PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY
TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION
OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT
THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION
THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a
state of mind.
The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the
mother church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and
murmured not.
But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different
clothes--to speak a different language--to live different lives in
different houses.
They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts
upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to
establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they
succeeded in a remarkable degree.
I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in historical
dates. People take them too literally. They think of the Middle Ages as
a period of darkness and ignorance. "Click," says the clock, and the
Renaissance begins and cities and palaces are flooded with the bright
sunlight of an eager intellectual curiosity.
As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines.
The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All
historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation
merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were
being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High
above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the
town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral.
Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty gentlemen of the
city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own strength (by way
of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for more power with
their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become
aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were fighting the high
and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and his shrewd advisers
went fishing in these troubled waters and caught many a shining bass
of profit which they proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the
surprised and disappointed councillors and guild brethren.
To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly
lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute,
the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs
of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women.
Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the
universities, and thereby hangs a story.
The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That sounds difficult,
but wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are "nationally
minded." We are Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and
speak English or French or Italian and go to English and French and
Italian universities, unless we want to specialise in some particular
branch of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn
another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. But the people
of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of themselves
as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, "I am a citizen of
Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa." Because they all belonged to one and
the same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all
educated men could speak Latin, they possessed an international language
which removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up in
modern Europe and which place the small nations at such an enormous
disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case of Erasmus, the great
preacher of tolerance and laughter, who wrote his books in the sixteenth
century. He was the native of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin
and all the world was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would
write in Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able
to read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America, his
publishers would be obliged to translate his books into twenty different
languages. That would cost a lot of money and most likely the publishers
would never take the trouble or the risk.
Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the
people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But
those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose-quill
belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across
the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected
no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the
strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not
follow the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher and a few
pupils happened to find themselves together. There again the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance differed from our own time. Nowadays, when a new
university is built, the process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some
rich man wants to do something for the community in which he lives or a
particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its faithful
children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc-tors and lawyers
and teachers. The university begins as a large sum of money which is
deposited in a bank. This money is then used to construct buildings and
laboratories and dormitories. Finally professional teachers are hired,
entrance examinations are held and the university is on the way.
But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man said to
himself, "I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my knowledge
to others." And he began to preach his wisdom wherever and whenever he
could get a few people to listen to him, like a modern soap-box orator.
If he was an interesting speaker, the crowd came and stayed. If he was
dull, they shrugged their shoulders and continued their way.
By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear the words
of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks with them and a
little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be
important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an
empty basement or the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in
his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and students
during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted for everything and
the building in which he taught counted for very little.
As an example, let me tell you of something that happened in the ninth
century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there were a number of
excellent physicians. They attracted people desirous of learning the
medical profession and for almost a thousand years (until 1817) there
was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the
great Greek doctor who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the
fifth century before the birth of Christ.
Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in
the twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris.
Thousands of eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him.
Other priests who disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their
point of view. Paris was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of
Englishmen and Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary
and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in the Seine
there grew the famous University of Paris. In Bologna in Italy, a monk
by the name of Gratian had compiled a text-book for those whose business
it was to know the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen
then came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas. To
protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers and the
boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation (or
University) and behold the beginning of the university of Bologna.
Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not know
what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers together with
their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a
little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the famous
University of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the year 1222,
there had been a split in the University of Bologna. The discontented
teachers (again followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their
proud city thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so
it went from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from
Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.
It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these early
professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to listen to
logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point however, which I want to
make is this--the Middle Ages and especially the thirteenth century
were not a time when the world stood entirely still. Among the younger
generation, there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a
restless if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this
turmoil grew the Renaissance.
But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene of the
Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of whom you ought
to know more than his mere name. This man was called Dante. He was the
son of a Florentine lawyer who belonged to the Alighieri family and he
saw the light of day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his
ancestors while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St.
Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but
often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the puddles
of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare that raged
forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the followers of the
Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.
When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father had been
one before him, just as an American boy might become a Democrat or a
Republican, simply because his father had happened to be a Democrat or
a Republican. But after a few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united
under a single head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered
jealousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbeiline.
He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor
might come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain. The
Ghibellines were driven out of Florence in the year 1802. From that time
on until the day of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the
year 1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of charity at
the table of rich patrons whose names would have sunk into the deepest
pit of oblivion but for this single fact, that they had been kind to a
poet in his misery. During the many years of exile, Dante felt compelled
to justify himself and his actions when he had been a political leader
in his home-town, and when he had spent his days walking along the
banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Beatrice
Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a dozen years before the
Ghibelline disaster.
He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had faithfully served
the town of is birth and before a corrupt court he had been accused
of stealing the public funds and had been condemned to be burned alive
should he venture back within the realm of the city of Florence. To
clear himself before his own conscience and before his contemporaries,
Dante then created an Imaginary World and with great detail he described
the circumstances which had led to his defeat and depicted the hopeless
condition of greed and lust and hatred which had turned his fair and
beloved Italy into a battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked
and selfish tyrants.
He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 1300 he had
lost his way in a dense forest and how he found his path barred by a
leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave himself up for lost when a white
figure appeared amidst the trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and
philosopher, sent upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by
Beatrice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her true lover.
Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and through Hell. Deeper and
deeper the path leads them until they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer
himself stands frozen into the eternal ice surrounded by the most
terrible of sinners, traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame
and success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers have
reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who in some way or
other have played a role in the history of his beloved city. Emperors
and Popes, dashing knights and whining usurers, they are all there,
doomed to eternal punishment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when
they shall leave Purgatory for Heaven.
It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the people of the
thirteenth century did and felt and feared and prayed for. Through it
all moves the figure of the lonely Florentine exile, forever followed by
the shadow of his own despair.
And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon the sad poet of
the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung open to the child who was to
be the first of the men of the Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca,
the son of the notary public of the little town of Arezzo.
Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party as Dante. He
too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as
we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was
sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like his
father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He
wanted to be a scholar and a poet--and because he wanted to be a scholar
and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as people of a
strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying manuscripts in
Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege
and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild
mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he
had become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both the
University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him to come and teach
their students and subjects. On the way to his new job, he was obliged
to pass through Rome. The people had heard of his fame as an editor
of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the
ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with the laurel
wreath of the Poet.
From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and
appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear. They
were tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander through
hell as much as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and
the sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed to have
been the stock in trade of the last generation. And when Petrarch came
to a city, all the people flocked out to meet him and he was received
like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring his young friend
Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were
both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything
once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find
still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the
other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were!
Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing
a dirty coat just because some day or other you were going to die. Life
was good. People were meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very
well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find? Beautiful
old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient buildings. All these
things were made by the people of the greatest empire that ever existed.
They ruled all the world for a thousand years. They were strong and
rich and handsome (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of
course, they were not Christians and they would never be able to enter
Heaven. At best they would spend their days in purgatory, where Dante
had just paid them a visit.
But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of ancient Rome was
heaven enough for any mortal being. And anyway, we live but once. Let us
be happy and cheerful for the mere joy of existence.
Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the narrow and
crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.
You know what we mean by the "bicycle craze" or the "automobile craze."
Some one invents a bicycle. People who for hundreds of thousands of
years have moved slowly and painfully from one place to another go
"crazy" over the prospect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and
dale. Then a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is
it necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and let
little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody wants
an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-Royces and Flivvers and
carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers penetrate into the hearts of
unknown countries that they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise
in Sumatra and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil
become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession. The
whole world is "automobile mad" and little children can say "car" before
they learn to whisper "papa" and "mamma."
In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy about the newly
discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their enthusiasm
was shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding of an
unknown manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who
wrote a grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents a
new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his time and his
energies to a study of "homo" or mankind (instead of wasting his hours
upon fruitless theological investigations), that man was regarded with
greater honour and a deeper respect than was ever bestowed upon a hero
who had just conquered all the Cannibal Islands.
In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred which
greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers and authors. The
Turks were renewing their attacks upon Europe. Constantinople, capital
of the last remnant of the original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In
the year 1393 the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras
to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzantium and to
ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman Catholic world was more
than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go to the punishment that
awaited such wicked heretics. But however indifferent western Europe
might be to the fate of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in
the ancient Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus
ten centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn Greek that they
might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato. They wanted to learn it
very badly, but they had no books and no grammars and no teachers. The
magistrates of Florence heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of
their city were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and teach
them? He would, and behold! the first professor of Greek teaching alpha,
beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young men, begging their way to the
city of the Arno, living in stables and in dingy attics that they night
learn how to decline the verb [gr paidenw paideneis paidenei] and enter
into the companionship of Sophocles and Homer.
Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching their ancient
theology and their antiquated logic; explaining the hidden mysteries
of the old Testament and discussing the strange science of their
Greek-Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of Aristotle, looked on in dismay and
horror. Next, they turned angry. This thing was going too far. The young
men were deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to
go and listen to some wild-eyed "humanist" with his newfangled notions
about a "reborn civilization."
They went to the authorities. They complained. But one cannot force an
unwilling horse to drink and one cannot make unwilling ears listen to
something which does not really interest them. The schoolmen were
losing ground rapidly. Here and there they scored a short victory. They
combined forces with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy
a happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence, the
centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought between the
old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour of face and bitter in his
hatred of beauty, was the leader of the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought
a valiant battle. Day after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy
wrath through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. "Repent," he
cried, "repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things that are not
holy!" He began to hear voices and to see flaming swords that flashed
through the sky. He preached to the little children that they might not
fall into the errors of these ways which were leading their fathers to
perdition. He organised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service
of the great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden moment of
frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance for their wicked
love of beauty and pleasure. They carried their books and their statues
and their paintings to the market place and celebrated a wild "carnival
of the vanities" with holy singing and most unholy dancing, while
Savonarola applied his torch to the accumulated treasures.
But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise what they
had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy that which they
had come to love above all things. They turned against him, Savonarola
was thrown into jail. He was tortured. But he refused to repent for
anything he had done. He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy
life. He had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to share
his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate evil wherever
he found it. A love of heathenish books and heathenish beauty in the
eyes of this faithful son of the Church, had been an evil. But he stood
alone. He had fought the battle of a time that was dead and gone. The
Pope in Rome never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he
approved of his "faithful Florentines" when they dragged Savonarola to
the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst the cheerful howling
and yelling of the mob.
It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola would have been
a great man in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century he was
merely the leader of a lost cause. For better or worse, the Middle
Ages had come to an end when the Pope had turned humanist and when the
Vatican became the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities.