Introduction to the Renaissance
Study Guide questions:
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2.
3.
4.
How was the Renaissance a reaction to the 14th century crises?
Why did the Renaissance start in Italy (3 reasons)?
How is Renaissance religious art different from medieval religious art?
What values did Renaissance thinkers and artists advocate? How do they
differ from those in the Middle Ages?
5. What does it mean to be a “Renaissance Man”?
The Renaissance, a reaction to the crises of the 14th century
“Renaissance” in French literally means “rebirth”. The word refers to the rebirth of
Greco-roman ideas and classical learning that began not in France but in Italy in the 14th
century, and then spread to the north (especially thanks to Guttenberg’s printing press).
Prior to this, during the Middle Ages, some classical learning had been used by the Church
to support Church teachings. Platonic thought for example fit very nicely with the Christian
worldview of two worlds: an earthly, imperfect world of sinners (Plato’s allegory of the
“cave”) and another perfect world: Heaven (corresponding to Plato’s world of the Forms).
However, the many crises of the 14th century (Black Death, Babylonian Captivity, the
Great Western Schism, the fall of Constantinople) shook people’s confidence in the Church
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and traditional society. Many felt that the Church and feudal society were old, obsolete and
incapable of responding to the new challenges of a changing geopolitical world.
In Italy some intellectuals were determined to make a new start through a search
for rebirth and revival of old Antiquity. Reflecting on the disasters of the 14th century, these
men came to see the entire Middle Ages as a period of chaos, decay and corruption. By
contrast, they saw Ancient Greece and Rome as the golden age of civilization and culture: a
time of joy, prosperity and learning. In this context, they stressed the recovery and rereading of all ancient texts in order to solve their political, social and moral problems.
Why Italy?
The question that now needs to be addressed is why the Renaissance began in Italy.
While Northern Europe still remained locked in the medieval world for another one
hundred to two hundred years, the Italian peninsula was already showing the beginnings of
the Renaissance by 1300. There are a number of explanations for the rapid advance of
Italian culture.
First, Italy had remained in close contact with the Eastern Roman (Byzantine)
Empire despite the repeated invasions of Germanic and Slavic barbarians.
A fairly
constant exchange between Constantinople and Rome meant that Greco-Roman civilization
had never been completely extinguished in Italy. There had even been brief moments
when the Byzantine emperors had managed to wrest control of Italy away from the
barbarians, though this never lasted very long. Just by proximity (‘proximity’ means ‘being
near’) Italy had an advantage over the north of Europe.
Second, the greater number of cities in Italy provided a place for the ideas of the
Renaissance to flourish. Most northern cities had been destroyed by barbarians. Though
Italian cities suffered a similar fate, the mere fact that the Romans had built more cities in
Italy meant that more survived the disastrous invasions.
The Renaissance lifestyle
required urban centers that provided a place for the exchange of ideas, literature, and art.
Italy simply had more urban centers than any other place in Europe. In 1377, only 10% of
the English population lived in villages having 3000 people. In the same period, over a
quarter of the Italian population lived in cities. Though none of the Italian cities could
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match the size of ancient Rome (which had become a giant cow pasture during the Middle
Ages), they were still larger than most European cities. With the collapse of the Roman
Empire, Italy had fragmented into dozens of mini-states led by a handful of cities. The
major cities of this period were Naples to the south, Rome, Florence, Siena and Pisa in
central Italy, and Milan, Venice and Genoa in the north. Much like Athens, many of these
cities (Florence for example) were independent republics and as such could find in
classical authors like Cicero or Tacitus practical answers to their social and political
problems. Between these cities there was enormous competition, both culturally and
economically, much like in Classical Greece. During the Renaissance, this rivalry increased
the production of art and ideas as cities competed to acquire the talents of the best artists
and writers. Third, the money needed to create a merchant leisure class who could sit
around and enjoy art, compose poetry, and indulge in the cultural life was to be found in
Italy. Trade began again in Italy long before the rest of Europe. There are two reasons for
this. First, the food supply in Italy was not large enough to support the growing urban
population.
During the barbarian invasions, most Europeans had left the cities and
migrated to the countryside and the farms of medieval lords. But in Italy there was little
countryside to migrate to and so, to survive, people had to engage in trade and
manufacturing. All levels of society participated in this, including the great landlords,
nobles, and knights. In northern Europe, such as France and Germany, trade was seen as
being work of the middle class, only fit for those who owned no land. But in Italy some of
the most powerful and wealthy families were involved in trade and banking, including the
Popes!
