Chapter 12: Renaissance and Reformation

The Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance

The word renaissance means rebirth.
A number of people who lived in Italy between 1350 and 1550 believed that they had witnessed a rebirth of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. * First, Renaissance Italy was largely an urban society. * As the Middle Ages progressed, powerful city-states became the centers of Italian political, economic, and social life. * Within this growing urban society, a secular, or worldly, viewpoint emerged as increasing wealth created new possibilities for the enjoyment of material things. * Second, the Renaissance was an age of recovery from the disasters of the fourteenth century such as the plague, political instability, and a decline of Church power. * Third, a new view of human beings emerged as people in the Italian Renaissance began to emphasize individual ability.
The well-rounded, universal person was capable of achievements in many areas of life.
Leonardo da Vinci (VIHN•chee), for example, was a painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, and mathematician.
Of course, not all parts of Italian society were directly affected by these three general characteristics of the Italian Renaissance.

The Italian States

During the Middle Ages, Italy had failed to develop a centralized monarchical state.
The lack of a single strong ruler made it possible for a number of city-states in northern and central Italy to remain independent.
Three of them—Milan, Venice, and Florence expanded and played crucial roles in Italian politics. * The Italian city-states prospered from a flourishing trade that had expanded in the Middle Ages.
Milan, located in northern Italy at the cross-roads of the main trade routes from Italian coastal cities to the Alpine passes, was one of the richest city- states in Italy. * The last Visconti ruler of Milan died in 1447.
Francesco Sforza then conquered the city and became its new duke. * Sforza was the leader of a band of mercenaries—soldiers who sold their services to the highest bidder. * Both the Visconti and Sforza rulers worked to build a strong centralized state.
Another major northern Italian city-state was the republic of Venice. * Venice’s trade empire was tremendously profitable and made Venice an international power.
The republic of Florence dominated the region of Tuscany. * In 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici took control of the city.
During the late 1400s, Florence experienced an economic decline.
During this time a Dominican preacher named Girolamo Savonarola began condemning the corruption and excesses of the Medici family. * Eventually people tired of Savonarola’s strict regulations on gambling, horseracing, swearing, painting, music, and books.
The growth of powerful monarchical states in the rest of Europe eventually led to trouble for the Italian states.
A decisive turning point in their war came in 1527.
On May 5, thousands of troops belonging to the Spanish king Charles I arrived at the city of Rome along with mercenaries from different countries.

Machiavelli and the New Statecraft

No one gave better expression to the Italians’ love affair with political power than Niccolò Machiavelli.
His book The Prince is one of the most influential works on political power in the Western world. * Machiavelli’s central thesis in The Prince concerns how to acquire—and keep—political power. * From Machiavelli’s point of view, a prince’s attitude toward power must be based on an understanding of human nature, which he believed was basically self-centered. * Machiavelli was among the first to abandon morality as the basis for analyzing political activity. * His views on politics have had a profound influence on political leaders who followed.

Renaissance Society

Throughout much of Europe, land-holding nobles were faced with declining incomes during the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
By 1500, nobles, old and new, again dominated society * By this time, the noble, or aristocrat, was expected to fulfill certain ideals.
In his work, Castiglione described the characteristics of a perfect Renaissance noble. * First, a noble was born, not made. * He was expected to have character, grace, and talent. * Second, the perfect noble had to develop two basic skills. * The aim, then, of the perfect noble was to serve his prince in an effective and honest way.
In the Middle Ages, peasants had made up the overwhelming mass of the third estate.
Serfdom continued to decrease with the decline of the manorial system.
Townspeople made up the rest of the third estate. In the Middle Ages, townspeople were mostly merchants and artisans.
At the top of urban society were the patricians. * Their wealth from trade, industry, and banking enabled them to dominate their communities economically, socially, and politically.
Below the patricians and the burghers were the workers, who earned pitiful wages, and the unemployed.
The family bond was a source of great security in the dangerous urban world of Renaissance Italy.
The most important aspect of the marriage contract was the size of the dowry, a sum of money given by the wife’s family to the husband upon marriage.
The father-husband was the center of the Italian family. * He gave it his name, managed all finances (his wife had no share in his wealth), and made the decisions that determined his children’s lives.
A father’s authority over his children was absolute until he died or formally freed his children.

The Intellectual and Artistic Renaissance

Italian Renaissance Humanism

Secularism and an emphasis on the individual characterized the Renaissance.
These characteristics are most noticeable in the intellectual and artistic accomplishments of the period.
A key intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism. * Humanism was based on the study of the classics, the literary works of ancient Greece and Rome.
Petrarch, who has often been called the father of Italian Renaissance humanism, did more than any other individual in the fourteenth century to foster the development of humanism * He also began the humanist emphasis on using pure classical Latin (Latin as used by the ancient Romans as opposed to medieval Latin).
In Florence, the humanist movement took a new direction at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Vernacular Literature

The humanist emphasis on classical Latin led to its widespread use in the writings of scholars, lawyers, and theologians.
In the fourteenth century, the literary works of the Italian author Dante and the English author Geoffrey Chaucer helped make vernacular literature more popular. * Dante’s masterpiece in the Italian vernacular is the Divine Comedy.
Chaucer used the English vernacular in his famous work The Canterbury Tales. * The Canterbury Tales consists of a collection of stories told by a group of 29 pilgrims journeying to the tomb of Saint Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, England.
Another writer who used the vernacular was Christine de Pizan, a Frenchwoman who is best known for her works written in defense of women.

