Q. Discuss the social roots of the Renaissance in Italy.

The term 'Renaissance' literally means rebirth, and is, in a narrow sense, used to describe
the revival of interest in the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome. This deeply
influenced Europeans. The Renaissance, however, was not a mere revival of ancient
learning. It was marked by a series of new developments in the fields of art, literature,
religion, philosophy, science and politics. The intellectual and cultural life of Europe for
centuries had been dominated by the Catholic Church. The Renaissance undermined this
domination. The revival of pre-Christian Classical learning and of interest in the cultural
achievements of ancient Greece and Rome was, in itself, an important factor in
undermining the domination of the Church. The Renaissance, of course, went beyond mere
revival and gave rise to a new way of thinking.

If we were to have a glance at the history of the preceding centuries of the Renaissance, it
shows that, after the dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no immediate
possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had deluged Europe had
to absorb their barbarism: the fragments of Roman civilization had either to be destroyed
or assimilated: the Germanic nations had to receive culture and religion from the people
they had superseded; the Church had to be created, and a new form given to the old idea of
the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern nationalities should be defined, that
the modern languages should be formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and
wealth accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of the free spirit
of humanity could exist. The first nation which fulfilled these conditions was the first to
inaugurate the new era. The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that
Italy possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and commercial
prosperity, at a time when other nations were still semi-barbarous.

While formally beginning in the 15th century, the social origins of the Italian Renaissance
can be traced back to the economic, social, and political developments in Italian society
during the 12th through 14th centuries. The 12th and 13th centuries comprised an age of
expansion and prosperity directed by the capitalistic noble classes, or grandi, who often
resided in the cities and invested in business but whose cultural traditions were military
and feudal, giving preference to the chivalric and courtly literature of France. This changed
in the late 13th century when the non-noble classes, led by rich businessmen, seized control
of many town governments and drove the grandi from power. However the 14th century
experienced a series of disasters that, paradoxically, modified the structural foundations of
Italian society so as to promote the flourishing of artistic and literary endeavors. During
the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the
world or had seen it only to cross himself, and turn aside and tell his beads and pray. The
Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick veil which they had drawn
between the mind of man and the outer world, and flashing the light of reality upon the
darkened places of his own nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted
culture in the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man strove to
make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his privilege as well as destiny to
live. An external event determined the direction which this outburst of the spirit of freedom
should take. This was the contact of the modern with the ancient mind which followed
upon what is called the Revival of Learning. Men found that in classical as well as Biblical
antiquity existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual, by which they might
profit in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in its own energies when it learned
what the ancients had achieved.

Dante's poem, a work of conscious art, conceived in a modern spirit and written in a modern
tongue, was the first true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had shaken
off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal, of antique culture as the everlasting solace and
the universal education of the human race, his lifelong effort to recover the classical
harmony of thought and speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of
the Renaissance; its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After Petrarch,
Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of freedom. His conception of human
existence as joy to be accepted with thanksgiving, not as a gloomy error to be rectified by
suffering, familiarized the fourteenth century with that form of semi-pagan gladness which
marked the real Renaissance. Sculptors and painters combined with architects to cut the
arts loose from their connection with the Church by introducing a spirit and a sentiment
alien to Christianity.

There are three stages in the history of scholarship during the Renaissance. The first is the
age of passionate desire; Petrarch poring over a Homer he could not understand, and
Boccaccio in his maturity learning Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head
of poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the Italians with a thirst
for antique culture. Next comes the age of acquisition and of libraries. Nicholas V., who
founded the Vatican Library in 1453, Cosimo de Medici, who began the Medicean
Collection a little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and convents
of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers of Greek, who in the first half of the
fifteenth century escaped from Constantinople with precious freights of classic literature,
are the heroes of this second period. It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and
indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshiped by these men, just as the reliques
of Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the Crusades
was revived in this quest of the Holy Grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of Pagan
authors were valued like precious gems. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received an
almost equal homage. What is most remarkable about this age of scholarship is the
enthusiasm which pervaded all classes Italy for antique culture. Popes and princes, captains
of adventure and peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike became
scholars. Then came the third age of scholarship; the age of the critics, philologers, and
printers. What had been collected by Poggio and Aurispa had now to be explained by
Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. They began their task by digesting and arranging the
contents of the libraries. There were then no short cuts to learning, no dictionaries of
antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology and history. The text and the canon
of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be
struck. Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The Aldi,
the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing scores of scholars, men of
supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right reading of
sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place beyond the reach
of monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace of humanity which exists in
the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field of scholarship sink into insignificance
beside the labors of these men, who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of
Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer in
1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1513. They then became the inalienable heritage of
mankind. This third age in the history of the Renaissance Scholarship may be said to have
reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed on the torch of learning to
the northern nations. The publication of his "Adagia" in 1500, marks the advent of a more
critical and selective spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining
strength in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and sifting, is
one of the points which distinguish the moderns from the ancients; and criticism was
developed by the process of assimilation, comparison, and appropriation, which was
necessary in the growth of scholarship. The ultimate effect of this recovery of classic
literature was, once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The modern world was brought into
close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom
of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated.

The history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or
even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human
spirit manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of
art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge
and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain
neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their
discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the
spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use
of them. The force then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the
modern world. In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared. But
it must never be forgotten that as a matter of history the true Renaissance began in Italy. It
was there that the essential qualities which distinguish the modern from the ancient and the
medieval world were developed. Italy created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture and
of intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath of the European races. As the Jews
are called the chosen and peculiar people of divine revelation, so may the Italians be called
the chosen and peculiar vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship,
in science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern intellect, they took the
lead, handing to Germany and France and England the restored humanities complete. Spain
and England have since done more for the exploration and colonization of the world.
Germany achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has
collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible energy. But if we return to
the first origins of the Renaissance, we find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was
inert, Italy had already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and to
set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and live.

Bibliography

DeMolen, Richard L.,ed. The Meaning of the Renaissance and Reformation. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy.

Submitted by,
Name: Jungdinaro Sanglir
Course: History Honors, 2nd year
Roll no. : 559