Contesting the Renaissance

William Caferro

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781444391329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

In this book, William Caferro asks if the Renaissance was really a period of progress, reason, the emergence of the individual, and the beginning of modernity.

• An influential investigation into the nature of the European Renaissance
• Summarizes scholarly debates about the nature of the Renaissance
• Engages with specific controversies concerning gender identity, economics, the emergence of the modern state, and reason and faith
• Takes a balanced approach to the many different problems and perspectives that characterize Renaissance studies

1

The Renaissance Question

Few historical periods have elicited more discussion than the Renaissance. It defies easy categorization, confounds basic definition, and has thus remained a topic of vigorous debate. Scholars have contested virtually every aspect of it, from its causes and general characteristics, to its temporal and regional boundaries, to whether indeed the label is at all valid. The discourse has occasioned a vast literature that has only grown larger in subsequent years, with new approaches and techniques borrowed from anthropology, psychology, gender studies, and literary criticism.

The identification of the era as a distinct one dates back to the period itself, to the writings of contemporaries who were aware of their importance and priority. The key figure was Francis Petrarch (d. 1374), who consciously separated himself from the “barbarism” that preceded him, on the basis of his love and understanding of the classics. In Letters on Familiar Matters, Petrarch characterized the period from the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperors in the fourth century up to his own age as one of “tenebrae” or “darkness.” In doing this Petrarch subverted the traditional notion among medieval Christian writers who associated the “dark age” with the period prior to the advent of Christianity. Petrarch made his determination on linguistic and cultural grounds, in terms of the good Latin and high culture of what he called “antique” Rome as opposed to the bad Latin and decline in learning in the later period.¹ Subsequent humanists, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, reinforced the distinction. Flavio Biondo (d. 1463) in his History of Italy from the Decline of the Roman Empire (Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades, 1439–53) drew a clear chronological boundary between his own age and the thousand years that preceded it. He located Rome’s decline as beginning with the sack of city by Goths in 410 (which he erroneously dated as 412) and lasting until 1412, a period corresponding roughly to the modern concept of the Middle Ages. Matteo Palmieri (d. 1474) drew a still sharper contrast, depicting the era after the fall of Rome as culturally barren, about which he thought it was “best to be silent altogether.” Conversely, his own age was one of “majestic rhythm.” He praised his fellow Florentines Giotto (d. 1337) and Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444) as having restored arts and letters. A generation later, the great Dutch humanist Erasmus (d. 1536) remarked that everywhere “splendid talents are stirring.”²

Protestant writers of the Reformation further sharpened the distinction between the new and old age by associating the earlier period with the evils of the papacy and the church. They accused popes and scholastic theologians of subverting the true faith and encouraging the formation of a society based on superstition and ignorance. In this schema the Renaissance became a precursor to Reformation, which manifested itself by means of divine providence. Protestant scholars sought out tangible signs of God’s will. The English theologian John Foxe saw one such in the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor at Geneva, stressed the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and the arrival of Greek scholars in Italy. The interpretations of both men have cast long shadows on the subsequent secular literature.

The formulation of the modern concept of the Renaissance owes much to Rationalist and Romantic intellectual movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period during which historical studies became more systematized. Enlightenment writers stressed the notion of history as one of progress, of the evolution and development of society. The great French philosophe Voltaire (d. 1778) equated the Renaissance with the awakening of human reason and “Italian genius.” In his Essay on the Manners and the Spirit of Nations (1756), Voltaire drew parallels between the ancient Greeks and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italians, pairing such figures as Guicciardini and Thucydides, Ariosto, and Homer, often to the advantage of the Italians. He portrayed Cosimo de’ Medici and his son Lorenzo as precursors to the enlightened despots of the eighteenth century, and Florence, their home, as an updated Athens. The Italian achievement was, however, coupled with a darker side of moral confusion and violence. “Intelligence, superstition, atheism, masquerades, poetry, treason, devotion, poison, assassinations, a few great men, an infinite number of clever and yet unfortunate scoundrels: that is what Italy was.”³

The Romantic historian Jules Michelet (d. 1874) gave wide currency to the term “Renaissance,” the title he used for the seventh volume of his History of France (1855).⁴ Michelet perceived of the Renaissance on a grander scale than Voltaire, as a European-wide phenomenon involving all aspects of life, characterized by the “discovery of the world and the discovery of man,” a phrase that has gained a special place in the historiography of the period. Michelet singled out as prime features of the Renaissance the revival of antiquity, scientific discoveries and geographical exploration. The emphasis on the latter led him to perceive such men as Columbus and Copernicus as Renaissance figures.

Unlike Voltaire, however, Michelet did not focus on fifteenth-century Italy, but stressed instead the role of sixteenth-century France. The bridge between the two places was the French invasion of the peninsula in 1494, which brought Italian influences to France. The French Renaissance reached its apogee in the court of Francis I.

Michelet’s lasting achievement was to make the Renaissance into a concrete historical period. The notion of “rebirth” inherent in the term Renaissance was for Michelet above all a rebirth of the human spirit, a “heroic outburst of an immense will.” In this sense, even Martin Luther was a Renaissance figure insofar as the spirit of the age led him to the break with the Church.

