Chapter Notes

CHANGING CULTURAL TRADITIONS

From the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, Europe experienced significant cultural shifts. This period saw the growth of towns and the development of a distinct 'urban culture'. People in towns began to see themselves as more 'civilised' than people living in rural areas.

Key developments of this era include:

• Centers of Culture: Cities, especially Florence, Venice, and Rome in Italy, became vibrant hubs for art and learning, with artists and writers supported by wealthy and aristocratic patrons.
• The Printing Press: The invention of printing made books and prints widely available, spreading ideas to people in distant towns and countries.
• A New Sense of History: Europeans began to contrast their 'modern' world with the 'ancient' world of the Greeks and Romans.
• Shifting Beliefs: Religion was increasingly viewed as a personal choice. The Church's long-held belief that the Earth was the center of the universe was overturned by scientists. New geographical knowledge also challenged the idea that the Mediterranean was the center of the world.

In the nineteenth century, historians began using the term 'Renaissance' (which literally means 'rebirth') to describe these cultural changes. The Swiss scholar Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) was a key historian who focused on this period. In his 1860 book, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, he argued that history was about culture as much as politics. He described the emergence of a new 'humanist' culture, which was defined by a new belief that an individual was capable of making their own decisions and developing their skills. This 'modern' individual was seen as a contrast to the 'medieval' person, whose thinking had been controlled by the church.

The Revival of Italian Cities

After the Western Roman Empire collapsed, many of its former political and cultural centers in Italy fell into ruin. Italy was weak and fragmented, without a unified government.

However, several factors helped Italian culture to revive:

• Expansion of Trade: The growth of trade between the Byzantine Empire and Islamic countries revived the port cities on the Italian coast.
• Global Connections: From the twelfth century, the Mongols opened up trade with China along the Silk Route, and trade with Western European countries also increased. Italian towns played a central role in this commercial network.
• Independent City-States: As they grew in power, Italian towns began to see themselves as independent city-states rather than parts of a larger empire. Florence and Venice were notable as republics.

These cities were unique in Europe because clergy and powerful feudal lords were not politically dominant. Instead, wealthy merchants and bankers were actively involved in government, which helped the idea of citizenship take root.

The City-State

The government of Venice provides a clear example of how these city-states operated. As described by Cardinal Gasparo Contarini in the sixteenth century, the Venetian government was structured to maintain stability.

• Governing Council: The city's authority rested in a council open to all "gentlemen of the City" over the age of 25.
• Exclusion of Common People: The "common people" were deliberately excluded from this council because the city's ancestors believed that popular rule led to "troubles and popular tumults."
• Nobility over Wealth: The founders decided that participation in government should be based on "nobility of lineage" rather than wealth. This was done to prevent both rule by a small, super-wealthy elite and the instability of popular rule.

Universities and Humanism

The first universities in Europe were established in Italian towns. The universities of Padua and Bologna had been centers for legal studies since the eleventh century. Because trade was the main activity in these cities, there was high demand for lawyers and notaries to write and interpret contracts.

A significant change occurred when law began to be studied in the context of ancient Roman culture. Francesco Petrarch (1304-78) was a central figure in this shift. He believed that the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations could best be understood by reading the original works of their authors.

This new educational program led to a culture that nineteenth-century historians would label 'humanism'.

• Humanists: By the early fifteenth century, the term 'humanist' referred to masters who taught grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.
• Humanities: These subjects, derived from the Latin word humanitas (used by the Roman essayist Cicero to mean culture), were not connected to religion. They emphasized skills developed through discussion and debate.

This new way of thinking flourished in universities, especially in Florence. The city became a major intellectual center, known for figures like the writer Dante Alighieri and the artist Giotto, who painted lifelike portraits. The ideal of this era was the 'Renaissance Man', a term used to describe a person with many interests and skills, such as a scholar, diplomat, and artist all in one.

The Humanist View of History

Humanists believed they were restoring "true civilisation" after centuries of darkness. They argued that a 'dark age' had begun after the fall of the Roman Empire.

They divided history into three periods:

1. Ancient Times: The era of the Greeks and Romans.
2. The Middle Ages: The thousand-year period after the fall of Rome, which they saw as a time when the Church controlled everything and classical learning was forgotten.
3. The Modern Age: The period from the fifteenth century onwards.

Science and Philosophy: The Arabs' Contribution

While many Greek and Roman texts were known to monks during the Middle Ages, they were not widely circulated. In the fourteenth century, European scholars began reading translated works of Greek writers like Plato and Aristotle.

