Most Renaissance thinkers didn’t think of their “humanism” as terribly threatening; they thought of “humanism” in the way that Pico della Mirandola thought of it: as a celebration of human freedom, creativity, dignity, achievement, virtue, andpotential. But many 16th and 17th-century Protestant and Catholic reformers, began to see Renaissance humanism as a direct threat to religious authority. Interestingly, today, I keep reading about religious nationalists in the USA critiquing “humanism” as a threat to their ideal vision of America as a Christian nation!
For this prompt, first look into this new critique of humanism by some current Christian nationalist writer(s). Then, defend Renaissance humanism from these current attacks! That is, think of yourself as a lawyer defending the meaning and importance of Renaissance humanism for our current society. Be sure to draw upon More’s Utopia, Machiavelli’s The Prince, pages from the Merriman textbook on humanism, to help you support your defense of humanism against its attackers today.
https://basilica.ca/documents/2016/10/Thomas%20Mor…
56 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
The Rediscovery of Classical Learning
The Tuscan poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) was among the
earliest and most influential of those who rediscovered and celebrated the
classics of Latin antiquity. Petrarch, the son of a Florentine notary, learned
Latin from a monk who inspired the boy to pursue his fascination with the
classical world, which he came to view as a lost age. As a young man,
Petrarch lived in Avignon, among an international community of lawyers and
churchmen at the papal court during the “Avignon Papacy” (1309-1378),
when the popes were subject to the influence of the kings of France. There
he copied ancient works from manuscripts and books. Petrarch and his
friends searched far and wide for more classical manuscripts. They uncov
ered the Letters to Athens of the Roman orator and moralist Marcus Tullius
Cicero (106-43 b.c.), among other texts, stored in the cathedral of Verona.
The study of Cicero led Petrarch to see in classical philosophy a guide to life
based on experience.
Petrarch’s successors found and copied other classical manuscripts.
Among them were classical literary commentaries, which provided human
ists with a body of information about the authors in whom they were inter
ested. Scholars brought works of classical Greek authors, including the
playwright Sophocles, from Constantinople and from the libraries of
Mount Athos, an important center of learning in the Eastern Orthodox
Church. Knowledge of Greek texts (as well as certain Arabic and Hebrew
texts) spread slowly through Italy after the arrival of Greek teachers from
Constantinople.
The development of printing (see Chapter 1) permitted the diffusion of
a variety of histories, treatises, biographies, autobiographies, and poems.
Printing spread knowledge of classical texts and the development of tex
tual criticism itself. Many Renaissance scholars considered Cicero to rep
resent the model of the purest classical prose (although others considered
him too long-winded), and by 1500 more than 200 editions of his works
had been printed in Italy, including his influential On Oratory and his let
ters. Libraries were established in many of the Italian city-states, including
Florence, Naples, and Venice, and provided scholars with common texts
for study.
From Scholasticism to Humanism
The Romans had used the concept of humanitas to describe the combina
tion of wisdom and virtue that they revered. The term came to refer to stud
ies that were intellectually liberating, the seven liberal arts of antiquity:
grammar, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, and rhetoric (the
art of expressive and persuasive speech or discourse). Medieval scholasti
cism was a system of thought in which clerics applied reason to philosophi
cal and theological questions. Those teachers and students who shifted their
A Dynamic Culture 57
A humanist educator and his charges.
focus from the scholastic curriculum—law, medicine, and theology—to the
curriculum of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and metaphysics became known as
“humanists.” They considered the study of the “humanities” to be essential
for educating a good citizen.
Renaissance humanists believed that they were reviving the glory of the
classical age. They considered their era greater than any since the Roman
Empire. They also believed the Italian peninsula, although divided by po
litical units, dialects, and by the Apennine Mountains, shared a common,
distinct culture.
Venerating classical civilization, the humanists turned their backs on
medieval scholasticism, which they believed was composed of irrelevant the
ological debates and encouraged ascetic withdrawal from the world.
Scholastics celebrated the authority of Church texts and revered the saint,
the monk, and the knight. Petrarch rejected idle philosophic speculation or
even knowledge that seemed irrelevant to mankind. He mocked scholastics,
remarking that they can tell you “how many hairs there are in the lion’s
mane . . . with how many arms the squid binds a shipwrecked sailor. . . .
What is the use, I pray you, of knowing the nature of beasts, birds, fishes
and serpents, and not knowing, or spurning the nature of man, to what end
we are born, and from where and whither we pilgrimage.”
The humanists proclaimed the writers of antiquity to be heroes worthy of
emulation. Although virtually all humanists accepted Christianity, and cleri
cal religious culture persisted intact, humanism stood as an alternative
approach to knowledge and culture. Humanists believed that a knowledge of
the humanities could civilize mankind, teaching the “art of living.” Petrarch
insisted that the study of classical poetry and rhetoric could infuse daily life
with ethical values.
Unlike the scholastics, humanists believed that it was not enough to
withdraw into philosophy. Petrarch rediscovered the classical ideal that the
58 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
philosopher, or humanist, was a wise man who could govern. Cicero had
written that what made an individual great was not the gifts of good for
tune, but the use to which he put them. The active life, including partici
pation in public affairs, had formed part of his definition of true wisdom.
From the literature of the Greek and Roman past, humanists looked for
guides to public life in their own city-states. The first half of the fifteenth
century is often referred to as the period of “civic humanism” because of
the influence of humanists and artists on the city-states themselves. Like
the classic writers of ancient Rome, Renaissance writers were concerned
with wisdom, virtue, and morality within the context of the political com
munity. Humanists wrote boastful histories of the city-states, philosophi
cal essays, stirring orations, and flattering biographies, as well as poetry,
eagerly imitating classical styles.
The Renaissance and Religion
While rediscovering classic texts and motifs, the Renaissance remained
closely linked to religion. Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321), an allegorical
poem, provides the quintessential expression of medieval thought by its
demonstration of the extraordinary power that both Latin classical learn
ing and Christian theology exerted on educated thought and literature. In
his voyage through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, Dante encounters histori
cal figures suffering terrible agonies for their sins, waiting expectantly for
admission into Heaven, or already reaping the benefits of having lived a
good life. Renaissance humanists could reject medieval scholasticism with
out turning their backs on the Church. Indeed, they claimed that they
were searching for the origins of Christianity in the classical world from
which it had emerged.
Although not the first to do so, humanists took classic texts, which were
pagan, and ascribed to them meanings prophetic of Christianity. For exam
ple, the Aeneidy the long epic written by Virgil (70-19 b.c.), had been
commissioned by the Roman emperor Augustus in the hope that it would
offer the most favorable image of himself and of the empire, that is, of
Rome bringing peace and civilization to the world. The hero of the Aeneidy
Aeneas, personifies the ideal qualities of a Roman citizen, wanting to fulfill
his patriotic duties, seeking glory for the empire but never for himself. The
humanists transformed Aeneas’s journey into an allegory for the itinerary
of the Christian soul, appropriating antiquity into theology by viewing it as
a foreshadowing of the true religion.
The place of the Church in Italian life remained strong during the Renais
sance, the relative decline in the papacy’s temporal power notwithstanding.
There was thus considerable continuity between the medieval period and
the Renaissance in matters of religion. There were at least 264 bishops in
Italy, as many as in the rest of the Christian world. In 1427, Florence had
more than 1,400 clerics out of a population of 38,000 living in ecclesiastical
A Dynamic Culture 59
institutions. Religious festivals dotted the calendar. The colorful Venetian
water processions of elaborately decorated gondolas, jousting, boat races,
and the annual horse race (palio) sponsored by rival neighborhoods in Siena
still bear witness to the playful but intense festivity of the Renaissance city
states, a festivity that gave ritualized religious expression to civic and politi
cal life.
The Renaissance Man and Woman
Renaissance literature and poetry, preoccupied with nature, beauty, and
reason, placed the individual at the forefront of attention. Renaissance
writers praised mankind as “heroic” and “divine,” rational and prudent,
rather than intrinsically unworthy by virtue of being stained by original
sin, as Church theologians held. This, too, represented a revival of the
classic vision of the moral greatness of the individual and his or her ability
to discover truth and wisdom.
By this view, the lay person could interpret morality through the ancient
texts themselves, without the assistance of the clergy. Once someone had
learned to read Latin and Greek, neither ecclesiastical guidance nor formal
ized school settings were necessary for the accumulation of wisdom. Univer
sities in general remained under the influence of the theological debates of
scholasticism, although the universities of Florence, Bologna, and Padua
gradually added humanist subjects to their curricula. Relatively few human
ists emerged from the universities, which remained training grounds for
jurists, doctors, and clerics.
“These studies are called liberal because they make man free,” a humanist
wrote; they are humane “because they perfect man . . . those studies by
which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls
forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind, which
ennoble man.” The young Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463—1494)
exclaimed, “O highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To him it is
granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills.” Pico described
the individual as an independent and autonomous being who could make his
own moral choices and become, within the context of Christianity, “the
molder and sculptor of himself.”
The political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli (1469—1527), too, found per
sonal fulfillment in the study of the classics. He had been employed in the
Florentine chancery, serving as a diplomat. Purged when the Medici over
threw the republic in 1512, he took up residence in the countryside. Machi
avelli complained that his days consisted of mundane exchanges with
rustics. But “when evening comes I return home and go into my study. On
the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the
robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts
of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there again I taste the food
that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And I make bold to speak to
60 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply
to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexa
tion, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their
world.” Machiavelli evoked the exhilaration of the individual discovering the
joys of antiquity.
The development of the autobiography in literature reflected the cele
bration of the individual, however much the genre was limited to public
people and the image that they sought to present of themselves, revealing
virtually nothing of private life. In the first half of the fifteenth century,
the portrait and the self-portrait emerged as artistic genres; princes, oli
garchs, courtiers, and other people of wealth joined Christ, the Virgin
Mary, and popular saints as subjects of painting.
A growing sense of what it meant to be “civilized” arose in the Italian
city-states and highlighted the place of the individual in society. The Ital
ian patrician may have been cleaner and more perfumed than people else
where in Europe. Books on good conduct and manners emerged. The
writer Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) urged the person of taste to
show that “whatever is said or done has been done without pains and virtu
ally without thought” as if correct behavior had become part of his or her
very being. Women, he contended, should obtain a “knowledge of letters,
of music, of painting, and . . . how to dance and be festive.”