It was, however, Michelet’s Swiss counterpart Jacob Burckhardt (d. 1897) who most set the modern terms of discussion. Burckhardt wove the various strands of Enlightenment and Romantic thought, as well as that of German philosophical-historical writers, into a powerful synthesis in his great book entitled The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. In the Enlightenment tradition, he identified the Renaissance as a period of progress and the emergence of reason.⁵ Like Voltaire, he located the Renaissance in Italy and called the Italians “the first born among the sons of Europe.” He stressed the role of “individualism,” which he equated with the appearance of the modern man and modern world.

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is so famous that its contents have often been assumed rather than carefully assayed. Scholarly refutations of the book have sometimes proceeded along lines that Burckhardt himself would not have recognized. For this reason it is worthwhile to look closely at its organization and argument.

What most interested Burckhardt was gaining access to the character of the age, pinpointing the “spirit” of the Renaissance. Burckhardt’s emphasis on individualism, and the key role played by great men bears the stamp of Hegel’s “geistige Individualität,” while his interest in uncovering the roots of modernity shares characteristics of the approach of his contemporary Karl Marx (d. 1883), who like Burckhardt was a student at the university of Berlin.⁶ Burckhardt nevertheless emphasized cultural rather than economic forces. Burckhardt self-effacingly called his work “ein Versuch” or “an attempt,” intended as an interpretation, short of employing all available evidence. He promised to follow with a separate treatment of art, which he felt warranted its own attention. But he never completed that work.

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is divided into six parts. The first two are the most widely read by modern students in the English speaking world. In them, Burckhardt traced the political circumstances in Italy. His main thesis is expressed in the famous subtitle of the first section, “The State as a Work of Art,” by which Burckhardt meant that the state was a “calculated conscious creation.” He depicted the Italian political environment as one of violence and uncertainty, which produced the individualism and egocentrism characteristic of the Renaissance. These traits were readily apparent in the great mercenary captains, the so-called condottieri of the fifteenth century, men of illegitimate birth, who by dint of their skill and cunning rose to leadership of armies and took over the states they served.

Burckhardt’s treatment of individualism is the central theme of the book, and constitutes his most original contribution. The concept is fully developed in the second part, “The Development of the Individual.” Here Burckhardt gives his oft-quoted description of the Middle Ages as “laying dreaming and half awake beneath a common veil.” The veil was composed of “faith, illusion and childish prepossession” and man perceived of himself only in terms of a general category, such as race, family, or corporation. It was in Italy that the veil melted away, replaced by the self-conscious individual, who recognized himself as such. The terms “individual” and “individualism” are, for Burckhardt, elastic ones, applied in various ways. At base they constitute dedication to self-interest and freedom from authority, both moral and political.

Burckhardt devoted the third part of his book to the revival of antiquity and the link between the Renaissance and the renewed interest in classical literature. He viewed the “spirit” of the Renaissance as prior to the intellectual renewal, embedded in the “genius of the Italian people” and not specifically reflected in the work of the humanists. The humanists were Renaissance men insofar as they reflected the traits of individualism and modernity.

In the last three parts, Burckhardt fleshed out the ways that individualism affected the age. The section entitled “The Discovery of the World and of Man” makes clear his debt to Michelet. It examines oversees exploration, scientific discovery, the natural world and literature. The section on “Society and Festivals” places the individual in his social setting. “Morality and Religion” presents a dark picture of “grave moral crisis” in Italy, which grew from the influence of pagan antiquity, difficulties within the church, and, above all, unbridled egoism.

Burckhardt’s great legacy was to present the Renaissance as an all-encompassing event, touching on varied aspects of life and society. His book took time to reach its audience, a development that Burckhardt himself lamented.⁷ It did not correspond to the dominant trends in contemporary German academia, which favored specialization and the learned monograph.⁸

But Burckhardt’s ideas gained wide currency soon enough.⁹ The elegance of his writing had obvious appeal, as did the force of his argumentation. Moreover, there already existed considerable interest in the Renaissance throughout Europe. A year before the appearance of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, the German scholar Georg Voigt had published a multivolume work on the humanist revival of antiquity (Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity, 1859), which, like Burckhardt, posited a decisive break between the Renaissance and the period that preceded it. Voigt also found a place for individuality, which was reflected in the work of humanist writers. Similarly, in Italy, the historian Pasquale Villari wrote of a distinctive Renaissance “spirit.” In biographical works such as The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola (1859–61) and The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli (1877–82), Villari noted the individualistic nature of the period and the workings of Italian genius. Writing at a time of heightened nationalism owing to Italian reunification, Villari also condemned the moral and political corruption of the Renaissance, which he believed contributed to the peninsula’s domination by foreign powers.

Burckhardt’s work also found a receptive audience in the English-speaking world, where there was already substantial interest in the Renaissance, both in academic and non-academic circles.^10...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Contesting the Past
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Renaissance Question
• 2 Individualism: Who Was the Renaissance Man?
• 3 Gender: Who Was the Renaissance Woman?
• 4 Humanism: Renovation or Innovation? Transmissionor Reception?
• 5 Economy: Hard Times or Prosperity?
• 6 Politics: The Emergence of the Modern State?
• 7 Faith and Science: Religious or Rational?
• Further Reading
• Index