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genius and erudition. Of letters and liberal studies it would be better to be silent altogether. For these, the real guides to distinction in all the arts, the
solid foundation of all civilization, have been lo~t to mankind for 800 years and more. It is but in our own day that men dare to boast that they see the
dawn of better things. For example, we owe it to our Leonardo Bruni that Latin, so long a byword for its uncouthness, has begun to shine forth in its
ancient purity, its beauty, its majestic rhythm. Now indeed may every thoughtful spirit thank God that it has been permitted to him to be born in this new
age so full of hope and promise, which already rejoices in a greater array of nobly gifted souls than the world has seen in the thousand years that have
preceded it.
D. Far to the north, in France, François Rabelias agreed:  Out of the thick gothic night our eyes were awakened to the glorious light of the sun.
E. Such views tell us a lot about the men who held them but not necessarily much at all about history.
F. Erwin Panofsky, the great art historian, said that in the fourteenth century, people  looked back as from a fixed point in time.
G. The word rinascità was first used by Giorgio Vasari in the middle of the sixteenth century in his history of painters.
H. The very word Renaissance has had somewhat varied fortunes.
1. Protestant reformers applauded Renaissance attacks on the Catholic Church but disliked what they saw as hedonism and rationalism.
2. In the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, there was a tendency to draw lines too sharply between  medieval superstition and  Renaissance
rationalism.
3. For the Romantics, there was an aesthetic appreciation of Renaissance art but also a certain regret at the perceived rationalism that supposedly
suppressed the natural man.
The fist great modern attempt to capture a sense of the era came with Jacob Burckhardt s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860).
IL It has not been much easier to say just what issues come under the heading  Renaissance. Usually, Renaissance is associated with humanism, but this term
can mean several things:
A. Love and concern for human beings, as in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola s Oration on the Dignity of Man.
B. A preoccupation with this world and its concerns, as in Niccolj3 Machiavelli s The Prince.
C. A devotion to the humane disciplines the liberal arts but not, presumably, theology.
D. A particular fascination with the literary culture of classical antiquity.
E. Civic humanism, either as  boosterism or as republicanism.
III. Why did the Renaissance begin in Italy? Italy had been economically precocious in the Middle Ages, but otherwise, major developments occurred in the
north.
A. One might have expected France to take the lead because it had been culturally dominant since the twelfth century.
B. There was a higher level of literacy and lay education in Italy.
C. Italians felt themselves more directly the heirs of the Romans than anyone else could or did.
D. There was greater wealth in Italy that provided for patronage and leisure to enjoy the arts.
E. Italian society was less bound to feudal and chivalric values than the north. One might compare Chaucer s Canterbury Tales with Boccaccio s
Decameron.
IV. Given that it began in Italy, how and why did the Renaissance spread?
A. Italians traveled in the north: They searched for manuscripts and sometimes hired out as teachers and courtiers.
B. Northerners traveled in Italy. By the late fifteenth century, scholars commonly made tours of Italy and, with the sixteenth century, painters began to
follow.
C. The development of printing made it possible for ideas to circulate much more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently than ever before.
D. The Renaissance began as an urban, a communal, phenomenon but quickly became princely and courtly. Renaissance culture became fashionable.
Civilité, defined in largely Italian terms, became prestigious.
V. Allowing for some correction at the edges, we can apply a rough chronology to the Renaissance.
A. Down to about 1370, we see individual geniuses but little that ties them together, little that looks like a movement.
B. Down to l470s, we have a Florentine period: Great things were done by Florentines and by outsiders resident in Florence.
C. Beginning in about the l450s, we can speak of the  reception of the Renaissance in Rome, Milan, and Venice; after 1500, the Renaissance crossed the
Alps and the movement became more decidedly courtly.
Essential Reading:
Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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