Castiglione’s The Courtier
(1528) described the ideal
courtier, or attendant at a court, as
someone who had mastered the
classics and several languages, and
who could paint, sing, write
poetry, advise and console his
prince, as well as run, jump, swim,
and wrestle. This idea of a “univer
sal person,” or “Renaissance man,”
had existed for some time,
although, of course, not everyone
had the leisure or resources to
study so many subjects.
Although he was not a human
ist and could not read Latin,
Leonardo da Vinci (1452
1519)—painter, sculptor, scien
tist, architect, military engineer,
inventor, and philosopher—
became the epitome of the “Ren
A drawing by Leonardo da Vinci that illus- aissance man. The illegitimate
trates his understanding and appreciation son °f a notary from a Tuscan vil
of human anatomy. lage, he was apprenticed to a Flo
A Dynamic Culture 61
rentine painter at the age of twelve. Following acceptance into the masters
guild in Florence, he remained in the workshop of his master until moving
in 1482 to Milan, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Sforza family. Tak
ing the title “Painter and Engineer of the Duke of Milan,” Leonardo taught
students in his workshop and undertook scientific studies of human and
animal anatomy. His drawings were the first modern scientific illustrations.
Leonardo began compiling his prodigious notebooks, in which he jotted
down his ideas, perceptions, and experiences. He also sculpted an eques
trian monument, designed costumes for theatrical performances, worked as
a military engineer, and decorated palaces. In 1500, Leonardo returned to
Florence, then went back to Milan six years later, beckoned by the governor
of Francis I, king of France. When the Milanese freed themselves from
French hegemony, he went south to Rome, where Pope Leo X (pope 1513—
1521) provided him with a salary. In 1516, the French king brought
Leonardo to his chateau on the Loire River at Amboise, where he sketched
court festivals, and served as something of a Renaissance jack-of-all-trades
before his death in 1519.
If the Renaissance is often said to have “discovered” mankind in general,
this meant, for the most part, men. The Church considered women to be
sinful daughters of Eve. Legally, women remained subordinate to men;
they could own property and make their wills, but they could not sell prop
erty without their husbands’ permission. Both rich and poor families con
tinued to value boys more than girls; poor families were far more likely to
abandon female babies or to place them in the care of a distant wet nurse.
Many families viewed girls as a liability because of the necessity of provid
ing a dowry, however large or small, for their marriage. Some families of
means sent daughters off into convents. Because of the strict gender divi
sion within the Church, women there could aspire not only to holiness and
sainthood, but also to leadership in a world of women. Life in a convent
left them free to study.
Some patricians, however, educated their girls as well as their boys in the
humanities. These girls studied letters, orations, and poems with tutors. A
small number of women went on to write because they could not enter
learned professions. Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466), a fifteenth-century
humanist from Verona, abandoned secular life for quiet religious contempla
tion and scholarship. In her discussion of the fall of mankind in the Garden
of Eden, she apologized for the weakness of women’s nature, and she
lamented that she fell short of “the whole and perfect virtue that men
attain.” Several women, however, managed to become publishers, book
sellers, and printers, including several nuns who set the type for works by
Petrarch. The achievement of such status required literacy and family con
nections to the trade—for example, being the widow or daughter of a printer
and thus having family links to a guild. It was rare for a female printer to
sign her name to her work, and her status was viewed as provisional—until,
for example, a male heir came of age.
62 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Overall, the Renaissance did not bring about any significant loosening in
the restrictions placed on women, and womens social and personal options
may even have been reduced. In the Italian city-states, women had less of a
role in public life than they had enjoyed in the courts of medieval Europe.
They presided over social gatherings, but for the most part in a ritualized,
decorative role. Although Renaissance authors idealized love and women, the
role of women continued to be to serve their fathers, husbands, or, in some
cases, their lovers. When the education of young women clashed with a
father’s plans for his daughter to marry, marriage won out without discus
sion. Men’s feelings were the focus of considerable attention by Renaissance
writers; women’s feelings and opinions usually were assumed to be unimpor
tant. To be sure, women in large, powerful families like the Sforza, Este, and
Gonzaga exerted influence and were patrons to artists. Yet the subjects they
commissioned artists and sculptors to portray were essentially the same as
those of their male counterparts, and, in patriarchal households, their hus
bands made the decisions.
Renaissance Art
When the German painter Albrecht Diirer (1471 — 1528) visited Venice on
one of his two trips to the northern Italian peninsula, he was surprised and
delighted by the fact that artists there enjoyed considerably more status
than in his native Nuremburg: “Here,” he wrote, “I am a gentleman, at home
a sponger.”
The prestige and support given to the Renaissance artist created a nur
turing environment for the remarkable artistic accomplishments that char
acterize that special period’s place in history. Great works of Renaissance
architecture, painting, and sculpture are still studied by specialists and
appreciated by millions of people each year.
Architecture
Despite the Renaissance concept of the “ideal city” of architectural har
mony, reflected in the first treatises on architecture, Florence, Siena, Peru
gia, and other Italian cities retained their medieval cores, which contained
their markets and their public buildings, such as the town hall. But during
the fifteenth century, the narrow streets and alleys of many Italian cities
became interspersed with splendid buildings and dotted with works of art
commissioned by wealthy families.
Florence underwent a building boom during the fifteenth century.
Construction of its elegant residences stimulated the economy, providing
employment to day laborers, skilled artisans—brick- and tilemakers,
masons, roofers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, and joiners—and decorative
artists, including goldsmiths, sculptors, and painters. Renaissance archi
Renaissance Art 63
tecture emphasized elegant simplicity, an expansion of the simple rustic
fronts that had characterized medieval building. Renaissance architects
combined plain white walls with colorful, intricate arches, doors, and win
dow frames. In the fifteenth century, expensive palaces of monumental
proportions with columns, arches, and magnificent stairways were consid
ered sensible investments, because they could later be sold at a profit.
Like writers and painters, Renaissance architects looked to antiquity for
models. Filippo Brunelleschi (1377—1446) first applied theories of classical
architecture to the Foundling Hospital in Florence, the earliest building
constructed in Renaissance style. Fourteenth-century architects planned
churches in the form of a circle, the shape they thought was in the image
of God, with no beginning and no end. But they may also have drawn on
Rome’s Pantheon, a round classical temple. After going to the papal city to
study the ruins of classical architecture, Brunelleschi solved daunting tech
nical problems to construct the vast dome, or cupola, of that city’s cathe
dral (Duomo). The magnificent structure, completed in 1413 after work
lasting more than a century, reflects the architect’s rejection of the north
ern Gothic architectural style, with its pointed arches, vaulting, and flying
buttresses. Inspired by excavations of classical ruins and the rebuilding of
Rome in the late fifteenth century, architects began to copy classical styles
closely, adding ornate Corinthian columns and great sweeping arches.
Patronage and the Arts
Renaissance art could not have flourished without the patronage of wealthy,
powerful families, though commissions by guilds and religious confraterni
ties were not uncommon. Artists, as well as poets and musicians, were
eager, like Leonardo, to be invited into a patrician’s household, where
there were few or no expenses, and time to work. Lesser artists painted
coats of arms, tapestries, and even portraits of the prince’s pets—dogs and
falcons.
Some humanists not fortunate enough to be given the run of a powerful
patrician’s place found posts as state secretaries, because they could draft
impressive official correspondence. They tutored the children of patrician
families, and a few worked as papal courtiers. Such humanists penned ora
tions, scrupulously imitating Cicero, for formal state receptions, clamorous
festivals, and funerals. Pope Leo X, a Medici who composed and played
music himself, brought to his court a number of distinguished artists, in
addition to Leonardo da Vinci, and musicians, as well as humanists whom
he employed as officials and envoys. At the same time, the genres of wit
and satire developed and became part of the ribald and “sharp-tongued”
life of the political and social world of the city-state. Her well-heeled
friends winked and joined in the laughter when Isabella of Mantua dressed
one of her dwarfs as a bishop to greet a visiting dignitary. The biting satires
and lampoons of Pietro Aretino (1492—1556), who enjoyed in succession
64 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Pope Leo X, here presented
by Raphael with two cardi
nals, brought artists and
musicians to his court.
the patronage of a banker, a cardinal, the duke of Mantua, the Medici of
Florence, and a Venetian doge and nobleman, spared neither secular nor
ecclesiastical leaders from mocking jokes and rhymes. Aretino attacked
social climbers and the venality of offices in the city-states with particular
venom. He spared the one person he referred to as divine—himself.
Because the classical texts suggested that the active life included playing a
salutary role in one s community, humanist families of means believed that
they should demonstrate wisdom by making good use of their riches. Com
missioning works of art seemed to confirm moral leadership, and therefore
the right to govern. Wealthy families also used art to reflect the image that
they wished to give of themselves, for example, commissioning portraits to
impress the family of a prospective spouse.
The Medici of Florence, the greatest of the secular patrons of the arts,
commissioned buildings, paid for the elaborate decoration of chapels and
altarpieces, and restored monasteries. Although wags suggested that he may
have been more interested in the expensive bindings of the books he pur
chased than in their contents, Cosimo de’ Medici collected manuscripts and
even read some of them. The wealthy banker oversaw the construction of
fine palaces and churches. Michelangelo (1475—1564), who designed the
Medici tomb in the church of Saint Lorenzo in Florence, was but one sculp
tor who enjoyed the favor of the Medici.
The long economic recession of the fifteenth century may have actually
contributed to the arts. Finding insufficient profits in commerce and man
ufacturing for their money, patrician families spent considerable sums on
paintings and sculpture. This may, in turn, have accentuated the recession
by turning productive capital away from economic investments. At the
same time, so the argument goes, the recession offered families of means
more time to devote to culture.
Renaissance Art
65
Masaccio’s Adoration of the Magi (1426).
Patrons of the arts often specified not only the subject of the work they
were commissioning but certain details as well, requiring, for example,
that specific saints be depicted. The size of the work of art and its price
were also specified, of course, including the cost of blue pigment or gold
for paintings and bronze or marble for sculptures. Cherubs cost more.