Education in the Renaissance

The humanist movement had a profound effect on education. * They wrote books on education and opened schools based on their ideas.
At the core of humanist schools were the liberal studies.
Humanists believed that the liberal studies (what we call today the liberal arts) enabled individuals to reach their full potential. * According to the humanists, students should study history, moral philosophy, eloquence (or rhetoric), letters (grammar and logic), poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and music.
Following the Greek ideal of a sound mind in a sound body, humanist educators also stressed physical education.
Humanist educators thought that a humanist education was a practical preparation for life
Females were largely absent from these schools.

The Artistic Renaissance in Italy

Renaissance artists sought to imitate nature in their works.
The frescoes painted by Masaccio in Florence at the beginning of the fifteenth century have long been regarded as the first masterpieces of early Renaissance (1400–1490) art. * A fresco is a painting done on fresh, wet plaster with water-based paints.
This new, or Renaissance, style was used and modified by other Florentine painters in the fifteenth century.
The revolutionary achievements of Florentine painters in the fifteenth century were matched by equally stunning advances in sculpture and architecture.
The architect Filippo Brunelleschi was inspired by the buildings of classical Rome to create a new architecture in Florence.
By the end of the fifteenth century, Italian painters, sculptors, and architects had created a new artistic world.
The final stage of Italian Renaissance painting, which flourished between 1490 and 1520, is called the High Renaissance.
Leonardo mastered the art of realistic painting and even dissected human bodies to better see how nature worked.
At age 25, Raphael was already regarded as one of Italy’s best painters.
Michelangelo, an accomplished painter, sculptor, and architect, was another artistic master of the High Renaissance. * Michelangelo’s figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome reveal an ideal type of human being with perfect proportions.

The Northern Artistic Renaissance

Like the artists of Italy, the artists of northern Europe became interested in portraying their world realistically.
Circumstance played a role in the differences.
The most important northern school of art in the fifteenth century was found in Flanders, one of the Low Countries.
The Flemish painter Jan van Eyck was among the first to use oil paint, which enabled the artist to use a wide variety of colors and create fine details as in his painting Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride.
By 1500, artists from the north had begun to study in Italy and to be influenced by what artists were doing there.
One German artist who was greatly affected by the Italians was Albrecht Dürer.
As can be seen in his famous Adoration of the Magi, Dürer did not reject the use of minute details characteristic of northern artists.

The Protestant Reformation

Erasmus and Christian Humanism

The Protestant Reformation is the name given to the religious reform movement that divided the western Church into Catholic and Protestant groups.
Although Martin Luther began the Reformation in the early sixteenth century, several earlier developments had set the stage for religious change.
One such development grew from widespread changes in intellectual thought.
From that came a movement called Christian humanism, or Northern Renaissance humanism. * The major goal of this movement was the reform of the Catholic Church. * The Christian humanists believed in the ability of human beings to reason and improve themselves.
The best known of all the Christian humanists was Desiderius Erasmus * To reform the Church, Erasmus wanted to spread the philosophy of Christ, provide education in the works of Christianity, and criticize the abuses in the Church. * Erasmus sought reform within the Catholic Church.

Religion on the Eve of the Reformation

Between 1450 and 1520, a series of popes—known as the Renaissance popes—failed to meet the Church’s spiritual needs.
Julius II, the fiery “warrior-pope,” personally led armies against his enemies.
Many church officials were also concerned with money and used their church offices to advance their careers and their wealth
While the leaders of the Church were failing to meet their responsibilities, ordinary people desired meaningful religious expression and assurance of their salvation or acceptance into Heaven.
According to church practice at that time, through veneration of a relic, a person could gain an indulgence—release from all or part of the punishment for sin.
Other people sought certainty of salvation in the popular mystical movement known as the Modern Devotion.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a monk and a professor at the University of Wittenberg, in Germany, where he lectured on the Bible.
Catholic teaching had stressed that both faith and good works were needed to gain personal salvation.
Through his study of the Bible, Luther came to believe that humans are not saved through their good works but through their faith in God. * Luther did not see himself as a rebel, but he was greatly upset by the widespread selling of indulgences.
On October 31, 1517, Luther, who was greatly angered by the Church’s practices, sent a list of Ninety-five Theses to his church superiors, especially the local bishop.
By 1520, Luther had begun to move toward a more definite break with the Catholic Church.
Through all these calls for change, Luther continued to emphasize his new doctrine of salvation.
Unable to accept Luther’s ideas, the Church excommunicated him in January 1521.
The emperor thought he could convince Luther to change his ideas, but Luther refused. * The young emperor was outraged. “A single friar who goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years,” he declared, “must be wrong!”
By the Edict of Worms, Martin Luther was made an outlaw within the empire.
During the next few years, Luther’s religious movement became a revolution.
As part of the development of these state-dominated churches, Luther also set up new religious services to replace the Catholic mass.

Politics in the German Reformation

From its very beginning, the fate of Luther’s movement was closely tied to political affairs.
Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor (who was also Charles I, the king of Spain), ruled an immense empire consisting of Spain and its colonies, the Austrian lands, Bohemia, Hungary, the Low Countries, the duchy of Milan in northern Italy, and the kingdom of Naples in southern Italy. * Politically, Charles wanted to keep this enormous empire under the control of his dynasty—the Hapsburgs.
The chief political concern of Charles V was his rivalry with the king of France, Francis I.
Finally, the internal political situation in the Holy Roman Empire was not in Charles’s favor.
By the time Charles V was able to bring military forces to Germany, the Lutheran princes were well organized.
An end to religious warfare in Germany came in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg.
The right of each German ruler to determine the religion of his subjects was accepted, but not the right of the subjects to choose their own religion.

The Spread of Protestantism and the Catholic Response

The Zwinglian Reformation

With the Peace of Augsburg, what had at first been merely feared was now certain: the ideal of Christian unity was forever lost. * Even before the Peace of Augsburg, however, division had appeared in Protestantism.
One of these new groups appeared in Switzerland.
Ulrich Zwingli was a priest in Zürich. * As his movement began to spread to other cities in Switzerland, Zwingli sought an alliance with Martin Luther and the German reformers. * In October 1531, war broke out between the Protestant and Catholic states in Switzerland.

Calvin and Calvinism

John Calvin was educated in his native France.
After his conversion to Protestantism, however, he was forced to flee Catholic France for the safety of Switzerland.
On most important doctrines, Calvin stood very close to Luther. * Calvin’s emphasis on the all-powerful nature of God led him to other ideas. * One of these ideas was predestination. * The belief in predestination gave later Calvinists the firm conviction that they were doing God’s work on Earth.
In 1536, Calvin began working to reform the city of Geneva.
Calvin’s success in Geneva made the city a powerful center of Protestantism.
By the mid-sixteenth century, Calvinism had replaced Lutheranism as the most important and dynamic form of Protestantism.

The Reformation in England

The English Reformation was rooted in politics, not religion.
King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had a daughter, Mary, but no son. * Since he needed a male heir, Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. * Impatient with the pope’s unwillingness to annul (declare invalid) his marriage to Catherine, Henry turned to England’s own church courts.
As the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the high- est church court in England, Thomas Cranmer ruled in May 1533 that the king’s marriage to Catherine was “null and absolutely void.”
In 1534, at Henry’s request, Parliament moved to finalize the break of the Catholic Church in England with the pope in Rome. * Henry used his new powers to dissolve the monasteries and sell their land and possessions to wealthy landowners and merchants. * When Henry died in 1547, he was succeeded by Edward VI, a sickly nine-year-old, the son of his third wife. * There was no doubt that Mary was a Catholic who wanted to restore England to Roman Catholicism.

The Anabaptists

Reformers such as Luther had allowed the state to play an important, if not dominant, role in church affairs. * However, some people strongly disliked giving such power to the state.
These were radicals known as the Anabaptists. * To Anabaptists, the true Christian church was a voluntary community of adult believers who had undergone spiritual rebirth and had then been baptized. * Anabaptists also believed in following the prac- tices and the spirit of early Christianity. * Finally, most Anabaptists believed in the complete separation of church and state.
Their political beliefs, as much as their religious beliefs, caused the Anabaptists to be regarded as dangerous radicals who threatened the very fabric of sixteenth-century society.

Effect on the Role of Women

The Protestants were important in developing a new view of the family.
Protestantism had eliminated the idea that special holiness was associated with celibacy and had abolished both monasticism and the requirement of celibacy for the clergy. * Obedience to her husband was not a woman’s only role. * Her other important duty was to bear children.
To Calvin and Luther, this function of women was part of the divine plan.
Overall, then, the Protestant Reformation did not change women’s subordinate place in society.

The Catholic Reformation

By the mid-sixteenth century, Lutheranism had become rooted in Germany and Scandinavia, and Calvinism had taken hold in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and eastern Europe. * However, the Catholic Church also had a revitalization in the sixteenth century, giving it new strength and enabling it to regain much that it had lost.
The Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, was founded by a Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola.
Reform of the papacy was another important factor in the Catholic Reformation.
Pope Paul III perceived the need for change and took the bold step of appointing a Reform Commission in 1537 to determine the Church’s ills.
In March 1545, a group of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and theologians met in the city of Trent, on the border between Ger- many and Italy. * The final decrees of the Council of Trent reaffirmed traditional Catholic teachings in opposition to Protestant beliefs. * After the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church possessed a clear body of doctrine and was unified under the supreme leadership of the pope.
With a renewed spirit of confidence, Catholics entered a new phase, as well prepared as Calvinists to do battle for their faith.