May 27, 2003
Misreading the Renaissance
If you've ever taught history, you've probably had to devote a fair amount of time to debunking myths and misconceptions. Sometimes they come from popular works (Egyptians flew! Chinese discovered America! The Irish saved civilization! And the Knights Templar -- oh, let's not go into the Knights Templar); others are tropes from Victorian (or earlier) historiography that have sunk so deep into popular consciousness that they may never be entirely uprooted.
What prompted this blather was a recent post on Renaissance art and artists by the normally estimable Colby Cosh:
Not to point out the obvious, but it was a cultural period of justified confidence. Try to imagine how they felt!--Western civilization had laboured under the shadow of classical accomplishments in architecture, art, and engineering for a thousand years. In the space of about fifty, they got it all back--rediscovered everything the Greeks and Romans had known and much else besides. And they did it largely by being stubborn, venomous, ambitious, and generally horrible.Gasp. I don't quite know where to start -- it's like being confronted with someone earnestly explaining how the sun and planets travel around the Earth so beautifully.
OK, let's start here:
Middle Ages dark and benighted? False.
Medieval people overshadowed by accomplishments of Antiquity? False.
The Renaissance a sudden, glorious departure from what came before? False.
Overall, there was much more continuity than discontinuity between the periods conventionally termed "the late middle ages" and "the Renaissance", while the notion that the latter's greatest accomplishments took place in a mere 50 year span is so wildly mistaken that one wonders if it is based on any reading whatsoever.
UPDATE: Here is a random list of some medieval innovations (or borrowings): hospitals; banks; universities; Arabic numerals; gunpowder; letters of credit; stock markets; the stirrup; windmills; widespread use of watermills; the magnetic compass; cast iron; spectacles; displacement of the scroll by the modern codex as standard book form; quill pens; guilds (trade unions). Will add more as they come to me. . . .
AND don't forget Bill Allison's piece here, touching on the reputedly oh-so-rational Renaissance's fascination with mystical texts such as the Corpus Hermeticum.
Posted by David on May 27, 2003 3:51 PM
Let's see...the mechanical clock, a practical application for gunpowder, the hand crank...
I think Jean Gimpel makes the trenchant point that the Medieval renaissance of the 12th and 13th centuries was primarily technological (although the influx of Aristotelians from Moorish Spain added a philosophical component) whereas the capital R Renaissance of the 15th century was primarily literary (although the influx of classical texts -- primarily Plato -- gave it a philosophical component, and the arrival of the Corpus Hermeticum gave it a decidedly mystical, non-scientific flavor).
Posted by: Bill Allison on May 28, 2003 11:06 PM
Not sure about the hand crank -- wasn't that used for Archimedes' screw?
In any case, I'm glad you pointed out the different components of the various renascences, as I ran out of steam before I could compose a properly comprehensive survey.
One thing that definitely should be added is some note regarding precisely how the Renaissance made a difference. From popular commentary, such as distilled in Colby Cosh's post, one would think that all of a sudden the sun shone brighter on all the world. Yet for the great majority of individuals, life changed little at all, and not always for the best.
Yet even if we are to concentrate on high culture, making due allowance for the great changes and accomplishments wrought by Renaissance humanism, many of the achievements of the era may better be understood as the culmination of later medieval trends rather than as entirely new departures. Renaissance artistic culture may have wrapped itself in the mantle of antiquity, but the efflorescence of the arts which made this possible, desirable, and even, arguably, necessary, rested on less romantic and longer-term developments: the expansion of trade and industry; the concentration of power and wealth in nation- and city-states; the rising status of skilled craftsmen; and the triumph of courtly culture, where conspicuous display was the preferred form of competition.
Posted by: David on May 29, 2003 10:05 AM
You're probably right about the hand crank -- I must have been thinking of something else (maybe an improved cam?) I think I know where I got the idea -- I'll check tonight and let you know how far I was off...
Posted by: Bill Allison on May 30, 2003 6:16 PM
The hand crank was a medieval invention. The first one shows up powering a grindstone in the Utrecht Psalter, 9th century.
Posted by: S. Worthen on October 13, 2003 10:56 PM
could you tell me some achievements that the Rennaissance made? Thanx
Posted by: gaf on October 26, 2004 3:51 PM
cronaca.com