Renaissance

A

Decline of the Roman Catholic Church

The 14th century had opened with the dramatic humiliation of the papacy, as the French king forced the papal court to move to Avignon and made the church’s highest leadership appear to be pawns of France. Disaster then followed disaster for the church. Instead of providing spiritual direction in a rapidly changing world, the papal court was preoccupied with the development of its administrative machinery and with the collection of revenue. The problems only grew worse with the Great Schism, as rival popes competed for control. Although the papacy was reunited in 1417, it faced other challenges to its authority and struggled to recover control of the Papal States, which it had lost during the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism.

Certain Renaissance popes were learned, devout, and worthy leaders of the Catholic Church during this difficult period. Notable examples are Nicholas V, who ruled in the mid-15th century, and Pius II, who followed him. Other popes—such as Alexander VI, who took over the papacy in 1492, and Julius II and Leo X, who held the position in the early 16th century—were chiefly concerned with politics, the promotion of their families, or the patronage of the arts. These popes further weakened the ability of the church to influence society. Under these conditions, local and national forces increasingly challenged papal control over the church, and clerical discipline and morale deteriorated. Heresy (challenges to church doctrine) flourished, and critics of the Catholic Church became more numerous and outspoken.

B

Dissent, Reform, and Popular Religion

Dissent and concern over the condition of the church are evidence of the strength, not the weakness, of religion. Christianity during the Renaissance presents a contradiction: Although the institution of the Roman Catholic Church was in decay, there was extraordinary religious fervor in every part of Europe. Preachers, such as the highly popular Girolamo Savonarola of Florence, called on sinners to repent and enjoyed great success in Italy. A mystical religious movement that drew, in part, from the teachings of German mystic Meister Eckhart flourished in the portion of western Germany known as the Rhineland. Its members sought direct revelations from God without the church as an intermediary. In the Low Countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands a movement known as the devotio moderna emphasized individual and practical faith, a contrast with the more communal and metaphysical faith of the Catholic Church.

These teachings spread through schools and gained public attention through The Imitation of Christ (approximately 1424), a highly influential work usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis, a German monk and writer. Eager laymen built churches and chapels, and new devotional exercises—such as the stations of the cross and prayers using the rosary—became popular. With the introduction of the printing press in Europe during the 15th century, religious books were produced by the millions, and they found a ready market.

---

---

The increase in popular devotion posed a threat to traditional religion, especially when the prestige of church officials was low and they seemed incapable of, or uninterested in, close supervision of the faithful. Popular heretical movements emerged and challenged papal authority. These movements proposed, in varying degrees, to do away with the church as an institution. In the 14th century, British philosopher and reformer John Wycliffe and his counterpart in Bohemia, Jan Hus, formalized these attacks on church authority in their teachings and writings.

Heretics remained a small minority, however, and a variety of reformers who hoped to change the existing church were far more characteristic of the Renaissance. Theologians such as Jean de Gerson, who was particularly influential at the University of Paris in the early 15th century, supported conciliar theory, which aimed at reforming the Roman Catholic Church by placing supreme authority in a general council rather than in the papacy. Mystics preferred to deepen the religious life of individuals, while many humanists hoped to reform Christian society by relying on education rather than on religious faith.

The Renaissance also encouraged practical reformers. As papal legate (official representative of the pope) to Germany in the mid-15th century, Nicholas of Cusa pursued a vigorous reform campaign directed particularly at monks who had violated their monastic vows. The monasteries in Paris also underwent significant reform in the early decades of the 16th century. Most successful of all was the work of Cardinal Ximenes, the leading church figure of Spain in the early 16th century. He set standards for qualifications, training, and discipline for the Spanish clergy. Such reforms were by no means universal, and the visible condition of the church continued to bring widespread demands for reform. The religious history of the Renaissance reveals both weakness and vigor. People of this era expressed discontent with the actual state of the church, but they also expressed hope for improvement.

VII

Humanism

The dominant intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism, a philosophy based on the idea that people are rational beings. It emphasized the dignity and worth of the individual, an emphasis that was central to Renaissance developments in many areas. Humanism originated in the study of classical culture, and it took its name from one of the era’s earliest and most crucial concerns: the promotion of a new educational curriculum that emphasized a group of subjects known collectively as the studia humanitatis, or the humanities.

Humanities disciplines included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and ethics. These subjects were all studied, whenever possible, in the original classical texts. The humanities curriculum conflicted directly with more traditional education that was based on scholasticism. A scholastic education concentrated on the study of logic, natural philosophy (science), and metaphysics, or the nature of reality. Scholars often clashed sharply over these two systems of education.

Far more was at stake in these academic controversies than the content of education. Scholastic training prepared students for careers in fields such as medicine, law, and, above all, theology. The humanists believed that this scholastic course of study was focused too narrowly on only a few professions. They claimed that it was not based sufficiently on practical experience or the needs of society, but relied too heavily on abstract thought. The humanists proposed to educate the whole person and placed emphasis not only on intellectual achievement, but also on physical and moral development.

The humanists also stressed the general responsibilities of citizenship and social leadership. Humanists felt that they had an obligation to participate in the political life of the community. From their perspective, the specialized disciplines taught by the scholastics had failed to instill a respect for public duty.

