RENAISSANCE , HUMANISM and REFORMATION.

WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?

Renaissance is the name of the great intellectual and cultural movement in the fourteenth,
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is a period of transition from the Middle Ages to
modern times.

Renaissance is a French word meaning rebirth. But the word was first used in Italian
(rinascità) with reference to painters that everyone today would call “medieval.”

Second, if one thinks of the Renaissance as an efflorescence of originality and creativity, why
do we associate it with the rebirth of something older and long gone: Greece and Rome.

Third, even if some 14th- and 15th century writers thought of themselves as utterly different
from the people between themselves and the ancients (the people in the middle, the medievals,
whence the name), must we believe them? Was there a break of some kind?

Fourth, what does Renaissance mean? Styles in painting and sculpture? New architecture?
New or different literary forms? An original lifestyle? All of them?

It has not been much easier to say just what issues come under the heading “Renaissance.”
Usually, Renaissance is associated with humanism, but this term can mean several things:

* Love and concern for human beings.

* A preoccupation with this world and its concerns, as in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince.

* A devotion to the humane disciplinesthe liberal arts but not, presumably, theology.

* A particular fascination with the literary culture of classical antiquity.

* Civic humanism, either as “boosterism” or as republicanism.

Thinking back over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we can identify some stages in the

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historical evolution of the Renaissance movement, talk about why that movement began in
Italy, and ask how it spread from Italy.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THE RENAISSANCE

We can apply a rough chronology to the Renaissance:

A. Down to about 1370, we see individual geniuses but little that ties them together, little that
looks like a movement.

B. Down to 1470s, we have a Florentine period: Great things were done by Florentines and by
outsiders resident in Florence.

C. Beginning in about the 1450s, we can speak of the “reception” of the Renaissance in
Rome, Milan, and Venice; after 1500, the Renaissance crossed the Alps and the movement
became more decidedly courtly.

WHY DID THE RENAISSANCE BEGIN IN ITALY? WHY IN

FLORENCE?

Although the Renaissance eventually spread north, east, and west, it is generally agreed to
have started in Italy, and especially in Florence. Its first period was marked by a revival of
interest in classical culture and the classical ideals. The civilization of Greece and Rome,
obtained a powerful hold on Italian life. It became the source and basis of culture in the
beginning of the 14th century Italy.

Why did the Renaissance begin in Italy? Italy had been economically precocious in the
Middle Ages, but otherwise, major developments occurred in the north.

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Then why in Italy and why not in France that had been culturally dominant since the twelfth
century? A number of factors help to explain why Humanism emerged in 14th century
Florence.

1. Italy had been the most commercially advanced and probably the wealthiest region of
Europe during the High Middle Ages. It was perfectly placed to be the European entry point
for goods (e.g., fabrics, spices), texts, and ideas from the fabled East. The resultant wealth,
combined with the collapse of political control by the Holy Roman Empire, enabled the cities
of Italy to gain independence and prosper.

2. Because Italian wealth centered on cities, Renaissance Humanism was, to start off with at
least, an intensely urban phenomenon Although the Renaissance eventually spread north, east,
and west, it is generally agreed to have started in Italy.

3. There was a higher level of literacy and lay education in Italy. The high rates of lay
literacy were especially important for a movement whose membership and ethos were
relatively secular.

4. Nowhere else in Europe was the Classical past so physically present and such a matter of
national pride as in Italy. Italians felt themselves more directly the heirs of the Romans than
anyone else could or did.

5. There was greater wealth in Italy that provided for patronage and leisure to enjoy the arts.
The chancellor of Florence between 1375 and 1406 was Coluccio Salutati, a Humanist who
steered the city’s financial resources toward the support of Humanist authors and artists.

Florentine patronage continued through the 15th century, but private patronage became
increasingly important as members of the de Medici family used their wealth to finance
Humanist scholars and artists. The de Medici family took an interest in Plato, and the
Humanists whom they supported likewise became more interested in Plato and in
philosophical issues in general during the second half of the 15th century.

6. Florence was unusual among important late-medieval towns because it lacked a functioning
university. Scholasticism was not as well established in Florence as elsewhere, giving
Humanism room to grow there.

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7. Italian society was less bound to feudal and chivalric values than the north. One might
compare Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with Boccaccio’s Decameron.