Although one of the dukes of Ferrara paid for his paintings by their size,
increasingly patrons paid the artist for his time—and thus his skill—as well
as for the materials he used. The contract for a work of art might specify
whether it was to be completed by the artist himself, or if assistants from
the master s workshop could be employed for certain parts. Patrons some
times appeared on the canvas, as in the case of The Adoration of the Magi
(1426) by Tommaso di Giovanni Masaccio (1401-1428), which includes
portraits of the notary who commissioned the painting and his son. Con
versely, patricians occasionally commissioned artists to humiliate their
enemies, as when a painter in Verona was paid to sneak up to the walls of
a rival palace and paint obscene pictures.
Renaissance Artists
Because of its basis in the craft tradition, in the medieval world painting
was considered a “mechanical” art. This made the status of the artist
ambiguous, because he sold his own works and lacked the humanist’s edu
cation. Michelangelo’s father tried to discourage his son from becoming a
sculptor, an art that he identified with stone cutting. Michelangelo himself
sometimes signed his paintings “Michelangelo, sculptor,’’ as if to differen
tiate himself from a mere painter. Yet, in his treatise on painting (1435),
the humanist Leon Battista Alberti, irritated by contemporary insistence
that painting was a “mechanical art,” insisted that the artist was no longer
a craftsman but a practitioner of a “high art.”
Of the artists whose social origins are known, the majority had fathers
who were urban shopkeepers or artisans, most often in the luxury trades.
66 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Next in number—surprisingly—came the sons of nobles, perhaps reflect
ing the relative decline in noble fortunes during the Renaissance. Then
came the children of merchants and educated professionals such as
notaries, lawyers, and officials. A few painters, like Raphael (1483—1520),
were sons of artists. Only a handful were the sons of peasants.
The contemporary association between craftsmen and painters was
appropriate, because, like the former, artists entered a period of apprentice
ship. Architects and composers lacked such formal training. The painters’
guild of Venice required five years of apprenticeship, followed by two years
of journeyman status, requirements similar to those by which silversmiths,
shoemakers, cabinetmakers, and other craftsmen were trained. Some mas
ters had sizable workshops, where apprentices trained and often lived
together, sometimes working on the same paintings (which is one reason it is
difficult to authenticate some canvases). Because women could neither
become apprentices nor attend universities, there were no prominent female
Renaissance artists until well into the sixteenth century.
Indeed, artists claimed that they deserved more esteem than a craftsman.
Leonardo praised the painter, who sits “at his easel in front of his work,
dressed as he pleases, and moves his light brush with the beautiful colors . . .
often accompanied by musicians or readers of various beautiful works.” The
artist’s quest for the humanist ideals of beauty and God helps explain the
rise of some artists of the Renaissance period from practitioners of a
“mechanical art,” to the description of Michelangelo offered by a Por
tuguese painter: “In Italy, one does not care for the renown of great princes:
it’s a painter only that they call divine.” Not all painters ascended to such
heights, of course, but in general the status of the artist rose during the Re
naissance. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian (Tiziano Vecellio,
c. 1490—1576) lived as gentlemen, the last knighted by Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. Some artists and writers were crowned with laurels—
thus the designation of “poet laureate”—by their adoring city-states.
Painting and Sculpture
The rediscovery of antiquity, nature, and mankind transformed European
painting. Renaissance artists reflected the influence of the neo-Platonists. In
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the neo-Platonists appropri
ated Plato’s belief that eternal ideas—such as beauty, truth, and goodness—
existed beyond the realm of everyday life. Humanists believed that the mind
could transcend human nature and come to understand these eternal ideas.
The artist could reproduce the beauty of the soul through imagination and,
in doing so, reach out to God. To Dante, art was “the grandchild of God.” For
Michelangelo, beauty “lifts to heaven hearts that truly know.”
Artists sought to achieve the representation of beauty in a realistic way
by using the proportions created by God in the universe. It was the
Renaissance Art
67
Stories of Saint John the Evan
gelist: Vision on the Island of
PatmoSy fresco by Giotti,
Peruzzi Chapel in the Basilica
of Santa Croce in Florence.
supreme compliment to say of a Renaissance painter that his work had sur
passed nature in beauty. Leonardo put it this way: “Painting . . . compels
the mind of the painter to transform itself into the mind of nature itself
and to translate between nature and art.” During the Renaissance, nature
ceased to be mere background. Painters now faithfully depicted the beauty
of mountains, rocks, and gardens for their own sake.
Objects of everyday life increasingly appeared in paintings, reflecting a
greater preoccupation with realistic depiction. Take, for example, Raphael’s
painting of the pudgy Pope Leo X, staring off into space while fiddling with a
magnifying glass with which he has been examining a book (see p. 64).
Beauty could be portrayed with extraordinary richness. The memorable
figures of the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266-1337) in the chapels
of Holy Cross Church in Florence, particularly their facial expressions,
reflect humanity, deeply personal emotion, and naturalism, unseen since
the classical age. The fame of Giotto, who is usually considered the first
great painter of the Renaissance, spread rapidly throughout much of Italy,
and his style greatly influenced his successors. Raphael, who admired and
learned from Michelangelo, eight years his senior, wrote of trying to paint
a beautiful woman, “I use as my guide a certain idea of the beautiful that
I carry in my mind.” Raphael’s figures reflect a softness and inner beauty
68 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
that contrast with the powerful, stirring sub
jects of the tempestuous Michelangelo. Reflect
ing neo-Platonist influence, Titian early in the
sixteenth century strove to bring the viewers of
his paintings closer to the idea of the eternal
form of female beauty that he sought to repre
sent with his depictions of Venus.
The Greeks and Romans believed that the
painter and sculptor understood and portrayed
the soul when they reproduced the human face.
Leonardo’s famous Mona Lisa (1503—1507),
with its mysterious, confident half-smile, is a
compelling illustration of this undertaking.
“Movements of the soul,” wrote Alberti early in
the fifteenth century, “are recognized in move
ments of the body.” The artist had to be able to
reveal the emotions and passions of the figures
he depicted.
Renaissance artists used a large repertoire of
stylized portrayals of emotion, the meanings of
which were immediately recognized by virtually
all viewers of their paintings. The Florentine
Masaccio intended his extraordinary fresco The
Expulsion
of Adam and Eve from Eden (c. 1427)
Masaccio’s The Expulsion
to
represent
the tortured souls, as well as bodies,
of Adam and Eve from
of
those
biblical
figures. Masaccios Adam covers
Eden (c. 1427).
his eyes with his fingers in anguish in this truly
gripping depiction of Adam and Eve’s crushing
grief as they leave the Garden of Eden. Although Renaissance artists gener
ally avoided many of the routine associations of the medieval period (gold for
piety, for example), certain colors were used for symbolic purposes. Violet was
often a color of reverence, white that of charity, red of fire, and gray of earth.
Clear colors, intense light, and ideal proportions were combined in represen
tations of Christ. Deep coloring, more subtle and natural than the blues and
golds of medieval painting, enriched the canvas.
Medieval and Byzantine artists typically painted rigid images on a flat
space, thus their work often appeared two-dimensional and lifeless; linear
forms were arranged in order of importance, accompanied by symbols easily
identifiable to the viewer. The Renaissance development of perspective the
ory, in which parallel lines recede from the surface and seem to converge on
the vanishing point, facilitated the realistic presentation of figures and move
ment. Renaissance artists believed that naturalism could only be achieved
through the use of perspective. Masaccio first applied the mathematical laws
of perspective to painting in his revolutionary Trinity (1425), which makes a
two-dimensional surface seem to be three-dimensional. The mastery of light
Renaissance Art 69
Andrea Mantegna’s The Dead Christ (c. 1506), an example of
Renaissance treatment of perspective.
also contributed to innovative uses of space; for example, through the tech
nique of foreshortening, artists proportionally contracted depth so as to give
the viewer the illusion of projection or extension into space. In his realistic
The Dead Christ (c. 1506), Andrea Mantegna (c. 1430-1506) utilized this
technique, which had been pioneered by Masaccio. This shortcut allowed
the artist to create the visual impression of a three-dimensional body on a
flat surface. Florentine artists, in particular, used perspective to develop high
relief and silhouette, presenting rounded figures on the canvas surface by
effective use of tones and shades.
This mastery of perspective by the naturalist painter Masaccio and, above
all, the sculptor Donatello (c. 1386-1466) helped Renaissance painters
choose difficult, complicated themes and treat them with a more complex
realism. Donatello utilized perspective to achieve dramatic action through
gradations of relief. In The Feast of Herod (c. 1417), sculpted in bronze for
the stone basin in the Siena Baptistery, Donatello captures the shocked
reaction of the king and guests as John the Baptist’s head is presented to
Herod. In Leonardo’s painting The Last Supper (c. 1495-1498), Christ’s
disciples crowd around the table. The viewer’s eye is drawn along the lines of
perspective of the ceiling to the central figure of Christ, whose image stands
out because it is framed by a large window. Leonardo identifies Judas, the
betrayer of Christ, not by leaving him without a halo nor by placing him
alone on the other side of the table from Christ, but by painting him as the
only figure in shadow.
70 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
To Leonardo, painting was the highest form of science, based on “what has
passed through our senses.” He believed that “the scientific and true princi
ples of painting first determine” the components of painting: “darkness, light,
color, body, figure, position, distance, nearness, motion, and rest.” The work
of Michelangelo reflects a mastery of mathematics, anatomy, and optics. Ani
mals, birds, and inanimate objects also took on a lifelike quality based upon
artists’ discovery of proper proportions.
The quest for the natural representation of beauty led some artists to
depict the human body in nude form, which some took to be a more natural
and expressive form borrowed from classical paganism. Michelangelo
believed that the depiction of the human body in sculpture was the ultimate
expression of mankind as a divine creation, made in God’s image. In his
sculptures and paintings of the nude figure, the muscles and sinews of the
body are infused with the emotions and passions of humanity.
