42 a Fxotrr DnwN To DecRoE'NcE

th.y wefe regutady coflmofe modest settings, as "d.irectors of conscience," often the women. Molidre's Tartffi sulted by the members of the family, most abuses that it was denounced depicts the arcangernent. In tirne, ii tea to such 9;345>) (21 ' grounds intellectual on both moral "na revised methods, the conrinualry and thought Meanwhle, by c re and in the histoty of education' Jesuits shone as schoolmasters-unsurpassed doctrine and did so with ruxexThey taught secular subiects as well as chorch their pupils. Their success \il/as ampred id.rrtand.ing and kindness toward ever seell' They knew that due to the most efficient form of teacher-training that the next best cannot be born teachers are as scarce as true poets and' so th.y devised a pfeparation that made casually out: of indifferent matlrials, unfit at every learning and a severe winnowing of the included exhaustive
phase

%*fl aerl* 5 u**q ## %.

s, qt
',*.s',.... .r"#
i.*

t.

f" n-r q.it: - f, # Fr',*.'s # *'t

***,r e##dJ*

The GoodLetters

of along aPprenticeshiP'

The university of paris opposed the Jesuits .schools not merely because they were from mid-19C' Indeed' there soonwas combut because they competed with *to*. for the pop-

"t*o"d lt pPi* of too many schools on*rir[ by University the salaried posts at dation. All likely youths, rich or poor' education free. xt is nor hard fot fu-; do wefe given the means to attend, and the united, crever, and courageous men to
greatthingsintheworld.Tensuchrnenmeritsofthesystemu/efeshordySeen that it
affebt

The Jesuits set uP schools bY the score' In mid -17 C Europe there were and pupils than in the *::t-

So nen rN THrs sroRY' events and ideas have suggested three themes: pRIMITI\rISM, INDTVIDUALISM, and EMANCIPATToN. The first and last, audible in

1,,

i i'
$,,,

Lurher's proffer of Christian liberry and based on what rnight be called the chtrrchlessness of the gospels, succeeded in putting an end to the $7est's uniry of belief' It also foreshadowed tlre third theme, rNDrvrDUALrsM, not as a political or social right, but as an as$umption behind the proliferation I of se6s, themselves a result of the individual's untrammeled relation to Gorl. Side by side with this revolutionary idea, another of equal po\Mer was also
at r:itork strengthening the awareness and the claims

of the individual. This was

100,000.

-BuncKHARDT,

JuncunN-rs oN

Hrronf

in the galaxy of brilliant minds prodoced. From Descartes to \lcltaire

and beYond,
a

Humanism, to which passing reference has been made in characterizing figures !" important in the revolution. Humanism, too, grevr out of concern with the

good many PhilosoPhers

Some of these bdght pupils went and scientists were educared by the Jesuits. of so well learned; they became leaders on ro un,Jermine the dogmas they had thty thing" "infamous was the the 1gc Enlightenm.rr,lro rvhorn the church

must crush (361>)'

lack of proficiency in classical Latin, which his prot6g6 :[Me]anchthon had mastered like any good humanist. And Calvin, we sau/, was ruained humanistically without turning atheist. The appellation obviously had several connotations at the dawn of our eta and has acqoired rnore since. hrious adiectives have been added to it seculaE theistic, naturalistic, and bven esthetic Humanisnf .' l' To rnake things more complicated, the name is associated with that of

il$:""ed his

which is also an elastic tetm. One meets the latter in reading bout many things-painting diplom ac!,or the geniuses who possess more han one talent-Renaissance men. And both its meaning and its clate are in dispute. But this confusion is not hopeless. If one is willing to go ieflnanent to origins, one sees the usual growth of anev/ cultural interest, a change l,,!ak if.clirection in purposes and feelings. Those origins take us back some 150 lar:s before the Modern Era.
i.enaissance,

44 ca FRou DawN To DEcADENCE

Oh century! Oh letters! It is a ioy to be
SncnBrany

THp Goon LnrrERS @ 45

ideas and catchphrases from Cicero's speeches and writings, together with the
The new degree of Bachelor of Science does not guarantee that the holder knows any sci_ ence. It does gr.rafantee that he does not know any Latin.

alive.

