Amedeo

A correction and an addition to # 141:


[Roman architecture:} ...which became obsessive in Pisa and etherial in Florence...

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[After the last paragraph"}

Under the conditions of civil freedom, the crafts and business thrived. Men devoted themselves to the cares of their world and made many new mechanical inventions, including the four-phase piston and cylinder apparatus (which will eventually be employed in conjunction with the Italian invented internal combustion engine.) While Florence excelled in the arts, Siena excelled in the creation of technologies. And it is in Siena that the municipal Hall has two huge murals that depict the industrial and economical effects of what they called Good [unsuppressive and non-exploiting] Government and the effects of Bad Government. ("Libertas et Justitia" were even inscribed on the first but short-lived silver dollar of the U.S. republic.) The endeavors of the Venetian Vivaldi brothers, and of the Genovese Chris. Colombus, in the 15th century, to reach the far East by sailing West are fundamentally connected with the world of trade, but Columbus availed himself of the geographical studies made by the Florentine scholar Toscanelli. From the same Venetian maritime republic, the English hired the Cabot [Caboto] brothers to sail along the eastern coast of north America. And it will be from the late Renaissance Italy that Ricci will bring clocks and harpsichords to the emperor of China -- never reached by the hopeful Columbus.
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And thank you, LOGOS SOKRATIKOS.

Antipope Innocent II

A superb exercise in the re-definition of terms you mean. By the end of his post his rather weird definition of "the Renaissance" had been pushed all the way to the Tenth Century. If you wave your magic wand and redefine anything in the Middle Ages that you happen to like as "Renaissance", then it's hardly surprising if you end up with a glorious "Renaissance" that just happens to stretch back over about 500 years of the Medieval Period.

His post was superbly silly.

Amedeo

I will reply to you, NOT in order to defend Logos' compliment, but in order to clarify a few points that obviously confused you and may have confused others.

The Renaissance, and I mean the Italian Renaissance (not its proliferations and its being joined in by various people in many countries, whether it's Chaucer, the admirer of Petrarch; Copernicus, who want to Italy to study Law but started attending the lessons in Pythagorean heliocentrism; or the many English and other poets who learned to compose sonnets after its beginning at the 13th century court of Palermo and its great actualizations by Italian poets).

Considering the many aspects of the Renaissance, it is reasonable to say that it started at the beginning of the 14th century, but it had antecedents: the teaching of Francis of Assisi in the 13th century, the troubadours from the 12th century on, and the renaissance or re-foundation of republics (the renaissance of civil freedom), which took place over a number of centuries and is a precondition for the flourishing of the arts and crafts. Thus, one Italian historian, who understood the decline of the feudalism or the Dark Ages, and the re-emergence of free states (Republics and Communes), spoke of the RENOVATION -- the RENEWAL. But it was not an all-encompassing renovation or renaissance. Burckhardt's use of the term, "renaissance" [The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy]* is actually also a limited one, as it concentrates on the sociological or political phenomena, and certainly does not expound the thesis of the contrast between the heaven-oriented life and the earth oriented life of the common people that I spoke of.

For practical purposes, one may also say that the Dark Ages started in 312, when in the battle on the Milvian bridge in Rome, Emperor Maxentius was defeated (along with the Graeco-Roman civilization) by Emperor Constantine, the non-Roman who in a dream saw a cross with the caption, "In hoc signo vinces": Under this sign, you will win, and he did (along with Christianity and all of its disastrous consequence). And for Augustan Italy or half of it, the Dark Ages ended symbolically in 1313, when the last of the Holy Roman Emperors [neither Roman nor holy] descended on Italian soil and died there, and the ecclesiastial power (The Holy See) moved to Avignon, outside Italy. [The end of one Age and the beginning of the other practically coincide chronologically.]

For different countries, the Dark Ages (or, if you wish, the Middle Ages) are chronologically different, but in all cases, what one calls Middle Ages or Renaissance comprises MANY cultural factors and it's not the case that ALL the factors of a cultural period have a simultaneous beginning -- in the same way that you can purchase goods in stores and furnish and decorate your home all at once.
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* (great to read; available on line)
http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy...urckhardt.html

Antipope Innocent II

What you are deciding to call "the Italian Renaissance" seems to be defined by a number of elements in Medieval culture and society which are not confined to Italy and (by your own admission) not confined to the Fourteenth, Fifteenth or Sixteenth Century. So your definition of "Renaissance" is so loose and wide-ranging as to be virtually useless.

Because Burkhart is smart enough to know that if you try to define either periods or even movements by simplistic generalisations about "the heaven-oriented life and the earth oriented life" you get nowhere.

David B

Why is it that no historian has any interested in the geophysics and climatology of history?

David B

Amaleq13

Too much science.

WishboneDawn

Well, you've at least got one housewife interested in the subject.

Antipope Innocent II

Pardon? Lots are. It's an increasing area of analysis generally, but particularly in relation to the potential significance for the fall of the Roman Empire and the upheavals of the Fourteenth Century.

