Transcript D - ap . european . history

Renaissance
1350 - 1550
Renaissance
Jacob Burckhardt
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Middle Ages (Medieval)
Vasari’s The Lives of the Artist 1550
Dark Ages
Petrarch 1330s
1858
But Italians knew something was up.
“Now may every reflecting spirit thank God he
has chosen to live in this new age, so full of
hope and promise, which already basks in a
greater number of nobly-gifted souls than the
world has seen in the thousand years before.”
Matteo Palmieri, On the Civil Life, 1435
OK, so what IS the Renaissance?
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Movement of elites in Italy
Movement of artists and thinkers
1350-ish to 1550-ish
Rejection of SOME elements of the Medieval
outlook
• Revival of classical forms
• Emergence of distinctly modern attitudes
Beginning of the Modern World!!
Changes on every level of European Society
Economic: Revival of Commerce / Capitalism
Political: Strengthening of Central Governments
Religious: Shattering of Christian unity
Intellectual: a new secular focus
New Renaissance Values
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SECULAR
INDIVIDUALISTIC
RATIONAL
HUMANISM
vs
Religious
vs
Group
vs
Traditional
• Study the classics
vs
Scholasticism
• Dignity of Man (humanism)
Humanism
technical definition
• Medieval scholasticism: emphasized practical studies.
(doctors, lawyers, theologians)
• Humanists rejected utilitarian education.
• create a citizenry able to speak and write eloquently
capable of engaging in the civic life.
• study of the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry
and moral philosophy.
• program to revive the legacy and philosophy of classical
antiquity.
• Laymen’s def: reject medieval learning in favor of the greeks.
Francesco Petrarca
PETRARCH
1304 - 1374
The Father of Humanism
“After the darkness has
been dispelled, our grandsons will be able to walk
back into the pure radiance
of the past.”
PETRARCH
1304 - 1374
The Father of Humanism
Each famous author of antiquity
whom I recover places a new
offence and another cause of
dishonor to the indictment against
earlier [medieval] generations,
PETRARCH
1304 - 1374
The Father of Humanism
earlier [medieval] generations,
who, not satisfied with their own
disgraceful barrenness, permitted
the fruit of other [Greek] men’s
minds , and the writings that their
[Greek] ancestors had produced
by toil, to parish through
insufferable neglect.
PETRARCH
1304 - 1374
The Father of Humanism
Although they had nothing of
their own to hand down to
those of us who were to come
after, they robbed posterity of
its ancestral heritage.
The OTHER
(Less technical / More Casual)
Definition of
HUMANISM
Humanism
Common / Broader Definition
DIGNITY OF MAN!!!
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
He [God] therefore took
man as a creature of
indeterminate nature, and
assigning him a place in
the middle of the world,
addressed him thus:
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
“Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine
alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have
we given thee, Adam, to the end that according
to thy longing and according to thy judgment
thou mayest have and possess what abode ,
what form, and what functions thou thyself
shalt desire.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
The Nature of all other beings is limited and
constrained within the bounds of laws
prescribed by Us. Thou, constrained by no
limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in
whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain
for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set
thee at the world’s center that thou mayest
from thence more easily observe whatever is in
the world.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
We have made thee neither of heaven nor of
earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with
freedom of choice and with honor, as though
the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest
fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt
prefer.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into
the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou
shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment,
to be reborn into the higher forms, which are
divine.”
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
“O supreme generosity of God the Father, O
highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To
him it is granted to have whatever he chooses,
to be whatever he wills. Beasts as soon as they
are born bring forth from their mother’s womb
all they will ever possess. Spiritual beings,
either from the beginning or soon thereafter,
become what they are to be for ever and ever.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
On man when he came into life the Father
conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of
every way of life. Whatever seeds each man
cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him
their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be
like a plant. If sensitive [emotional], he will
become brutish.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
If rational, he will grow into a heavenly
being. If intellectual, he will be an angel
and the son of God.
Hmmmm . . . .
Pico
Renaissance
vs
St. Benedict
Medieval
Pico
vs
St. Benedict
I’m a chameleon!
Who then will not look
with awe upon this our
chameleon,
or who, at least, will look
with greater admiration on
any other being?
Warning
“The difference between the
Renaissance and the Middle Ages was
not a difference by addition but by
subtraction. The Renaissance … was
not the Middle Ages plus Man, but the
Middle Ages minus God.”
Etienne Gilson,
Catholic Philosopher (1937)
“The Renaissance is the real cradle of
that very un-Christian concept: the
autonomous individual.” Reinhold Niebuhr
Protestant philosopher (1941)
“Unfortunately, however, the Renaissance began
to assert man’s self-sufficiency, and to make a
rift between him and the eternal truths of
Christianity… Here we have the fountain-head of
the tragedy of modern history … God became
the enemy of Man, and Man the enemy of God.”
Nicholas Berdyaev
Russian Orthodox
(1931)
New Renaissance Values
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vs
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Religious
Group
Traditional
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vs
Scholasticism
HOW does the art
of the Renaissance reflect the values
of the Renaissance era?
Secular -ism
Rational -ism
Individual -ism
Humanism
Dignity of Man