8. The Renaissance was a great revolt against the medieval scholasticism. Traces of this
revolt can be seen in Dante (1265- 1321), who chose the Roman poet Virgil as his model.
Petrarch (1304-1374) was the first true poet of the Renaissance. He is also accepted as the
founder of the humanistic movement. His poems followed the classical models of poetry. His
friend and disciple Boccaccio made a translation of Homer into Latin.

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 Renaissance gained a further impetus because of
a number of Greek humanists who moved from Byzantium to Italy. In 1462, the Platonic
Academy was opened in Florence under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici.

During the first three-quarters of the 14th century, Humanism—not yet a self-conscious or
self-defined movement—was the work of a few pioneers, whom later Humanists would hail
as their inspiration.

a. In art, Giotto di Bondone (d. 1337) introduced new elements of realism into painting
through the use of shading. He lacked any immediate successors, though, and other artists did
not follow his lead until the early 15th century.

b. In letters, Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (d. 1374), was the trailblazer. Petrarch was an
ardent student of Classical literature; he rediscovered lost works of Cicero and wrote Latin in
flawless imitation of Classical Roman authors. Between roughly 1375 and 1425, Giotto and
Petrarch attracted admirers and followers who came to believe that the period of rebirth, for
which Petrarch had longed, was at hand. These self-identified Humanists also began to attract
the support of patrons.

IN WHAT WAY ITALIAN HUMANISTS WERE DIFFERENT FROM

SCHOLASTIC THINKERS?

Humanists spoke of themselves as making a complete break with the medieval past. Although
they had more in common with their medieval predecessors than they admitted, nonetheless,
Humanists were right to believe that there was something new and different about themselves.

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A. Scholastic theologians of the High Middle Ages revered the intellectual authorities of the
ancient world, and throughout the Middle Ages, there had been attempts to reform the Latin
language and bring it into closer conformity with its Classical usage.

B. In the long run, the Humanists’ most revolutionary legacy was their revival of a notion that
was a commonplace of ancient philosophy but contrary to a dominant strand of Christian
thinking: that human beings could attain happiness in this world and ought to work toward
achieving that happiness.

In the early 5th century, Saint Augustine, in his City of God, had critiqued Classical
philosophy precisely because it had sought after human happiness during this lifetime—an
unattainable goal, for humans could achieve true happiness only through salvation in the
afterlife. Although Petrarch and other Humanists admired Saint Augustine for the elegance of
his Latin prose, they understood human nature rather differently, as rendered only slightly
imperfect by original sin and its consequences, rather than devastated by them. Although all
Humanists believed in the existence of a Christian afterlife and desired salvation, they
assigned an independent value to doing good in this world—as one Humanist maxim put it,
“Man was born to be useful to man.”

C. Nonetheless, Humanist admiration for the Classical world was more intense than that of
the Scholastics, and as a result, it had unique consequences. During the 1330s, Petrarch came
to believe that history consisted of three periods: the Classical age, when antique art and
letters had flourished, ending with the Sack of Rome in 410; a Middle Age or Dark Age,
when art and literature had decayed, persisting into his own lifetime; and a future third age,
when Classical art and literature would be reborn. It was obvious that this new three-part
periodization of all human history (ancient, medieval, modern) used secular events, to mark
the essential dividing points. This Humanist schema would replace the division of history,
based on religious events, associated with Saint Augustine.

D. Italian Humanists were keenly aware of the cultural gap that existed between their own
time and the Classical past, and this recognition helped Humanist scholars and artists to avoid
the anachronistic mistakes that their predecessors, who saw themselves and the ancients as
more alike than they really were, had been prone to make.

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E. Humanists tended to avoid works of universal history, which had been popular in the
Middle Ages. Universal history told the history of the world from the creation to the present,
with the purpose of showing divine providence at work throughout. Humanists tended to write
works of history that were more limited in scope and geared toward practical political
problems. The Humanist approach to history was, in this sense, relatively secular.

F. There was a new emphasis on individualism among Humanists. Humanist artists signed
their creations (unlike medieval artists), and Humanist authors saw their work as a means of
achieving personal glory and immortality — not as a replacement for Christian immortality.

HOW RENAISSANCE SPREAD IN EUROPE?

The second period of the Renaissance is marked by a new view of the intellectual life beyond
Italy. By this time the movement had spread to Germany, Poland and France, the Netherlands
and to other northern countries, where it developed into the wide scholarship of men like
Thomas More, Campanella, Erasmus, and Copernicus.

Given that it began in Italy, how and why did the Renaissance spread?