_Ur*cH voN Hurre* ro prncKHErMER,

ro
rHE ENrpnnon

(1513)

The term humanistwas first applied by Gerrnan scholars of the eady 19C to writers who in the 1'4C and 15C rejected parts of the immediate past in favor

works of other Romans, filled the rrinds of educated western mari and
woman after bedeviling the young in school. The strucfure of thought and

of the culture th.y perceived in the classics of ancient Rome. They were P^rticutady keen about the Latin style of these classics. The label Humanism is odd-th e ism of being human-but it is not arbi-

-DsaN (c. 1e00)

Bnrccs or HaRvano

Conecn

ffI;;ffifr*:,:,xffi #.'JjL:i,*:fr?T:':::K:*r:;',T;i# These

argument in the western languages has been influenced by Cicero, and the oration long flourished as a lttenry form

(s1>).

phy and expressed in a more elegant grammat andconcise vocabulary. qualities defined what the humanists liked to call the "good letters." By comparison, the prose of the medieval scholastics was barbaric and fit only for discussing theology. It was far from ignoring Man, but it was logic-chopping it linked all human corlcerns to the hereafter. Such was the animus of cer^rLd tain gifted writers born in It,aly in the first third of the 1.4C, notably Petrarch, Salutati, and Boccaccio, whose disciples made humanism the cultute ctf the

c]'rpedic natural historl-made up the porrrait

seemed to

of Seneca; the comedies of, Plautus and Terence; th+oems of Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace; and-lone specimen-pliny's .nlyessays

Besides Cicero's works, Livytr patriotic history of Rome and its wars with Carthage; the Annals and Germania of Tacitus (<9); the tragedies and moral

of i complete

next centufies.

Their negative view'\r/as unfair; the Humanists owed rnore to the past than th.y knew or acknowledged-the fypical attitude of innovators. But

since their positive views have shaped western thought and action to this d"y, the conception of humanitas that came out of the preoccupation with style wants looking at. We still sperak of "the humanities" and keep ttembling at the '\r/e are not danger th.y ate rrt, appafentty their permanent condition. But are orwhv so called' Are thtv iust college subfects or

3;I6';*:x;*rt

intellectual class meant ^

marr-centered way. Those

ists, and Homer, Thucydides, and Dernosthenes as well. But lear:ning Greek carne late-hardly before the Tudrs captured Constantinople, capital of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire at rhe midpoint of the 15C. It was then that learned refugees from that ciry came ro Rcrme and made a living by teaching Greek. But reading Greek u/as never so general an accomplishment. Hunrarrisrn as the common possession of the

th.y lived in. \Xtry no mention of the Greeks? To be sure, Plato and Aristotle, long used by the Scholastics in theit speculations, were important to rhe human-

its 14C devotees grander and far more highly.irrilir.d than rhe one

r:ulrure that

in order to read these authors

For the original Humanists, the ancient classics depicted a civilizatton

that dealt udth the affairs of the urodd in

books-

nr;#fl :'1n,HIT:,:::iJf'T"i#']trJ*T*::l*lH:irto the

subordi nate to an overriding scheme that put off human happiness d"y of judgment. The theme of secuLARISM emerges from this outlook. Humanitas, that is, the studies it involved, opened a vista on the goals that could be reached on earth: individual self-development, action rather than pious passivity, a ltfe in which reason and will can be used both to improve worldly conditions and to observe the lessons that nanffe holds for the thoughtful. The Humanists were scholars, but th.y had no use for an ivory tower. With this vision in rnind, it is not sulprising that Cicero became the hurnanists' cultrrre hero. A writer of superb prose, an otator and statesrnan, a moral philosopher, and the last defender of Republican Rome, he had all the vlrtues and talents of the ideal Humanist, except rhat of able warrior. His "irnperishable farrte" perished only when physical science began to drive Latin out of the curriculum around 1890. Until then, urhich is to say for 500 years,

Padiament: a member could quote a Latin tag to round out an argument and he was laughed atifhe uttered a false quantity; but to quote Greek was a faux pas-it might nor be understood by everybody, whig tr Tory. Humanists saw Greece through Roman eyes anyway. The vivicrt a\il/areness anri worship of Greece-the Parthenon, Pericles, th. Venus of Nlilo-came later in our era (514>), and different conceptions of Greece have flourished in successive periods. But throughout, *re highty educated were supposed to have

old Rome-witness a custom of the

Engtish

both the ancient languages, and the clergy must k"tw Hebrew in addition" It is a noteworthy feanrre of Z}Cculrure that for the first time in over a thousand years its educated class is not expected to be at least bilingual. "
ma.stered
{<**

