Renaissance I
The six centuries between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and
the start of the Crusades may be seen as the time when the "barbarian"
states were catching up.
We may mark the start of the civilizing process in Western Europe with
king Henry I of England (reigned 1100-1135) who defined homicide to be
an offense against the state rather than an offense against only the victims
and their relatives [PNKR, p. 74]. Another important civilizing event
also happened in England when the king of England signed the Magna Carta
in 1215, a document that limited his own powers.
The first painter to break from the formal Byzantine style and start
the artistic Renaissance is Giotto (1266-1337) not much later than the
civilizing acts of the kings of England. What other historical events
happened in those centuries? One that comes foremost to mind are is the
sequence of the nine (or ten) Crusades that took place between 1095 and
1272.
Gibbon [EG, Chapter LXI, vol. 6, pp. 205-208] provides an interesting
evaluation of the crusades. He points out that the Latins were inferior
to both the Greeks and the Arabs in "knowledge, industry, and art"
but they had the advantage of an inquiring spirit and were able to learn
from the East. However, such improvements could have been achieved better
by trade than by war that resulted in large loss of lives. He goes on
to say that the major effect of the crusades was "not so much in
producing a benefit as in removing an evil." The crusades weakened
the oppressive European feudal structure. He writes "The estates
of the barons were dissipated ... Their poverty extorted from their pride
those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured
the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer ...". He concludes
the section with a metaphor: "The conflagration which destroyed the
tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation
of the small and nutritive plants of the soil." [ibid, p. 208].
Gibbon's interpretation provides food for thought and we can search for
parallels. One that comes to mind is the extinction of the dinosaurs by
the impact of a meteorite and the subsequent growth of the mammals. In
the post-crusade period the weakening of the warrior knights created new
powers in Italy that were searching for models to govern themselves and
they looked to ancient Rome ([MORR], p. 418). That started the Renaissance.
Northern Italy was broken up. The Pope liked the many small states; they
could not threaten his rule. Suddenly people were free (because of the
demise of the crusading knights). The new spirit, of course, spread throughout
north-western Europe.
“The odd thing about the Renaissance was that this apparently
reactionary struggle to re-create antiquity in fact produced a wildly
untraditional culture of invention and open-ended inquiry.” (ibid)
I am not sure about that observation. The return to the antiquity was
an excuse. People wanted to act outside the church dogma and the “return
to the classics” was a polite way of expressing it.
Big Events of the 1000-1400 period
- 722-1252 Reconquista: Expulsion of Moorish power from Spain.
(Granada held till 1492 but it was a small kingdom at the South of Spain.)
- 1391 Closure of Synagogues and pogrom in Seville.
- 1095-1291 Crusades
- 1200-1300 First Mongol Invasion (Genghis Khan). Affected only the Middle
East.
- 1309-1376 Avignon Papacy (conflict between French kings and the Pope)
- 1340-1360 Black Death Epidemic.
- 1360-1410 Second Mongol Invasion (Tamerlane)
- 1300-1500 Little Ice Age ([GGS] p. 424)
Notable People of the Period in Europe
- Giotto (1266 –1337) started the revolution in art, painting in a
natural way rather than the stylized Byzantine.
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Florence –Start of Renaissance?
Wrote Divine Comedy between 1308 and his death in 1321.
- Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca] (1304-1374) Florence. Coined
term “Dark Ages.” Discovered and translated Livy’s
“History of Rome.”
Outside Europe
Maimonides (1135-1204) Jewish scholar and physician. Active in Egypt.
The World was preparing for big things
Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve” depicts the scene
in those years. The central character is Poggio Bracciolini (early 1400’s),
a scribe, who used to be secretary of several popes. He devoted his free
time to search for ancient manuscripts. People were slowly breaking from
Church control. “Curiosity was said by the Church to be a mortal
sin” ([GRBL] p. 16) Also “debate on books was forbidden”
([GRBL p. 27).
Most of the old Greek and Latin works have been lost (though destruction
by Christians). Very few have survived and starting on the 12th century
people went looking for them. The term “Italian Renaissance”
usually refers to the 14th to 17th centuries (1300-1699). Greenblatt focuses
on the poem “De Rerum Natura” (The Nature of the Universe)
by the Roman poet Lucretius (lived around 100-50 BCE) recovered by Poggio
around 1417.
The poem presents the work of Epicurus to a Roman audience (cited approvingly
by Cicero). Epicurus (circa 300 BCE) was an atomic materialist, following
in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack
on superstition and divine intervention. Lucretius poem is the most comprehensive
presentation of Epicurean philosophy. The following is a summary of that
philosophy ([GRBL], pp. 185-202).
- Everything is made of invisible particles, atoms.
- The elementary particles of matter (atoms) are eternal.
- Atoms are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
- All atoms are in motion in an infinite void.
- The universe has no creator or designer.
- Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve (clinamen
in Latin). Atoms normally move in straight lines but at unpredictable
times and places deflect slightly from their course and that sets off
a chain of collisions that create the world.
- The swerve is the source of free will.
- Nature ceaselessly experiments.
- The universe was not created for or about humans.
- Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but
in a primitive battle for survival.
- There is no afterlife.
- Death is nothing to us. (Corollary of previous)
- All religions are superstitious delusions.
- Religions are invariably cruel.
- The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the
reduction of pain. (But beware of craving pointless luxuries.)
- The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion
- Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.
Although [GRBL] seems to overplay the effect of the Epicurean philosophy
to the development of the Renaissance, it was certainly a factor.
THE CHURCH REACTION TO THE RENAISSANCE
1481 First Auto da Fe in Seville – Birth of the Inquisition.
[GGS] |
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and
Steel, Norton, 1997-2005.
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[EG] |
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, first published in 1788.Note:
I use the 1978 reprint of the 1910 Everyman's Library (Dutton: New
York) unabridged edition with comments by Oliphant Smeaton.
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[GRBL] |
Stephen Greenblatt The Swerve:
How the World Became Modern, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. |
[MORR] |
Ian Morris Why the West Rules -
For Now, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010. Subtitled:
The Patterns of History and what they Reveal about the Future. |
[PNKR] |
Steven Pinker The Better Angels
of our Nature, Viking, 2011.
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