A. Italians traveled in the north: They searched for manuscripts and sometimes hired out as
teachers and courtiers.

B. Northerners traveled in Italy. By the late fifteenth century, scholars commonly made tours
of Italy and, with the sixteenth century, painters began to follow.

C. The development of printing made it possible for ideas to circulate much more quickly,
cheaply, and efficiently than ever before.

D. The Renaissance began as an urban, a communal, phenomenon but quicky became

princely and courtly. Renaissance culture became fashionable. Civilité, defined in largely
Italian terms, became prestigious.

In the 15th and the 16th centuries, the movement had gone far beyond the revival of classical
studies and it was felt in every department of life.

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In philosophy it gradually replaced the purely formal methods of thought of the
scholasticism.

In science it led to the great discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

In architecture it brought about the revival of the classical style.

In the fine arts it inspired new schools of painting in Italy, such as of Raphael, Leonardo da
Vinci, Bellini, Michelangelo, and the Flemish school in the Netherlands.

In religion its influence can be seen in the revolt of Martin Luther. Also, it indirectly inspired
the passion for exploration that led to the discovery of the New World.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMANISM

In early 15th century, “studia humanitatis” was describing a course of classical studies that
consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric1, history and moral philosophy. The intellectual basis
of this movement is based on an educational and political ideal expressed with the Latin word
humanitas.

Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms. Human virtue implies
qualities associated with the modern word humanity – understanding, benevolence2,
compassion3, mercy4 – and also with characteristics as fortitude5, judgment6, prudence7,
eloquence8 and even love of honour.

The Renaissance humanism included not only the education of the young but also the
guidance of adults (including rulers) by using philosophical poetry and strategic rhetoric. In
1
The art of using words impressively; writing and speaking persuasively
2
Kindness, helpfulness
3
Feeling of pity
4
Kindness shown to someone in your power
5
Courage in bearing pain or trouble
6
The ability to make wise decisions; a judge’s decision on a case
7
The showing of thought for the future
8
Fluent and persuasive use of language

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short, humanism was a comprehensive reform of culture. Humanists desired to transfigure9
the passive and ignorant society of what they called the “dark” ages into a new order that
would reflect and encourage human potentialities.

The wellspring of humanitas was classical literature. For Renaissance humanists, Greek and
Roman thought and classical philosophy, rhetoric and history were tantamount to recovering
reality. Classical literature was rich en eloquence. Since humanists were normally better at
Latin than they were at Greek, Cicero10 was considered to be the pattern of refined discourse.
For humanists eloquence was very important because they found in it an effective means of
moving leaders or fellow citizens toward one political course or another.

Humanism then may be defined as that Renaissance movement which had humanitas as its
central focus. The word humanities is often used to designate the nonscientific scholarly
disciplines: language, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, art history and so forth. Scholars in
these fields are called humanists and their activities are referred to as humanistic.

Humanist ideas spread through society thanks to Humanist schools and the curriculum they
taught. The Humanist educational program, or the studia humanitatis, had three main
components:

1. The study of rhetoric11, Classical Latin, and Greek literature.

2. History.

3. Ethics.

Ethics provided a guide to action, history provided examples of good and bad individuals that
reinforced ethical precepts, and rhetoric allowed Humanists to inspire ethical behavior in
others.

Humanism, like Scholasticism, was fundamentally textual. Old books were considered to be
the greatest source of knowledge and wisdom. Renaissance artists, in trying to achieve a
greater naturalism in their work, sponsored dissections of the human body, which in turn,

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Transform into something nobler or more beautiful
10
Marcus Tullius, 106-43 B.C. Roman consul and writer. Formerly known in English as
Tully
11
The art of using words impressively; writing and speaking persuasively

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revealed that ancient authors had a flawed understanding of how the human body operated.
Humanists began the process whereby empiricism (direct observation of the natural world)
would supplant ancient texts as the ultimate source of intellectual authority in Europe.

Basic Principles of Humanism

In a certain sense, humanism is always against something: against exclusive submission to

God; against a wholly materialist conception of the world; against any doctrine neglecting or
seeming to neglect humanity; against any system that would reduce human responsibility.

Renaissance humanism was a dialogue of Rome with Rome, between pagan Rome and
Christian Rome, between classical and Christian civilization. It was a matter of living with the
classical past. Early humanists returned to the classics with a sense of deep familiarity. In art,
classical sculpture and Roman painting were imitated because of their ability to offer a unique
model for the artistic idealization of human beauty.

