THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance: A Time of Transition
Though there was no specific event to mark the end of the middle ages and the on-set of the modern era, the 1400s seem to be the all-important transition time.
This period of transition into modernity, known as the "renaissance," was centered on Italy, especially the cities of Florence, Milan, Rome and Venice--but was carried into Northern Europe through commerce and by scholars who studied in Italy and took its learning northward to Paris, London, Bruges, Antwerp.

A Shifting Sense of History
The 1400s mark both a definite continuity with the long development of Western Christian culture and yet at the same time a strong departure from many of the ways the Christian community had understood the cosmos around it. The Christian mind had long (a thousand years) seen the sweep of history in a profoundly dualistic fashion: there were the times before Christ and the times since then. Every thing before that even had meaning for them only as preparation for this grand event. Everything since that event was measured in terms of how it gave fulfillment to God's plan of salvation for human life.
Christians traditionally had been certainly mindful of the importance of Rome. It seemed to them to be no mere coincidence that Rome reached its greatness (presumably in the reign of Augustus) at about the time Christ was born. To the Christian mind, this was God's way of preparing the civilized world physically to receive the gospel. They were aware of many of the unique features of Roman thought--but either they dismissed that thought as a carryover from darker days--or as metaphor, pointing to and confirming the gospel message. Thus they read Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Livy with a profoundly Christian interpretation of the meaning of their works. So also did they understand Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

But by the 1400s, without dismissing their Christian loyalties or pieties, the Renaissance mind was looking back on the days of Greece and Rome through a new set of eyes. There had been growing, since the early 1300s (perhaps even earlier) a fascination with Roman ways in themselves, without having to go through some kind of Christian interpretation. This was timed with the reaction against scholasticism as an arid, intellectually arrogant ambition of the human reason to bring all things under systematic theological mastery. This was timed with a desire to explore more deeply the "humane" features of human life: the simple passions, the loyalties, the love that connected human life with God and Christ--and with the rest of the human community. Things came to be of interest in themselves to the enquiring European mind as it moved through the 1300s and entered the 1400s. They came to be of interest not because they conformed to some great intellectual system but because they gave life to human existence. Thus did they now approach Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Livy--not to further undergird a well-rehearsed medieval world-view, but to listen to them speak out of their own times, as fellow humans trying to find in life the same deeper qualities of human existence.

Having discovered this wealth of ancient human testimony and being deeply touched by the profunidty of its spirit--pagan it might be (certainly was!)--they began to detach themselves all the more from the "darker" Christian mood of the centuries that stood between themselves and that "golden age" 1000 years earlier. They saw history now not as some form of single Christian continuum, but as time in which the once greatness of Roman civilization was lost and was now, a thousand years later, being rediscovered.

The Development of the Renaissance Mind
We need to make note at this point that who we are talking about in reality composed only a tiny minority of the people of those days. By and large the mass of the Europeans living in those times probably retained the older medieval world-view. When we are talking about the "Renaissance mind" we are describing a small group of wealthy and powerful businessmen, an equally small number of intellectuals, both secular and religious, and a small, curious group of adventurers. However, though small in number, they were very powerful in terms of shaping the events of their day. In any case, it is to them that we look when we describe the Renaissance mind.
Though these individuals remained Christian to the core, they began to take a dimmer view of the way that their faith had been mediated by the Church during a 1000-year "dark ages." They instead sought to validate their Christian faith on the basis of personal loyalties and personal virtue. These people were doers--who used their minds in service to the needs of the family and local community--the "patria" as they understood it. They were not contemplatives; monastic life was not for them a Christian ideal. They were not knights living to honor the code of chivalry; that was much to abstract a notion for them. They were practical, "earthy" in their interests, and sought to use their considerable worldly talents for the common good. This was their understanding of their Christian responsibilities, their accountability before God.

In Literature
In their "earthiness" they were an incredibly curious lot. They of course studied all the classic works they could get their hands on. They already knew Latin; they now took on Greek and even Hebrew. They wanted to go back to the "sources" themselves of the intellectual foundations of their world. They took in the works of the early church fathers--more authoritative for them because they were closer to the original events of Christ. But they also became quite as familiar with the wide range of "pagan" works of Greece and Rome. The idea was that if it came out of that older age, it was truer, purer. Indeed, some of them became literary scholars of the first order--such as Lorenzo Valla, who studied the linguistic structure of the ancients--and was able to demonstrate that the "Donation of Constantine," by which the popes claimed vast temporal powers received from the Emperor Constantine (early 300s), was actually a much later document employing a much later Latin more characteristic of the Middle Ages--when it was probably written!
In the Arts
Finally, this spirit of "earthiness" was well reflected in the development of the arts. Art reached beyond traditional religious themes to reflect this interest in the individual--and the passions of the living person. Architecture was called up not only to build churches, but also trade halls and private homes. Poetry began to reflect not only on religious themes but on subjects of human love and passion.
In Exploration
This spirit of earthiness took on other aspects. This was the "Age of Exploration"--a term we use in reference to the beginning of the exploration of the Seas and continents around Europe by a wide variety of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish explorers--professional adventurers really. In the early-mid 1400s, Prince Henry of Portugual was sending out numbers of sailors to explore the African coast in search of a southern route around Africa to the East. By the end of the 1400s and the early 1500s the seas were full of the exploits of such explorers as Diaz, Columbus, da Gama, Cabral, Magellan, etc--and their royal patrons who financed these ventures.
In Princely Politics
But it also included a number of princes or secular-military rulers with quite large views of themselves, who were coming alive to the possibility of undergirding and extending their personal political rule through very worldly means, including crude violence if necessary. The rather cynical political writer of the late Renaissance, Machiavelli, did not invent this mindset--he merely described it and its operation in his classic work, The Prince.
In the Church
Interestingly, the Church chose to join the action. Certainly there were those who objected to the church taking up such a worldly manner. But by and large the view of the church--notably of its popes, who during the 1400s could be very worldly fellows--was that intellectual revolution and political intrigue were things to be pursued. Thus the church was as active a player in the Renaissance game as were the newly emerging princes and kings.

The Development of Commerce and Industry
As is typical in human history, this time of great intellectual growth was built solidly on the rapid growth of wealth, fueled by new industrial and commercial technologies.
Plunder of the Muslim Middle East by "crusading" Christian armies from the West no doubt got this growth started--all the way back in the 1100s. But with the revival of Muslim power in the 1200s and the contraction and then destruction of the Western position in the Middle East in the 1300s this growth might have come to an abrupt halt. However, the Muslims found it profitable to allow Westerners to continue to come as peaceful pilgrims to the Holy Lands of the East--and even to trade with them in Western goods (wood, metals, fish and grains) in exchange for Eastern goods (spices, silks, various fineries).

The Muslim traders grew prosperous off this trade. But so did their European counterparts, especially in the commercial cities of Italy (Venice, Florence, Genoa) and Northern Europe (Antwerp, London, Paris, Hamburg). Particularly notable in the development of the new commercial classes was the Medici family of Florence, Italy. The two giants of the family, Cosimo and Lorenzo de Medici, became not only fabulously wealthy, but also major underwriters of the artistic/intellectual development of Renaissance Italy.

Technological Development
This commerce in European goods called forth industrial growth--and industrial growth called forth new technologies. The number of inventions from newly emerging European inventive minds was phenomenal. But a few stand out not only because they added so much to industrial development--but because they came to have also such a profound impact on the European mind-set or spirit.
The clock, with its carefully interworked systems of gears and wheels, seemed to serve as a symbol of the new sense of order which underpinned the whole universe--an order which existed by its own right. Likewise the compass gave the traveler, especially the new bold class of seafarers, as sense that life had key foundation points--which man of his own could fathom and use for himself.

But there is no question that the one technological development that most revolutionized the times was the invention of the printing press. In around 1450 Johannes Gutenberg introduced the new printing process (moveable type) which revolutionized the production of written material--and the process of learning and the status of religion. One of the first impacts of the new printing process was the wide publication of the Vulgate bible, and the appearance of new translations of the Bible into the common languages of the people: German (1446), Italian (1471), Dutch (1477) Spanish (1478--but subsequently suppressed), French (1487), Czech (1488). [Manuscript copies of portions of the Wycliff Bible also were circulated widely--though not in printed form until the Reformation in the next century.]

Reaching Beyond Christianity
During the 1400s the intellectual ferment in the West--especially in Italy--became profound. But this ferment was no longer limited to theology and matters of religious interest. It included a huge curiosity about the human spirit--here and now--and the natural human habitat which surrounded it.
Interestingly, the renaissance involved a Platonist revival as a reaction to (Aristotelian) scholasticism. By the end of the 1300s the study of Plato was undergoing a revival.

But this Plato was not the traditional variety, distilled and transmitted through ancient Christian commentary. It was the full and direct Greek variety--inspired by new Greek translations which made Plato's original works directly accessible. In Plato they discovered the love of beauty, even the concept of the erotic, as a virtue alongside ethics and logic.

In keeping with this new spirit, the Academy of Florence was founded in the second half of the 1400s by the financial support of Cosimo de Medici. It involved a very distinct Neo-Platonist departure from the scholastic universities.

But this new learning did not stop at the boundaries of classic Western thought. Even ancient (often non-Western) philosophy, religion and mysticism began to come under study: ancient Egyptian and Babylonian religions, Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean mysticism, the mysticism of the Jewish Cabala. Even pagan astrology (which had never been far below the surface of Medieval thought) was openly revived--along with interest in the Greek and Roman pagan deities. All of these were approached in the spirit of discovery of a God operating on a more universal plane than the limited field of traditional Christian thought. Pantheism, even polytheism, was spreading rapidly.

Italian Humanism
At the same time that the field of inquiry was expanding outward into the world, it was expanding inward into the private human soul--especially in Italy, which took the lead in the development of this mood in the early 1400s.
The human soul was seen as reflective of the grandeur of a cosmic God--mirroring God's nature and intelligence. Man was endowed with power to bring to actuality the perfection of the divine Forms of Plato. The doctrine of original sin was quietly being put aside.

Northern European Humanism
In the latter half of the 1400s and into the 1500s, humanism spread to the intelligentsia north of the Alps, although there it remained a Christian humanism. Medieval scholasticism was put aside and focus was turned to the powers of the individual to know God through a private spiritual life, and through study of the original Greek and Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the early Church Fathers. Germany, France, England and Belgium produced their own humanist geniuses: Reuchlin, Lefevre, More and Erasmus, respectively.
The Artistic Expression of This New Spirit
In keeping with the spirit of the times, art reached beyond traditional religious themes to reflect this interest in the individual--and the passions of the living person. The human figure was represented with physical accuracy, complete with deep human expression--rather than in accordance with to traditional formulas of religious iconography. Portrait painting and sculpture of the wealthy and powerful became common. Paintings of the common life of the European townsmen and peasants also began to proliferate. And of course the fascination with the pre-Christian world of pagan Greece and Rome received artistic attention.
Architecture was called upon not only to build churches, but also trade halls and private homes.

Poetry was now reaching well beyond religious themes into the areas of human love and passion.

Spirits were freeing up and searching ever more widely for objects of artistic interest.

The names of the artists who stood behind such new ways are almost innumerable. But certainly Leonardo da Vinci, Michangelo, Pieter Bruegel stand out as giants of their times.

A new ethic attached itself to the expansive spirit of the times: power became justified as an end in itself or at least became justified in service of secular political interests rather than in service to God alone. And these secular political interests focused closely on the development of new political structures that could offer security and support for the expansion of the new secular realm.

The French Monarchy
In France, success (under Joan of Arc) in ridding the land of English influence in the mid 1400s stirred a new sense of Gallic pride. This played into the hands of French kings Louis XI (1461-1483) and Charles VIII (1483-1498), who strengthened royal power greatly.
For More on Joan of Arc

In the first half of the 1500s Louis XII (1498-1515) and Francis I (1515-1547)--especially the latter--promoted royal power even more.

With the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, the Popes essentially assigned to the French kings control over all church appointments and powers in France--in return for financial support for the rebuilding of the Papal position in Italy.

