Renaissance

University of Minnesota Press

Chapter Title: Seeing the Renaissance Whole

Book Title: History and the Social Web Book Subtitle: A Collection of Essays Published by: University of Minnesota Press. (1955) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsssr.10

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide

range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and

facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Minnesota Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History and the Social Web

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

8

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

i. WOULD be hard to find in any language a word more

fully freighted with optimism than the term "Renaissance." Heaven alone holds more. To be born again, presumably with the oppor- tunity to avoid all unpleasant experiences of a previous existence, to enjoy once more and to the full the springtime of youth and then as middle age creeps on to revel in the highest intellectual and aesthetic pleasures that the world has ever known—all this and more is implied in the word. And this is the term that has been applied to a period of European history variously defined but bounded roughly by the three centuries from 1300, the year when Dante made his imaginary journey through the afterworld, to the day when Shakespeare died, or, if you like, a bit later to the day of Milton's death after 1600 A.D.

This choice of name for the period is not the historian's; indeed he finds himself embarrassed by its use, for reasons that I have explained elsewhere.* But the rest of the literate world will not be dissuaded from the use of so neat and appealing a label, and the historian, not always finding it convenient to explain his ob- jections, is forced to conform.

The historian, whose professional task it is to deal with the whole recorded past, usually works alone in restoring that record. Not so for this period. Here he finds scholars and dilettantes of

* In the paper entitled "The New Learning."

174

I

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

so many fields of learning and cultural interests working upon his materials that he is almost crowded out by the throng and truly has trouble gaming a hearing—or even a reading. It is, I be- lieve, correct to say that more has been written about this period by persons who are not professional historians than by the his- torians themselves.

Consider the accounts of this period with which you are fa- miliar. Most of you will readily recall the several volumes by John Addington Symonds, a literary critic. Perhaps as many of you will know the profoundly analytical work of Jacob Burck- hardt, an art critic. Some of you, too, will have read the two vol- umes by Henry Osborn Taylor, originally a classical scholar who became something of a historian. He was so anxious to avoid the use of the term "Renaissance" that he entitled his work Thought and Expression in i6th Century Italy—a. far worse misnomer, for his two volumes deal chiefly with the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And of course you will recall those beautiful essays on the Renaissance by scholars of English literature.

It is natural for workers in any field as they gain success and prosperity in their chosen occupation to develop an avocational interest in its beginnings. Thus the artist, particularly the painter, follows his interest back to Giotto, with whom, Vasari tells him, modern painting began. The classical scholar looking for the earliest traces of a secular interest in his profession is led back to Petrarch, who with no undue modesty proclaimed himself the discoverer of the secular values of classical studies and thereby won for himself the title of "Father of Humanism." And the pro- fessor of modern literature seeking the origin of his profession is carried back inevitably to Boccaccio, who as far as I can discover was probably the first to occupy a university chair in contempo- rary literature when Florence appointed him to lecture upon the Divine Comedy of Dante. The political scientist, though his tra- ditional interests carry him back to Plato and Aristotle, finds many of his more modern ideas generated in this period by Mar- silio of Padua, Machiavelli, and Grotius; the economist finds the

'75

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

origin of modern capitalism here; and the historian sees the birth of his critical scholarship in Lorenzo Valla.

Likewise, the scientist comes to include among his forebears Fracastoro in the study of contagious diseases, Vesalius in anato- my, Fabricius in embryology, Harvey in physiology, Copernicus in astronomy, Georgius Agricola in geology and metallurgy, Je- rome Cardan in higher algebra, Gesner in botany and zoology as well as library science, Paracelsus in chemistry and pharmacy, and Pare in surgery. Technologists have come to regard Leonardo da Vinci as their patron saint, and philosophers have found the be- ginnings of modern lay interest in philosophy in the Platonic Academy of Florence.

I cannot possibly have enumerated all the professions and voca- tions that have developed a curiosity about this period of history, but I have surely named enough to indicate how thoroughly the historian finds himself crowded, if not indeed crowded out, by all this competing attention.

In passing, I should like to point out one striking feature of this listing of interests. They are all lay interests—and thus underline one essential characteristic of the Renaissance: it was the period when the laity became largely literate.

The historian's first reaction to so much competition is one of annoyance. And this annoyance is heightened by the fact that though the interest of these collateral professions is directed by their own vocational concerns, all of them have had sufficient experience of life to feel justified in interpreting the whole society of the period. But each interprets the period from his own point of reference. For Burckhardt every activity of these centuries was art-inspired; he sees art even in the way they perpetrated their murders. Symonds, of course, is at his best in the appraisal of literary developments, but he does not hesitate to include in his monumental treatment also politics and religion, fields with which he was but ill-acquainted. We could continue the roll, re- vealing a host of similar distortions—which leads us inevitably to recall the fable of the five blind men of India and their conclu- sions about the nature of the elephant.

176

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

I can illustrate the reaction of the historian by a personal ex- perience. Teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles one summer, I received an invitation to attend a two-day confer- ence on the Renaissance at the Huntington Library, which I was most happy to accept. I looked forward to enjoying a renewal of my acquaintance with familiar characters, events, and achieve- ments. I also hoped to hear new research and fresh points of view ably presented, and this I did. But as the conference progressed I was puzzled by the fact that I heard almost no mention of the names most familiar to me. Session followed session without a word, as far as I recall, about the many old friends whom I had grown to know in Italy in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and even six- teenth centuries.

Could this be a conference, I kept wondering, on the Renais- sance? Reverting to the simile of the blind men and the elephant, I didn't know which part of the elephant they were fingering, but it certainly was not the whole animal. My bewilderment was allayed somewhat when I learned that this was a conference of scholars in English literature.

I described my feelings to Louis B. Wright, the director of the Huntington Library in immediate charge of the conference, in- sisting that even a discussion limited to the English Renaissance could not properly omit some reference to Italy. There was Thomas Linacre, court physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII, John Caius, court physician successively to Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, and William Harvey at the end of the century, all of whom had taken their medical degrees at the University of Padua. These were the most distinguished physicians in England and their combined careers covered the whole of the sixteenth century. Such persistent connection between England and Italy in this vital area could only betoken a much wider cultural asso- ciation.

Whether Dr. Wright was more sympathetic or amused I never knew, but he invited me to write him a letter on the subject which he published as a brief article entitled "Padua in the Eng-

177

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

lish Renaissance." Fortunately I was able to summon Shakespeare to my aid with this quotation from The Taming of the Shrew.

To see fair Padua, nursery of the arts . . . for I have Pisa left

And am to Padua come, as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

A hasty search failed to reveal any other university, even Ox- ford or Cambridge, to which Shakespeare accorded such high praise. Apparently for him Padua was the highest center of Brit- ish education in his time.

The historian's irritation at what seems to him the unwarranted presumptions of his colleagues in other fields is not without re- taliation from those colleagues. When I was asked to participate in the Spencer Trask lectures on the meaning of the humanities at Princeton, I followed the natural approach of the historian in my assignment, "History and the Humanities." * Following along chronologically from antiquity to the Renaissance, I tried to point out that the interest in classical literature had never entirely ceased and that when circumstances favored there were definite out- bursts of interest in the classics, notably in the eighth, tenth, elev- enth, and twelfth centuries. In that perspective the humanistic activities of the Renaissance were merely wider and possibly deeper than in the earlier periods, owing primarily to the increased literacy of the laity.

This notion of a continuous flow of cultural interest, swelling at times, shrinking at other times, but always existing in some amount, proved to be most distasteful to Professor Panofsky, who had given the lecture on art. When our papers were published he added a footnote to his, protesting this notion of mine. Ap- parently his view was that each period developed a certain culture of its own like a beautiful globe which was broken when the period ended, leaving only a pleasant memory of its existence. The idea that the cultural urge is persistent and universal and that

* Parts of this lecture have been incorporated into two of the papers in this collection: "The New Learning" and "The Social Web."

I78

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

its achievements at any given period are necessarily limited by the materials and tools available at the time is not acceptable to Panofsky, for whom everything in society is subordinate or pend- ant to the artistic style of the period, e.g., Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance.

The historian's obligation to try to comprehend society whole existed even before the psychologists invented their "gestalt" or "configuration" concept, and he must adhere to it no matter how much the amateur enthusiasts may resent it.