Humanists avidly read history, taught it to their young and perhaps most importantly, wrote it
themselves.

Humanism benefited the development of science in a number of more specific ways.

Mathematics became an artistic principle and academic discipline. The importance of
mathematics in humanistic pedagogy may be seen as contributing to the critical role
mathematics would play in the rise of modern science.

The emergence of the individual and the idea of the dignity of man.

These attitudes took shape in concord with a sense of personal autonomy that was first
evident in Petrarch and later came to characterize humanism as a whole. A free intelligence,
capable of critical scrutiny and self-inquiry. But this individualism accompanied intellectual
and moral autonomy.

Parallel with individualism arose the idea of dignity of man. Most prominent humanists
asserted man’s earthly preeminence and unique potentialities. Humanity had been assigned no
fixed character or limit by God but instead was free to seek its own level and create its own
future

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Humanism and Christianity

The Renaissance humanism turned aside from the traditional teaching of scholasticism and
theology. It also relished classical literature that was wholly pagan. But this does not
necessarily mean that humanism opposed either God or the Church.

Humanism was not a challenge to Christianity but it constituted a breach in the previous
totality of Christian devotion. The humanists called into question the Roman Catholic Church
not a theological structure but as a political institution. But their intention has never been to
destroy. Humanism did not aim to remake humanity but rather to reform social order through
an understanding of what was basically and inalienably human.

The humanistic inquiry suggested erosions of the domain of faith. But it is extremely difficult
for anyone in the 16th century to embrace philosophic atheism. The mental equipment of the
period scarcely allowed such thoughts: it lacked the key words, the conclusive arguments and
the scientific support that is indispensable for such thinking. In that century, the denial of God
scarcely entered into people’s concerns, desires or needs.

Second, intellectual individualism, the independant and critical attitude of humanism was a
threat to the unanimity of Christian belief. Finally the reform-mindedness of such humanists
as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Erasmus and Rabelais was balanced on the religious side by reformers
such as Calvin,12 who employed humanistic techniques in their own cause.

RENAISSANCE PORTRAITS

A closer look at some of the people who made this movement, may be useful.

A. From the earliest period, we can study two remarkable figures.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was a Florentine merchant’s son who spent his formative
years in Naples, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Angevin (French) court. He resisted
his father’s desire that he study law. He finally settled in Florence in 1340. Boccaccio made

12
John Calvin (1509-64) (Jean Cauvin) leader of Protestant Reformation, who
established the first presbyterian government in Geneva; author of Institutes of the Christian
Religion.

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his reputation in Italian with the Decameron: A group of young men and women meet in a
church in Florence and decide to go into the countryside to avoid the plague. To busy
themselves, they told stories ten a day for ten days (the title means “ten days” in Greek).

Boccaccio also wrote important scholarly treatises, including On the Genealogy of the Gentile
Gods, which was a handbook to facilitate the reading of classical texts. He was a great friend
of Petrarch and wrote a life of Dante; indeed, in Florence, he delivered public lectures on the
Commedia, the first person known to have done so.

Francesco Petrarco, whom we know as Petrarch (1304–1374), was the giant of the early
Renaissance. He was born at Arezzo because his father was in exile from Florence (a victim
of the same troubles that had gotten Dante exiled). He grew up in the south of France, where
his father got a job at the papal court in Avignon. Petrarch studied law for seven years but
considered this time wasted because “I could not face making a merchandise of my mind.”

In 1327, he caught sigh of “Laura,” the mysterious woman who inspired 366 poems in
exquisite Italian. These poems first won him wide acclaim. In 1341, he was named poet
laureate in Rome. After the plague, Petrarch returned to Florence in about 1353, but he did
some work for the Sforza family in Milan. He found works of Cicero, got Homer translated
into Latin, and died with an unfinished life of Julius Caesar on his desk.

Petrarch’s attitude toward books is indicative of his character: Books are welcome, assiduous
companions, always ready to appear in public or to go back in their box at your command,
always disposed to speak or to be silent, to stay at home or to make a visit to the woods, to
travel or to abide in the country; to gossip, joke, encourage you, comfort you, advise you,
reprove you, and take care of you; to teach you the world’s secrets, the records of great deeds,
the rules of life and the scorn of death, moderation in good fortune, fortitude in ill, calmness
and constancy in behavior. These are learned, happy, useful, and ready spoken companions
who will never bring you tedium, expense, lamentations, jealous murmurs, or deception.

