The Renaissance (6 documents)
1) As a cultural movement, Renaissance Humanism often saw itself in
competition with the established Scholasticism of the universities. Both
lived off of the inheritance from the ancients, but whereas the Scholastics
mined the philosophical texts (metaphysics, physics, logic), the Humanists
treasured the poetry, histories, oratory and ethical maxims of the Greeks
and Romans. The antagonism toward Scholasticism was a combination of envy,
disdain, and the bluster of the "cutting edge" that one often finds among
intellectuals. In this passage the early Italian humanist Petrarch (1304-1374)
contrasts the logic chopping (dialectic) of the "modern" Scholastics to
the eloquent wisdom of the ancients. Note the constant reference to classical
writers and the rhetorical way in which Petrarch presents his argument.
It makes for quite a change from Aquinas.
2) Petrarch reveals other characteristics of the Italian humanists.
In the letters which are excerpted here one gets an interesting blend of
arrogance and humility, both evidence of a most unmedieval self-consciousness,
what some have called the earliest forms of modern individualism. Note
his contempt for his own age and his reverence for Antiquity. The letters
to Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.), the great Roman orator who had been dead
1400 years, are justly famous. Cicero was known only from his philosophical
works during the Middle Ages. The rediscovery of his letters by Petrarch
and others revealed him as the politician that he really was, much to Petrarch's
dismay. And yet, Cicero's golden eloquence and his reasonable (though not
rationalistic) moral philosophy retained Petrarch's admiration and affection,
as it did most humanist's.
3) While Petrarch is usually considered the first of the new "Renaissance
men," or even of "modern men," he still retained a deeply Christian consciousness
(Augustine was his favorite author) and distaste for the dangers and attractions
of the active life. He would have made a good monk had he been able to
forgo the pleasures of life. By the end of the fourteenth century Humanism
was beginning to embrace the active life of politics and arms, though not
yet of commerce, and to become less Christian and more classical. It had
also coalesced around a program of studies that would dominate Western
education for centuries, and which has molded not only the core curriculum
of Villanova, but of Interdis as well.
4) The Italian Renaissance was an age of political intrigue and unrest
(witness Machiavelli) in which cities and dynasties competed for power
and reputation. Literature and the arts were some of the weapons in that
struggle for eminence. One of the great patrons of the era, Lorenzo De
Medici (1449-1492), the uncrowned ruler of the nominally republican Florence,
used wealth derived from the family bank to finance both the arts and the
political advancement of his own family. The apogee of his success occurred
when he succeeded in having his young son, Giovanni, named cardinal. Giovanni
would later ascend the papal throne as Leo X (papal reign 1513-1521) and
would inaugurate the golden era of the Renaissance in Rome. This letter
gives advice on behavior, political strategy, and the enduring loyalty
to the Medici family. It also reveals the offhanded way in which the upper
classes exploited the Church for wealth, power and advancement.
5) The Renaissance is more widely known in our day for its art rather
than its literature. It was an age not only of art, but of the artist.
Our modern notion of the artist as an inspired, if eccentric, genius has
its source in the period. Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Italian
Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) immortalizes men whom earlier
ages would have left in obscurity. This selection from the life of Leonardo
da Vinci (1452-1519) also reveals a change in the Renaissance in the early
decades of the 16th Century: a return to a more consciously Christian outlook.
Michelangelo (1475-1564) would be another example of the earnest piety
of Italian artists as the Reformation appeared North of the Alps.
6) In the time of Lorenzo, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, Italian Humanism
crossed the Alps and began to remake the intellectual culture of Northern
Europe. Here too the ancients are prized above their medieval successors.
What is interesting is that while the Italians could rightly claimed Roman
culture as their own tradition, someone like the french Francois Rabelais
(1494-1593) in making the same claim would have to condemn the medieval
french "gothic" culture. In any event, the "dark" Middle Ages has begun
its tenure in the collective memory of the West, including the textbooks
with which you were taught at earlier stages of your education.