Renaissance Transition: The Birth of Modernity and Cultural Revolution

1. From Classical to Contemporary HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2015 Dr. Perdigao January 14-16, 2015

2. Some Contexts 1337-1453 Hundred Years’ War between France and England 1348-1350 The Black Death 1428 Joan of Arc is burned at the stake for heresy after liberating Orléans from the British 1473 Printing comes to Spain 1492 Columbus discovers America 1503 Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa 1512 Michelangelo completes the Sistine Chapel ceiling • Luther’s Ninety-five Theses denounces abuses of the Roman Catholic Church 1519 Charles I of Spain becomes Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V 1521 Luther is excommunicated 1532 Machiavelli’s The Prince (written in 1513) 1535 Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia (English translation in 1551), is executed for treason by Henry VIII 1580 Montaigne’s Essays (books 1 and 2) 1588 Montaigne’s Essays (complete publication) 1597-1605 Cervantes’ Don Quixote: part 1 published in 1605; part 2 in 1615 1600 Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1611 King James’ Bible published 1641 Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy 1655? Milton’s Paradise Lost:published in 1667 1655 Velázquez’s Las Meninas

3. Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (The Maids in Waiting) (1656) http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/artist/las_meninas.html http://www.evl.uic.edu/chris/meninas/ http://mediastudiesendicott.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/velazquez-las-meninas1.jpg

4. Shifts in Science, Faith Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543): Theorizes that the earth moves around the sun Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): Repudiates Copernicus’ theory at 1633 Inquisition Christopher Columbus (1451-1506): Discovers that the earth is round Center on religion but turn from Dante’s world order: As the geometer who tries so hard to square the circle, but cannot discover, think as he may, the principle involved, so did I strive with this new mystery: I yearned to know how could our image fit into that circle, how could it conform; but my own wings could not take me so high— then a great flash of understanding struck my mind, and suddenly its wish was granted. At this point power failed high fantasy but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning, I felt my will and my desire impelled by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. (Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, 1597) Uncertainty of time; questions of self, world Renaissance melancholy: sense of void experienced because of a “loss of firm belief in the final unity and the final intelligibility of the universe” (Puchner 2032)

5. Defining the Period • “Thus while on one, and perhaps the better-known, side of the picture, human intellect in Renaissance literature enthusiastically illuminates the realms of knowledge and unveils the mysteries of the universe, on the other it is beset by puzzling doubts and a profound mistrust of its own powers” (Puchner 2033). • Renaissance: rebirth • Renaissance as cultural movement and a period (Perry 293) • Time of revolutionary change in Renaissance Europe (Puchner 2024) • Shift from Middle Ages: commerce and industry expands, capitalism develops; central government replaces feudalism; rise of Protestantism and fragmentation of Christendom; shift from theology to science, from revelation to reason (Perry 293) • Return to classical Greece and Rome, from 1350-1600 (restricted to Italy until late fifteenth century, spreading to Germany, France, England, and Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)

6. Defining the Period • Renaissance movement in Italy in visual arts, in England, literature, particularly drama (Puchner 2031) • Term Renaissance coined by humanist scholars, seeing their moment as breaking through the darkness of the Middle Ages (Puchner 2030-2031) • Question if the Renaissance is a continuation of the Middle Ages or a point of departure and shift toward the modern world (Perry 293-294) • As age of transition • “Birth of modernity—in art, in the idea of the individual’s role in history and nature, and in society, politics, war, and diplomacy” (Perry 311), giving rise to the “cult of the individual” (Perry 313) • Struggle, like with the ancients, between tradition and modernization, what to retain and what to alter—as story of evolving civilizations • Doubts about the value of human action but, with the printing press, dissemination of ideas about the ideal prince, courtier, councilor, and humble subject as well as the ideal court and society (Lawall 1890)

7. Shifting Centers • City-states in northern Italy spawned the Renaissance • Shift in power within city-states no longer dominated by feudal nobility or landed aristocracy; struggle for power with merchants and artisans (Perry 295) • Internal conflicts between merchants and nobles and external rivalries among city-states lead to unstable governments (Perry 295) • Leads to experimental forms of government during the period (and beginnings of political philosophy, i.e., Machiavelli, Montaigne) • Republicanism (1300-1450); Despotism (1450-1550) • Although Florence retains republican ideas and practice, rise of Medici family changes its structure; Venice is the only city-state to maintain republicanism until advent of Napoleon (Perry 297)

8. Evolving Systems • Old feudal chivalric code transformed to suit new purposes (Perry 298) • Urban, commercial oligarchies become the new model but retain some aspects of the feudal codes • Shift from birth as basis of merit system to effort, talent, creative genius (Perry 298); honor shifts from warrior code of ancients to include citizen, creative genius; ideal as meritocracy (Perry 313) • Nouveaux riches—new form of elitism • Art—political function: civic pride, patriotism, power (Perry 299); benefactors, investment; development of portraiture as genre • Secularism, individualism

9. Revising Education • Humanism—return to the classics, study of ancient Greek and Roman literature, return to study of Greek; key figures Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375) as “fathers of humanism” (Perry 301) • “Humanist educational ideal” included a “radical transformation of the medieval (Augustinian) view of humanity” (Perry 300) rather than divine will, return to Greek notion of arêté • Mastery of nature as desired end—powerful Renaissance image of man as magus (magician); Scientific Revolution begins with Italian humanists (Perry 300) • Roles of women altered, questioned during the period • Civic humanism (to better serve the state) develops, to support republican values and cause; founding of schools and colleges—humanistic education • Shifts to “ideal of princely rule,” pursuit of virtue and honor in humanist education, aimed at princes and courtiers rather than citizens—leads to “advice books” on best means to that end, not republic but hereditary monarchy (Perry 302)

10. Book Learning • Printing press invented in mid-fifteenth century with Johann Gutenberg’s (c. 1398-1468) movable type in 1445 (Perry 308) • Book-publishing industry develops, from beginnings with religious texts: Bibles, sermons, prayer books then shift to secular works (fifteen or twenty million published by 1500, 150 million more in the next century) (Perry 208) • Rise in literacy as a result with publishing in vernacular—standardizes written language and helps to develop national literatures, leads to flourishing of critical scholarship (Perry 308) • On other side, censorship emerges; Index of Prohibited Books established in the mid-sixteenth century (Perry 308)