Chapter 11-- Introduction to theRenaissance

The Renaissance (1450 – 1600 C.E.)

A script for a documentary on the Renaissance might start this way:

“The camera fades in to a scene of a small family in a house somewhere in England in the year 1575. The small family is finishing its process of cleaning up after its evening meal. The décor of the house is not elaborate, but comfortable and well kept. It is not a family that is a member of the wealthy nobility, but instead, a middle class couple. The father moves the kitchen table slightly, arranges the chairs, and then lights a few candles. The mother disappears into the next room and reappears seconds later holding some printed pages, placing them on the table near the candles. The camera zooms closer to the pages and we see that it is printed music in a rather unusual format. There are four parts each, printed at 90 degrees to the parts beside it.Four adults sit down at the table.

Illustration 1: Giovanni Cariani "A Concert" (1520)

One of the adults hums a pitch, makes eye contact with the other three, and the four begin to sing an English Madrigal, “All Creatures Now Are Merry Minded”.

If you recall the earlier picture painted of life in the Medieval Era, there are a number of striking differences.

Perhaps the most glaringly obvious is that this is a scene of an average family with the ability to read—not just text, but musical notation. The implications are huge: while theyare obviously not affluent, life is not completely wrapped around survival for a simple middle class family. Their lives are not only comfortable enough to be able to learn to read music, they are enjoying leisure time. They likely have purchased this sheet music, meaning that they have disposable income. As the script noted, this music was printed. That means that technology and innovation have allowed mass duplication of music to become relatively commonplace and inexpensive enough so that the middle class can afford it—and be a large enough of a market to give an incentive to print it.

That also must mean that somewhere down the line, the musicians who were composing the music were getting at least a little recognition—and were probably no longer anonymous.

And, if this is how different life was in a small hamlet in England, how drastically changed would the rest of society be?

Around the year 1450 after about a millennium in a holding pattern, European civilization dusted off its feet and began to move forward once more.

This era is known as the Renaissance, literally meaning “rebirth”. Trade began to flourish. Literacy again became common. There was an explosion of arts, both celebrating the sacred AND the secular.

What exactly triggered this tremendous lurch forward after such a long period of stagnation?

Change can sometimes come from causes that are less than pleasant.

THE BLACK DEATH AND THE ECONOMIC RECOVERY

Oddly enough, a primary cause for this rebirth was the Black Death, believed

specifically to be the Bubonic Plague. When the plague reached Europe in the mid-1300s, it caused the death of 30-60% of the areas of population it infected. It is estimated that for every 10 people infected with Bubonic Plague, only one survived.This hardly sounds like something that could cause a positive change in society as well as a cultural revolution.

However, some of the side effects resulted in workers becoming scarce, and as happens with any valuable commodity, the price goes up when the demand rises. This resulted in more wealth and power coming to the Middle Class who, for the first time, were eventually able to have lives with more leisure time and disposable income.

Without an understanding of microbiology, germs, and disease, there was little to explain the horrific disease. To many, it must have seemed like the world was coming to a terrifying end.

This also caused a shift in philosophy of the survivors. Life became so uncertain that much of the emphasis was on day to day living, appreciating the now. Boccaccio's Decameron is an early collection of novellas that does just that.

Because of the difficulty and uncertainty of life, Medieval man took refuge in the concept of the afterlife; that all of the suffering in this life was only a preparation for the world to come—that the time after death (for the faithful) would be reality and this life was only a shadow.

This is not to say that with a newfound appreciation in the present that the old paradigm changed overnight. It wasn't until the late 1800s when the philosopher Nietzsche would write a novel with the premise that “God is Dead”, but things began to slowly shift in that direction.

At the end of the plague, which to many must have seemed that the world was coming toan end, what we look back and see often appears as if people began a celebration of the fact that they were still alive.

The members of the middle class were not the only ones who benefited from the aftermath of the Black Death. When there are fewer people around to inherit wealth from their parents, they wind up with larger shares. A wealthy merchant class began to appear.