Most cities were controlled by a class of Magnates.
These were wealthy
landowners who had moved to the city, or wealthy bankers and businessmen who had
been successful enough that the older aristocracy was forced to accept them. The Medici
of Florence, famous for their sponsorship of such artists as Da Vinci and Michelangelo, were
one such family. Just below these Magnates were the slightly less wealthy merchants,
bankers, lawyers and judges who formed the class known as the Popolo Grosso, the Fat
People. Although they weren’t nobles, their wealth tied them to the interests of the
Magnate class. Only about 1/10 of the population was ever in these two upper classes. It
was these classes, along with the Catholic Church, that were the primary sponsors of art
and literature in Renaissance Italy. Many of the merchants and bankers, newly (and
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reluctantly) into the ranks of nobility, felt pressured to purchase art and become patrons of
writers because that was the role of a noble. They felt that by buying the finest paintings,
building the largest palaces, and having books dedicated to them, that they would be
accepted as ‘true’ nobles. A second reason for trade resuming in Italy was the Crusades.
Most of the Crusader knights came from northern Europe, primarily France, England and
Germany (The stories of Robin Hood, for example, take place during the Crusades and the
reign of King Richard the Lionheart of England.) These knights would gather in Italy where
they were taken by ship to Greece, and from there would march to the Holy Land. The
Italian, especially the city of Venice, made a fortune providing housing and transportation
for soldiers either going to the Crusades or returning. With this money, the Italians
increased the size of their fleets which assisted in the rise of trade and led to the cities of
Venice and Genoa dominating most Mediterranean trade until the 16th century.
All of these reasons, and perhaps more, combined to make Italy the first to emerge
from the Middle Ages in Western Europe, and enter the new age of the Renaissance.
Renaissance Art
The most visible aspect of that renewal was the production of some of the great
pieces of art that you will study in your Art class and write about in your research paper.
You will learn that Renaissance artists and thinkers aimed at reintroducing the classical
themes and techniques of Antiquity in the West after a medieval period that they
associated with turmoil and disaster. The 14th century crises had encouraged among the
population an upsurge in personal piety. Disillusioned with the Church, people wanted to
be more emotionally and personally involved in religion. Wealthy families started to invest
in art (seen as a stable investment in times of crisis) and as a result, they built more
churches, chapels and commissioned emotionally charged art to decorate them. As a result,
Giotto’s Madonnas were no longer painted as saintly figures like in the Middle Ages, but
real women with all their emotions of motherhood expressed in their faces. Another great
figure of the Renaissance, Brunelleschi transferred Giotto’s techniques to architecture,
using architectural line to cause the viewer to focus his or her eye on the point of greatest
emotion in the church: the altar.
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Renaissance values
Yet the Renaissance was much more than an art movement. It was also an age of
new discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the New World) and intellectual. Both
kinds of discovery resulted in changes of tremendous importance for Western civilization.
In science, for example, Copernicus attempted to prove that the sun rather than the earth
was at the center of the planetary system, thus radically altering the cosmic world view
that had dominated antiquity and the Middle Ages. In religion and as part of our future
lesson on the Reformation, we’ll see that Martin Luther challenged and ultimately caused
the division of one of the major institutions that had united Europe throughout the Middle
Ages: the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves as ushering in
the modern age, as distinct from the ancient and medieval eras. Renaissance thinkers
strongly associated themselves with the values of classical antiquity, particularly as
expressed in the classics of literature, history and moral philosophy, many of which had
been rediscovered in Spain following the Reconquista.
A common oversimplification suggests that the Renaissance gave renewed emphasis
to life in this world instead of to the otherworldly, spiritual life associated with the Middle
Ages. Oversimplified as it is, there is nevertheless truth to the idea that Renaissance
Humanists placed great emphasis upon the dignity of man and the expanded possibilities of
human life in this world. For the most part, it regarded human beings as social creatures
who could create meaningful lives only in association with other human beings. In this
context, civic virtue became once again of the utmost importance for Renaissance thinkers.
In the terms used in the Renaissance itself, Humanism represented a shift from the
“contemplative life” to the “active life”. In the Middle Ages, great value had often been
attached to the life of contemplation and religious devotion, away from the world (think
about the thousands of monks living an ascetic life in monasteries for example). In the
Renaissance, individual achievement, the search for knowledge, and personal aspiration
became valued. Of course, these secular values coexisted with the traditional religious
values; in fact, some of the most important Humanists, like Erasmus, were Churchmen. The
concept of the “Renaissance Man” also appeared, referring to an individual who, in addition
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to participating actively in the affairs of public life, possesses knowledge of and skill in
many subject areas.
The Birth of the Renaissance Gentleman
It was the wealthiest classes that really participated in the artistic and literary
Renaissance that took place in Italy. Not being the warrior knights and lords of northern
Europe, the ideal life of the Italian elite was based much more on social behavior and
cultural pursuits. That emphasis was not on combat, but on how one behaved in society.
That is what distinguished the aristocrat of this age and a whole code of manners and
behavior grew around that ideal. Books were written to inform and educate the upper
classes in the proper manners suited to a ‘gentleman,’ the most famous of those texts being
Castiglione’s The Courtier.
The ideal gentleman was hopefully born to an old aristocratic family, though that
was not the true test of whether a man was truly ‘noble’. Given the fact that many of the
upper class Italians had worked their way into the aristocracy, an old bloodline could be
the sole standard of whether a man was noble. More important was how cultured and
refined a man was. Books emphasized that talent. He should be able to read and write both
Latin and Greek since most books of any intellectual value were in these languages. He
should acquire a library and, during an age when most books were still handwritten
(Guttenberg develops the printing press in Germany in 1450) and paper was relatively new
and expensive, buying a large library cost a fortune. This desire for books helps to explain
the revival of Classical learning. Most books written during the Middle Ages were focused
on Christian theology. If one wanted to expand one’s library, the only other books available
were the salvaged manuscripts of the Greeks and Romans. Preserved in monasteries during
the barbarian invasions or copied in Arabic by Muslim scholars, works of Classical
literature and philosophy had managed to survive. There now grew an increasing demand
for these books, despite the fact that most of them were clearly pagan. The desire for books
and knowledge outweighed their un-Christian content and the Church’s disapproval. A
number of the Popes were caught up in the library fad and accumulated thousands of
volumes of Classical works, making the Vatican Library one of the most importamt ones in
the world. Reading Plato and Aristotle became as important, if not more important, than
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reading Christian authors for the well-educated Renaissance gentleman. Da Vinci was
attacked by rivals as being illiterate since he did not know Latin or Greek, though he could
read Italian. The “gentleman” defended his reading of pagan authors by explaining that,
clearly, such intelligent writers must have been inspired by God; that Plato and Aristotle
had spoken the Lord’s truth before the coming of Jesus. They believed that Plato was a
prophet sent by God to teach the Greeks, the same way Moses had been sent to the Jews.
In reality, though the Renaissance gentleman was a good church-going Catholic,
religion and God became less and less the center of his world. More important was the
improvement of himself as a person. As seen above, the focus became the individual and
the human: Humanism. Literacy was a large part of this, but not the only part. He was to be
talented in playing music. He should be knowledgeable in history and be equally able to
construct fine poetic verses. He should be fearless in battle, skilled in weaponry
(particularly swordplay), an excellent horseman, and an athlete. On the other hand, he had
to be a fine dancer, elegant and superb in his clothing, handsome in appearance, and
always charming. He must marry a wife from a good family, but since the Greeks and
Romans had them, he also should have a mistress, a courtesan of the finest taste and
education. If there was a key word for the Renaissance gentleman, it would be “graceful”.
Whatever he was to do or say, it had to be said or done ‘gracefully.’ This was the hallmark
of a true gentleman. He was to have a well-rounded education, knowing little about a
great many things, a bit like a Core student. As a nobleman, he didn’t have to be a great
painter or poet. That’s what he paid artists and poets to do for him. But since he did have an
amateur knowledge of all of these fields, he would be able to judge what was ‘great’ and
what was ‘not so great.’ Note that this Renaissance Humanist ideal became the basis of
most Western education. This is why you are required to take math and science, physical
education and literature, foreign languages and art, even though you may have no interest
in one or more of these fields. The goal, like the Renaissance, is to produce a ‘well-rounded’
individual.
The ascetic ideal of the middle Ages died out for most Europeans. Jesus had not
returned, life had become increasingly rich (at least for the elite) and more elegant, art and
architecture was blossoming with the revival of Classical knowledge, and pleasure was on
the rebound. The focus was once again returning to the Here and Now.
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