Petrarch was by no means irreligious. He once said, “Theology is a poem that has God for its
subject.” Petrarch gives us a good feel for the many currents of the early Renaissance.

B. In the generation after Petrarch, we see the foundations for the period of Florentine

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greatness and the consolidation of certain intellectual traditions that begin to look like a
movement.

The great Florentine leader Lorenzo de’ Medici “the Magnificent” (1449–1492) opens up
further perspectives on the evolving Renaissance phenomenon. His family had risen from
plebeian origins, through trade, to the banking industry. They were among the richest people
in Europe and dominated Florentine politics. Lorenzo became head of state at twenty-one. He
was young, lusty, and artistically astute. He retained close associations with the lower classes
and posed as a popular leader. He was a hard-headed diplomat and politician who maintained
the peace. He diligently pursued the goal of making Florence the cultural capital of
Italywhich meant of Europe. He spent half the state budget on books for the Medicean
academy. Lorenzo sustained the Florentine achievements of preceding decades, promoting
civic humanism in all its respects and, through his princely patronage, inaugurating the
courtly phase of the Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was the illegitimate son of a lawyer and a servant. He was
apprenticed at fourteen to an accomplished artist, Verocchio, and stayed with him six years
before going on to nine or ten years in Florence. He was handsome, versatile, graceful, a fine
singer, and interested in almost everything, but he did not have the humanist education that
many of his contemporaries did. His Latin was imperfect and he had no Greek at all.

In 1482, da Vinci went to Milan to work as a military engineer for the Sforza. While there, he
painted portraits, designed stage sets and costumes, drew maps, proposed irrigation plans,
created a central heating system in the Sforza palace, and drew some of the sketches, more
than 5,000 of which survive in his notebooks. In 1499, the Sforza fell from power and da
Vinci spent the rest of his life wandering. He ended up in France.

His artistic remains are intriguing: not one finished statue, some dozen finished paintings, but
thousands of drawings and sketches. His restlessness and lack of focus are evident. This may
also explain the enigmatic nature of his work. Perhaps his greatest achievements were not
artistic: He raised interest in the structure and function of nature.

Michelangelo Buonoratti (1475–1564) was a Florentine of high birth whose family opposed

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his desire to be an artist. He was fantastically famous and wealthy in his own lifetime. He
won the favor of Lorenzo de’ Medici and was supported in the Medicean academy. Greek art
was being recovered in great quantities and held up as the model. Michelangelo did much
sculpture that studies the Greek models, but in the end, he surpassed them.

Michelangelo was fascinated by the opportunity to study the body in various poses and under
different tensions. There is, thus, an unprecedented realism in his work. But he never stopped
there. In 1496, he went to Rome and got a commission from a French cardinal to do a Pietà.
His work is an astonishing synthesis of Gothic, Greek, and Christian art that surpasses
anything previously accomplished. In 1501, he returned to Florence and, in this period,
sculpted his David. This work was clearly a study, but it shows Michelangelo trying to
capture the heroic.

In 1505, he returned to Rome to do a set of tomb sculptures for Pope Julius II. Only parts of
this work were ever finished, but the Moses shows the lineage of David. Meanwhile, Julius
had a new task for him: to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo protested that
he was not a painter, but he accepted because the work gave him the opportunity to combine
form and philosophy. He was given the opportunity to work out the program for himself. On
October 31, 1512, his ceiling was unveiled and the history of art changed forever.
Michelangelo was only thirty-seven and lived to be eighty-nine.

In all these figures, we can see certain common themes: versatility, originality, and classical
influences.

C. The “Northern” Renaissance.

It is a matter of considerable interest to see what happened to the Renaissance movement

when it crossed the Alps. The so-called “new learning” struck deep roots in the north of
Europe but looked quite different from its Italian manifestations. It is important to see that lay
culture was different in the north: less urban, literate, and affluent.

It is also important to recognize that the Church was more influential in intellectual life in the
north and that the scholastic tradition was more deeply rooted and persistent. In the north we
speak of “Christian humanism,” a movement that had much in common with Italian
humanism but also some important differences. As in Italy, the motto was “ad fontes”(to the

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sources)but the sources were more likely to be the Bible and the Church fathers than the
Greek and Latin classics.

Northern, or Christian, humanists shared the Italians’ conviction that reading and study were
paths to improvement. Both north and south laid great stress on free will: Humans were free
to choose the path of improvement or to reject it.