Crucially, they were indebted to Arab translators for this knowledge. Arab scholars had carefully preserved and translated ancient manuscripts into Arabic.

• For example, Plato was known as Aflatun and Aristotle as Aristu in Arabic.

This exchange of knowledge went both ways. Europeans read Greek works in Arabic, and Greek scholars translated Arabic and Persian works on science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry for other Europeans.

Important Muslim thinkers whose works were studied in Italy include:

• Ibn Sina ('Avicenna'), an Arab physician and philosopher.
• al-Razi ('Rhazes'), author of a medical encyclopedia.
• Ibn Rushd ('Averroes'), an Arab philosopher from Spain who tried to reconcile philosophical knowledge with religious beliefs.

Artists and Realism

Art, architecture, and books were powerful tools for spreading humanist ideas. The key artistic development of this period was 'realism'.

Artists were inspired by the art of ancient Rome, which they discovered in ruins. They admired the perfectly proportioned sculptures of men and women and sought to continue this tradition. In 1416, the sculptor Donatello (1386-1466) created incredibly lifelike statues.

This artistic quest for accuracy was supported by science:

• Anatomy: Artists studied bone structures in medical school laboratories to make their figures more realistic. Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) was the first to dissect the human body, which was the beginning of modern physiology.
• Geometry and Physics: Painters used geometry to understand perspective, making their paintings appear three-dimensional. They also studied how light changes to add depth to their work.
• New Mediums: The use of oil as a medium for painting allowed for a greater richness of colour.

A leading example of this fusion of art and science was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). His interests ranged from anatomy to mathematics, and he painted masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. The combination of science, technical skill, and a sense of beauty gave Italian art a new quality of realism that continued for centuries.

Architecture

In the fifteenth century, the city of Rome experienced a spectacular revival. Popes became more politically powerful and actively encouraged the study of Rome's history. Archaeologists began to carefully excavate the city's ruins, inspiring a new style in architecture.

This style was a revival of the imperial Roman style, now called 'classical' architecture. Popes, wealthy merchants, and aristocrats hired architects who were familiar with this classical style.

Many individuals were masters of multiple arts.

• Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was a painter (the Sistine Chapel ceiling), a sculptor (The Pieta), and an architect (the dome of St Peter's Church).
• Filippo Brunelleschi (1337-1446), the architect who designed the famous dome (Duomo) of Florence, began his career as a sculptor.

A major change during this time was that artists began to be known by name as individuals, not just as anonymous members of a guild.

The First Printed Books

While people had to travel to Italy to see its art and architecture, written ideas could travel much more easily thanks to the invention of printing.

Europeans were indebted to other cultures for this technology:

• Printing technology came from the Chinese.
• Europeans learned about it through contact with Mongol rulers.

In 1455, Johannnes Gutenberg (1400-1458), a German, used his printing press to produce 150 copies of the Bible. Previously, it would have taken a monk the same amount of time to hand-write a single copy.

The impact of printing was revolutionary:

• Availability: Books became widely available and affordable.
• Education: Students no longer had to rely solely on lecture notes.
• Spread of Ideas: Information and opinions could now move more widely and rapidly than ever before.
• Reading Habits: People could buy books for themselves, which helped develop a widespread reading habit.

A New Concept of Human Beings

A key feature of humanist culture was the loosening of religion's control over daily life. While Italians were not necessarily irreligious, they were strongly attracted to material wealth, power, and glory.

• The humanist Francesco Barbaro wrote a pamphlet defending the acquisition of wealth as a virtue.
• Lorenzo Valla criticized the Christian rule against pleasure.

Humanism also promoted the idea that individuals could shape their own lives. This belief in a many-sided human nature went against the strict feudal idea of society being divided into three separate orders (clergy, nobility, and peasantry).

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote about human nature in his book The Prince (1513). He had a cynical view, believing that "all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature" because human desires are insatiable. He argued that self-interest is the most powerful motive for every human action.

The Aspirations of Women

The new ideals of individuality and citizenship largely excluded women.

• Aristocratic Families: Men dominated public life and made all decisions. Women had no say in business, even if their dowries were invested in it. Marriages were often arranged to strengthen business alliances, and daughters without an adequate dowry were sent to convents.
• Merchant Families: The situation was slightly different for women in merchant families. Wives often helped run shops, and if their husbands were away, they would look after the business.