Religious, public, and private life overlapped, as the people of Renais
sance Italy sought religious meanings in everything they saw. Art with reli
gious subjects also served a teaching function for the Church. In many
patrician houses, a religious image could be found in every room. Devo
tional images, known as ex votos, were often erected in public spaces to
fulfill a vow made to a saint in times of danger or illness. Patricians com
missioned paintings with religious themes to realize similar vows. More
over, the splendid tombs sculpted for patricians and popes may have
reflected a preoccupation with glorifying the individual, but they nonethe
less also emphasized eternal salvation.
Religious themes continued to dominate painting, accounting for per
haps nine of every ten paintings; the Virgin Mary was the most popular fig
ure, followed by Christ and the saints (above all, Saint John the Baptist,
the patron saint of Florence). The visualization of certain episodes in the
life of Christ or of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian were intended to
stimulate piety and encourage morality. Thus, artists took on a role similar
to preachers, whose orations evoked a powerful emotional response.
Classical symbolism abounded in Renaissance painting and influenced
the depiction of religious themes, incorporating images drawn from pagan
Rome. Artists used details about history or mythology that patrons insisted
grace their canvases. Some of the classical gods stood as Renaissance sym
bols of moral or physical qualities. Michelangelo modeled his Christ in
The Last Judgment (1536—1541) on a classical portrayal of the god Apollo.
Yet, along with scenes from classical mythology, paintings with secular
themes increased in number, notably portraits of famous men or of wealthy
patricians, but also of more ordinary people as well. Aretino, who criticized
everything, found fault with the democratization of the portrait, despite
the fact that he was the son of a shoemaker, insisting, “It is the disgrace of
our age that it tolerates the portraits even of tailors and butchers.”
Renaissance Art 71
A section of Michelangelo’s fresco, The Creation of Many on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, the Vatican, showing God banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
High Renaissance Style
During the period of the High Renaissance (1490-1530), the city-states of
Italy lost much of their economic and political vitality, confronting French
invasion and then Spanish domination. In the midst of economic decline
as well as internecine political warfare, artists no longer enjoyed the lavish
patronage of wealthy patrician families. Instead, the Church became their
patron.
The papacy inspired the monumentalism of the High Renaissance.
Besieged in the first two decades of the sixteenth century by denunciations
of the sale of indulgences—the purchase of the remission of some punish
ment in Purgatory for ones sins or for those of some family member—the
papacy sought to assert its authority and image (see Chapter 3). Papal
commissions in Rome were one attempt to recover public confidence and
made possible the artistic achievements of the High Renaissance. Follow
ing excavations beginning in the 1470s that heightened interest in the
ancient Roman Empire, Raphael himself oversaw the reconstruction of
Rome and personally supervised excavations of the Roman Forum. Influ
enced by and more dependent on the Church, the canvases of the painters
of the High Renaissance became even larger as they became less con
cerned with rational order and more with achieving a powerful visual
response in their viewers.
Some humanists now began to claim that the papacy was the heir to the
glories of classical Rome. Popes took names that echoed the Roman
Empire. Julius II (pope 1503-1513) ordered a medal struck that read
72 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (c. 1495-1498).
“Julius Caeser Pont[ifex]. II,” a term that meant “high priest” in classical
Rome. Wide boulevards and spaces were forged to accommodate waves of
pilgrims descending upon the city.
Leonardo’s The Last Supper is perhaps the first example of the style of
the High Renaissance, or what is sometimes called the Grand Manner.
Mannerism (a term from the Italian word for style), which particularly
characterized the 1520s, is marked by heightened scale, exaggerated
drama, and the submersion of detail to a total emotional effect. Donato
Bramante (1444-1514), who constructed St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in
the “grand manner” of the High Renaissance, designed its grand Byzantine
dome, which was completed by Michelangelo and a successor.
Painters of the High Renaissance increasingly presented large, ambi
tious, complex, and sometimes even bizarre canvases. Mannerism’s imagi
native distortions and sense of restlessness offered an unsettling vision in
tune with new uncertainties. Mannerism marked something of a reaction
against the Renaissance ideal of attaining classical perfection. Thus, some
painters ignored the rules of perspective; emotionalism, as well as mysti
cism and illusionism, won out over classicism. Toward the end of his
career, Michelangelo’s work reflected this influence. His majestic marble
Moses (1515), sculpted for the tomb of Pope Julius II, has an immensely
prominent head, with an exaggerated facial expression. It reflects
Michelangelo’s tragic vision of human limitations, including his own.
Raphael and Titian presented human figures who seem almost empowered
by divine attributes but who nonetheless retain their humanity.
The End of the Renaissance 73
The End of the Renaissance
Late in the fifteenth century, the Italian city-states entered a period of eco
nomic and political decline, making the peninsula more vulnerable to for
eign invasion. Subsequently, some of the battles between Spain and France,
Europe’s two dominant powers, were fought on the Italian peninsula. The
exploration and gradual colonization of the Americas, first by Spain, and the
increase in trade and manufacturing in northwestern Europe, helped move
economic and cultural vigor toward the Atlantic Ocean, to Spain and north
western Europe, most notably, England, France, and the Dutch Nether
lands, and to the New World (see Chapter 5).
Economic Decline
The economic decline of the northern Italian city-states during the second
half of the fifteenth century undermined the material base of Renaissance
prosperity, indeed the economic primacy of the Mediterranean region. The
Italian city-states lost most of their trading routes with Asia. The Turks con
quered Genoese trading posts in the Black Sea, the traditional merchant
route to Asia, and in the Aegean Sea. Turkish domination reduced Genoa’s
once mighty commercial network to trade centered on the Aegean island of
Chios. Of the Italian city-states, Venice alone continued to prosper. After
the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, merchants in Venice con
cluded a deal with the Turks by which they received a monopoly on trade
with the East, leaving the other city-states without access to their traditional
Asian markets. Venice’s economy soon diversified with small-scale manufac
turing, however, particularly as the Turkish threat to its interests mounted in
the eastern Mediterranean and Venetian galleys no longer could venture
into the Black Sea.
Merchants of the Italian city-states sought alternatives. The Genoese
established a trading post in the Muslim city of Malaga on the southern
coast of Spain, although this made them dependent on local Muslim mid
dlemen. Portuguese fleets began to monopolize the spice trade with India
and beyond.
The Florentine silk and woolen industries, long prosperous, now faced
stiff competition from French and Dutch producers and merchants in north
western Europe. The dazzling prosperity of the great Italian merchant fami
lies ebbed. The economy of Europe—and even of world commerce
itself—was changing. Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch traders
looked to the New World for new products and significant profits (see Chap
ter 1). The rapid growth of Portuguese and then Spanish trade accentuated
the rise of the Atlantic economy. Competition from the larger sailing ships of
England, Holland, and Portugal overwhelmed Florence and Genoa and then,
more gradually, Venice.
74 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance •
Foreign Invasion
As long as the Italian peninsula remained free from the intervention of
France and Spain or other powers, the city-states could continue to prosper
while fighting each other and casting wary glances toward the Ottoman
Empire as it expanded its influence in the Mediterranean. But the city
states, divided by economic interests and with a long tradition of quarreling
among themselves, became increasingly vulnerable to the expansion of
French interests.
France had adhered to an alliance of Milan and Florence against Venice,
signed in 1451. But the three city-states recognized the threat the aggressive
French monarchy posed to the peninsula. Furthermore, following the cap
ture of Constantinople in 1453, Turkish ships now appeared more frequently
in the Adriatic Sea. It seemed imperative to end the struggles between the
city-states. The Peace of Lodi (1454), signed by Florence, Milan, and Venice,
established a new political order. Helping discourage Turkish or French
aggrandizement, the treaty brought four decades of relative peace, which saw
some of the crowning artistic glories of the Renaissance.
The establishment of this Italian League formalized this balance of
power—it was already called that—between the strongest city-states.
Whenever one or two of the states became aggressive—as when Venice and
the Papal States attacked Ferrara—the others joined together to restore
the status quo. Such wars were fought for the most part by mercenaries,
imported and organized by condottieri paid for the task. For the moment,
Milan’s strong army served as a barricade against French invasion.
Perhaps accentuated by the ebbing of prosperity, political life within the
city-states deteriorated. In Florence, the Medici despotism faced opposi
tion from republicans. In the 1480s, Perugia had become a warring camp,
torn between two rival families. In 1491, 130 members of one faction were
executed on a main square and hanged from poles for all to see. Then, in
repentance, the oligarchs erected thirty-five altars on that same square,
and ordered priests to say Mass for three days in atonement. In a number
of the city-states, some patrician families tried to outdo each other in their
violence, crushing their opponents with brutality, then praying over the
bodies. The leading Florentine families faithfully attended church, even as
they undertook murders of vengeance in defense of family honor. Consid
erable tension, then, remained between two parallel codes of conduct, one
religious, the other defined by family loyalties.
The Italian peninsula then became a battleground for the dynastic ambi
tions and rivalries of the French kings and the Holy Roman emperors, pow
erful rulers who could mobilize considerably larger armies than those of the
city-states. The absorption of the wealthy and strategically important duchy
of Burgundy into the Holy Roman Empire accentuated the struggle
between the Habsburg dynasty and Charles VIII (ruled 1483—1498) of
The End of the Renaissance 75
France. The latter decided to press his dubious claim to the throne of
Naples, encouraged by the Sforza family of Milan, the enemy of Naples. In
response, Naples allied with Florence and Pope Alexander VI (pope 1492
1503), himself a Florentine member of the Borgia family, against Milan.
In 1494, Charles VIII invaded the Italian peninsula with an army of
30,000 men. His French cavalry, Swiss mercenary infantry, and Scottish
bowmen tore through northern Italy. In Florence, the Medici ruler handed
over Pisa to France in exchange for leaving. This angered Florentine republi
cans. When the French army entered Florence, the Florentines drove the
Medici from power (after sixty years of rule). The new Florentine govern
ment, establishing the Great Council as a legislative assembly, contributed
to the city’s artistic splendors by commissioning works of art that symbolized
republican independence and ideals. Leonardo and Michelangelo painted
scenes of Florentine military victories for the meeting hall of the Great
Council. Seven years later, the city government commissioned Michelan
gelo’s great statue David. Michelangelo’s conscious imitation of a Donatello
bust of the same name from early in the fifteenth century referred back to
the republic’s successful resistance to challenges at that time.
