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2: Intellectual Change from the 15th to 17th Century

The Renaissance

The Renaissance

Within Europe, major cultural and religious changes were underway around before and after 1500.  These are embodied in the Renaissance and Reformation.  The term Renaissance, which means rebirth, refers to the cultural achievements that occurred in Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.  These cultural achievements involved looking back to the Greeks and Romans and reviving Greco-Roman values in philosophy, sculpture, painting, architecture, and other areas.  The Renaissance began in Italy and eventually spread across Europe.  By the late Middle Ages, Italy had emerged as the trade and banking center of Europe, making it both the commercial and economic center of the continent.  This provided it with the wealth needed to support the artists and philosophies of the Renaissance.  Wealth also created an upper class ready and willing to consume the ideas and art of the Renaissance.  Italy also had numerous cities, which became the centers of the Renaissance, with Florence known as the birthplace of the movement. 

While the Renaissance covers the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, many historians suggest 1453 as the year when the Renaissance began to take off.  Three key events occurred in 1453 that allow historians to suggest this date.  First, the Hundred Years War between England and France came to an end.  This brought peace to Western Europe and allowed the Renaissance to spread across the continent.  Second, the Ottoman Empire conquered the city of Constantinople in 1453.  With the city’s Greek and Roman past, many Greek scholars who lived there fled after the Ottomans captured the city, most of them heading to Italy where they turned to the wealthy merchants for patronage and protection.  They brought with them their Greek learning, including their knowledge of Greek language and philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle.  These scholars appeared in Europe at the same time that interest in this rebirth of classical learning was growing.  Third, the printing press was invented in the German city of Mainz by Johan Gutenberg either in or around 1453.  As a result of this invention, printing became drastically cheaper making books much more available and affordable to the people, including the common people.  By the year 1500, there were more than 1000 printers in Europe in 238 cities and over 10 million volumes had been printed.  Printing allowed the ideas and values of the Renaissance to spread with remarkable speed.  

Humanism

The most important intellectual movement of the Renaissance was Humanism, which influenced every other aspect of the Renaissance.  The name “Humanism” was derived from the Latin word humanitas which Cicero had used in the classical era to describe the learning a person needed in order to be considered educated.  It suggested ways that an individual could pursue activities that were proper to man.  Humanism can be defined as a cultural and educational program based on the study of the classics and the inherent dignity of mankind. 

Humanism first emerged in Florence in the mid-fourteenth century.  It was a revival of ancient learning from the Greco-Roman period.  As such, it suggested an intense interest in history, which was another key feature of the Renaissance.  Humanists put forward a new view of history with three ages, the ancient, the medieval, and the modern.  The first was antiquity, the period in which the Greeks and the Romans ruled Europe.  This was followed by the dark ages, which began either in 312 with the conversion on Constantine or in 410 with the Sack of Rome by the barbarians.  To the Humanists, this age was characterized by darkness and a loss of the learning, art, architecture, and scholarship that had reached such imposing heights during antiquity.  In taking control of Europe, the uncivilized barbarian hordes had wiped out the greatness of the Greco-Roman societies.  The final age was the modern age in which the Humanists themselves lived.  Humanists held a strong conviction that they were living at the beginning of a new and brilliant period in human history.  Europe was awakening, moving from darkness into light, which filled the Humanists with tremendous optimism about mankind and about society.  In order for this rebirth to occur, the greatness of the ancient period had to be recovered.  Hence, humanists placed a deep emphasis on studying and reviving the classics.  When they studied literature, it was Greek and Roman literature.  When they pursued learning, it was classical learning.  When they looked for models of morality and virtue, they turned to the ancient Romans and Greeks as their models. 

There are five key focuses of the Humanists:

1.  Eloquence – To Humanists, this meant good communication or the art of speaking and writing with eloquence.  They used classical authors as their models.

2.  Classical Scholarship – This was the study of the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers.  Humanists studied ancient texts to learn what was taught about human nature, about government, about morality, really about any issue of consequence.

3.  Classical Language – Humanists learned Latin and Greek in their pure forms and many also learned Hebrew.  They loved the languages of the classics and considered them to be superior to the Latin used in their day.

4.  Education – The Humanists placed a tremendous emphasis on education and how to become an educated man.  They believed strongly in a man’s ability to improve and reform himself through education by developing his mental, physical, and spiritual self.