One summer the department of English at the University of Minnesota sponsored an institute on the Renaissance and invited me to lead one of the round-table discussions. In such company I felt privileged to indulge in a bit of literary license. I conjured up a possible scene at the dinner table of Lorenzo the Magnificent about the year 1490, add or subtract a year or two.

It was Lorenzo's regular practice when at home to dine quite informally with family, friends, and privileged visitors. The guests took their places to right and left of him in the order of their arrival. If ever the partaking of food could be characterized as accompanied by "a feast of reason and a flow of soul" it would be at those dinners. The emphasis was never on the food, which was always wholesome and tasty but seldom lavish.

The reason would be supplied on my imaginary occasion by the group who constituted the nucleus of the Platonic Academy: the saintly Ficino, the colorfully handsome and brilliant Pico, and the scholarly, if unhandsome, Poliziano. The banter would be furnished by those two arch humorists, Franco and Pulci. The company would include Lorenzo's children, then teen age—young Giovanni, later Pope Leo X, already assured a cardinal's hat, and his natural cousin Giulio, the later Clement VII—and young Mi- chelangelo, then fifteen. It would also include Botticelli, who re- ceived the inspiration for his Neo-Platonic or Ovidian paintings here; "Arrigo the German," the leading musical composer; and Pier Leone, the family physician. Medici agents who might have happened to be in town and among the privileged guests at this

179

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

time would be Thomas Linacre of England and Johann Reuchlin of Germany, possibly also John Colet of England.

Lorenzo himself, master of ceremonies, would move the con- versation from grave to gay and vice versa. After a brief exchange of the day's latest news, he would probably turn to a discussion of the summum bonum or some other topic of Platonic thought; then as that became too heavy, he would give the signal to the humorous pair and Franco, the straight man, would submit to the outrageous insults of Pulci or Pulci would embark upon another episode in the career of his fancied giant, Morgante. In the latter event the others might join in the fun by suggesting supplemen- tary adventures in this favorite satire of the feudal nobility by the bourgeoisie.

Then the conversation might again take a more serious tone, the language changing from Italian to Latin to suit the theme. Everyone was welcome to participate and certainly Linacre would, for the favorable impression he made upon young Giovanni at this time led to a lifelong friendship of great value to Linacre's friends when Giovanni had become pope.

After the feast was ended the regular guests, even Ficino, would reach for their musical instruments, and all, including the servants, would join in singing. The songs might be those which Lorenzo himself had composed, alone or in collaboration with Poliziano and which Arrigo the German had set to music. Lorenzo, despite his squeaky falsetto voice, would insist on joining in if he did not, indeed, lead the singing.

The company might then repair, as it did on special occasions, to the Church of San Lorenzo or to the cathedral, to listen to Squarcialupi playing his favorite tunes.

This scene symbolizes for me the Renaissance at its best. Rep- resented in it were politics, business, the Church, learning, art, literature, and music, as well as gracious living. Together these representatives of the time were satisfying the cultural urge at almost its highest level. There was no pretense here but sincere enjoyment of the intellectual and artistic best. That the level was

180

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

so high merely reflects the greater experience, ability, cultivation, and taste of the participants.

It is interesting to speculate as to how much of this scene the historian, left to his own devices, would have described or appre- ciated. He would have caught the political implications certainly, probably too the ecclesiastical, and possibly the economic, but he would most certainly have missed the rest. It is doubtful that he would have attempted to describe the scene at all. That he is now able to do so he owes largely if not entirely to his colleagues in all other fields who have become amateur historians in quest of the modern beginnings of their separate vocations. Much as he may complain about what seems to him a clutter of errors that their unwarranted interpretations of society leave in their wake for him to clean up, he owes them more thanks than blame. With- out their help he could not possibly view the society of the Renaissance as nearly whole as he now does.

I must admit that the historian too has been guilty of errors. Take, for example, the commonly held notion that after Petrarch had gained prominence about 1350 Italian vernacular literature ceased, not to reappear for a hundred and fifty years. True, Boc- caccio stopped writing in the vernacular then and Dante, of course, had been dead some thirty years. But Petrarch and the humanists who followed him did not kill the vernacular, even though Leonardo Bruni about 1400 thought Dante's Divine Com- edy so good that it should be translated into Latin.