Amedeo

P.S. to # 223

I have already expresses the date of what some historians call the Middle Ages: between the 6th and the 16th century. Unfortunately this chronological classification is totally useless to differentiate the DARK AGES (which is characterized by the SUBMISSION of the majority of populations to feudal lords and to the divine Lord, or destitution and otherwordliness) from the RENOVATION that occurred in different countries at different times.

The sub-classification of the Middle Ages into the low and the high M.A. serves no purpose at all, because certain renovations that occurred (In Italy, in Flanders, etc.) DURING the high Middle Ages are actually deviations from the M. Ages! Feudalism was agrarian, but industrialism [crafts, engineering, etc.] grew in the cities. The "bougeosie", which developed in some countries, was a social class apart from the masters and serf of the feudal system.

What was truly Medieval during the so-called high Middle Ages? One of things is what has been called the Carolingian Renaissance. It was characterized by Dr. Charles the Great imposing baptism at gunpoint -- I mean at the point of the sword, for gunpower and cannon were developed and used in some Italian free states BEFORE Venetian merchants, the Polos, went to China. So, Charles revived Theodosius, who had imposed Christianity on the empire. As for the alleged revival of learning, NO! What occurred was the advancement of Christian theology, which utilized the works of the Arab Avicenna and Averroes, and whatever of Greek philosophy they Arabs had brought into Europe, as well as the utilization of philosophy which the early Greek and Italian theologians had systematically made. The advanced learning of the Medieval clergy was not the education of the masses of people under under the Pope or under the Emperor.

The High Middle Ages -- which was predominant all over Christendom -- undertook the reconquest of Palestine. I say re-conquest when I should be speaking of the regaining of the throne of Jerusalem for the House of the Merongians, in the bloodline of the Davidic King Jesus the Christ. (Godfrey of Boullion will finally get the throne that Joshua bar Joseph bar David never attained in his life and was crucified as Jesus Nazarene King of the Judeans.) The crusade sponsored by the French Pope, and joined in by many European countries, attained its mark and created a nobility caste which last to some extent to our own days.

Meanwhile, the common people got caught in the contests between Pope and Emperor for supreme power, and the 13th century Innocent III is the last claimant to the two keys that Peter received. There are at least three Italian humanists that contested his supremacy. Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy, wrote a short treatise [De Monarchia] on what today we call the separation of church and state. But the unity of church and state -- with their mutual support and with all the inquisitions and the burning at the stake or hangings was to persist until governor Jefferson -- a fighter for an American republic -- made it illegal in the colony of Virginia.

The French, English, or German monks of the high Middle Ages became land-lords of vast estates; the French one refined cuisine and liquors; the Spanish ones became the great inquisitors -- a far cry from the Italian monastic orders whose motto was, in the work of St. Benedict, "Ora et labora": Pray and Work. And it was from the Republic of Amalfi that the Order of the Hospitaliers was established in peaceful Jerusalem (before the Crusades), which later became the order of the Knights of Malta. (The last remnant has a city-state, a big block in size, within the city of Rome. It even issues its own postage stamps.) The templars and other monk-soldiers were a Franco-Norman invention, but from the Arab Palestine they brought the pointed-arch architecture, the game of chess, and the banking system into Europe. Chessmate: Shah Mat: the King is Dead.

Antipope Innocent II

We seem to have gone from “the Dark Age extended to the Renaissance!” to “the Dark Age extended to the Renaissance, which is whatever I define it as, so long as it’s Italian”.

Despite this, thousands of historians and other people seem to find this “useless” term quite useful. Probably because they have a better grasp of the period than you and recognise sweeping generalizations about “the SUBMISSION of the majority of populations to feudal lords and to the divine Lord” as being patently silly.

That sentence makes no sense.

Another of your problems is that you have this simplistic idea that this “feudalism” thing was the economic system across Europe apart from in cities in “Italy, in Flanders, etc.”. Basing your ideas on gross over-simplifications and errors like that will inevitably result in a confused misapprehension about many things.

I’m starting to get the idea that your definition of “Medieval” is “anything between 1000 and 1600 that I don’t like: religion, feudalism etc”. Just as your definition of “Renaissance” seems to be “anything in the same period that I do like, especially if it’s Italian”.

That’s a grotesque and ridiculous caricature of the what the Carolingian Renaissance constituted.

Yes. So? No-one thought the Polos brought gunpowder back from China anyway. And the first mention of gunpowder in Europe was by an Englishman.

The Carolingian Renaissance didn’t see any works by Avicenna or Averroes, which didn’t find their way to Europe until the Twelfth Century. Unless of course you’re trying to say the Twelfth Century Renaissance didn’t see any revival of learning, in which case your post just veered off from the muddled and silly to the totally ridiculous.

Anyone who thinks Medieval history can be characterised as “the unity of church and state[/i] needs to go back and do some basic reading on the period.

Yes, the Italians were wonderful while everyone else was bad – we get it. I think I’ll stop responding to this cartoonish nonsense now.