A Cultural History of Early Modern Europe

Charlie R. Steen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000733334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

A Cultural History of Early Modern Europe examines the relationships that developed in cities from the time of the late Renaissance through to the Napoleonic period, exploring culture in the broadest sense by selecting a variety of sources not commonly used in history books, such as plays, popular songs, sketches, and documents created by ordinary people.

Extending from 1480 to 1820, the book traces the flourishing cultural life of key European cities and the opportunities that emerged for ordinary people to engage with new forms of creative expression, such as literature, theatre, music, and dance. Arranged chronologically, each chapter in the volume begins with an overview of the period being discussed and an introduction to the key figures. Cultural issues in political, religious, and social life are addressed in each section, providing an insight into life in the cities most important to the creative developments of the time. Throughout the book, narrative history is balanced with primary sources and illustrations allowing the reader to grasp the cultural changes of the period and their effect on public and private life.

A Cultural History of Early Modern Europe is ideal for students of early modern European cultural history and early modern Europe.

1 The end of the Renaissance, 1480–1519

Introduction: events and people

Vital people with talent, attitude, and determination produced splendid cultural achievements and triggered changes and conflicts that grew in the following century. The actions, writings, paintings, and endeavors of a small number of individuals mounted challenges to religious and political leaders, strengthened the independence of intellectual life, attempted to expand urban freedom based on the rule of law, and produced literary and artistic expressions that began to represent life in realistic forms. In addition, artists and writers became active observers of the encounters in the age of exploration and discovery and did not hesitate to criticize as well as to glorify the conquests that followed. Within European lands, many among the creative individuals advocated individualism and expressed dismay over opposition from those who perpetuated rules from the past and resisted all change. In international affairs, the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain marked a cruel end for Islamic presence and the triumph of inquisitorial practices in the new monarchy in Spain at one end of Europe. The contrast, at the other extreme, the Turkish invasion of southeastern Europe began and continued throughout the century, creating a permanent military frontier and establishing Islam in some of the Balkan lands.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1495). He declared victory for humanism in his Oration on the Dignity of Man in 1493, placing humans at the top of creation and making achievement in this world the object of life. Pico recast the role of humanity as perfect and not sinful, freeing all people from limits and providing an unpredictable future, one that was entirely in the hands of individuals. Human obligations arose in the known world and were not defined by churchmen whose claim to be the sole interpreters of Scripture was already the subject of criticism and doubt. Pico insisted that humanity had the capacity to reach perfection on earth and thus he encouraged individual expression, self-confidence, and a host of attitudes that verged on arrogance.

Alexander VI Borgia (1431–1503). As pope, he and his children Cesare and Lucretia proved to be emblems of Italy as the end of the Renaissance. The very symbol of church corruption, Alexander VI put the papacy on the course of vigorous patronage of the arts that would make Rome the premier cultural destination in Europe. He thought of the papacy as a prize to be exploited by the winning family. His son Cesare viciously attacked the villages of the Romagna around Rome, and his daughter Lucrezia set high standards for intellect and low ones for behavior while living in the Vatican. She later became an active sponsor of the culture of Ferrara.

Thomas More (1478–1535). A political and intellectual leader with a firm sense of family and virtue, More, one of the foremost members of the Northern Renaissance, challenged the status quo with his Utopia and account of a fictional place that signaled a major change in perception of politics, religion, and society by challenging every existing measure of judgment. More’s sense of order and moral purpose later led him to refuse to endorse the policies of Henry VIII, and that cost him his life.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). A fugitive from monastic life who embodied the moderate approach to reform of faith and life and who did not spare corrupt churchmen from satire and ridicule, he became a major figure in the Northern Renaissance. He called on rulers to live by the faith that they professed, and demanded that the faith itself be free of corruption. Like Thomas More, Erasmus sought the via media and carefully avoided passionate involvement in causes, knowing that matters of conscience were always complicated and defied simple answers.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). The perfect late Renaissance man, Leonardo’s Notebooks revealed him as an artist, engineer, architect, scene designer, anatomist, and individual with a comprehensive view of humans in their physical form. He also recognized the imaginative capabilities and intellectual abilities of all people. As a mark of his inventiveness and understanding of engineering, Leonardo entered the competition to design a bridge for the Turks to build across the Bosporus at Istanbul. He made a rough sketch in his Notebook that provided few details, but his notes were more informative. The plan called for a long high span supported by eighteen massive arches that would allow for the passage of large ships. As with so many of his extraordinary theoretical ideas for structures and machines, the bridge remained unrealized at the time.

Laura Cereta (1469–1499). Part of a large family that valued education, Laura became a humanist through learning and a feminist through experience. She was so well educated that the letters she wrote to others served to challenge the limitations placed on women in the male dominated intellectual world of Italy. Even after her premature death the letters continued to circulate in manuscript and then printed form and became a solid part of the humanist literature of the late fifteenth century.

The forces of nature

Weather patterns became more unpredictable, thus creating uncertainty in food production. The drenching rains that had affected fifteenth-century harvests abated after 1480 and changes in the temperature of the North Sea marked the start of the Little Ice Age that remained in place for 300 years. Growing seasons varied in length with periods of long summers and fine harvests suddenly changing to short, cold growing months with weak crops and poor wines. Accounts of the wine harvest in 1506 indicated the changing pattern as harvests became too meager to sustain wine making in southern England and so limited in northern France that Paris and other cities started buying wine from southern provinces. The weather also forced changes in fishing, altering habits of Basque, English, French, and Dutch fishermen and forcing them to build better vessels as they chased cod and other fish far to the west in the North Atlantic. The Dutch buss, the English dogger, and the Basque whaler emerged as the new vessels capable of long journeys in cold, rough seas.

