that most
precious possession of the
modern world, was never seriously imperilled by the
classical enthusiasm of
the Renaissance; nor, on the other hand, was the
progressive emancipation of
the reason materially retarded by the reaction it
produced.
The transition at this point to the third branch in
the discovery of man,
the revelation to the consciousness of its own
spiritual freedom, is natural.
Not only did scholarship restore the classics and
encourage literary
criticism; it also restored the text of the Bible,
and encouraged theological
criticism. In the wake of theological freedom
followed a free philosophy, no
longer subject to the dogmas of the Church. To purge
the Christian faith from
false conceptions, to liberate the conscience from
the tyranny of priests, and
to interpet religion to the reason, has been the
work of the last centuries;
nor is this work as yet by any means accomplished.
On the one side, Descartes
and Bacon and Spinoza and Locke are sons of the
Renaissance, champions of
new-found philosophical freedom; on the other side,
Luther is a son of the
Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious
freedom. The whole movement of
the Reformation is a phase in that accelerated
action of the modern mind which
at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a
mistake to regard the
Reformation as an isolated phenomenon, or as a mere
effort to restore the
Church to purity. The Reformation exhibits, in the
region of religious
thought and national politics, what the Renaissance
displays in the sphere of
culture, art, and science - the recovered energy and
freedom of humanity. We
are too apt to treat of history in parcels, and to
attempt to draw lessons
from detached chapters in the biography of the human
race. To observe the
connection between the several stages of a
progressive movement of the human
spirit, and to recognize that the forces at work are
still active, is the true
philosophy of history.
The Reformation, like the revival of science and of
culture, had its
mediaeval anticipations and foreshadowings. The
heretics whom the Church
successfully combated in North Italy, in France, and
in Bohemia were the
precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way
in the fifteenth century.
Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type -
Reuchlin in Germany, Alexander
in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus
as a humanist - contribute
each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part,
incarnates the spirit of
revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the
necessity of a return to the
essential truth of Christianity as distinguished
from the idols of the Church,
and asserts the right of the individual to judge,
interpret, criticise, and
construct opinion for himself. The veil which the
Church had interposed
between humanity and God was broken down. The
freedom of the conscience was
established. The principles involved in what we call
the Reformation were
momentous. Connected on the one side with
scholarship and the study of texts,
it opened the path for modern biblical criticism.
Connected on the other side
with intolerance of mere authority, it led to what
has since been named
rationalism - the attempt to reconcile the religious
tradition with the
reason, and to define the logical ideas that
underlie the conceptions of the
popular religious conscience. Again, by promulgating
the doctrine of personal
freedom, and by connecting itself with national
politics, the Reformation was
linked historically to the Revolution. It was the
Puritan Church in England,
stimulated by the patriotism of the Dutch
Protestants, which established our
constitutional liberty and introduced in America the
general principle of the
equality of men. This high political abstraction,
latent in Christianity,
evolved by criticism, and promulgated as a gospel in
the second half of the
eighteenth century, was externalized in the French
Revolution. The work that
yet remains to be accomplished for the modern world
is the organization of
society in harmony with democratic principles.
Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new
birth to liberty - the
spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the
power of
self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the
outer world and of the body
through art, liberating the reason in science and
the conscience in religion,
restoring culture to the intelligence, and
establishing the principle of
political freedom. The Church was the schoolmaster
of the Middle Ages.
Culture was the humanizing and refining influence of
the Renaissance. The
problem for the present and the future is how,
through education, to render
culture accessible to all - to break down that
barrier which in the Middle
Ages was set between clerk and layman, and which in
the intermediate period
has arisen between the intelligent and ignorant
classes. Whether the Utopia
of a modern world in which all men shall enjoy the
same social, political, and
intellectual advantages be realized or not, we
cannot doubt that the whole
movement of humanity, from the Renaissance onward,
has tended in this
direction. To destroy the distinctions, mental and
physical, which nature
raises between individuals, and which constitute an
actual hierarchy, will
always be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the
future no civilized man
will lack the opportunity of being physically and
mentally the best that God
has made him.
It remains to speak of the instruments and
mechanical inventions which
aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern
age. Discovered over and
over again, and offered at intervals to the human
race at various times and on
divers soils, no effective use was made of these
material resources until the
fifteenth century. The compass, discovered according
to tradition by Gioja of
Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for the
voyage to America in 1492.
The telescope, known to the Arabians in the Middle
Ages, and described by
Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus to prove the
revolution of the earth in
1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the
planetary system.
Printing, after numerous useless revelations to the
world of its resources,
became an art in 1438, and paper, which had long
been known to the Chinese,
was first made of cotton in Europe about 1000 and of
rags in 1319. Gunpowder
entered into use about 1320. As employed by the
Genius of the Renaissance,
each one of these inventions became a lever by means
of which to move the
world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war. The
feudal castle, the armor
of the knight and his battle-horse, the prowess of
one man against a hundred,
and the pride of aristocratic cavalry trampling upon
ill-armed militia, were
annihilated by the flashes of the canon. Courage
became more a moral than a
physical quality. The victory was delivered to the
brain of the general.
Printing has established, as indestructible, all
knowledge, and disseminated,
as the common property of everyone, all thought;
while paper has made the work
of printing cheap. Such reflections as these,
however, are trite and must
occur to every mind. It is far more to the purpose
to repeat that not the
inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the
conscious calculating
spirit of the modern world, should rivet our
attention when we direct it to
the phenomena of the Renaissance.
In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations
of Europe shared.
But it must never be forgotten that, as a matter of
history, the true
Renaissance began in Italy. It was there that the
essential qualities which
distinguish the modern from the ancient and the
mediaeval world were
developed. Italy created that new spiritual
atmosphere of culture and of
intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath
of the European races. As
the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people
of divine revelation, so
may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar
vessels of the prophecy of
the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in science,
in the mediation between
antique culture and the modern intellect, they took
the lead, handing to
Germany and France and England the restored
humanities complete. Spain and
England have since done more for the exploration and
colonization of the
world. Germany achieved the labor of the Reformation
almost single-handed.
France has collected, centralized, and diffused
intelligence with irresistible
energy. But if we return to the first origins of the
Renaissance, we find
that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert,
Italy had already begun to
organize the various elements of the modern spirit,
and to set the fashion
whereby the other great nations should learn and
live.
Beginning And Progress Of The Renaissance
R. A. Guisepi, University of California