In the meantime, the army of Charles VIII moved toward Naples, devas
tating everything in its path. It marched into the city to cheers from
Neapolitans who opposed the harsh taxes that had been levied by their
rulers. But an anti-French coalition that included King Ferdinand of
Aragon—whose dynastic territories included Sicily, Venice, and the Papal
States—and the Holy Roman emperor rallied to defeat the French forces.
Although the French army left the Italian peninsula, the city-states’ troubles
had only just begun.
In Florence, Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), a charismatic Domini
can monk who had predicted the French invasion, opposed both the
Medici in Florence and the papacy on the grounds that both were worldly
and corrupt. He had welcomed Charles VIII of France as “an instrument in
the hands of the Lord who has sent you to cure the ills of Italy,” including
the sinfulness of the Florentines. With the Medici driven from power,
Savonarola took virtual control of the Florentine republic. His denuncia
tion of abuses within the Church led to his excommunication by Pope
Alexander VI. Savonarola also incurred the enmity of patrician families by
appealing for support to all ranks of Florentine society. With the pope’s
blessing, Savonarola’s enemies first hanged and then burned him—the
penalty for heresy—in 1498.
The next year, Louis XII (ruled 1498-1515), the new king of France,
invaded the Italian peninsula, intent on making good his claim on the duchy
of Milan. He did so with the support of the corrupt Pope Alexander VI, who
wanted French assistance as he tried to solidify papal territorial claims, as
well as to look after the extended interests of his children. To encourage the
French king, the pope annulled Louis’s marriage, so that he could marry his
76 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Girolamo Savonarola being burned at the stake in Florence,
sixteenth-century painting.
predecessors widow, thereby keeping Brittany within his domains. When
Julius II, who had been a bitter enemy of Alexander VI, became pope in
1503, he drove the powerful Borgia family from Rome. Then the dissolute
pope set about trying to restore territorial holdings taken from the Papal
States by Venice and its allies, constructing an alliance against the Venetians
and becoming the last pope to lead his troops into the field of battle. That
year the Spanish army defeated the French army and the Habsburgs
absorbed the kingdom of Naples. Milan remained a fief of Louis XII until
French forces were driven from the city in 1512, the same year that a Span
ish army defeated the Florentines and the Medici overthrew the republic.
Three years later, French troops overwhelmed Swiss mercenaries and recap
tured Milan. After the intervention of Emperor Charles V in 1522 and
French defeats, the Lombardy city became a Spanish possession in 1535.
Machiavelli
A mood of vulnerability and insecurity spread through the Italian penin
sula as the city-states battled each other. Peasants, crushed by taxes and
hunger, ever more deeply resented the rich. In turn, wealthy people were
increasingly suspicious of the poor, viewing them as dangerous monsters
The End of the Renaissance
77
capable of threatening social
order.
The devoted Florentine Nic
colo Machiavelli was among
those seeking to understand
why the once proud and inde
pendent city-states of Italy
now seemed virtually helpless
before the invasion of foreign
powers. Machiavellis view of
politics reflects his experience
living in Florence during these
tumultuous decades. The tur
moil in Florence led him to
write his Histories in 1494,
The pensive Niccolo Machiavelli.
which described the decline of
the city-states. Influenced by his experience in government, Machiavelli,
who had served as a Florentine diplomat at the court of the king of France
and in Rome, believed himself to be a realist. He considered war a natural
outlet for human aggression. But he also preferred the resolution of disputes
by diplomacy. He believed that the absence of “civic virtue” accounted for
the factionalism within and rivalries between the city-states. By civic virtue,
Machiavelli meant the effective use of military force.
In 1512, the Medici overthrew the Florentine Republic, returning to
power with the help of the papal army and that of Spain. Following the
discovery of a plot, of which he was innocent, against the Medici patri
archs, Machiavelli was forced into exile on his country estate outside of
the city. Florence had changed. A Medici supporter wrote one of the family
heads: “Your forefathers, in maintaining their rule, employed skill rather
than force; you must use force rather than skill.”
A year later, Machiavelli wrote The Prince (1513). In it he reflected on
the recent history of the Italian peninsula and offered a pessimistic assess
ment of human nature, marked by his belief that a strong leader—the
prince—could arise out of strife. By making his subjects afraid of him, the
prince could end political instability and bring about a moral regeneration
that Machiavelli believed had characterized antiquity. Drawing on Cicero,
he studied the cities of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
Machiavelli can be considered the first political scientist, because his works
reflect a systematic attempt to draw general, realistic conclusions from his
understanding of the recent history of the Italian city-states. This preoccu
pation with the past in itself reveals the influence of the Renaissance.
Machiavelli put his faith in political leadership. Regardless of whether
the form was monarchical or republican, he believed that the goal of govern
ment should be to bring stability to the city. A sense of civic responsibility
78 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
could only be reestablished through “good laws and institutions/’ but these,
for Machiavelli, depended completely on military strength. He called on
the Medici to drive away the new barbarians. Machiavelli’s The Art of War
(1521) expressed hope that the brutish mercenaries who had devastated the
Italian peninsula would give way to soldier-citizens who would restore
virtue. But for the Italian city-states, it was too late.
Machiavelli’s invocation of “reasons of state” as sufficient justification for
political action and as a political principle in itself, and his open admiration
of ruthless rulers, would leave a chilling legacy, reflected by his belief that
the “ends justify the means.” While it is unlikely that Machiavelli had a
sense of the state in the impersonal, modern sense of the term, he held that
“good arms make good laws.”
The Decline of the City-States
For much of the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, in Italy foreign
armies fought against each other and against alliances formed by the city
states. The army of France in Italy reached 32,000 men by 1525, that of
Spain 100,000 soldiers. Only Venice could resist the two great powers. In
1521, the first war broke out between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
(King Charles I of Spain) and King Francis I of France, who became the first
Western ruler to ally with the Ottoman Turkish sultan. Charles V’s armies
decimated the French at Pavia, Italy, in 1525, carting the French king off to
Madrid, where he remained until his family paid a ransom. In 1527, Charles
V’s mercenary army, angry over lack of pay, sacked Rome. By the Peace of
Cambrai (1529), France gave up claims to Naples and Milan. But with the
exception of Venice, the Italian city-states were now in one way or another
dependent upon Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, as the Spanish army
repulsed new French invasions. In Rome, where Spanish merchants already
had a significant presence, the pope increasingly depended on the Holy
Roman emperor for defense against the Turks, as Charles added to his
resources by taxing ecclesiastical revenues.
The long wars drained the city-states of financial resources and men, dev
astating some of the countryside. Nobles, whose political power had been
diminished by the wealthy merchants of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen
turies, took advantage of the chaos to return to prominence in some cities.
Patrician families struggled to maintain their authority against newcomers,
including wealthy merchants who had married into poorer noble lines and
who began to ape the styles of nobles. The Medici, after having once again
been expelled by republicans, reconquered their city in 1530 after a siege of
ten months. But in Florence, too, the Renaissance was over.
Artistic styles had already begun to reflect the loss of Renaissance self
confidence that accompanied the devastating impact of the French invasion.
Botticelli seemed to abandon the serenity and cheerful optimism that char
acterized the Renaissance. To his painting Mystical Nativity; Botticelli added
The End of the Renaissance 79
an anxious inscription: “I Sandro painted this picture at the end of the year
1500 in the troubles of Italy.” Botticelli thereafter became preoccupied with
suffering and the Passion of Christ, reflecting the fact that the High Renais
sance was more closely tied to ecclesiastical influence. The deteriorating po
litical situation, combined with the expansion of Spanish influence after
1530, made it more difficult for artists to find patronage in the Italian city
states.
Soon in Italy only Venice, the city of Titian, remained a center of artistic
life. Machiavelli, who died in 1527, the year Charles V’s troops pillaged
Rome, sensed that the humiliation of the Italian city-states by foreign
armies brought to a close a truly unique period in not only the history of
Italy but in Western civilization. Of the great figures of the High Renais
sance, only Michelangelo and Titian lived past 1530.
Impulses Elsewhere
The cultural glories of the Renaissance ebbed even as different kinds of dis
coveries by Europeans opened up new possibilities for mankind. Columbus’s
transatlantic voyages were signs that the economic and cultural vitality of
Europe was shifting away from the Mediterranean to Spain and, to a lesser
extent, England. The economic interests of these states would increasingly
be across the Atlantic Ocean. The mood of optimism associated with the Re
naissance seemed to have moved to central and northern Europe as Italy
lapsed into a considerably less happy period. Many humanists and artists
began to emigrate north of the Alps to lands considered by most cultured
Italians to have been barbarian only a century earlier. Now new universities
in northern Europe beckoned them.
Other dramatic changes had already begun to occur across the Alps.
Relentless calls for reform of the Catholic Church led to a schism within
Christendom: the Reformation. In northern Europe, the Dutch monk and
humanist Erasmus expressed the exhilaration many men of learning felt
when he wrote, “The world is coming to its senses as if awakening out of a
deep Sleep.”
CHAPTER 3
THE TWO
REFORMATIONS
After paying a handsome sum to Pope Leo X in 1515, Albert of
Hohenzollern received a papal dispensation (exemption from canon law)
that enabled him to become archbishop of Mainz, a lucrative and presti
gious ecclesiastical post. Otherwise, under canon law, the twenty-three
year-old Albert would have been ineligible due to his age (archbishops were
supposed to be at least thirty years old) and because he already drew
income from two other ecclesiastical posts. As part of his payment to the
pope and in order to repay the large sum of money loaned to him by the
Fugger banking family, the new archbishop authorized the sale of the St.
Peter s indulgence, which would release a sinner from punishment for his
sins. Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who was in charge of the sale of
papal indulgences in the archbishopric of Mainz, was commissioned to
preach the indulgence. Half of the proceeds were to go to the papacy, and
half to Albert and the Fuggers. In his tour of parishes, Tetzel emotion
ally depicted the wailing of dead parents in Purgatory, pleading with their
children to put coins in the box so that they could be released from their
suffering.
