The period covered by the Renaissance varies, depending on the geographic region or subject under discussion. The Renaissance began in northern Italy in the latter 14th century, culminating in England in the early 17 th century. Consequently the present book spans two centuries, c. 1400-c. 1600, emphasizing the pervasive influence of Italian sources on the development of the Renaissance in other parts of southern Europe as well as in the north.
Although the ideal of the Renaissance individual was exaggerated to the extreme by 19th-century critics and historians, there was certainly a greater awareness of an individual’s potential by the 16th century. Emphasis on the dignity of man (though not of woman) distinguished the Renaissance from the relatively humbler attitudes of the Middle Ages. In the love poetry of Petrarch and the great human scheme of Dante’s Commedia, individual thought and action were prevalent. Depictions of the human form became a touchstone of Renaissance art, from Giotto’s lifelike frescoes to the altarpieces of the van Eyck brothers and Michelangelo’s heroic statue of David. In science and medicine, from cosmography to anatomy, the macrocosm and microcosm of the human condition inspired remarkable strides in research and discovery. The Earth itself was explored, as intrepid adventurers pushed past the southern tip of Africa to claim parts of the Orient, and into the North American continent, searching for gold and converts to Christianity. Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe both defined and extended the Earth, situating Europeans within a vast world of possibilities.
The word renaissance means “rebirth,” and the most obvious example of this phenomenon was the rediscovery of Europe’s classical Roman past. Although important texts of ancient Greek authors, such as Homer and Plato, first became known in Western Europe during the Renaissance, very little was understood about the culture of ancient Greece. Roman history, law, literature, and art dominated the classical rebirth of Renaissance Europe. Greek texts and works translated from Arabic and Greek contributed to advances in science, medicine, and technology.
Although the Renaissance commenced in northern Italy, classicizing elements rapidly became assimilated in other regions. By the early 1500s, these influences had resulted in imitations and variations in the Late Gothic culture of France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, and Poland. The latter 1500s experienced the Renaissance as a new syncretic mode of thought and activity. With the aim of treating the major origins and influences of the Renaissance in a comprehensive manner, the present
Introduction
Book focuses on western Europe, occasionally mentioning eastern Europe and European colonies in the East and West. Scandinavia is beyond our scope because Renaissance style did not flourish there until the 17th century, and it was tempered by influences of the early baroque.
The geographic concept of “Europe” strengthened during the early Renaissance, originating in the continent’s identification as Christendom. With Muslims in north Africa and southern Spain, and Greek Orthodox Slavs and Turks as well as Muslims to the east, Europe was unified in its spiritual focus against these perceived common threats. The medieval Crusades had reiterated Europe’s multilateral cooperation against “infidels.” In addition, Europe’s religious fervor had been heightened by fervent and desperate responses to the biomedical devastation of the 14th century. Between 1347 and 1350, approximately 20 million deaths resulted from what was called the pestilence, known as the Black Death several centuries later because of the plague’s hideous black buboes, and possibly from anthrax (only recently discovered). Western Europe lost one-third of its population. While 25 percent of the aristocracy may have died, the peasantry suffered the loss of some 40 percent of its people. Peasants did not have the luxury of escaping from crowded living conditions into the relative safety of country houses. Several smaller epidemics further reduced the population during the second half of the 14th century.
With grain and grapes rotting in the fields, herds untended, and foot soldiers rapidly dwindling in supply, the peasants who survived found themselves in a new, much better bargaining position. Landlords were forced to raise the standard of living for peasants throughout Europe, making it possible for many of them to buy their freedom and become yeomen. Peasants freed from the land were able to seek a potentially better life elsewhere. One far-reaching result of the plague may have been the gradual influx of more individuals into towns and cities. This class of workers contributed to the rise of the wealthy merchant families who would provide much of the funding for Renaissance patronage.
Epidemics of the 14th century caused the deaths of numerous churchmen and monks, partly because any large group of people living together was susceptible to contagion. To keep the monasteries functioning, many younger, untrained men were allowed to enter. Although some university graduates were available, many of the new ecclesiasts were not ready for holy orders, personally or professionally. Abuses of the system were sharply criticized as greedy churchmen attempted to take advantage of the chaotic administration of church property. Another meaning of rebirth for the Renaissance was the Catholic Church’s movement to investigate corruption within, with the goal of reforming and returning to the purer religion of early Christianity. By the 16th century, proposed reforms were deemed insufficient and Protestants broke away to create their own Reformation.
Renaissance philosophy was involved in efforts to understand the pristine theology of the early church. The Christian Platonism of Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and his circle of learned friends in Florence explained the ideas of Plato in Christian contexts. This new philosophy, called Neoplatonism, led to esoteric symbolism and other forms of hidden meaning in literature, art, architecture, and music. Neoplatonism is one important example of the new philosophical strains in Renaissance thought. Although directly affecting only small groups of scholars, these movements functioned as an undercurrent in the cultural innovations of the 15th and 16th century.
Renaissance classical scholarship was enhanced, if not made possible, by Greek teachers and scholars who had arrived in Italy from the East. Numerous individuals emigrated from Constantinople during the late 14th and early 15th centuries, many of them to Venice. Then a major wave of Greeks escaped to Italy immediately before and after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. Scholars in general studied and corrected ancient texts, including the Bible. This process of textual criticism inevitably led to a questioning of authority, from Roman rhetoricians to church fathers.
New attitudes, ideas, and images from 15th-century Italy were disseminated across Western Europe by the printing press. Some scholars have argued that the advance of printing caused the Renaissance, whereas others have stated that the Renaissance caused the spread of printing. The process was more of a reciprocal arrangement, of Renaissance innovations and printers promoting each other. The works of Italian artists, for example, became known in the
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
North through printed engravings, and the engravings, in turn, encouraged Flemish, Dutch, and German artists to try their hand at painting and printmaking.
Although the Renaissance in general is often conceptualized by rebirth, as we have seen, the idea of renewal also expresses the cultural basis of life in Renaissance Europe. Europe had several new beginnings, affecting every aspect of life described in this book, and they usually were connected. The Protestant Reformation instituted new attitudes toward marriage that affected the daily life of thousands of converts; the so-called advancement of fired projectiles in military encounters led to new European empires in Asia and the Americas; secular music with the innovation of words to match the music developed into opera, which in turn influenced dramatic writing of the early 17th century; and, in medicine, new knowledge of the human body not only made life in the Renaissance more tolerable but also made survival more likely. These are only a few examples of the spirit of change experienced by Europeans during the 15th and 16th centuries.
World History