Stronger winter storms and growing populations required new approaches to land and labor, notably in northern Italy and in the Netherlands. Efforts to secure existing fields and to drain marshy areas required the construction of canals and dikes, creating polders out of useless land. The growth came along with implementation of better agricultural techniques assisted by an interest in agronomy as a field of study. In most cases, no feudal lords interrupted this activity as commoners of city and countryside acted on their own initiative. The Dutch opened whole new areas of Holland to cultivation and Italian efforts along and at the mouth of the Po River channeled waterways and drained fields. A leader in the process was Leonardo da Vinci who adhered to careful analysis and measurements as he planned to regulate the flow of the Arno River to improve navigation and cultivation between Florence and Pisa. He also drew up maps and plans to drain Rome’s Pontine Marshes. In other projects, his canal designs were the first to include sluice gates to manage elevation changes.¹ One consequence was to increase tension in the countryside as the larger number of free peasants altered social relationships, making residual serfdom odious. Throughout the west, peasants became more prosperous, but poverty had a constant presence because of the weather and changes in taxes over which they had no control.

European exploration

European voyages of exploration and discovery began with Columbus and Da Gama, introducing conquest and slavery as part of colonization in the New World and exciting the interest in new places and how to analyze and describe them in travel accounts and maps.

World maps: detailing exploration

1480 . . . . 1490 . . . . 1500 . . . . 1510 . . . . 1520

Henricus Martellus Germanicus ..d.World map of 1480.

Schedel (b. 1440)-----------------------------------------------------d.

Nuremberg Chronicle.

Waldseemüller (b. 1470)-------------------------------------------------------d.

Universal Cosmography.

Cartography entered an incredible period of accomplishment. The precision brought to producing earlier portolan maps of Europe’s coasts readily transferred to broad projections that between 1480 and 1520 came to include much of the entire globe as explorers ventured out in every direction. The effect on the vision of Europeans became visible in literature and helped to create a desire to know the whole world. The quest for knowledge joined with the desire for adventure as travelers explored all of Europe and ventured into Asia and Africa in larger numbers.

Hartmann Schedel’s World Chronicle, finished in 1493, had a transitional character. The Chronicle contained accurate maps of European cities and commentary on their history, showing a sense of examination of facts and the need for reality in visual description, as in the fine map of his home city, Nuremberg. But when he examined the remainder of the known world, Schedel included Biblical narratives, bizarre descriptions of other humans, and fanciful maps.² One of his associates, Jerome Münster, traveled to escape the plague of 1484 and then set off again a few years later to visit France. He too did not remain factual in his observations. Although a humanist interested in the New World and active in the Nuremberg circle of Schedel, he remained bound by Christian versions of the past and thus recounted his travels in Itinerarium with a mixture of factual geographic information and long descriptions of relics and sacred sites that he viewed uncritically.³ Nevertheless, the idea of true cosmography grew and those who followed him had a keener dedication to accuracy and analysis as they gathered information from merchants and explorers, although some, like the artist Wolgemut, continued to include fanciful drawings of human-like creatures with one eye, or a wolf’s head, or a face that was part of the stomach. The actual images of the cities had a striking realism in showing their basic design and the distribution of its parishes, a feature that gave information on population. The image had limitations as views from afar and offered no sense of public space, streets, or the true size of houses.

Henricus Martellus Germanicus’s world map of 1480 included information provided by explorers. He relied on Ptolemy’s Roman map but modified it with information from explorations, including Diaz’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. A similar rendition of the earth appeared on Martin Behaim’s globe, the Erdapfel, of 1492. The coverage and accuracy of the maps increased quickly after 1500. Waldseemüller’s map presented the latest information derived from Americus Vespucci’s reports. This map was the first to indicate that America was a separate continent and to name it after Vespucci.

Other extraordinary maps of the period included Cantino’s Map of 1510. It had more detailed information about the explorations of the Portuguese explorers along the African coast and the Indian Ocean. In addition, the Piri Reis 1513 world map demonstrated the rapid spread of information among cartographers. The work of Turkish cartographers directed by Reis, an admiral and cartographer, it included America. Reis claimed to have seen the now lost maps of Columbus in preparing it. The Turks prided themselves in gathering information from all of the latest reports of voyages of discovery.⁴

Defining European borders

The extremities of Latin Christendom appeared when Iceland became its last bishopric and the borders with Russian and Lithuanian lands became more certain. Western European traders and travelers began to venture into Russian Orthodox Christendom. At the same time, the Ottoman Turks invaded southeastern Europe and military frontiers developed in the Balkans and in Hungary. The Austrian Hapsburgs undertook a long struggle with the Turks along the Danube River. In contrast, Venice continued a unique relationship with the Turks in which conflict, trade, and limited toleration coexisted. The fluid borders between Christian and Islamic areas in the southern Adriatic made for an interesting set of compromises as a mélange of people coexisted without rancor in southern Italy and along the Balkan coast.

The western reaches of the Mediterranean experienced strife when Spain and Portugal captured ports along the coast of North Africa even as the Turks began their own occupation there. Spain complicated matters further with the violent expulsion of their Muslim residents from Granada in 1492, compelling instant conversion or departure. North Africa experienced a flood of refugees from Spain and many died in the rush to escape persecution. The presence of Cardinal Ximenes, the author of Instructions for Inquisition that gave form to religious persecution in Granada, revived a crusader mentality of intolerance that deeply affected the time.

European exploration: searching for wealth and a better world

Europeans followed the explorations of Bartolomeo Diaz (1488), Christopher Columbus (1492), and Vasco da De Gama (1497) with fascination, expressing curiosity about new people, unknown places, and geography. Maps of newly explored areas had wide circulation as they showed the initial voyages of the Portuguese in Africa and Brazil and of Spain in the New World. The discoveries of Columbus attracted pop...