Once again, some portraits to sketch the main themes and issues in the northern Renaissance.

Thomas More (1478–1535) has been so much romanticized that it is difficult to get at the
historical figure. He came from a solid middle-class London family. His father desired him to
study law and he did so, brilliantly. He was called to the bar in 1501 and even taught law for a
time.

In 1504, More entered Parliament, but his political career began in earnest when Henry VIII
became king in 1509. More held a series of increasingly distinguished positions until, in 1529,
he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England. He was in touch with, indeed, friends with,
most of the great intellectual figures of the day.

In 1516, he published his most famous work, Utopia, a semi-satirical account of an imaginary
place run according to natural law and simple logic. The book parodied many contemporary
situations. When Henry VIII initially opposed Luther, More prepared the theological treatises
that issued in the king’s name.

He was current with the best Christian humanist scholarship and defended it against both
scholasticism and obscurantism Finally, More broke with the king over the matter of the royal
divorce and was executed for refusing to compromise.

Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536) of Rotterdam was the “Prince of Humanists.” He was of

obscure origins and educated in modest schools, then by the Brethren of the Common Life,
among whom he became acquainted with humanism. Erasmus became an Augustinian canon
and was ordained a priest but got permission to leave his monastery to study. For many years,
he was an itinerant scholar, studying in Paris, Louvain, Oxford, and Italy.

In 1516, Erasmus published a new Latin version of the New Testament, revised on the basis
of Greek manuscripts. His goal was to create a Bible pruned of errors and mistakes, but some

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contemporaries found his willingness to alter the traditional Latin Vulgate Bible disturbing,
because it could be construed as calling into question the extent to which the Bible formed a
single, stable, and recoverable text.

Erasmus became a master of satire; his two greatest works were the Praise of Folly and Julius
Excluded. In the former, Lady Folly naively speaks on behalf of many contemporary
ecclesiastical abuses. In the latter, Pope Julius II arrives at the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter
does not recognize him and will not let him in.

In his later years, Erasmus had a battle with Martin Luther on the human will. He held to the
freedom of the will and the Christian humanist ideal of improvement. Although he
contributed to the Protestant movement, he would not join it. Even so, the Catholic Church for
a long time suspected some of his teachings and rejected others.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI AND THE PRINCE

The Italian Renaissance was a “rebirth” of the legacy of classical antiquity. The Renaissance
was marked by the rebirth of classical forms in art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and
politics.

This rebirth took place in the political framework of city-states, which were, in many ways,
similar to the city-states of classical Greece and Rome. Florence and Venice were two of the
greatest of these city-states.

The Renaissance was an age of individualism and power politics. Secularism, rather than
Christianity, dominated the social, political, and intellectual forces of the age. In the
Renaissance, even popes, such as Julius II (1503–1513), were secularists and political
adventurers. Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) and his unscrupulous career typified the lack of
political morality in the age.

The Prince by Machiavelli epitomizes the age of the Renaissance in Italy. Niccolo
Machiavelli (1469–1527) was a citizen of the Republic of Florence. Middle class in
background and well educated in the classics, Machiavelli was a civil servant of the Republic
of Florence. He served it capably in a number of positions, including diplomatic service. In

15
1512, the republican government of Florence fell and was replaced by the authoritarian
regime of the Medici. Machiavelli lost his position, was briefly imprisoned, and forced to
retire to his farm outside of Florence.

He devoted himself to the study of history and to writing. He wrote books that used the past to
illuminate the present: Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy and, most important, The
Prince (1513).

The influence of Machiavelli’s The Prince.

The Prince is a great book, because, it deals with a great theme: power. It speaks across the
ages. It is one of the most influential books ever written.

Machiavelli chose not to write in Latin, as would have been common. He writes in a clear,
forceful Italian that was formative for the later history of the language.

The Italian title, Il Principe, is correctly but inadequately translated into English as The
Prince. A better rendition is The Leader or Hükümdar in Turkish. Machiavelli’s Principe was
a dictator.

The book summarizes the values and ideals of the Italian Renaissance. Machiavelli built on a
great tradition of debate on morality in politics. The Prince is a tacit but direct critique of
Cicero’s work On Moral Duties (De Officiis, 44 B.C.). For Cicero, a dichotomy can never
exist between morality and expediency, and no separation can exist between public and
private morality. Machiavelli argues exactly the opposite. He argues that expedient acts are
frequently immoral. Machiavelli is a complete secularist. He does not deny God and the idea
of divine punishment. They simply do not enter his calculations. Success is the only criterion
by which to judge a leader or his actions. Machiavelli bases his conclusions on the empirical
evidence of history.

Machiavelli’s ideas were too honest, too free of cant, to be openly embraced. In fact,
however, The Prince has served as a self-help manual for leaders in all fields down to our
own day. Many Political Scientists believe that the modern political world began with
Machiavelli.

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Machiavelli revived the classical Greek idea, found in Thucydides, that the state is subject to
no limits and no code of morality. Machiavelli was, thus, at the foundation of the greatest
enemies faced by freedom in the modern age: the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and
communism.

Machiavelli saw himself as an Italian patriot and ended The Prince with a call for the
unification of Italy. That would remain a dream for three and a half centuries. A more
successful demonstration of Machiavelli’s principles was seen in the “new monarchies”
elsewhere in Europe: England of the Tudor monarchs, France of Louis XI and his successors,
and Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella. The new monarchies were national, rather than dynastic,
states. They were centralized and bureaucratic. They were strongly supported by the middle
class, which wanted a government that would ensure peace, prosperity, and efficiency. The
king was the guarantor of law and order against the chaos of unruly feudal nobility.
Parliaments and other institutions of representative government were viewed as anachronistic
holdovers of feudalism. Roman law was fostered as the legal vehicle of royal absolutism.

Every government requires a myth of supranational legitimization, a set of beliefs that unites
the political community and validates decision making. In a democracy, this set of beliefs is
majority rule. In the new monarchies, it was the concept of the divine right of kings.

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 REFORMATION AND THE WARS OF RELIGION

1523−1648

REFORMATION

Western Christianity was and remains the main constituent element in European thought.
Throughout the history of the West, Christianity has been at the heart of the civilization it
inspires. A European, even if he is an atheist, is still the prisoner of an ethic and a mentality
which are deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. Christianity became the official religion as
a result of the Edict of Constantine13 in 313, three centuries after the birth of Christ14. Until the
15th century, Christianity had successes and setbacks and long periods of stagnation. In the
second half of the fifteenth century, a new religious rising occurred, affecting the whole of
Europe. Until the 18th century, Europe lived a time of trouble.

Protestant humanism was the source of the Reformation between the 15th and the 16th
centuries. A key date was 31 october 1517 when Martin Luther (1483-1546) displayed his 95
Propositions on the doors of Schlosskirche in Wittenburg.

The Reformation was accompanied by the Wars of Religion. These began in Germany in
1546 the year when Luther died and ended more than one century later, in 1648. They left
behind them widespread ruin. In the meantime many agreements were signed: the Peace of
Augsburg in 1555, the Edict of Nantes in 1598, the Letter of Majesty in Bohemia in 1609. But
the Reformation, unlike the Renaissance humanism, quickly became a mass phenomenon and
thousands of men and women had to face civil war and violent repression, just to defend their
faith. The alternative was exile, either in the New World or in a country that upheld their
faith.

All this violence died down in the 18th century but Protestantism survived it. Today it colours
large part of the Western World in Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Nordic countries,. There is a
particular variety of Protestant humanism but it is not easy to identify the precise nature of

13
Known as Constantine the Great. Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus (280-337)
14
The theological bases of Christianity were laid in the first Councils of Nicaea (İznik) in
325, Constantinople (Istanbul) in 381, Ephesus (Efes) in 431, Chalcedon (Kadıköy) in 451.

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Protestant humanism , because there is not one Protestant Church, but many, each expressing
the different views of different people. But they all belong to the same family.

What interests us here is not the Reformation itself but the legacy it left to modern Europe. In
early 16th century, two types of Protestantism followed each other. One was dominated by
Martin Luther, the other by John Calvin (1509-64). The two men were totally different.
Luther was a peasant with a romantic and revolutionary attitude, which inspired on one side
the German peasants between the Elbe, the Rhine and the Alps to revolt and on the other,
antagonized the rich and powerful. Calvin was a lawyer, a cool intellectual, a patient and
tireless organizer who must always follow his logic to the end. These two major strands of
Protestantism prevailed in different places but they had points in common: both aimed at a
break with Rome and with the cult of the Saints, the primacy of Scripture etc. They disagreed,
mainly on the theocratic polity: for Calvin, the Church was supreme; for Luther, the state was.