Underlying the differences between these two philosophies was the humanists’ deep conviction that society had outgrown older ways of thought. According to the humanists, these ways of thought emphasized abstract speculation and relied too heavily on Christian teachings. Many of the humanists were townspeople who were not directly associated with the church. These urban residents tended to object to an educational system that was largely monopolized by the clergy and oriented to clerical needs. Humanists were accustomed to the ever-changing, concrete activities of city life and found the rigid and closed systems of abstract thought to be both useless and irrelevant. In sum, humanism reflected the new environment of the Renaissance. Its essential contribution to the modern world was not its concern with antiquity, but its flexibility and openness to all the possibilities of life.

Renaissance humanism was complex, with few unifying features beyond a common belief that humanity and society could be improved through a new kind of education based on a study of the classics. Humanists varied widely in the ways they applied these ideas to areas that interested them. Some humanists were mainly interested in rhetoric and Latin prose style, while others analyzed ancient texts to determine exact meanings. One group focused on ways to improve society in general, while Christian humanism applied the techniques of humanist scholarship to the study of church documents, particularly the Bible.

A

Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch, incorporated most elements of Renaissance humanism into his work. Called the first great humanist, Petrarch was born in 1304 near Florence and spent much of his life in the cities of Italy. He absorbed the typical urban emphasis on the practical and concrete experiences of daily life. Petrarch traveled widely, climbed mountains simply to see what he could see, and displayed a keen interest in the human personality, most notably his own. The classics further nourished his interest in broad human experience.

Petrarch was displeased by what he saw in the world. He wavered between nostalgic contemplation of the ideal world of antiquity and active efforts to improve his own times. He acted as an emissary for the duke of Milan, attempted to serve as peacemaker in Italy’s constant wars, and urged the pope to end his exile in Avignon during the Babylonian Captivity. He also attacked the scholastics for their failure to address the true needs of humanity.

Petrarch believed in the possibility of a better future, and he hoped, above all, to better the world by the study of classical literature. He admired the formal beauty of classical writing and considered it a remedy for contemporary ugliness. To promote the study of classical literature, he collected ancient texts during his travels. He studied and imitated them in Latin writings of his own, and then attempted to extend their teachings to as many other people as possible.

B

Development of Humanism

After Petrarch, humanism spread first in Italy and then beyond the Alps. Most of Petrarch’s early followers were little more than enthusiastic, and somewhat amateurish, classical scholars. Through one of his friends, Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch’s influence was transmitted to Florence. In the mid- to late 14th century, a number of scholars in Florence collected and studied ancient works, lectured about them, imitated their style, and made the city a center of humanistic learning. Among them were Boccaccio, the scholar Niccolò Niccoli, and above all the Florentine government leader, Coluccio Salutati.

Some humanists became experts in rhetoric, and town governments frequently employed them to give style to formal documents, to compose speeches for public occasions, and to write official histories. These humanists often became so pretentious and artificial that they eventually lost sight of significant issues in their focus on technique and detail. By the early 16th century a few of these humanists cultivated such an extremely pure style of Latin that they would only employ words used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero. It was primarily this type of humanist who was responsible for the frequent accusation that humanism was a frivolous pursuit and that, far from reviving Latin, it finally killed the language by isolating it from everyday life.

Other humanists adopted an entirely different and more political approach to classical studies. Many of the humanists of Florence, led by historian Leonardo Bruni, became fervently patriotic. Their patriotism was in part a response to frequent armed attacks by Milan, a rival city-state, during the first decades of the 15th century. As they began to apply classical teachings to their immediate problems, they found that ancient Roman literature encouraged love of country and offered practical historical lessons. These humanists also took a positive attitude toward their native language; they applied classical literary standards to everyday writing, laying a foundation for later literary development. Their interest in the destiny of Florence influenced them to write seriously about the city’s past and stimulated the emergence of the modern historical perspective.

The work of Lorenzo Valla during the first half of the 15th century inspired a new quality in humanist scholarship. Valla studied ancient texts with an increased rigor and contributed significantly to the development of textual and historical criticism. Vittorino da Feltre, a teacher at the palace school of Mantua (Mantova) during the early 15th century, worked to establish the humanist goal of educating the whole person for a life of political leadership. This ideal was popularized by Il cortegiano (1528; Book of the Courtier, 1561) by Italian diplomat Conte Baldassare Castiglione, a work that circulated throughout Europe. Castiglione’s treatise on proper training and values for members of the royal court influenced the upbringing of the European ruling classes for centuries.

During the 15th century, a steadily increasing number of Italian humanists learned Greek. For the first time since ancient times Greek texts were being read in the original language in western Europe. A whole new body of ideas became available for the humanists to study, and this led to a more precise understanding of Greek philosophy.

In particular, the Greek philosopher Plato increasingly gained respect among the humanists. His most prominent Renaissance disciple was Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who in the late 15th century led scholars at the Florentine Academy into more serious study of Plato’s work. Ficino hoped to make Plato a new guide for Western thought, just as scholastic thinkers had based many of their ideas on the work of Plato’s student Aristotle.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain