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THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The sixteenth century in England was the age of the Tudor sovereigns:
three generations of Tudors ruled England between 1485 and 1603
(Henry VII – Henry VIII – Elizabeth I)
THE WARS OF THE ROSES
A dynastic strife that had raged for more than thirty years
between the two houses of York and Lancaster.
Lancastrians
John of Gaunt
(Edward III’s third son)
Duke of Lancaster
Yorkists
Edmund of Langley
(Edward III’s fourth son)
Duke of York
WARWICK CASTLE
Feudal order decline
After the Wars of the Roses England needed stability and order: they were both found in
Henry VII’s internal policy.
The barons, reduced, impoverished and divided by the dynastic wars, could not effectively
oppose the power of the Crown: the feudal order declined and a new order was established
on the nation with a much stronger central authority.
Henry VII confiscated the lands of the barons who had been killed during the Wars of the
Roses and allied with new economical forces: urban middle classes and the gentry.
The introduction of firearms made both armoured knights and bowmen obsolete.
HENRY VII – 1485 1509
He made the monarchy supreme.
He allied with new emerging forces: the urban middle classes and the
country gentry.
He avoided war because too expensive; he summoned parliament only
six times and only to pass law against nobility.
He made England’s trading position stronger by means of dynastic
marriages (which will have important historical consequences):
with Spain: his eldest son, Arthur, married Catherine of Aragon;
with Scotland: one of his daughters married James IV Stuart.
The growth of trade
Henry VII made commercial treaties with European countries.
England, which had always been a sheep-raising country, was
now manufacturing and exporting significant amount of good
cloth:
textile manufacturing improved by the introduction of the loom (a
family-run activity), and at the same time lands were enclosed to
permit grazing on a larger scale.
He wanted a merchant fleet.
London grew into a metropolitan market.
The discovery of new lands.
The circumnavigation of the globe.
The English were not pioneers in the exploration of the Western hemisphere, but those
explorations affected their place in the world: the discovery of America shifted the
centre of interest towards the West, and in the next century English sailors would
become great colonizers and merchant adventurers.
Maritime power had began.
Copernican theory and the achievements of Galileo Galilei.
The old order of ideas was seriously weakened.
The Elizabethans were obsessed with the fear of chaos,
which meant the cosmic anarchy before creation.
Elizabethan culture was fascinated by the occult (following Theophrast Paracelsus):
magic meant control of the natural world by enchanting or taming it like an animal.
The witch hunt was still carried on.
Copernicus' epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres),
published just before his death in 1543, is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy
His heliocentric model, with the Sun at the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations,
often referred to as the Copernican Revolution.
Literacy increased during the fifteenth century:
many more people could read than in Geoffrey Chaucer’s time (an estimated 60% of the population by 1530).
New schools were founded.
Printing, which was introduced by William Caxton around 1467,
made books cheaper, more plentiful, and provided more opportunities to read
and more incentive to learn.
Anyway, Caxton’s printed versions were still medieval in content (long prose romances
translated from the French, collections of moral sayings or works as Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur).
HUMANISM
An intellectual movement that involved the rebirth of letters and arts,
prompted by the recovery and study of classical texts and the development
of new aesthetic rules based on those classical models.
The attitude towards Italy was dual: from one hand, Italy was the cradle of culture,
with Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio; but from the other, it was the land of papal Rome;
moreover, a misunderstanding of Machiavelli’s The Prince, convinced the Elizabethans
that he was a master of cunning and praised immoral methods to serve political purposes.
The dignity and potential of the individual was emphasized as well as the worth of life
in this world (before going into the other!).
Humanism was a fundamental intellectual current in the Renaissance:
its first major exponents were Sir Thomas More
and his friend Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, who spent some time in England.
But: it was not until Henry VII’s reign had brought some political stability to England
that the Renaissance seeds could take root there;
and it was not until the accession of Henry VIII that it began to flower.
HENRY VIII
When he succeeded his father, Henry VIII was only eighteen.
He was a typical Renaissance prince: he had a magnificent court, he
liked music and dancing, he was a poet and an athlet; yet he was cruel
and executed those who displeased him.
EDUCATION (of the prince or the courtier or the nobleman) was a prime concern of
the English humanists; it still followed the medieval trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric)
and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) but with a new
enphasis on rhetoric and classical texts.
The purpose was to train the young nobleman to speak and write a good Latin,
which was still the language of diplomacy, of the professions and of the higher
learning.
The grammar was Latin grammar, and the rhetoric was a rigorous study of the
stylistic devices used by classical authors. Nonetheless, the classics were also
studied for their moral, social and political values and philosophical truth
Still, English Humanism was highly Christian; later authors reacted against the more
pagan Humanism coming from Italy.
THE REFORMATION
To those who supported it, it was a return to pure Christianity, cleansing the Church of all the corruption and idolatry
that had accumulated over the centuries; to the Roman Catholic church it was damnable heresy.
For medieval people, the Roman Catholic church had been a universal, infallible, omnicompetent guide
from cradle to grave.