The militant Protestantism of the 16th century was inaugurated under the banner of liberty and
revolt but soon it fell in the same degree of intransigence of which it accused its enemy. It
built a structure as rigid as medieval Catholicism. The key words of the early Protestant
churches were: Order, strictness and the iron hand.

In the 18th century, Protestantism favoured liberty of conscience. Dogmatic rigour gradually
lessened, in the same spirit as the Enlightenment and mainly under the influence of scientific
progress.

WARS OF RELIGION

How and why did Protestantism take root in some parts of Europe but not in others?

As we have seen, many princes in the Holy Roman Empire, especially in northern Germany,
embraced the Reformation. They did so because of their Humanist educations, religious
conviction or greed for Church lands.

In contrast, such places as Bavaria and Austria, more directly under the emperor’s control,
stayed Catholic. Protestantism was embraced by the ambitious monarchs of Sweden and
Denmark.

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Switzerland was a federation of self-governed city-state republics. Because there was no
central control, urban areas, dominated by literate merchants, were able to embrace
Protestantism. In 1520, Ulrich (Huldreich) Zwingli persuaded the merchants on the town
council in Zürich to embrace Protestantism.

In Geneva, John Calvin sought to create a theocracy. Geneva embraced Protestant liturgical
reforms. The city provided rigorous public religious education for all. Pastors and other parish
officials were elected. Individual households and personal behavior were closely monitored
by a consistory of clergy and lay people. Notorious sinners were excommunicated and even
put to death. Finally, Calvin founded a university that trained preachers who became
especially influential in France and Scotland.

In France, after 1534 the monarchy began a crackdown on Protestants, soon to be known as
Huguenots, who fled to Geneva. The Huguenots returned in the 1550s and drew up a platform
based on the Geneva model. They became especially popular in cities, among merchants, in
part because of the Protestant emphasis on literacy. The attempts of the monarchy and
Catholic Church to suppress them led to the French Wars of Religion (1552–1598). France
was increasingly divided into a Huguenot minority and a Catholic majority.

The 1572 murder of Protestant leaders in their beds (“St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”) led
to two decades of sporadic civil war and a France too weakened by internal division to play a
major role on the international stage.

The Low Countries (Netherlands, Flanders, Luxemburg) were ruled directly by Charles V;
after 1554, by Phillip II of Spain. The literate merchant classes embraced Protestantism. By
the mid-16th century, the northern part (Netherlands) was mostly Protestant; the southern part
(Flanders—later Belgium), Roman Catholic.

In England, Henry VIII, unable to secure a Catholic divorce from his first wife, Catherine of
Aragon, declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England in the 1530s. Between
1553 and 1558, Mary restored Catholicism and launched a persecution, burning 286
Protestants at the stake.

Elizabeth (1558–1603) instituted the Act of Uniformity (1559), which abolished the authority
of the pope and named herself Supreme Governor of the Church of England but retained
bishops, vestments, and many old holidays. Strict Protestants sought to purify the settlement

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of Catholic rituals and practices. They became known as Puritans. Thanks in part to
Elizabeth’s 45-year reign, most English men and women seem to have accepted the
compromise settlement.

The Spanish Crusade, led by Philip II, was an attempt to stamp out Protestant heretics
wherever he found them.

In 1589, Henry III, the last Valois king of France, was assassinated. The next in line for his
throne was the Protestant leader of the Huguenots, Henry of Bourbon who accepted to
convert to Catholicism and became the king of France as Henry IV. In 1598, Henry IV,
reassured Huguenots by granting a toleration via the Edict of Nantes.

Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) began when the Protestants of Bohemia revolted from the
Holy Roman Emperor, The result was a general European war over religion and the balance
of power. The Catholic side included Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Bavaria.

For 30 years, armies crisscrossed Central Europe, leaving devastation in their wake. Finally,
the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 enshrined the position “Cujus regio, ejus religio,” that is, the
religion of the state is the religion of the ruler.

The Wars of Religion had significant consequences.

Germany would remain weak and divided well into the 19th Century.

Spain, saddled with debts from more than a century of trying to fight heretics on all fronts,
began a long, slow decline.

England stayed out of it and, after a period of instability, would emerge a major player at the
end of the 17th Century.

France, having achieved a degree of dynastic stability, would become the leading power in
Europe.

Europeans finally agreed to live and let live (more or less) on the issue of religion. With such
an intensely rational settlement in place, it is no accident that the remainder of the 17th
Century would be regarded as THE AGE OF REASON.

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