Italy in Dante's time had no literary vernacular. Its popular language consisted then of purely local dialects which varied one from the other as widely as those of Cornwall from Yorkshire or Gascon from Picard. Dante traveling through the north of Italy and Boccaccio living so much in the south of the peninsula had each broadened his native Tuscan dialect by additions from the others. So potentially these two were the parents of the Italian lit- erary vernacular.

The historian treating of these two figures dismisses them at the time of their deaths, Dante in 1 3 2 1 and Boccaccio in 1375, and

181

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

does not refer to them again—as though their influence was ended with their demise!

Actually Dante had little influence in his own lifetime, earning scarcely enough to keep body and soul together. And Boccaccio did not do much better. It would be much more accurate to say that their work had only just begun when they died. But does any textbook in history mention the fact that by 1400 all the greater universities in Italy were offering courses on Dante and the Italian vernacular? Or that by 1500 virtually every literate Italian had read and many illiterate Italians had heard at least a portion of the writings of these two men? Without this education in the vernacular through a century and a half by Dante, Boc- caccio, and even Petrach, the great outburst of literary production in Italian at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the 16th represented by Pulci, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Guicciar- dini, Tasso, and Ariosto would have been impossible.

The historian has become guilty of another fault too. The body of literature for this period has become so vast and the interest in special phases so great that he has tended to specialize in certain aspects of social activity. Thus we now have specialists in economic history, in social history, in the history of science, even in the history of medicine, and more recently in intellectual history. The natural tendency of all scholarship to focus its attention upon the newest developments in its fields has led even historians to distort their treatment of the period until they are becoming guilty of the same errors for which they have hitherto blamed the enthusi- astic amateurs of other fields. We are back to the blind Indians and the elephant again. In some more recent symposiums on the Renaissance the discussion has been so concentrated upon its pure- ly intellectual aspects as to convey the impression that the period was one of sheer disembodied intellect.

Actually the period was one of full-blooded, full-bodied social activity. Let me review briefly the salient points in its develop- ment.

The birth of the Renaissance can be localized in northern Italy, north of the Papal States—in Tuscany and Lombardy with their

182

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

two pendants, Venice and Genoa. This region was peculiarly ripe for unusual cultural development. It lay across the great trunk lines of luxury commerce from the eastern Mediterranean to western Europe. Venice and Genoa had been the chief carriers of this commerce for several centuries, the rest of the region hav- ing developed industrially to take over much of the luxury manu- facture. Until the fourteenth century, however, their excess prof- its had been drained off to satisfy the needs of the two rival con- trolling powers, the papacy and the Empire. When the war between those two powers ended, the Empire had been rendered impotent, and by 1305 the papacy had been virtually captured by France. The Babylonian Captivity which followed removed the papacy to Avignon and minimized its influence in Italy.

The towns' profits from their trade and manufacture were now in their own control if they could find some way to maintain law and order themselves. The only organization they possessed was economic. Fortunately for them, warfare had changed and mer- cenary troops had superseded feudal levies. The businessmen who controlled the economic organization of the towns in this region were thus able to engage the necessary soldiery to keep order. They had to learn the art of government. Accustomed to operate by their wits instead of brawn, they turned to the study of past experience for guidance and the legal profession gained new status. Though there were innumerable separate and rival city centers aspiring to dominance in 1300, the situation in northern Italy had become fairly stabilized a century later, with Florence, Milan, and Venice, all commercial states, dominating the region.

During the same while, the condition of the rest of Europe was contributing to increase the well-being of Italy. Germany, which had been broken by the struggle with the papacy, was to remain hopelessly divided for centuries. France, the most powerful state in Europe, soon became involved in a century-long struggle with England, which had become almost as powerful. Spain was divided among several warring states. Thus there was not only no danger of invasion from outside for nearly two centuries, but, even more important, those regions, having to use their surplus energies for

183

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

wars, became increasingly dependent upon Italy for their com- mercial, industrial, and financial needs. Northern Italy was thus to enjoy a degree of economic prosperity such as it had never before experienced.