5.  History – Humanists held a deep appreciation for history.  This was a very self-conscious, self-aware age so they were very aware of the place they had in history and in many ways they viewed the Greco-Roman thinkers as their contemporaries.  This naturally led to an intense study of the history of the ancient period.

Humanism was the most important intellectual movement of the Renaissance.  It directly influenced art, literature, philosophy, morality, theology, and really every intellectual and cultural aspect of the era.  The Father of Humanism was Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), who came from Florence.  Petrarch was the first to present the Humanist view of history with three periods.  He firmly believed he was living at the start of a new, more vibrant age and saw the first two centuries of the Roman Empire as the peak of human civilization.  Petrarch dedicated himself to gathering ancient manuscripts and studying them.  He traveled across the countryside looking for lost texts in cathedrals and monastic libraries.  He was the first to build such a collection.  Petrarch copied these texts and established an amazing private library.  He learned much from reading the works of these classic authors.  But he did not only read, he also wrote 500 letters to various classical authors and mirrored their writing style in his letters.  This helped him gain a better understanding of the classic methods used in the works.  Petrarch established the foundation for Humanism. The Humanist focus on Greco-Roman philosophy and literature represents a significant shift in the intellectual perspective of Europeans.  Throughout the Middle Ages, the primary focus was on religion and on God, even when a person pursued a formal education.  Humanists altered this significantly and focused on the current state of man and improving that situation.  The primary concern went from being other-worldly in the Medieval period to being this-worldly during the Renaissance.  Humanists also tended to focus on the positive aspects of mankind rather than man’s weaknesses and sins, which were common topics for Medieval scholars.  Still, Humanists were generally Christians.  Petrarch himself was a devout Christian.  Humanists were not turning away from or rejecting Christianity, they were redirecting the focus of their education. 

Secularism

Secularism was a focus on the material world around people rather than on the eternal world of spirits.  Despite being deeply religious, people during the Renaissance began to increasingly turn their attention to the here and now.  The worries of life no longer centered on getting to heaven, but dealt with interest rates, the cost of shipping, and ways to increase wealth.  The pleasures of life were bought by the wealthy as they sought to have comfortable lives and to enjoy the good things, including the arts and other pleasures.  No longer was mortal life considered painful and a period of suffering.  Instead, life was an opportunity for enjoyment and pleasure and needed to be taken full advantage of. The rise of Secularism is evident in the work of Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529).  Castiglione was a nobleman and a diplomat, so he often found himself in the courts of the great rulers of Italy and Europe.  At these courts, the men and women of the Renaissance interacted with each other in a new fashion.  The age of chivalry was over.  The people spoke about art, about philosophy, about love.  They danced and played games together.  They discussed how they could develop themselves to their full potential. Castiglione saw all this going on and participated in it himself.  He was good at it too, and found himself in high demand within courts across Italy.  He finally ended up at the court of the Duke of Urbino and, while there, recorded and wrote about the social interactions he observed.  This finally led him to write The Book of the Courtier in 1528.  This book became incredibly popular across Europe and was a best seller for two centuries after its publication.  The Courtier was a guidebook.  It told individuals how they could excel in these Renaissance courts that were appearing across Europe.  At its foundation was the belief in the dignity of man, that a man could improve himself through effort and education.  These are the chief characteristics needed within a courtier and they certainly take a very secular perspective on life:

1. A courtier had to be a Humanist.  This meant he was educated in the Renaissance style which would allow him to appreciate the art, music, and literature of the Renaissance.
2. Knowledge of Foreign Languages – be able to engage in conversation with many people.
3. Understand the Art of War – how to use weapons.
4. Good Sportsman – related to hunting.
5. Physical Beauty – in shape, well groomed – not too tall or too short.
6. Good Conversationalist.
7. Well-mannered.
8. Charming, generous, loyal, courageous, prudent, wise, and then humble.

Critical Spirit

Another aspect of the new learning of the Renaissance was a critical spirit regarding texts.  This was first evidenced in the rampant efforts of Humanists, including Petrarch, to collect ancient texts and compare them with other ancient ones.  But the critical analysis of past texts did not end there.  An Italian Humanist named Lorenzo Valla really began the modern practices of textual criticism.  Valla was an expert in the language of Latin, which was the language of the learned in Europe for many centuries.  He used his knowledge of the language to critique the accuracy of the works.  Valla gave birth to the practice of Philology or the critical examination of a text based on how it is written.  He used his technique with a number of texts to either verify their authenticity or prove they were fake.  In the Renaissance, scholars no longer accepted what they read without question.