All of this contributed to the birth of humanism.

Much of the new culture originated around Venice, Italy. A fairly simple innovation called “double-entry bookkeeping” permitted a more accurate and workable way for a

merchant to keep track of his assets and his debts. This gave rise to a wealthy merchant class who, naturally, chose to celebrate their riches. How better to do it than surround themselves with finery of art, sculpture, and music?

And of course, that art, sculpture, and music required the services of artists, sculptors, and musicians who suddenly found themselves in demand.

While music (and the other arts) had never died out, music steps further into the background when times are lean. When the sheer act of survival doesn't require every waking ounce of energy and occupy every minute, the time left over frequently is devoted to some of the “finer” things of life.

Trade opening to the far East also contributed to a broadening of many horizons.

If there was a city that exemplified the rebirth, it would be Florence, Italy. The presence of Filippo Brunelleschi doing research into ancient Greek building techniques and then successfully finishing the dome of the cathedral in Flornece—and his patrons, the Medici family who gloried in their success by hiring artists to create works of art—are what the Renaissance became about. The Medicis also brought much foreign and exotic culture into the city.

GUTENBERG AND MOVABLE TYPE

At roughly the same time, Johannes Gutenberg developed something that in retrospect seems fairly simple, but was a major breakthrough in the development of society. Prior to Gutenberg, each page of a book was carved as one plate. That plate would then be used to print its own page. Got a book with 30 pages? You needed thirty carved plates.

Gutenberg discovered that he could carve the letters individually, clamp them together toprint a number of pages (which took considerably less time than engraving them wholesale), unclamp them, create a new page, and repeat.

It is worth noting that by the time Gutenberg got around to “discovering” movable type, it had been developed in Asia at least several centuries earlier. The printing press had existed in Asia for more than a thousand years by that time.

Why didn't this contribute to the Renaissance in Europe (or even prevent the Medieval Era)?

First, it's a sign of just how much Europe was isolated from the rest of the world at the time. Second, movable type (which at the moment is thought to have been invented in Korea) would not have been nearly as useful because of the great numbers of characters in the written language.

However, with European languages, a few dozen letters and numbers were all that were needed. Add a few more for punctuation and you're set.

And if that wasn't a big enough of a jackpot, add to this the fact that the first European paper mills appeared just a few years before. Instead of vellum from animal skin as the principal medium, something much more easy to acquire became the conveyer of new ideas. One can imagine a monk being chastised by his superior for wasting valuable vellum with the words, “This stuff doesn't grow on trees!” With paper, now it did.

Gutenberg, a printer trying to make a living by inventing the proverbial “better mousetrap” became nothing less than the deliverer of an explosion of information. It is hard to exaggerate the impact this had on Western civilization, everything we do and how we see everything.

Books became substantially cheaper to produce. When there were no books, there was no need to learn to read and write. Now, there was a reason.

And if that wasn't yet a big enough jackpot, a market had been created for those books: amiddle class with enough wealth, leisure time, and a humanistic philosophy to take advantage of them. When most of the energy of existence is devoted to simple survival, that doesn't leave much time for the “finer things of life.” Now there was the time.

Without the ability to sell music to an audience larger than the church or the nobility, there was no need to print and mass produce music. Now there was the need.

As we studied in the section on notation, there really wasn't a use for some of the more complicated parameters of notation when the composer was the one performing the music. Things had changed to where the performer was not necessarily the composer.

With all of these things coming together at the same time, Gutenberg—as well as all of Western culture—had a special partner in all of this.

The name of that special partner was Luck.

Had any of these elements failed to materialize--paper, a more powerful middle class, and a humanistic philosophy, movable type wouldn't have had nearly the impact it did.

The ripple effect was profound. Books became substantially cheaper to producei. When there were no books, there was no need to learn to read and write. Now, there was a reason.

One of the early major effects of Gutenberg’s invention was to cheaply and quickly printmaterials supporting the Protestant Reformation, having a far reaching political effect.

Combined with disposable income and leisure time of the middle class, literacy was once again a practical and even desirable goal.

Information storage, retrieval, and verification on a large scale had arrived. Information as a marketable commodity, along with copyright laws, and the concept of intellectual property were not far behind.

While it would take a few centuries to fulfill, because of these laws, creative people would eventually be able to become some of the richest people in the world.

Scientific understanding would also begin to accelerate when everything important no longer had to be committed to memory and passed along orally.

And of course, it became the empowerment of anyone who could read.

The beginnings of modern society began to coalesce. An actor who began writing plays, by the name of William Shakespeare, began using the English language in a way that helped standardize it, with a byproduct of giving us uniform spellings and grammar.

Then, as now, knowledge is power. Understanding has the power to chase away fear of the unknown.

BREAKDOWN IN AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH

One more key to understanding the tremendous change the Renaissance represents is to take a look at the beginning of the end of the authority of the church.

As we noted in the section of the Medieval Era, everything was wrapped around the church; it gave meaning to life, it gave a rationale and explanation for seasons, events, tragedies, for the workings of nature.

The sun circled around the Earth. The Earth was the center of the Universe.

In the early 1500s a Polish astronomer by the name of Copernicus was asked to try to make sense of the cycles of the moon so that they could be predicted with regularity and fit into the calendar system. With more precise mathematics available, one observation led to another, which led to another, which led to Copernicus refuting the long held views of Ptolemy and giving the world some very bad news: we were not the center of the universe or even the solar system.

This contradicted the teachings of the Church at the time, and Copernicus paid dearly forit. So did Galileo Galileiii, who later confirmed the heliocentric theory of the solar system.

Ptolemy, a Greek mathematician and astronomer (and musical theoretician to boot), had created the explanation that the Medieval world accepted as accurate: that the heavens were a series of concentric spheres.

The invention of the telescope along with discoveries of other astronomical objects as well as moons of other planets shattered the sphere theory of the universe.

Explorers returning from new continents not mentioned in the Bible began raising questions about the completeness and accuracy of the Bible and the teachings of the Church.

The biggest blow to the authority of the Church came from one of its priests named Martin Luther. With the intention of trying to correct what he felt were problems in the Church, he eventually triggered the Protestant Reformation. This introduced competitioninto what once was a religious monopoly with the net effect of strengthening the monarchies.

He who has the gold makes the rules. By the end of the Renaissance, much of that “gold” had started to change hands.

ANTIQUITY AND THE END OF THE “PERPETUAL PRESENT”

In an earlier section, we discussed the impact of living in an isolated bubble of perception where scientific observation, a sense of historical context, and the understanding of random chance were non-existent. The description by James Burke of aworld without facts as we know them illustrates the effects on human psychology.

Journeys to the East by Marco Polo during the era of the Black Death began opening doors to the rest of the world.

The discovery of antiquity was an important element in the forward growth of society.

To the surprise of many in Italy (where the Renaissance began), the ground on which they walked had once been walked by a grand and powerful civilization—the Roman Empire. With the rebirth of literacy, an interest in ancient Rome and ancient Greece created a demand for writings from those past eras.

A substantial body of ancient literature was discovered in various monasteries throughout Eastern Europe preserved by the Byzantine Empire.

Not the last time in history, an era was inspired by the balance, proportion, and eloquence of ancient writings and art.

Those caught up in the wave of change brought about by the Renaissance found their sense of perspective changed (figuratively).

A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE

Those caught up in the wave of change brought about by the Renaissance found their sense of perspective changed—LITERALLY.

If you examine paintings from earlier in the Medieval Era, they had a rather strange wayof suggesting distance and perspective. To portray figures in the distance, the artists would draw smaller figures often appearing in the same plane.

A painter by the name of Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with the first use of a vanishing point, a device where implied parallel lines in a picture all converge to a point at the horizon.

Other artists soon began adopting this, quickly creating some remarkable artwork and advancing the suggestions of large space from a two-dimensional canvas very quickly.Looking at these pictures from before and after, one has to wonder why it took so long.