The utilization of the proceeds of all this swollen prosperity became a real problem, to be solved as such problems often are, fortunately—in the satisfaction of the cultural urge. And, lacking the modern outlets for the spending of surplus wealth all over the world, these people had to spend it in their home towns.

Individual fortunes at first were not large. The surplus profits were collective rather than individual and were devoted to satis- fying the cultural needs of the community as a whole. That meant civic improvements, public buildings, including of course churches and hospitals as well as city halls and gaols. Florence, for example, had embarked upon its building program by 1300. The Palazzo Vecchio, the Cathedral, the church dormitories for the two great orders of friars, Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, as well as the comprehensive city wall, were all projected before Dante left Florence. Other towns followed suit and the leaders of the mercenary troops, become petty despots in small territories bor- dering the big three, did likewise.

Large buildings were then not built in a month or a year. Santa Maria del Fiore, whose foundations were laid in Dante's time, did not receive its final touch, Verrochio's lantern, until 1475, nearly two centuries later. So northern Italy had embarked upon a build- ing program that was to be continuous and expanding for more than two hundred years. Craftsmen builders, architects, painters, sculptors, and jewelers were to vie with each other for contracts, each generation seeking to excel its predecessors. The story of Renaissance Italian art is told in this building program.

The intellectual atmosphere in which this lay culture developed was one of extraordinary freedom. First, not only did the long absence of the papacy from Italy lead to a relaxation of papal con- trol over that region, but because the Italians resented that ab- sence it invited practically unlimited criticism of ecclesiastical authority and weakened the moral restraints that might otherwise

184

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

have prevailed. Second, the great merchant princes who ruled in northern Italy were accustomed to dealing with people of varied faiths, Greek, Hebrew, and Moslem as well as Roman, and with such tolerance did practically nothing to restrain the freedom of thought and expression, which sometimes amounted to outrageous license. One can follow this development through the writings of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Poggio, Lorenzo Valla, and Becadelli —not to mention Machiavelli.

In such an atmosphere, free of traditional restraints, self-expres- sion and experimentation, though sometimes abused, flourished mightily. Individual initiative and enterprise were stimulated by the great rewards in both fame and fortune. As an instance, in the realm of politics it became possible for a hillbilly, Muzio Atten- dolo, nicknamed Sforza, to start his son on the road to establish- ing a ruling dynasty whose descendants have been prominent in Italian affairs down to our own time.

Even in warfare the emphasis was upon brains not brawn. Mili- tary commanders, the condottieri, were businessmen first and stu- dents of tactics and strategy next. They sold their services to the merchant princes who ruled the greater city-states. Though there were individual instances of ferocious cruelty, these seldom in- volved more than a few individuals and the greatest destruction recorded destroyed only one small town. The merchant rulers had no desire to kill their customers and the wars in which they engaged were primarily to safeguard their trade routes and en- sure an adequate food supply, almost never for motives of power politics. They preferred diplomacy to force in achieving their ends.

Indeed it may almost be said that they invented diplomacy. Few modern states with all their advantages of speedy communi- cation have devised a more efficient foreign intelligence than did Venice during this period. The ideal diplomats described by Machiavelli and Castiglione are still models today. Undisturbed by outside pressures the masterminds of Italy preferred their sepa- rate city-states and transformed Italy into a microcosm of inter- national relations, an experimental laboratory of such relations from which emerged the concept both of mercantilism and of the

185

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

balance of power, which the larger nations of modern Europe were to practice down to our time. Nor can one find many states- men of modern times who have handled the problem of public relations more effectively than did Cosimo de Medici, the "pater patriae" of Florence from 1434 to 1464.

In activities other than political, individual initiative and en- terprise were equally encouraged and successful. It was this invi- tation that led the craftsmen-artists to discover or invent one technique after another in the effort to portray on a flat surface the perfect representation of nature, human and otherwise. It was the same invitation that led the humanists to discover bit by bit the principles of literary composition which could be applied to any language, not only to Latin. And Leonardo da Vinci was only one of many who were contriving models of machines that arouse the admiration of technologists today. Indeed Leonardo's own designs were largely modifications of ideas already either in use or described.