But now only the Scriptures (not the church or tradition) have authority in matters of religion;
only God’s grace and personal faith (not good deeds or religious practices) can effect a Christian’s salvation;
and only the enlightened private conscience (not priests or hierarchies) can determine what an individual must believe and do.
The Reformation
In England, the Reformation did not begin with ideological controversy.
The split with the church of Rome was caused by a man
who considered himself a Catholic champion against Luther:
Henry VIII had received from Pope Leo X the title “Defensor Fidei”
for having written a book against Luther.
Henry’s motives were dynastic, not religious:
he needed a legitimate son and his queen,
Catherine of Aragon, could not give him one.
With the ACT OF SUPREMACY (1534)
he declared himself “Supreme Head of Church”.
He had the monasteries dissolved and seized
their wealth:the confiscated lands went
directly to the King or to members of the middle
classes.
ELIZABETHAN AESTHETICS
Art and Nature
Artificial had a good meaning for the Elizabethans.
The improvement of something naturally beautiful – by device, by arrangement, by human ingenuity, by art –
extended to all aspects of life: intricacy of design and elaborate patterns were especially valued
(think of the Elizabethan garden).
The poet is seen as a maker, whose activity reflects that of the Divine Creator:
the poet does not imitate the real, fallen nature we see, but he imitates an ideal nature
(Sidney’s The Defence of Poesy) Poetry has a didactic role: it teaches by delighting and move us to be virtuous.
Therefore: the delight in “abundance” of words, poetic figures, ornaments;
the close relation of poetry and rhetoric;
the concern with level of style (high, middle and low) and the idea of “decorum”,
that is the suiting of subject to genre and style.
Allegory still remains as a means to teach moral truths
as well as to suggest the mysterious analogies and symbolic relationships
that permeate and order God’s universe.
Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from
November 17, 1558, until her death.
Sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen (since she never married),
Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I was the fifth and final monarch
of the Tudor dynasty, having succeeded her half-sister, Mary I.
She steadied England during a period of political and religious turmoil and
set her nation's course to become the leading Protestant world of her time.
Hatfield House
Elizabeth believed that she ruled by God's
grace, and remained as she put it “married to
England” rather than to any man.
Like her father Henry VIII, she believed in a
destiny for her country and she saw herself as
the very personification of that divine,
providential purpose. That purpose was
perceived as the task of establishing a
harmonious realm, ruled by laws derived from
Biblical ethics, that would glorify God in its
order, industriousness, and sobriety (Calvinism
was influencing English theology).
More than anything, Elizabeth wanted to unite her
country, and she used the Church of England as a tool,
attempting to make it as inclusive as possible, trying to
keep in its fold those with Roman tendencies (although
Catholicism was outlawed) and Puritans, thus steering
a middle course.
THE ACT OF SUPREMACY
It was this act that gave Elizabeth ultimate control of the Church of
England. In the reign of her father and brother, the monarch had
been "Head of the Church in England", but under Elizabeth, this
was modified to "Supreme Governor of the Church in
England". The change may have been made to appease
Catholics who could not accept the monarch as "Head of the
Church", seeing the church as the Pope's domain, or it may have
been made because Elizabeth was a woman.
THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY
This was the crux of the Elizabethan Church, establishing a set
form of worship. The Prayer books of Edward VI were fused into
one, and were to be used in every church in the land. Church
attendance on Sundays and holy days was made compulsory.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE and national identity.
Moreover the question of whether to write in Latin or in English became a very serious issue:
“I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more; I honor the Latin, but I worship
the English.” (by Richard Mulcaster, Spenser’s teacher)
Humanist reverence for the classics and English pride (and sense of national identity) in the
vernacular language gave rise to many translations: Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,
Ovid’s Metamorphoses; but also contemporary writers: Castiglione’s “The Courtier”, Ariosto’s
“Orlando Mad”, Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered”.
Elizabeth's reign is referred to as the Elizabethan era or the
Golden Age. Playwrights William Shakespeare, Christopher
Marlowe and Ben Jonson all flourished during this period.
Francis Bacon laid out his philosophical and political views; and
English colonization of North America took place under Sir Walter
Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert. This was a period of English
disengagement from Europe and of turning towards overseas
commerce, exploration, settlement and colonial conquest.
With the defeat of the Spanish Armada the reign of Elizabeth reached
its peak of glory and national unity. (1588)
MACROCOSM and MICROCOSM
Among typical symbolic relationships
are those suggested by the pervasive
macrocosm-microcosm analogy,
according to which everything in the
vast universe may be found,
replicated in little, in the human body;
and also those suggested by the
image of the Great Chain of Being,
according to which all orders of being,
from speck of dust to highest angel,
are ranged hierarchically in their
divinely ordered stations.
JAMES I
He became King of Scots as James VI on 24 July
1567, when he was just thirteen months old,
succeeding his mother Mary, Queen of Scots.
Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March 1603,
and James was proclaimed king in London later the
same day, as James I, King of England and Ireland
The Stuart dinasty had begun.