The sale of indulgences, particularly their commercial use to allow clergy
men to obtain multiple posts, had drawn increasing criticism in some of the
German states. Indeed, no other ecclesiastical financial abuse drew as much
passionate opposition as did indulgences. More than this, the Roman papacy
itself faced considerable opposition in the German states, as the pope had
appointed foreigners to many key ecclesiastical posts and had attempted to
force the German states to provide him with money for a war against the
Turks. The young German monk Martin Luther was among those denounc
ing Tetzel, the sale of indulgences, and the role of the Roman papacy in the
German states.
This opposition to the papacy created a schism that would tear Christen
dom apart beginning in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Origi
80
The Two Reformations 81
(Left) The young Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach. (Right) The pope selling
indulgences.
nating in the German states and Switzerland, a movement for religious
reform began to spread across much of Europe, in part reflecting the influ
ence of Renaissance humanism in northern Europe. Reformers rejected the
pope’s authority and some Church doctrine itself. The movement for reform,
or of “protest,” came to be called the “Reformation.” It led to the establish
ment of many Protestant denominations within Christianity. The followers
of the German priest Martin Luther became Lutherans, while those of the
Frenchman Jean Calvin in Switzerland became known as Calvinists. King
Henry VIII established the Church of England (Anglican Church). Under
attack from many sides, the Roman Catholic Church undertook a Counter
Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, which sought to reform some aspects
of ecclesiastic life, while reaffirming the basic tenets of Catholic theology
and belief in the authority of the pope.
By 1600, the pattern of Christian religious adherence had largely been
established in Europe. Catholicism remained the religion of the vast major
ity of people living in Spain, France, Austria, Poland, the Italian states,
Bavaria, and other parts of the southern German states. Protestants domi
nated England and much of Switzerland, the Dutch Netherlands, Scandi
navia, and the northern German states. Wars fought in the name of religion
broke out within and between European states, beginning in the late six
teenth century and culminating in the Thirty Years’ War (1618—1648).
These conflicts shaped the next century of European history, with religious
divisions affecting the lives of millions of people.
82 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
The Northern Renaissance
Until the middle of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance had been limited
to the Italian peninsula. Northern Europe enjoyed very little of the eco
nomic and cultural vitality of the Italian city-states, where wealthy merchant
and banking families patronized humanists and artists. The country estates
of noble families were rarely centers of learning. The future Pope Pius II
claimed in the mid-fifteenth century that ‘literature flourishes in Italy and
princes there are not ashamed to listen to, and themselves to know, poetry.
But in Germany princes pay more attention to horses and dogs than to
poets—and thus neglecting the arts they die unremembered like their own
beasts.”
In about 1460, Renaissance humanism began to influence scholars in
northern Europe. As in Italy, humanism changed the way many people
thought about the world. Humanists were interested in morality and ethics,
as well as in subjecting texts to critical scrutiny. Therefore, debates over reli
gion, and the Bible itself, attracted their attention. Humanists began to crit
icize Church venality and corruption, and the seeming idleness of monastic
life. They also called into question scholasticism and its influence on reli
gious theology, as well as criticizing parts of religious practice that they con
sidered illogical and therefore superstitious. The spread of humanism in
northern Europe was gradual, first influencing isolated scholars. In the
beginning, it posed no immediate threat to the Church; humanists could not
imagine organized religion beyond Roman Catholicism. But the cumulative
effect of the Northern Renaissance, and humanism in particular, helped
engender a critical spirit that by the first decades of the sixteenth century
directly began to challenge Church practices and then doctrine.
Northern Art and Humanism
The Northern Renaissance that began in the late fifteenth century reflected
considerable Italian influence. Italian ambassadors, envoys, and humanists
brought Renaissance art and humanistic thought to northern Europe. Many
of the Italian envoys to northern Europe had studied the classics. They car
ried on diplomacy with oratorical and writing skills learned by reading
Cicero and other Roman authors. Yet, much of the artistic creativity in
northern Europe, particularly Flanders, emerged independent of Italian
influence. Like the Italian city-states, in the Dutch Netherlands, which had
a well-developed network of trading towns, wealthy urban families patron
ized the arts. Lacking the patronage of the Church, which so benefited Flo
rentine and other Italian painters, Flemish painters did few church frescoes
(which, in any case, a wet climate also discouraged). They emphasized deco
rative detail, such as that found in illuminated manuscripts, more than the
spatial harmonies of Italian art. Dutch and Flemish painters favored realism
The Northern Renaissance 83
more than Italian Renaissance ideal
ism in their portrayal of the human
body. They broke away from reli
gious subject matter and Gothic use
of dark, gloomy colors and tones. In
contrast to Italian painting, intense
religiosity remained an important
element in Flemish and German
painting, and it was relatively rare to
see a depiction of nudes.
Albrecht Durer’s visits to Italy
reflect the dissemination and influ
ence of the Italian Renaissance
beyond the Alps. The son of a
Nuremberg goldsmith, Diirer was
apprenticed to a book engraver. As a
young man, he seemed irresistibly
drawn to Italy as he wrestled with
how to depict the human form. Albrecht Durer’s Self-Portrait (1500).
During two visits to Venice—in
1494 and 1505-1506—he sought out Italian painters, studying their use
of mathematics in determining and representing proportion.
Literary societies, academies, and universities contributed to the diffu
sion of Renaissance ideals in northern Europe. Francis I established the Col
lege de France in 1530 in Paris, which soon had chairs in Greek, Hebrew;
and classical Latin. Northern universities became centers of humanistic
study, gradually taking over the role royal and noble households had played
in the diffusion of education. In Poland, the University of Krakow; which
had its first printing press in 1476, emerged as a center of humanism in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. But some universities were quite
slow to include humanists; only one humanist taught at the University of
Cambridge in the early sixteenth century.
Some nobles now sent their children to humanist schools or employed
humanists as tutors, as did a number of wealthy urban bourgeois. Some Ital
ian artists and scholars found employment in northern courts. Leonardo da
Vinci, Renaissance artist and scientist, was employed by King Francis I of
France. Kings and princes also hired humanists to serve as secretaries and
diplomats.
Latin gradually became the language of scholarship beyond the Alps. Ger
man, French, Spanish, and English historians borrowed from the style of the
Roman historians to celebrate their own medieval past. Unlike Italian histo
rians, they viewed the medieval period not as a sad interlude between two
glorious epochs but as a time when their own political institutions and cus
toms had been established.
84 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
In England at the end of the sixteenth century, Latin remained the lan
guage of high culture. There Machiavelli’s The Prince was widely read and
debated in Latin. When continental scholars traveled to England, they could
discuss common texts with their English counterparts. Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535), English lawyer and statesman, reflected the influence of Re
naissance humanism, writing poetry in Latin. In his Utopia (1516), a satire
of contemporary political and social life, More asked readers to consider
their own values in the context of their expanding knowledge of other soci
eties, including those of the New World.
The spread of the cultural values of Renaissance humanism across the
Alps into the German states and northern Europe helped prepare the way
for the Reformation. Like the Renaissance, the Reformation was in some
ways the work of humanists moving beyond what they considered to be the
constraints of Church theology. Humanists, who had always been concerned
with ethics, attacked not only the failings of some clerics but also some of
the Church’s teachings, especially its claim to be immune to criticism. They
also condemned superstition in the guise of religiosity. Northern Renais
sance humanists w’ere the sworn enemies of scholasticism, the medieval sys
tem of ecclesiastical inquiry in which Church scholars used reason to prove
the tenets of Christian doctrine within the context of assumed theological
truths. By suggesting that individuals who were not priests could interpret
the Bible for themselves, they threatened the monopoly of Church theolo
gians over biblical interpretation.
Erasmus’s Humanistic Critique of the Church
An energetic Dutch cleric contributed more than any other person to the
growth of Renaissance humanism in northern Europe. Bom to unmarried
parents and orphaned in Rotterdam, Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469—1536)
spent seven years in a monastery. Ordained a priest in 1492, he taught at
the universities of Cambridge and Louvain, and then worked as a tutor in
Paris and in Italy. As a young man, Erasmus may have suffered some sort of
trauma—perhaps a romantic attachment that was either unreciprocated or
inopportunely discovered. Thereafter compulsively obsessed with cleanli
ness, he was determined to infuse the Church with a new moral purity
influenced by the Renaissance.
The patronage of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and several other
statesmen permitted Erasmus to apply the scholarly techniques of humanism
to biblical study. Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly (1509) was a satirical survey of
the world as he saw it but also a clear call for a pure Christian morality shorn
of the corruption he beheld in the monastic system. Thus, he wrote that
priests claimed “that they’ve properly performed their duty if they reel off per
functorily their feeble prayers which I’d be greatly surprised if any god could
hear or understand.” He believed that the scholastics of the Middle Ages had,
like the barbarians, overwhelmed the Church with empty, lifeless theology.
The Roots of the Reformation 85
Erasmus’s attacks on those
who believed in the curing power
of relics (remains of saints ven
erated by the faithful) reflected
his Renaissance sense of the dig
nity of the individual. His Hand
book of the Christian Soldier
(1503), which called for a theol
ogy that de-emphasized the
sacraments, provided a guide to
living a moral life. The little
book went through twenty Latin
editions and was translated into
ten other languages. Erasmus
wrote at length on how a prince
ought to be educated and how
children should be raised. The
most well-known intellectual
figure of his time in Europe,
Erasmus greatly expanded the Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus by Hans
Holbein the Younger.
knowledge and appreciation of
the classics in northern Europe.
He and other major Northern Renaissance figures forged a Christian
humanism focused on the early Christian past. Following his lead, north
ern humanists turned their skills in editing texts in Greek and Latin to the
large body of early Christian writings.
The Roots of the Reformation
In principle, the pope governed the Church in all of Western Christendom.
But in reality, the emergence of the monarchical states of France, England,
and the kingdoms of Spain in the late Middle Ages had eroded papal
authority. Gradually these rulers assumed more prerogatives over the
Church in their states. This expansion of monarchical authority itself pro
vided the impetus toward the development of churches that gradually took
on a national character as monarchs bargained for authority over religious
appointments and worked to bring ecclesiastical property under their fiscal
control by imposing taxation.
In the Italian and German states and in Switzerland, where many smaller,
independent states ruled by princes, urban oligarchs, or even bishops sur
vived, the very complexity of territorial political arrangements served to limit
the direct authority of the pope. For in these smaller states, too, the ability of
the pope and his appointees to manage their own affairs depended on the
cooperation of lay rulers. Furthermore, the territorial expanse of Western
86 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
Christendom and daunting problems of transportation and communication
made it difficult for the papal bureaucracy to reform blatant financial
abuses. That the papacy itself increasingly appeared to condone or even
encourage corruption added to the calls for reform.
Yet Erasmus and other northern humanists, while sharply criticizing the
Church, were unwilling to challenge papal authority. The papacy, however,
had other, more vociferous critics. First, the monarchs of France, Spain, and
England had repudiated the interference of the pope in temporal affairs,
creating what were, for all intents and purposes, national churches. Second,
religious movements deemed heretical by the Church rejected papal author
ity. Some people sought refuge from the turmoil in spiritualism. Others
based their idea of religion on personal study of the Bible, turning away
from not only papal authority but also the entire formal hierarchy of the
Church. Third, within the Church, a reform movement known as concil
iarism sought to subject the authority of the popes to councils of cardinals
and other Church leaders. More and more calls echoed for the reform of
clerical abuses. As the Church seemed determined to protect its authority, to
critics it also seemed more venal, even corrupt, than ever before. By ques
tioning fundamental Church doctrine and the nature of religious faith, the
resulting reform movement, culminating in the Reformation, shattered the
unity of Western Christendom.
The Great Schism (1378-1417)
In the fourteenth century, the struggle between the king of France and the
pope put the authority of the papacy in jeopardy. The French and English
kings had imposed taxes on ecclesiastical property. In response, Pope Boni
face VIIPs bull Unam Sanctam (1302) threw down the gauntlet to lay rulers,
asserting that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation for everyone to be sub
ject to the Roman pontiff.” King Philip IV of France ordered Boniface’s
arrest, and the pope died a year later, shortly after his release from captivity.
Philip then arranged the election of a pliant pope, Clement V (pope 1305—
1314). In 1309, he installed him in the papal enclave of Avignon, a town on
the Rhone River. During the “Avignon Papacy” (1309-1378), the popes
remained under the direct influence of the kings of France. At the same
time, the popes continued to build up their bureaucracies and, like the mon
archs whose authority they sometimes contested, to extract ever greater rev
enues from the faithful.
In 1377, Pope Gregory XI (pope 1370-1378) returned to Rome, in the
hope that his presence there might calm the political situation in the Italian
states. When Gregory XI died a year later, a group of cardinals in Rome,
most of whom were French, elected Pope Urban VI (pope 1378—1389), pop
ularly believed to be faithful to the Avignon Papacy. After a Roman mob
invaded the proceedings, the cardinals fled. Upon their return several
months later, a smaller group of thirteen cardinals was vexed by the new
The Roots of the Reformation 87
pope’s denunciation of their wealth and privileges. Furthermore, they now
viewed him as temperamentally unstable, unfit to be pope. They elected
another pope, Clement VII, who claimed to be pope between 1378 and
1394. He returned to set up shop in Avignon, leaving his rival, Urban VI, in
Rome. The Great Schism (1378—1417) began with two men now claiming
authority over the Church.
The two popes and their successors thereafter sought to win the alle
giance of rulers. The Avignon popes, like their pre-Schism predecessors,
were under the close scrutiny of the king of France, and the Roman pope
was caught up in the morass of Italian and Roman politics. France, Castile,
Navarre, and Scotland supported the Avignon popes; most of the Italian
states, Portugal, the Holy Roman Empire, and England obeyed the Roman
popes. In 1409, Church dignitaries gathered at the Council of Pisa to
resolve the conflict, and they elected a third pope. However, neither of the
other two would agree to resign. And, in the meantime, secular rulers forced
the popes to make agreements that increased the authority of the former
over the Church in their states. The Great Schism enabled lay rulers to con
struct virtual national churches at the expense of papal power.
Heretical and Spiritual Movements
The chaos of two and then three popes claiming authority over the
Church, along with the ruthlessness and greed of the claimants, greatly
increased dissatisfaction with the organization of the Church. From time
to time, heresies (movements based on beliefs deemed contrary to the
teaching of the Church) had denied the authority of the papacy and
demanded reform. In the twelfth century, the Waldensians in the Alps and
the Albigensians in the south of France had defied the papacy by withdraw
ing into strictly organized communities that, unlike monasteries and con
vents, recognized neither Church doctrine nor authority.
An undercurrent of mysticism persisted in Europe, based on a belief in
the supremacy of individual piety in the quest for knowledge of God and
eternal salvation. William of Occam (c. 1290-1349), an English monk and
another critic of the papacy, rejected scholastic rationalism. Scholasticism
had become increasingly linked to the theology of Thomas Aquinas (1225—
1274), who had deduced the existence of God from what he considered
rational proofs that moved from one premise to the next. Occam, in con
trast, posited that the gulf between God and man was so great that
scholastic proofs of God’s existence, such as those of Aquinas, were point
less because mankind could not understand God through reason. “Nomi
nalists,” as Occam and his followers were known, believed that individual
piety should be the cornerstone of religious life. Nominalists rejected papal
authority and the hierarchical structure of the Church. Their views reflected
and accentuated the turn of more clergy and laymen toward the Scriptures
as a guide for the individual’s relationship with God, emphasizing the
88 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
importance of leading a good, simple life. The Great Schism may have
increased the yearning for spirituality as well as for the institutional reform
of the Church.
The English cleric and scholar John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384) also ques
tioned the pope’s authority and claimed that an unworthy pope did not
have to be obeyed, views that drew papal censorship. For Wyclif, the
Church consisted of the body of those God had chosen to be saved, and no
more. Stressing the role of faith in reaching eternal salvation, he insisted
that reading the Scriptures formed the basis of faith and the individual’s
relationship with God. Wyclif also put himself at odds with Church theol
ogy by rejecting transubstantiation (the doctrine that holds that during
Mass the priest transforms ordinary bread and wine into the body and
blood of Christ).
Wyclif’s de-emphasis of rituals and his advocacy of a religion based on
faith suggested the significantly reduced importance of the Church as inter
mediary between man and God. Wyclif, who had powerful English noble
and clerical protectors, called for Church reform. But the Peasants’ Revolt
of 1381 in England, in which wealthy churchmen were targets of popular
wrath, gave even Wyclif’s powerful protectors pause by raising the specter of
future social unrest. An English Church synod condemned Wyclif, but he
was allowed to live out his remaining years in a monastery. Some of his Eng
lish followers, poor folk known as the Lollards, carried on Wyclif’s work
after his death. They criticized the Church’s landed wealth and espoused a
simpler religion. Led by gentry known as “Lollard knights,” the Lollards rose
up in rebellion in 1414, but were brutally crushed by King Henry V.
In Bohemia in Central Europe, Jan Hus (c. 1369-1415), a theologian,
had learned of Wyclif’s teaching. He, too, loudly criticized the worldliness
of some clerics, and called for a return to a more unadorned religion.
Rejecting the authority of the papacy and denouncing popes as “anti
Christs,” Hus held that ordinary people could reform the Church.
The Challenge of Conciliarisnt to Papal Authority
The doctrine of conciliarism arose not only in response to the Great Schism
but also to growing demands from many churchmen that the Church must
undertake reform. The Council of Constance (1414-1418) was called to
resolve the Great Schism and to undertake a reform of the Church. Many of
the ecclesiastical dignitaries who attended also wanted to limit and define
the authority of the papacy.
There were at least four significant parties to conciliarism: the popes
themselves; bishops who supported councils as a way of resolving Church
problems; secular rulers, particularly French kings, but also Holy Roman
emperors, intervening in the Great Schism; and heretics condemned at
Constance, who were far more radical than the mainstream conciliarists in
their challenge to papal authority.
The Roots of the Reformation 89
The Council of Constance first turned its attention to Jan Hus. Holding a
safe-conduct pass given to him by the king of Bohemia, Hus travelled to the
Council of Constance in 1414 but was arrested and put on trial for heresy.
Hus refused to recant Wyclif’s views, defending his own belief that the
faithful, like the priest saying Mass, ought to be able to receive communion,
the Church’s rite of unity, in the two forms of bread and wine. The council
condemned Hus, turning him over to the Holy Roman emperor, who ordered
him burned at the stake as a heretic. The Hussites, the only major fifteenth
century dissidents within the Church, fought off several papal armies. They
finally won special papal dispensation for the faithful to take communion in
both bread and wine; their “Utraquist” (“in both kinds”) church lasted until
1620.
The Council of Constance resolved the ongoing conflicting claims to
papal authority by deposing two of the claimants and accepting the resigna
tion of the third. In 1417, the council elected Martin V (pope 1417-1431).
But the Great Schism, with its multiple papal claimants, by delaying any
serious attempts at reform, had reinforced the insistence of some prelates
that councils of Church bishops ought to have more authority than the pope.
Convoked by the pope, at least in principle, councils brought together
leading ecclesiastical dignitaries from throughout Europe. These councils
deliberated on matters of faith, as well as on the organization of the
Church. But some councils began to come together in defiance of papal
authority. Those holding a “conciliar” view of the Church conceived of it as
Jan Hus being burned at the stake as a heretic.
90 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
a corporation of cardinals that could override the pope. William of Occam
had argued a century earlier that, when confronted by a heretical pope, a
general council of the Church could stand as the repository of truth and
authority. Some reformers wanted to impose a written constitution on the
Church. At the Council of Basel, which began in 1431, exponents of unlim
ited papal authority and their counterparts favoring conciliarist positions
both presented their views. In 1437, the pope ordered the council moved to
Ferrara, and then the next year to Florence. Some participants, mostly con
ciliarists, continued to meet in Basel until 1445, although the pope
declared that council schismatic. Fifteen years later, Pope Pius II (pope
1458—1464) declared the conciliar movement to be a heresy.
Clerical Abuses and Indulgences
The assertion by some churchmen that councils had authority over the
papacy merged easily with those who called for the reform of blatant abuses
within the Church. Some monasteries were mocked as hypocritical institu
tions no more saintly than the supposedly profane world monks and nuns
sought to leave behind. Several new religious orders had been founded at
least partially out of impatience with, if not disgust with, ecclesiastical
worldliness.