A few remarkable women were intellectually creative and advocated for humanist education.

• Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558) of Venice argued that "every woman ought to seek and embrace these studies," even if they offered no reward or dignity. She was known for her skill in Greek and Latin and criticized the republic for a definition of freedom that only favored men.
• Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), the Marchesa of Mantua, ruled the state while her husband was away and made her court famous for its intellectual brilliance.

These women argued that to achieve an identity in a male-dominated world, they needed economic power, property, and education. This stood in contrast to the view of writers like Balthasar Castiglione, who wrote in The Courtier (1528) that a woman should have a "soft and delicate tenderness" and "in no way resemble a man."

Debates within Christianity

As humanist ideas spread north from Italy, they began to influence members of the Church. Unlike in Italy, where professional scholars led the humanist movement, in northern Europe, many church members were attracted to humanism.

These Christian humanists, like Thomas More in England and Erasmus in Holland, called on Christians to practice a simpler form of religion based on ancient texts, discarding what they saw as unnecessary rituals.

They criticized the Church for several reasons:

• Greed: They felt the Church had become an institution focused on extorting money from ordinary people.
• Sale of 'Indulgences': They condemned the practice of selling documents that supposedly freed a buyer from the burden of their sins.
• Forgeries: Humanist scholars proved that the 'Donation of Constantine', a document the Church used to claim judicial and fiscal powers, was a forgery.

The invention of printing played a key role here. When the Bible was translated into local languages, people could read it for themselves and see that their religion did not permit such practices.

This discontent led to the Protestant Reformation.

• In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther (1483-1546) launched a campaign against the Catholic Church.
• Luther's core belief was that a person did not need priests to establish contact with God; faith alone was enough for salvation.
• His movement led to churches in Germany and Switzerland breaking away from the Pope and the Catholic Church. The ideas were popularized in Switzerland by Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Calvin.

Some reformers were even more radical. The Anabaptists argued that since God created all people as equal, they should not have to pay taxes and should have the right to choose their own priests.

In response to the Reformation, the Catholic Church began to reform itself from within. In Spain, Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1540 to combat Protestantism. Their mission was to serve the poor and expand their knowledge of other cultures.

The Copernican Revolution

The traditional Christian view of the universe was that the Earth was a sinful, immobile object at the center, with the celestial planets revolving around it. This idea was challenged by scientists.

The turning point came from Copernicus (1473-1543), a contemporary of Martin Luther.

• He asserted that the planets, including the Earth, rotate around the sun (a sun-centered system).
• As a devout Christian, Copernicus feared the reaction from the Church, so his manuscript, De revolutionibus (The Rotation), was only published on his deathbed.

His ideas were further developed and popularized by other astronomers:

• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) demonstrated that planets move in elliptical orbits, not perfect circles.
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) confirmed the idea of a dynamic, moving world in his work The Motion.

This revolution in science reached its peak with Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation.

Reading the Universe

The work of these scientists showed that knowledge could be based on observation and experiments, rather than just belief. This new approach to understanding man and nature became known as the Scientific Revolution.

As a result, some people began to see Nature, rather than God, as the source of creation. Even those who kept their faith began to think of a distant God who did not directly control the material world. These ideas were spread through scientific societies like the Paris Academy (established 1670) and the Royal Society in London (formed 1662), which held public lectures and experiments.

Was there a European 'Renaissance' in the Fourteenth Century?

Modern historians, such as Peter Burke of England, have re-examined the concept of the 'Renaissance'. They suggest that Jacob Burckhardt exaggerated the sharp difference between this period and the Middle Ages.

The main arguments against a sharp break are:

• Continuity with the Past: Scholars in the Middle Ages were already familiar with Greek and Roman cultures, so it wasn't a complete 'rebirth'.
• Importance of Religion: Religion continued to be a very important part of people's lives; it was not replaced by a pre-Christian worldview.
• Non-European Influences: The cultural changes in Europe were not shaped only by Greece and Rome. Europeans learned a great deal from India, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia, and China in areas like technology and navigation. These debts were often not acknowledged in Europe-centered histories.

However, two important changes did occur during this period:

1. Private vs. Public Life: The 'private' sphere (family and personal religion) became more separate from the 'public' sphere (government and formal religion). An individual was now seen not just as a member of a social order, but as a person in their own right.
2. Regional Identities: Different regions of Europe began to develop separate identities based on language. Europe, once unified by the Roman Empire and later by Latin and Christianity, began dissolving into states united by common languages.