Historians of science have not been friendly to the first two centuries of the Renaissance. Scholars, Lynn Thorndike particu- larly, though with some support from George Sarton, blame the period for diverting its best minds from science to humanism and art, and Thorndike goes so far as to consider humanism con- sciously opposed to science.

I cannot share that view, first because those two hundred years produced notable progress in some fields of science, especially in medicine, where Carpi's edition of Mondino advanced the knowl- edge of anatomy to the very threshold of Vesalius, and Fracastoro certainly moved the knowledge of contagious diseases to a new high plateau. But even more am I reluctant to accept Thorndike's view because both humanism and art were during these centuries fashioning the essential tools without which the striking scientific advance of the sixteenth century would have been impossible. Art contributed accurate observation and the means of precise record- ing of such observations. The cumulative efforts of the craftsmen- artists to portray human emotion had led them to a close study not only of the surface expression of emotion but also of the muscles be-

186

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

neath the skin and the bodily organs which operated those mus- cles. Scholarly artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo actually performed more dissections than did 99 per cent of the medical students of the time. The humanists in their effort to re- cover all the writings of antiquity were editing and translating the scientific works of the ancient Greeks, thus making available to their contemporaries the Greek discoveries in mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences as well as medicine.

I have dealt with medieval developments in medicine in another paper * and so here shall say only this: It is now evident that the hoary old notion so long perpetuated in our textbooks—namely, that before Vesalius the medical profession had relied wholly upon the authority of Galen—is entirely wrong. Western Europe during the Middle Ages knew very little of Galen. It was not until the sixteenth century that the voluminous writings of this ancient authority were available to medical men.

Only a fraction of scientific knowledge can be transmitted by words alone. Illustrations are absolutely essential to understanding in science. Therefore, not until this combination of tools, the fruit of two centuries of antecedent labor by craftsmen-artists and humanists, was available could science make the strides that it did in the sixteenth century. Without that antecedent labor the achievements of Vesalius in anatomy, Copernicus in astronomy, Georgius Agricola in geology and metallurgy, Gesner in botany and zoology, even Cardan in higher algebra would have been impossible.

As we reach the sixteenth century the names I mention are no longer exclusively Italian. Times have changed. The great coun- tries of Europe—France, England, and Spain—have all regained internal unity and peace. Thanks to the enterprise of the earlier Renaissance, new worlds and new trade routes have been dis- covered. The Atlantic now rivals the Mediterranean as a main artery of commerce, and the rest of Europe has ceased to be eco- nomically dependent upon Italy.

* Published in this collection under the title, "The Rebirth of the Medi- cal Profession."

187

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

More than that, the failure of the Italians to achieve politi- cal unity, together with the alluring achievements in nearly all branches of culture which the Italian Renaissance had accumu- lated, rendered Italy a most tempting field for the imperial am- bitions of these power-minded neighbors. From 1494 on, Italy was a battlefield in the fierce rivalry of France and Spain, and by 1530 virtually the whole peninsula except the maritime state of Venice was politically dependent upon outside powers.

England and the Low Countries, less war-involved than France and Spain, were the first to profit from these changed circum- stances. Peace and prosperity and the increased leisure they af- forded enabled these regions to embark upon the fuller satisfaction of their own cultural urge. How?

So strong has been the feeling of nationalism in modern times that even scholars have been led to view their fields of learning with national bias. I have already spoken of the conference on the English Renaissance at the Huntington. Similarly Batifol has written the history of the French Renaissance as a purely sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French development, and scholars of other countries have been guilty of the same myopia. Laudable as the sentiment of national patriotism may be, it scarcely justifies such gross distortion of fact.

The Europe of the sixteenth century did not surfer from such strong nationalistic predisposition. It greatly admired the achieve- ments of the Italian Renaissance, with many of which it was acquainted, thanks to the printing press. Business agents and cul- tivated refugees from now war-torn Italy were welcomed in all these countries. France and Spain, having appropriated so much of Italy, also appropriated some of its artists and scholars, carry- ing them back to the conquerors' homelands.

In none of these countries did people repeat the slow painful process of acquiring the various techniques of painting or the various principles of literature; they gladly accepted the full com- plement of both as the Italians had worked them out. Thus artists like Diirer, Holbein, and Rubens did not start where Giotto had left off but rather where Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and

188

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

Veronese were. Nor were Erasmus, Linacre, Vives, and Me- lanchthon limited as Petrarch had been, to a few Latin classics; they all had access to the whole range of recovered classical lit- erature as Poliziano and Bembo ,did. Indeed, Erasmus as a school- boy had already so thoroughly mastered the De Elegantiis of Lorenzo Valla with its full exposition of the principles of com- position and style that his teachers asked him to prepare a compen- dium of it for his classmates.

No, one can only conclude that the other countries of Europe entered upon the Renaissance at the point reached by the Italians. They adopted the Italian ideal of the cultivated gentleman de- scribed by Castiglione in The Courtier, as witness the rapidity with which that work was translated into all the leading literary vernaculars as well as into the more universal Latin.

In addition to all this, the rest of Europe continued to go directly to Italy for vital instruction throughout the sixteenth century. Venice, now the only autonomous portion of Italy, had graciously accepted the role of residuary legatee of Italian Ren- aissance culture. It had two universities within its orbit, its state university of Padua and its satellite university of Ferrara, and to these it welcomed scholars not only from Italy itself but also from the rest of Europe, even Protestant Europe. Padua held a position of recognized intellectual leadership throughout the cen- tury such as few universities have ever attained. The galaxy of its students and teachers included Linacre, Fracastoro, Vesalius, Fallopius, Cardan, Copernicus, Georgius Agricola, John Caius, Fabricius, William Harvey, and Galileo.

To the artists Venice could offer Titian, Tintoretto, and Vero- nese, all long-lived, and the young Greek who received his train- ing there and practiced his art in Spain under the name El Greco. In literature it had, of course, Cardinal Bembo but also some claim to Tasso and Ariosto. And the Venetian printing establishment of Aldus Manutius was the great center for the editing and translat- ing of the Greek classics.

All Europe in the sixteenth century gladly acknowledged its in- debtedness to the Italian Renaissance, past and current, as Shake-

189

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Long Road Back

speare did for England. All shared in the advance that was made in this century, so that it may actually be wrong, as it certainly is mis- leading, to speak of a French, a Spanish, an English, or an Italian Renaissance, for they were all part of the same development.

This whole paper is only a summary, but if I were to list the chief points I have tried to establish in the course of it, they would be these: First, this period from 1300 to 1600, thanks to the wide interest it has aroused, is the most thoroughly studied period in all history. Second, because of the varied approaches that have been made to it, the Renaissance affords our best oppor- tunity to view society whole, to see the interplay and interrela- tion of nearly all man's activities. For society, like the individual, is a complex of many interests—political, economic, social, intel- lectual, artistic, and religious—each affected by the others. Third, the Renaissance reveals more clearly than any other period that no activity of society can be explained in terms of itself alone, and that no one activity, be it economic, political, or religious, can safely be accepted as always the most important.

Take, for example, such an incident as the building of the Certaldo at Pavia, generally acknowledged to be one of the archi- tectural triumphs of the Italian Renaissance. It was built at the command of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, ruler of Milan. His wife, fearful of her impending childbirth, had requested him to erect this monastery for the Carthusian monks in the event of her death. She survived, but he carried through her request anyway, as a mark of gratitude. He was by virtue of his political position able to command the financial resources to engage the best artistic talent available to construct this religious edifice.

This incident involves political, economic, social, artistic, and religious elements, and I doubt that we could all agree as to which of these elements was the most important. But need we do so? Why not just recognize that all these factors played a part in the episode?

Finally, one of the essential characteristics of the Renaissance is the appearance of a strong lay interest in the promotion of cul- tural activities. It is the period when the laity became literate and

190

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Seeing the Renaissance Whole

when they added their eager energies to that of the clergy, the traditional custodians and promoters of culture.

For all these reasons the Renaissance will long remain the model for the study of all periods. It reveals so clearly the social web that is the proper subject of history.

191

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

This page intentionally left blank

This content downloaded from 209.50.140.132 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:34:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms