Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course European History. So, as you’ll recall from
our previous episode, a declining European population due to disease and war in the 14th
century meant that labor had become much more valuable, which shifted long-held beliefs
about how society should be organized. Amid all this upheaval, and to some extent
because of it, the Florentine author Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch, was unleashing his
critique of 14th century life. “Living,” he lamented, “I despise what melancholy
fate/ has brought us wretches in these evil years.”[i]
Oh, Petrarch, are you sure you weren’t writing about now? It’s almost like people always
feel like they live in the worst possible time.
At any rate, not happy with the state of things in Europe, he turned to Plato, Cicero, and
other ancient writers, whom he thought of as residents of the Old Age.
In fact, Petrarch gave the era in which he lived its name--calling them the “middle
ages” just as his writing and research helped usher in a New Age that we now call the Renaissance.
[Intro] According to Renaissance author Leonardo Bruni
in the early fifteenth century, “Francesco Petrarch was the first with a talent sufficient
to recognize and call back to light the ancient elegance of the lost and extinguished style.”
The Renaissance, meaning revival or renewal, harkened back to what was seen as the bright
light of classical antiquity, which had then been obscured in the dark and ignorant Middle
Ages. But in some ways, the Middle Ages existed
simultaneously with the Renaissance. Like just as scholars were reviving translations
of Plato and integrating knowledge from the Islamic world, the bubonic plague went on
killing people; and in Petrarch’s hometown, ordinary people
like the Ciompi were vigorously protesting living conditions. Which brings us to an old
question here at Crash Course: Was the Renaissance really a thing? Was it in fact just a continuation
of the medieval world? Or was it the dramatic change that Renaissance thinkers believed
it to be? The writers and thinkers of the Renaissance
scoured monasteries for ancient works, initially written or at least influenced by Roman writers.
It was from this manuscript-hunting--especially for works by Cicero, and Tacitus, and Quintilian--that
Renaissance scholars began to focus on so-called humanism. That is to say, they became more
interested in worldly and human concerns. And because the Renaissance really was a revival,
this new thought was based on learning about old or ancient ways, especially in the study
of the “humanities”. The three liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, led
to the so-called sciences of theology, philosophy, laws, and medicine.
The study of the humanities as developed by the ancients focused not on the heavens or
saints but on human speech or rhetoric, human logic, and the correct use of language. And
by language, of course, they mostly meant Latin--being able to write in Latin and even
perform Latin orations was seen as key to a fully educated life, as every high school
Latin teacher will be happy to tell you. Competence in these fields was seen as crucial
to developing the self and a prerequisite for joining Florentine or Venetian elites.
Like, Venetian youth Lauro Quirini, for example, studied the humanities at the University of
Padua and then was sent to work in a Venetian enterprise on Crete, fully prepared for his
new job as a commodities trader, although he also worked as a translator and a writer.
You might say he was a real Renaissance Man. I’m sorry.
The Italian city-states were the heartland of the early Renaissance. In these prosperous
cities, artists, composers, writers, and scholars thrived along with the commerce that paid
for everything. Urban merchants and manufacturers built a
brisk business that brought in products and ideas from around Afroeurasia. And some families
achieved immense wealth, which allowed them to support the world of Renaissance thinkers
and artists in a system called patronage. I would like a phenomenally wealthy patron
like Lorenzo Medici. If any of you are out there, I am available. And I would like all
your ducats. You can visit patreon.com/crashcourse. But
at any rate, banking institutions also sprang up, and bankers funded civic events and the
construction of lavish cathedrals.
Bankers also backed or personally paid for the building of masterworks in the classical
style--that is, in the style of the restrained, stately design of the pre-Christian Roman
Empire.
Did the Globe open? Is there a neoclassical piggy bank in the
center of the world? There is! You know all those white statues of the renaissance
that take their whiteness from the white statues of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Yeah, they
were not white! They were painted. Like, here are some of
our best guesses of what actual classical statues looked like, and as you can see, not
very much like neoclassical white piggy banks. Nonetheless, the idea of unpainted marble,
or porcelain, or whatever has proven so powerful that even though we now know that ancient
statues were painted, we still don’t paint our neoclassical ones.
Bankers also financed artists needing funds to complete their works, including Botticelli
and Michelangelo.
And city governments themselves were also important patrons of the Renaissance,
while individual leaders often spent as much as six percent of their personal income on
the arts. Why? Well, largely for the same reason rich
people fund art and buildings today--for status, for recognition, and maybe even for the love
of beauty. But also, funding public art and cathedrals and the like served to legitimize
the wealth of these families. The Church could not very well condemn merchant wealth if it
was used to build churches, nor could the governments that came to depend on it. We
see this again and again throughout history--wealth supports institutions that in turn legitimize
that wealth Regardless, in these artworks, you can see
the paradoxes of the Renaissance-- paganism is combined with Christianity, as it often
had been throughout Christian history. Profit-oriented bankers financed the Church, which was run
by priests who’d taken a vow of poverty, and founded by a figure who in the gospels
overturns the tables of moneylenders in the temple.
Also, In these city-states, access to a more humanistic educational approach helped boost
economic growth and fueled the creation of much art and architecture that is still really
influential. Now, many city states participated in this
humanist revival, but its headquarters was undoubtedly Florence. Let’s go to the Thought
Bubble. 1. Artists of the time were following ancient
styles and taking them further. 2. Visual artists, like Sandro Botticelli
and Michelangelo,
3. focused on human dignity and realistic details.
4. Botticelli’s portraits of Florentine citizens display the distinct features of
his subjects,
5. while his depictions of religious individuals show, for example, a plump infant Jesus realistically
reaching for his mother’s garments.
6. Botticelli’s portrait of the long-dead Dante similarly displayed his long, thin,
and pointed nose
7. rather than some idealized, formulaic hero.
8. And Michelangelo’s “David” presents truly human characteristics
9. even as it sought to copy ancient sculptural styles.
10. Across the spectrum of Renaissance art, anatomical accuracy flourished,
11. which you can see in Michelangelo’s sculptures
12. and also in the work of fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci--
13. both artists, incidentally, were able to render the human form in part because they
both dissected cadavers. 14. And nature, as a setting for humans and
thus humanism, was also glorified in Renaissance art,
15. as you can see in the Birth of Venus. Botticelli’s painting focuses on the mythical
goddess from the classical world
16. but at the same time she’s about to be clothed in the flowers found in the natural
world of the countryside.
17. In short, the artists of the Renaissance focused on situating a realistically depicted
human body
18. in both its natural environment and its civic setting.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. But amid this prosperity and cultural revival, Florentine history was
marked by a succession of economic and natural shocks, class divisions, corporate rivalries,
party struggles, conflicts with the church, and especially political crises.
And those arose from threats of external invasion as well as internal tyranny and discontent
among the lower classes. Like Venice, Florence took great pride in
being a Republic, although it was a bit different from contemporary republics and exceedingly
unstable. Like, there weren’t really elections; instead,
names of members of Florence’s guilds would basically be drawn out of a large leather
bag, and if your name was drawn, you got to serve on the Signoria, which ran the city.
And if you weren’t psyched about the job, no worries--new Signorias were chosen every
two months, which might make it seem like lots of people were able to participate in
civic life, but 1. In order to be a member of a guild, you needed to be debt-free and
male and well-connected, and 2. in truth the lotteries were often rigged,
with wealthy families tending to win places on the signoria.
Also, there were frequent coups and countercoups, and the Republic would often cease to be republican
and at times become downright Monarchical. It was all quite Games of Thronesy--one might
even say that it was a bit Machiavellian. And no wonder--the political theorist Niccolo
Machiavelli did live in Florence. We’ll discuss him more next week, but for
now, it’s important to know that he saw--and suffered through--much of this turmoil, including
the rise and fall and rise again of the Medici family. The Medicis were tremendously powerful
in Florence, although contrary to what you might read they weren’t the only important
family in the Renaissance. But they did make huge sums in banking and
investing, and were important patrons to artists--in fact Michelangelo carved one of their tombs.
Cosimo Medici and his grandson Lorenzo dominated the second half of the fifteenth century,
in Florence, while successive members of the family perpetuated its power and patronage
by serving as popes in the next centuries. Machiavelli argued that the Florentine Renaissance’s
Golden Age ended with the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492 and the invasion of the
“barbarians.” Of course, “Barbarians” mostly means “Not
Us” throughout history--in fact the word itself comes from a feeling that the language
of Barbarians sounded like bar bar bar bar bar. Anyway, these particular Barbarians were
French, so I guess it sounded like Bar. I wasn’t very good at High School French.
And so we return at last to the old question: Were there really broad shifts away from the
religiofication of all aspects of European life toward the human and the secular in the
Renaissance? Like, Michelangelo sculpted David, but he also painted the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel. Perspective matters when you ask these questions--something
important and new was happening in 14th century Florence (and Venice and Milan and so on)
among merchants and intellectuals. But the lives of average people, especially peasants,
were not much transformed by this humanist thinking--at least not in the short run.
But in other ways, ordinary people did also have a Renaissance--ancient authors were translated
into Italian and French, which allowed those without access to Latin to read Cicero and
the like. But of course most Italian peasants couldn’t read anything.
Historians also debate whether women experienced a Renaissance. Women were among the patrons
of the arts: Isabella d’Este sponsored musical events and loved Petrarch’s poems so much
that she had music composed for them. She also sponsored painters, maintaining contacts
with Leonardo da Vinci. But, Isabella d’Este and her similarly accomplished
sister Beatrice are often seen as the exception. In general men, according to fifteenth century
writer Laura Cereta, discounted women’s intellectual worth.
Deliberately following Petrarch’s path as he had followed Cicero’s, Cereta wrote a
famous letter to one misogynist that read in part: “I cannot tolerate your having
attacked my entire sex. . . . With just cause I am moved to demonstrate how great a reputation
for learning and virtue women have won by their inborn excellence, manifested in every
age as knowledge. . . .”[ii] Also, the rise of Roman legal thinking meant
the rise of the Pater Familias. The idea that the father is the center of every family,
and also the center of power. All of which is to say that the Renaissance
saw tremendously important developments in the intellectual and cultural life of Italian
city-states, developments that would soon be exported to other communities.
But we have to be able to shift perspectives--to the Medicis, the Renaissance was a thing.
To many peasants, it was not. We remember the Renaissance today partly because it’s
helpful for historians to periodize history to frame their analyses, and partly because
so much Renaissance thinking shapes our thinking. And I think it’s worth remembering how the
ideas of the Renaissance continue to resonate for us today. Consider, for example, the feeling
that the current age is so full of corruption and destruction that we must return to the
purity of some bygone era of greatness. That Renaissance thinking seems very relevant,
indeed. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.
credits
Sources Hunt, Lynn et al. The Making of the West:
Peoples and Cultures, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2019.
Donald R. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism. Boston: Twayne, 1991.
________________
[i] Petrarch quoted in Donald R. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism (Boston: Twayne, 1991) 8.
[ii] Laura Cereta, In Defense of the Liberal Instruction of Women,” in M. I. King and
Alfred Rabil, r., eds. Selected Works By and About the Woman Humanists of Quatrocento Italy
(Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), 81-84.