Illustration 2: Between the time the image on the left was painted and theimage on the right was painted, something obviously had changed; whatever it

was, it wasn't the basic intelligence or mechanical skill of the painter.

Illustration 3: This is a photo of a snow covered building. Note how easy it is tosee a vanishing point. Note that this is what our eyes see. Why didn't artists

paint this way before Brunelleschi??? Surely it was not a matter of ability. . .

While you are mulling over the question in the photo of the snow covered building, it gets better. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was extraordinarily influential in the foundations of Western thought. Many of the important ideas, including science, up through the early Renaissance were heavily influenced by his thinking.

In Aristotle's view, all motion was in straight lines. A cannonball fired from a cannon aimed upward at 45 degrees would travel in a straight line until it slowed down and stopped, and then fell down in a straight line.

What??? How can that be? Little children playing catch with a ball—or even an apple that fell to the ground—can see that objects in motion don't move that way.

Yet, the philosophy persisted until the Renaissance that objects flying through the air traveled only in straight lines. In the early 1500s Niccolo Tartaglia began to pick apart this notion. A little later Galileo developed the formula that explained trajectory.

Perhaps James Burke in The Day The Universe Changed explains it the best: “We see what our knowledge tells us we are seeing.”

Without question, those living in the Renaissance had begun to see something profoundly different.

About 400 years earlier, the first polyphony in music had evolved in the Medieval Era giving, in its own way, an added dimension to the music. Perspective and polyphony appeared roughly in the same place and roughly in the same era—for the first time in human history. Could this have been simple coincidence?

We may never know for sure. What may be the best argument is to keep digging into history and seeing if trends link together in other eras and drawing a conclusion from that.

A MESSAGE FROM THE KNIGHT PERCIVAL

Earlier, we briefly touched on the Medieval legend of the knight Percival. As frequently depicted, Percival is an adult, fully intelligent, but without a sense of his past. He does not know who he is or where he came from. It was almost as if he was born as a full grown adult.

This folktale—like many, many other folktales throughout history—is almost as if it were directly written to tell the story of its eraiii.

When Europe came out of the Middle Ages, it was a mature society but without a past. Itwas intelligent, but naïve and innocent.

In discovering its past, it became a launching pad into the future.

When Europe came out of the Middle Ages, it was a mature society but without a past. Itwas intelligent, but naïve and innocent.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN (FILL IN THE BLANK)

We begin seeing some of the roots of modern thought and philosophy beginning in the Renaissance. For those of us who speak English, we owe a debt to William Shakespeare whose works are the foundation of the English language, not to mention modern drama.

LASTLY, A DISCLAIMER

For the sake of accuracy, this section needs to end with a little disclaimer. Reading through the introduction to the Renaissance might give one an impression that scientific thought and secularism had exploded and chased the Church off the radar screen. That would be a serious misconception.

The vast majority of music composed (and art created) was sacred. The Church was stillvery powerful, very wealthy, and very influential in the thought of the time.

What we do see is a crack in the in dam with a little trickle beginning to flow. It wouldn'tbe until the late 18th century for the dam to completely burst.

i According to contemporary accounts, someone with multiple copies of a printed book was chased out of Paris because the Parisians felt there must be something demonic about copies of a book that were exactly the same.

ii For his “heresy” contradicting the teaching of the church, Galileo was placed under house arrest for the final years of his life. It wasn't until the papacy of Pope John Paul II that the Church officially stated that 'We were wrong, Galileo was right.'

iii Psychology tells us that is EXACTLY what it is. Genesis states that God created man in His own image; the stories we weave, the music and art that we create is, similarly, created in OUR own image. The stories we often tell that have so much meaning to us heavily resonate with our subconscious.

Material copyright 2016 by Gary Daum, all rights reserved. All photos and illustrations by Gary Daum unless otherwisenoted. Unlimited use granted to current members of the Georgetown Prep community.