Critics of the papacy attacked with particular energy ecclesiastical finan
cial and moral abuses. They claimed that the papacy had become an invest
ment trust run by the priests who administered the papacy’s temporal
affairs. No clerical financial abuse was more attacked than indulgences,
which were based on the idea of transferable merit. Through granting
indulgences, the Church supposedly reduced the time a soul would have to
suffer punishment in Purgatory (that halfway house between Hell and
Heaven that had emerged in Church belief early in the Middle Ages) for
sins committed on earth. The practice of selling indulgences began during
the Crusades as a means of raising revenue for churches and hospitals.
Those seeking the salvation of their souls did not purchase God’s forgive
ness (which could only be received in the confessional) but rather cancelled
or reduced the temporal punishment (such as the obligation to undertake
pilgrimages, or give charity, or say so many prayers) required to atone for
their sins. In 1457, the pope had announced that indulgences could be
applied to the souls of family members or friends suffering in Purgatory.
Some people had the impression that purchasing indulgences rather than
offering real repentance brought immediate entry to Heaven for oneself or
one’s relatives. “The moment the money tinkles in the collecting box, a soul
flies out of Purgatory,” went one ditty. The implication was that wealthy
families had a greater chance of opening the doors of Heaven for their loved
ones than poor people. One papal critic interpreted all of this to mean that
“the Lord desireth not the death of a sinner but rather that he may live and
pay.”
The Roots of the Reformation 91
Another clerical practice that was much criticized was that of the sale of
Church offices, known as simony. More than ever before, those who partic
ipated in—and benefited from—this practice were Italian clerics. Most
popes appointed Italians as cardinals, many of whom lived in Rome while
accumulating great wealth from ecclesiastical sees (areas of a bishops’
jurisdiction) they rarely if ever visited. Some prominent families looked to
the Church to provide lucrative sinecures—offices that generated income
but that required little or no work—for their children. Reformers decried
the appointment of unqualified bishops who had purchased their offices.
Many priests charged exorbitant fees for burial. Resentment also
mounted, particularly in the German states, because clerics were immune
from civil justice and paid no taxes. Indulgences and pardons, swapped for
gold or services, had since 1300 become a papal monopoly. Commenting
on Leo’s death in 1521, one wag remarked, ‘4His last moments come, he
couldn’t even have the [Last] Sacrament. By God, he’s sold it!”
The papacy also came under attack for moral abuses. In the diocese of
Trent in the early sixteenth century, about a fifth of all priests kept concu
bines. Nepotism, the awarding of posts to relatives or friends, seemed to
reign supreme. In the fifteenth century, Pope Paul II was mocked as the
“happy father,” not revered as the Holy Father. Alexander VI (pope 1492
1503) looked after his own children with the care of any other father. Paul
III (pope 1534-1549) made two of his grandsons cardinals, their expen
sive hats far bigger than the young heads upon which they rested.
The sacrament of penance also generated popular resentment against
the clergy. Since 1215, the faithful were required to confess their sins at
least once a year to a priest. This sacrament originated in the context of
instruction to encourage good behavior. But for many people, penance had
become the priest’s interrogation of the faithful in the confessional, dur
ing which the confessor sought out details of misdeeds in order to deter
mine one of the sixteen stated degrees of transgression. The Church’s call
for sinners to repent seemed particularly ironic in view of popularly per
ceived ecclesiastical abuses.
Given a boost by the conciliar movement, calls for reform echoed louder
and louder. The representatives of the clergy who had gathered at the
Estates-General of France in 1484 criticized the sale of Church offices. In
1510, the Augsburg Diet, an imperial institution of the Holy Roman
Empire, refused to grant money to the pope for war against the Turks
unless he first ordered an end to financial abuses. The imperial representa
tive Assembly (Reichstag) had increasingly served as a forum for denuncia
tions against the papacy. In 1511, King Louis XII of France, whose armies
had backed up his territorial ambitions in northern Italy, called a council
with the goal of reasserting the conciliar doctrine and ordered reforms in
the monastic houses of his realm. The Fifth Lateran Council, which met
from 1512 to 1517, urged more education for the clergy, sought to end
some monastic financial abuses, and insisted that occupants of religious
92 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
houses uphold their vows of chastity. The council also suggested missions
to carry the Church’s influence into the Americas. Pope Leo X, however,
emphatically insisted that he alone could convoke Church councils, and
the Fifth Lateran Council itself forbade sermons denouncing the moral
state of the Church.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483-1546) was born in the small town of Eisleben in
central Germany. He was the son of a miner whose family had been pros
perous peasants. His peasant background could be seen in the coarseness
of his language, song, and humor. The stocky, pious, and determined
Luther began his studies in 1501 at the University of Erfurt, where he
took courses in philosophy and then began the study of law.
In July 1505, Luther was engulfed in a violent storm as he returned to
Erfurt after a visit home. As a bolt of lightning struck not far from where he
stood in terror, the young student cried out to the patron saint of travelers,
“Help me, Saint Anne, I will become a monk.” Returning safely to Erfurt, he
gathered his friends together and told them, “Today you see me, henceforth,
never more.” They escorted him to the nearby monastery of the Augustinian
monks, which he entered against his father’s wishes. Luther prayed, fasted,
and, outside the monastery, begged for charity. In 1507, he was ordained a
priest and soon became a doctor of theology, administrator of eleven Aug
ustinian monasteries, and dean of the theological seminary in the town of
Wittenberg.
Luther had, for some time, been wracked with gnawing doubt concerning
his personal unworthiness. Was he not a sinner? He had been saved from
the storm, but would he be saved from damnation on Judgment Day? Was
there really any connection between good works effected on earth and salva
tion? If mankind was so corrupted by sin, how could charity, fasting, or con
stant prayer and self-flagellation in the monastery earn one entry to
Heaven? He later recalled, “I tried hard … to be contrite, and make a list of
my sins. I confessed them again and again. I scrupulously carried out the
penances that were allotted to me. And yet my conscience kept telling me:
‘You fell short there.’ ‘You were not sorry enough.’ ‘You left that sin off your
list.’ I was trying to cure the doubts and scruples of the conscience with
human remedies. . . . The more I tried these remedies, the more troubled
and uneasy my conscience grew.”
Luther’s lonely study of theology in the tower library of the monastery did
not resolve his doubts. Like other Augustinians, he had been influenced by
the nominalism of William of Occam, which emphasized individual piety.
This led Luther closer to his contention that faith, not good works, was the
key to salvation. Indeed, the teachings of Saint Augustine himself also sug
gested to him that each person could be saved by faith alone through the
grace of God. Believing man is saved “not by pieces, but in a heap,” Luther
The Roots of the Reformation 93
became obsessed with a phrase from the Bible (Romans 1:17), “The just
shall live by faith.” Such a conclusion broke with the accepted teachings of
the Church as defined by medieval scholasticism. But more than faith was
troubling Luther. He was also especially troubled by the abuse of the eccle
siastical sale of indulgences.
On October 31, 1517, Luther tacked up on the door of the castle church
of Wittenberg “Ninety-five Theses or Disputations on the Power and Effi
cacy of Indulgences.” He denounced the theoretical underpinnings of the
papal granting of indulgences out of the “treasury of merits” accumulated by
Christ and the saints. He then had his theses printed and distributed in the
region and invited those who might want to dispute his theses to present
themselves to debate with him, as was the custom. In February 1518, Pope
Leo X demanded that Luther’s monastic superior order him to cease his
small crusade. Luther refused, citing his right as a professor of theology to
dispute formally the charges now leveled against him. And he found a pro
tector, Frederick III, elector of Saxony, a religious ruler who turned to the
Bible as he mulled over matters of state.
In April, as denunciations against Luther poured into Rome, he success
fully defended his theses before his Augustinian superiors. Pope Leo was
An allegorical painting of the dream of Frederick the Wise wherein Martin Luther
uses an enormous quill to tack his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle
church at Wittenberg.
94 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations
trying to remain on good terms with Frederick III, a strong candidate for
election as Holy Roman emperor. Instead of immediately summoning
Luther to Rome, he therefore proposed that a papal legate travel to Augs
burg to hear Luther out. At their meeting, the legate warned Luther to
desist or face the consequences. Luther’s friends, suspecting that the pope
had ordered his arrest, whisked him away to safety.
Luther sought a negotiated solution. He agreed to write a treatise calling
on the German people to honor the Church, and promised neither to preach
nor publish anything else if his opponents would also keep silent. At this
point Luther did not seek to create a new church, but merely to reform the
old one. A papal representative sent to meet with Luther in Leipzig in June
1519 accused him of being a Hussite, that is, of denying the pope’s author
ity. Luther admitted that he did not believe the pope to be infallible.
Luther crossed his Rubicon, but unlike Caesar moved not toward Rome
but away from it. “Farewell, unhappy, hopeless, blasphemous Rome! The
wrath of God come upon thee, as you deserve,” he wrote a friend, “We have
cared for Babylon and she is not healed; let us then leave her. . . .” Luther
would not be silenced. “I am hot-blooded by temperament and my pen gets
irritated easily,” he proclaimed.
Three treatises published in 1520 marked Luther’s final break with
Rome. Here Luther developed his theology of reform, one that went far
beyond the prohibition of indulgences and the sale of ecclesiastical offices.
He argued his view that faith alone could bring salvation, that good works
follow faith but do not in themselves save the soul. Nor, he argued, does
the absence of good works condemn man to eternal damnation. Upon
reading one of these tracts, Erasmus, loyal critic of the Church, stated
emphatically, “The breach is irreparable.”
Developing the theological concept of “freedom of a Christian,” Luther’s
immediate goal was to free German communities from the strictures of
religious beliefs and institutions that seemed increasingly foreign to their
faith. He called on the princes of the German states to reform the Church
in their states. In doing so, he argued that the Scriptures declared the
Church itself to be a priestly body that was not subject to the pope’s inter
pretation. Luther acknowledged only two of the seven sacraments, those
instituted by Christ, not the papacy: baptism and communion. After first
retaining penance, he dropped it, arguing that faith was sufficient to bring
about a sinner’s reconciliation with God. If this was true, the monastic life
no longer seemed to Luther to provide any advantage in the quest for salva
tion. And he rejected what he called the “unn…