III.

Interpretations of the Renaissance

A.

Renaissance as Rebirth

Both the idea of historical rebirth and the use of the term renaissance to describe this process were characteristic products of the Renaissance itself. The term rinascità (an Italian word for 'renaissance') was probably first attached to the modern period in a book of biography entitled Le vita de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, ed scultori italiani (1550; The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, 1568), more commonly known as Lives of the Artists, published by Italian painter Giorgio Vasari. Vasari applied the concept specifically to a rebirth of art that drew its inspiration from antiquity rather than from the work of more recent medieval artists.

In the 14th and 15th centuries many Italian scholars began to display a remarkable awareness of history. They believed that they lived in a new age, free from the darkness and ignorance that they felt characterized the preceding era. These scholars compared their own achievements to the glories of ancient Rome and Greece. One group of Italian writers in the 14th century, following the example of the contemporary poet Petrarch, emphasized that their age resembled the great civilizations of the past because it focused on artistic achievement. In their view, this renewed emphasis on the arts had begun in the late 13th and early 14th centuries with the work of Italian painter Giotto and Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Another group, led by Florentine scholar and diplomat Leonardo Bruni, added an equally important political dimension to this concept. Bruni and his followers admired a republican or representative form of government and looked to ancient Rome, as it was before the emperors came to power, as the best model. They applied humanistic learning to social and political life and encouraged patriotism among the residents of Florence and other Italian city-states.

The Renaissance originally grew out of cultural and political developments in Italy. Over the next three centuries, writers north of the Italian Alps adopted some of these ideas and soon spread them widely throughout Europe. Northern European Renaissance scholars, such as Dutch writer Desiderius Erasmus, added their own dimension to the Renaissance. They emphasized the need to reform Christian society and believed that this reform could be accomplished through education that was based on the great writings of ancient Greece and Rome.

Intellectuals continued to build on the ideas of the Renaissance during the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, a time when scientific advancements led to a new emphasis on the power of human reason. One of the early Enlightenment thinkers was French philosopher and writer Voltaire. He claimed that the Renaissance was a crucial stage in liberating the mind from the superstition and error that he believed characterized Christian society during the Middle Ages. Voltaire applauded the declining power of the Roman Catholic Church during the Renaissance.

Later historians and writers who became part of the 19th-century romantic movement evaluated the Renaissance in an entirely different manner. Followers of romanticism emphasized passion over reason. They showed a keen interest in the vital, heroic, and unconventional personalities of the Renaissance such as Italian poet Petrarch, Italian artist Michelangelo, and French philosopher René Descartes. The romantics believed that an important characteristic of the Renaissance was individualism, which emphasized the capabilities and rights of the individual.

By the middle decades of the 19th century, two historians—Jules Michelet of France and Jakob Burckhardt of Switzerland—had combined these various perspectives in their interpretation of the Renaissance. Michelet saw the Renaissance as the momentous debut of a new phase in human history. He believed that it made possible all the great achievements of modern man, including the discovery of the Americas, the new science, and modern literature and art.

Michelet’s view of the Renaissance as the beginning of the modern era was refined in Jakob Burckhardt's Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1878), first published in 1860. He attached particular importance to the Renaissance state and saw in it the origins of modern political attitudes and behavior. In Burckhardt's view, Renaissance leaders conceived of the state as a work of art, one that they created deliberately by identifying and then applying the best means to reach their desired goals. Another characteristic of the Renaissance that Burckhardt considered modern was an interest in human personality and behavior.

Burckhardt saw all these traits as indications of a deeper quality: a fundamental individualism that was a central feature of the Italian Renaissance. He believed that the absence of centralized control in Italy during the 13th century had created an atmosphere of insecurity that encouraged the emergence of ruthless individuals, free spirits, and geniuses. Burckhardt believed that the study of antiquity had inspired Italians, but that its impact was less significant than other scholars had believed.

Historians who followed Burckhardt rarely disputed his interpretation of the Renaissance. However, they supplemented it with detailed investigations of other aspects of Renaissance life, including economics, science, and philosophy. These studies have reinforced the interpretation of the Renaissance as a period of striking innovation that pointed toward the modern world. Other scholars have also applied Burckhardt's vision of the Italian Renaissance to Europe as a whole.

B.

Renaissance as Gradual Change

Those who have challenged Burckhardt’s theories have generally argued that the Renaissance was not as unique or different as previous scholars claimed. In particular, scholars who studied the Middle Ages became convinced that the centuries before the Renaissance, far from being a period of unrelieved barbarism, had developed a high order of civilization. They insist that most elements of the Renaissance had their roots in the past, and that it is misleading to speak of the 'rebirth' of culture in the Renaissance or to emphasize its significance in the formation of the modern world. These alternate interpretations have suggested that the Renaissance was a waning of the Middle Ages rather than the dawning of a new era, and that medieval scholars also knew and valued classical writings.

Scholars have largely abandoned the notion of an abrupt break between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and have modified older ideas about the nature of the era. It is now clear, for example, that people of the Renaissance did not abandon Christianity and that vigorous religious impulses were a major feature of the Renaissance. Scholars recognize that many aspects of the Renaissance were not modern; they also acknowledge that what may be true of one movement, region, or decade, may not be true of another.

Despite these differing interpretations, there are many indications that Europe had changed dramatically by the 16th century. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Renaissance intellectuals believed their age marked a momentous turning point in history and that they were somehow fundamentally different from their medieval ancestors.