The English Monarchy
In England the loss of the Hundred Years War to France was followed immediately by another disaster, the War of the Roses (1455-1485), which essentially bled the country dry of baronial power. But these misfortunes nicely created the physical and emotional preconditions for the rise of a purely English national monarchy. Henry VII (1485-1509) took advantage of the situation to establish the Tudor dynasty in England. His son, Henry VIII (1509-1547) enhanced royal authority even more--making it virtually unchallenged in the land.
The Spanish Monarchy
In Spain, the new wealth pouring into the Iberian peninsula from the Americas gave Ferdinand (1479-1516) and Isabella (1474-1504), rulers of Aragon and Castile respectively, a firm grip over the country. Further, this new economic power served to enhance the political instincts of the monarchs to act as the "protectors" of Christianity, including even the papacy (which fell heavily under Spanish influence during the latter part of their rule), by restoring the Spanish Inquisition (1478)--to stamp out Islam, Judaism and "unorthodox" Christianity in Spain. This Inquisitional zeal also served nicely to concentrate royal power in Spain even further. Indeed, under their grandson, Charles I (or, within the context of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V), who ruled 1519-1556, Spanish royal power threatened to overwhelm all of Europe.
The German Principalities
In Germany, secular power did not centralize around the emperor, who retained a rather weak hold over the land, but centered itself on a number of local kings, princes and bishops. Imperial cities, on the other hand, jealously preserved their independence from these local lords--at the same time remaining quite independent of direct imperial rule. Germany as a result remained very disunited at a time when the rest of Europe was coming under rapidly increasing royal patronage.
Further, lacking a national monarchy, Germany remained heavily under the influence of a church principally oriented toward Rome--with all of its corruption.

Likewise, in Germany local princes and kings seemed to be more predators than protectors of the peasantry, which had become enserfed after the Black Death. Having no national champion to help them against the arbitrariness of the local princes and kings, the peasants lived with a spirit of rebelliousness in their hearts.

The Italian Political Spirit
One of the key expression of this mood was contained in the writings of Machiavelli, who pleaded for some kind of political authority to step forward and, by whatever means possible (even treachery), give political expression to this nationalist urge--in Machiavelli's case, an Italian urge. But Italy was the one geographical area that would be refused such a development. The political interests were too varied and oppositional and the interests of powerful outsiders were lined up against the development of a true Italian national political unit. Not for several more centuries would Italy see its nationalist hope finally come true.

The church was finding itself hard-pressed to maintain its traditional place of authority within the European cultural sphere. It tried to resist its loss of status--but found that circumstances were making it increasingly difficult to hold its own.

For instance, the translation of the Bible from Latin into the languages of the people gave them the power to discern for themselves the word of God. Through the rapid growth of literacy that accompanied the growth in Bible and other book publication this development became quite extensive. Thus the church became very alarmed by the publication of the Bible--more alarmed that it was over the publication of pagan Roman and Greek literature--protesting that this wide dissemination of the Bible would cause the emergence of wrong interpretations and subsequently the spread of new heresies. The church well understood that it was thus rapidly losing its monopoly on learning and authoritative knowledge.

Also, with the rise of the secular, humanist spirit, especially in Italy, religion was becoming seen more and more as a matter of internal religious disposition of the individual, and less and less as a matter of the sacraments, teachings and traditions dispensed by the church.

Yet interestingly, many of the church leaders themselves chose to join in with the spirit of the times. Certainly there were those clergy who objected. But by and large the view of the church--notably of its popes, who during the 1400s could be very worldly fellows--was that this intellectual revolution was something to be pursued. Thus the church was as active a sponsor in this matter.

Indeed, the worldliness of the church was becoming a well-recognized feature. The Roman hierarchy was viewed widely as being venal and corrupt--as secular politics rather than spirituality preoccupied the popes of the 1400s. The dreams and schemes of the Roman church became more grandiose, overstepping even the wealth of Italy, and beginning to drain the wealth of the church north of the Alps. And the personal conduct within the highest offices of the church, including the papacy itself, was at times scandalous.

Discontent against the Roman church thus began to spread in the North of Europe by the end of the 1400s. Led especially by a number of northern humanists, many Europeans began to demand reform the church, not only in its ethical behavior but also in its very lines and features as an institution. Reform-minded individuals were beginning to demand that the church should drop its medieval trappings and purify itself along the lines of the early church described in scripture.