The' path between the onset of the good letters and the modern Humanist as freethinker or simply as scholar is circuitous but unbrgken. If we look for what is comrnon to the Humanists ovef the cenruries we find two things: a body of accepted authors a.nd a method of carrying on srudy
and

46 w FxoM DAwN To DEcADE

NCE

THe Gooo

Lprrpns @

47

debate. The rwo go together wirh the belief that the best guides to the good life Lre Reason ancl Nature. Finding this assumPtion tll-i*portant, sonle moderns have caqped at the eaily Humanists for fussing over grammar and words, but it is ftarcl to see how th.y could have ptoduced scholttly editions of the ancienr works that th.y valued so highly without fi.rst mastering the case, what is the point of saying about innovaminutiae of language. In ^ny what later comers were able to do after the done have th.y rft"Ja

tors that ground had been cleared fot them? As for the Humanist method, it is the one still in universal use. Its conventions are commonplace everywhere: in government, business, the weelCy rn gazines, and even in schoolwork-who has escaped "research"? who dares ignore exacr quotation and date, consulting previous work, citing sources, listing bibliography, and sporting that badge of candor, the footnote?'

The accepted authors have not been as stable, though drawn from the shift of same pool. Cicero's rise and fall has been mentioned; with every
mood new names emerge fror:n relative neglect or oust others from the top be places. The nev/ droices point to a recurtent cultural need that can
described as "elements tha t are wanted l' because lacking at that moment' The freshly ad,mired fig*es correspond to that felt need. The passing of a who generation usually ends a battle and installs those who urged new heroes, Occidental whole the Today, fzme. lasting called deserve what is amusirgly canon is r.mder attack by rnany people who find it out of tune, useless, although th.y could not readily say who is in it. In the 15th and 16C the contitroing enthusiasm for the ancients was teina forced by the feeling that the inhedted culnrre'was dissolving and hete'v/as up storehouse of ideas and attirucles with which to rebuild. It was like going to the attic and polishing up semi-discarded treasures. The names of authofs' the titles of their books, the topics treated were ftesh, not the old bores; they formed a tield of discovery al} untouched, a mine to exploit for those ambiof liter ary fame. Hence the passionate search for old manuscript$ to

spontaneous choice governs tastes, career, estimates of woith, and the feel of life itself. For the eady Humanists, the aspects that shone out in the works of antiquity were the beauty of the language and the novel features of avanished civilization. Iloth gave rise to a new sense, the sense of history which may be defined as the simultaneous perception of difference and similarity between past and present' But had the medievals no historical av/areness? They thought of themselves as descendants of the F.oman Empire; they veneraterJ the first Chdstian emperor, Constantine, and his feudal inheritor Chademagne. They reaC Vit$l and thought that one or another of the Trojan heroes in his poem had founded this or that western nertion. That same poem was also used as a" means of foretellitg the future, by o1:ening it atrandom and reading some one Iine on the page. For Vit$l had been a:magician. All this is a clue ,o"rlr. Middle lg.t' attitude toward history. They merged time and space indiscrimin ately. They mingled factand legend and miracle,and being preoccupied with eterniry,

fereni historians. This partiality should not be surprising; it is a fatnitar fact of life: each individual "takes" only some elements of e*p.rience, and that

round. Like a mountain, it presents a variety of faces. Moved by an ulterior purpose, observers take a few of thesr: for the whole. This is a cinrral genertliqt It accounts for the suqprising differences in the value put on the same artist or thinker at different times and flor the different pasts depicted by dif-

th.y "took"

sameness and continuity as more real than development and change-hence, no history in the modern sense e34>). Sfith the usual pride of advanced thinkers, the Humanists saw their

tious
save

from loss, to comparcand edit. Scholars traveled vridely to ransack

cas-

tles and monasteries; wealthy arnateurs sent agents to buy in Constantinople and the Greek cities. The monks had copied and recopied the old texts and housed them for amillenniuffi, but th.y had regarded them in another light. To be sure, as ear\y as the 1,zcwhen Frederick II of Hohenstaufen had held court at Naples, [e had shown a true humanist interest, extending even to

In. il :. , how the viewet

,l.t

Arabic works, but he was a lone exception' To explain the curious fact that the Middle Ages valued the ancients a enough to keep rheir works copied but did not breed Humanists calls for the in seen rarely is idea or obiect an than state It would Aspect. of Theory

dispute is not one of those thal can be senled; judgment depends on takes the unquestioned facts. But it can also be held that there u is no need to "take" sides. In the first place, the traditional Renaissance is like a i,,movable feast. The Italian Petrarch in the 14C is deemed the first full-blooded

t Humanist"
i; Eras:rnus,

"Renaissance" ptittirg is the great achievement of rhe 15C. Atiosto, Tasso, Rabelais, l\4ontaigne, Shakesp eate) and the ptdiade L:poets in France are all labeled Renaissance writers, and th.y belong to the l6C. ir,So d,:es Renaiss ance music. As we sa.u/, Erasmus, arriving in England in 1,497, ,,.
.

4g q FxoM DA\rN To DBcapENCE

letrers." was gladto find that English scholars were nou/ abreast of "the good and north moved In short, the culnrral featores of the so-called RenaissalLce centuries. west from Italy during a culnrr d,Iagof some two and ahalf These dates ."r, ,.rve to calm the dispute: since the Modern Era is seen eadiest Humanist' the as beginning around 1500 and Petrarch is seen as the is to say before the which 15C, Renaisr"*.. i, a going concern in the 1 4C and in the late present germs its Modern Era, ,rr,1 th"s part of the medieval, viewed, So er^. modern eady the in Middle Ages, its fruitfulness intensified of the illusion an it'v/as disappears: eras the black-and-white contrast between tenable is it us, To self-encoufagement. as innovators, serviceable to them 1550only if we make comparisons over a wide Bap, say betrveen 1'250 and 200 built cathedral, Chartres of towers trrio the Aquinas with Erasmus, or both enioy safely can rcader inquiring the years apa.rt.In this perspective, bor.khrrait Hisnrl of Ciuitirytion in the Renaissance and his challenger

Tne Gooo

LBT.TERS

@ 49

have held the title fot one yer each, with the modest expectation that theit elevation will publici ze the imponance of literanrre. Petrarch's celebration at Rome signifies much more: it means that the aur a ofthe Roman past was in the intimation's of what was to come. It is in his combining ,,elements
\I/ere wanted" andadding one or t'rvo that Petrarch is

"rt,

that

imitation without end. The one thing of mon etary vzrlue that he inherited from his father was a manuscript of Cicero. The work fi.lled his mind with ancient facrs and ideas; a uip to Rome fixed his vision. For there he saw and marveled at the antiquities, tangible remains of a culture once alive and complete. It mayhave helped the vision that the city iust then was no longer pap^l Rome: a schism in the church had exiled the popes to l$ignorr, *h.r. p.tr^tch grew up. The pope's
court there gave the young rnan a dristaste for intrigue, which ma6e him refuse ,rfficial posts-even university recrorships-all r.i,

nev/ rrrrrr, who inspired

Huizinga's

LVaning of tbe Middte

Ages'-Bvo masterpieces of culnrral history,

m..

tu/o visions that complement each other in spite of partial disagreement. is Since the pasr"g. of time always brings on difference, "the" Humarrist in an an abs tract figure trtra must be rnade concfete by examples. Nuances should' evolving ideJand the rurbulent culture then ^pPe r together as they lantheir and **, obviously begin with the veneration for the ancients

One

guage as recorded in the life and work

of

Petrarch aFlorentine notary young Francesco, born in 1304, began by to st'dying law, but being left impoverished after his father's political exile a famous was he year 30th his By a priest. souther-n Fr"nce, he became ^s a hero crowning of custom ancient the of revival a ln poer-so famous that gave with laurel leaves, a Roman senator crou/ned him "poet laureate." Petrarch of part only Latinity'\vas this But Virgil. by text a on oration thanks in a Latin poet his renov/n. Petrarch's name today evokes that of Laura, to whom the wfote sonnets and odes fot yeat's, and these were in Italian' Incidentally' he Petrarch's t'Lr'orv'e rJGs'r rriarr been r:,,,'a had Think you, if Laura made no attempts at intimacli indegd, wife, so varied was the purely literary tribute sonnets all his life?

The son

of

changed emphasis.""

choice of r67e1d5-fatin vis1d5-ui2s despatched to make a formal speech on the mattet issue. Petratch excelled in the required rhetoric, and though his ^t speeches tarcIy produced results, his disting"lshed presence flattered the lecipient prince and his words were appreciated by ,n invited audience as high entertainment. To earn a more than passing repute as a poet, Petrarch started an epic in I-atin on the deeds of the Romarr hero Scipiq the commander-in-chief in the 'second war against Carthage--hence the title Afn* for the epic. It was never finished, partly because Petrarch never gained ease in handling the classic metres-any more than he mastered Greek, though he tried more than once. This falling short of the later Humanists' pan"pfy accounts for one modern scholar's quaint description of him as only "the vanguard of the

Instead, he set himself to earn his keep as a writer, though not, of course, by the sale of his works. He was at first partof the household of the Colonna **tt then, when famous, he sen'ed as envoy to various prince;s. Diplo macy jn his dty was occasiond, not a pefmanent exchange of resident ambrsr"dors, as it became in the 1'6C. In the rnid-l 4th, ro-.orre with a rcady

He would have written

-BvnoNrN

DoNrueN

a deconsuuction dimmed, is stili somewhat laureateship, This e^r\y Humanist rjrual of a lifetinre Post is it where England, in persists with us. As everybody knows, it harvest of The verse. in events gteat r^te ..Lb to whose holder is expected ofincumbents series a 1985 since States United the In poetryhas been small.

$::1"ff:'Hff"*:t?#':ffff: with vengeance"

coNscIousNESS. It is allied to INDTvIDUALISu but it differs frorn it in being 1 not a social and political condition but a mental state. One can be in prison,
11

50 @ FRoM DawN ro DE'cADENCE

individuatity
submerged, and yer be acutely self-conscious' of many other individuIndividualisrn has limits impor.i by the coexistence centuties it has dug ever deeper als; self-consciousness has none. Over the

Tnp Goon rirrERS @

51

all but

intotheego,*ithncrboundatyinsight. a high hill in Another singul rrrtty in Petrarch's life was that he climbed him, it was before done was it If vievr.' southern France in order to admire the
but not recorde,J. Nature'had been endlessly discussed,
as a generality,

not

as

unique self, it included changthis ;andscape. As fcrr Petrarch's nurture of his esthetic. Petrarch was born called be cartonly ing his name, for. apurpose that decided that it was not a he ear petr"..o, poet's but with ,a Francesco di lengthen the middle a' euphonious run of syllables. Cuttinga r, addin ganrto and changing , to a at the end to make
Petrarca (in Latin poeta ends

of Whether we wish to leave sorne memory otriti"g or thinking by Posterity to ourselves of something and thus to arrest the flight

o) was as

deft a piece of work as making a go'd

vefse.

Hln:n$,S:ffiJffi.tfi;ff
Tffil,
oru rHE

f,o,. i, in errect autobiographv' iid Hewroteanexplicitoneentidedfutter

to Posterifl'

N."rly

the whole of Petrach's verse

sorrr'*v

Lne

"'d

hi'

letters

to

ftiends

linked in Petratch u'ith felt. Introspecrion followed by seH-Iortraitute is It too is a revival of an fame. eternal for another novelry tlre expfess desire readily confess to in would one that passion the kind of
ancient habit, and not every poet has follorved agethat still desired eternal bliss. Since Petrarch, posreriry eternal renown to ^n promising and to him ("rrd Horace) by appealing the author's o\I/n' the patron of the wort tttror.tgh its being tied to

;T.",tr',JlTJ:

l:"l: T"XH' H

peuarch strikes the personal note, Although in rhe Lavrapoems given the kind of detail emotions are fresh and "i"idly described, we are not find G"y) in Merefith's Modern that brings out a unique character such as'we ,,character,, is a later invention (135; 140>). It was no doubt Pettarch's Loue. After him and without end, simpler notion of self that made him so imitable. form. The species that sonnet in Europe has been flooded wirh lovelornery "thou shalt stoP at commafid: the, if we owe to petrarch is now regarded as a happy nrrn of was it But sinai. Mount fourteen lines,, had been otteied on Petrarch's d^y in and existed, model ancient practice that established it; no The no\ilr lengths. various of sung-were be sonnets--verses to be soand,ec,to developrnent,

and the

the Humanists, has remained a pattetn that govefns western creations, from pub]ic speaking to poetry, drama,prose, and the symphony (419>). True, the span of fourteen lines does not suit alt languages equally well, which is why (fot instance) French poets have used the iorm sparingly. But so.rrrit sequences like Petrarch's or Shakespeare's make possibl, u nirrativeby-episode; the poet need not versifil any connective matter as he must in an epic. Ratheq he anticipates by five or six hundred years the technique of film and television. Meredith found he needed sixteen lines for the sonnets of Mttdern l-oue and his great story is none the worse for this retufn to the freedom of choice abolished by petrarch. The imitatots, with their exaggerated sighs of love and cries of despair addressed to an idol in female shape have r.p."t.dly brought the love lyric into distepute. Gefmany at one time went Petrarch-mad and during such high tides of production Petrarchist becarne a term of abuse. But the genre always rebounded, and not solely to express love; it has conveyed passign allied to descriptions of nature or to moral reflections and political opirrior,r. Peftarch himself showed that a poet bent on th. contemptrtirr. life could, at the shock of an event, trun politicatr. A commoner named Cola di Rien ziled an uprising in 1347 and "restored the Roman republis"-f6r a few rnonths. 0Wtgt.r's eady opera uses his name and story,) Petrarch, then in his exlyforties, u/as overjoyed at this revival of another classical instinrtion, though he did not St up hobnobbing with *re tyrants who ruled the several Italian cities; his ideal remained untouched by the facs. Uke his predecessor Dante ancl other writers yet to come, he longed for a united Italy. His ,,Oc{e to Italy,, ancl othet pieces foretold glories of the kind he read about in Livy. This utopian wish \il/as another l{umanist departrrre: educatecl men and women began to revere the Roman republic instead of the empire that had so deeply stirred the Middle Ages. Cicero fighting to save a free governmenr became the model citizen, even to the loyal subjects of 16C princes. (laesar was the hatecl usuqper and Brutus a hero for killing him-witness Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Uke the value put on the judgment of Posterirr this excitement about political ideals shorrs the imprcrtance that the Humanist temper anached to rvoddly things.

But one must not ovedook opposites and contradictions. I{umanists

not indifferent to religion or v/antirg to replace Christianity with paganism. Those called Humanists today mayrule out the divine and make Man the measure of all things, but Petrarch, for one, remained deeply reli.gious.
\Mere

traditional length is just right for asmall orarion-exposition, and practiced by and conclusion. And th^t .lussical form, so closely studied

took second place to the gospel; he had a cult for Saint Aqy.rstine and late in life wro te a tract on Cont.tnpt for the Wo66. It was a sort of confession of sins paralleling the antt-Laura poems. He even attacked the followers of Averrods, the Arab physician-philoiopher, for being materialists and infidels. One can i*"grtte Petrarch in old age retiring to aHumanist

secular wotks, he said,

All

52 qa FRou DawN To DecapENCE

convent, had there been such a thing. A11 he wanted to do then'il/as cultivate the good letters so as to "shut out the reality of my own times."

Tsn Gooo

LgTTERS

53

What m^y mislead about the Humanists' genuine faith is that, after Petrarch, writers of all tendencies mingle the pagan mythology, history, and geography with the Christian. Milton, the firrn believer, is a prime example: his poems are filled with nymphs and ancient rnyths. Poets took pleasure in using a set of fresh words; the narnes of the gods, heroes, places, and deeds formed a treasury of new images and sounds. Humanists freely refet to the "divine Plato," the "divine Seneca"; some useJove to mean God orJehovah, or call it Providence when a god in Homer protects a warrior-all this without a thought of being free*rinkers, heretics) or atheists. From reading the ancients the conviction grew that some of thern, by their thoughts and lives, were almost Christians. \We saw Erasmus invoking "Saint Socrates." Many believed that Plato failed to be a Christian only because Revelation had not yet occurred. Seneca the Roman Stoic was revered for his austere ethics and his conception of a universe obedient to a single god, remote though Seneca thought him. After this merger of traditions it is not surprising to see the Renaissance Humanists followed in the 17Cby thinkers who professed themselves Stoics without abandoning their equal claim to being Christians. These things being so, it seerns bad history to keep referring today to "ourJudaeo-Christian heritage." Pagan or Graeco-Roman ought to be added to the phrase, not to mark a fused element like the other two. To cite but one a separate strand but ^s item, the endless effort to change sociery for the better, urhich is a charactetistic of the last five centuries, cornes from the Graeco-Roman ttadition. To say this is to point agfu to the presence of Humanism thtoughout the
Modern Era. **x<
Between Petrarch and Erasrnus the development of Humanist knowledge and taste took place mainly in Italy. Its great cities and universities \n/ere

mother of the arts." It should have been: "Ttaly the mother of all high culture." This dominant role is recotded in the vocabulary we still use aboufthe arts, to say nothing of all the Italian names in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, English and foreigrr. \){/hat would we do without such technical They have no concern llor music or rhetoric or terms as sonata, rondq ana da capo, the metrical att. Oratory and poetfy are almost unknown. For them, all study in logic foliq octavo, impastq chiaroscuro, terza is futile disputation. You rarely find anyone rima, intermezzo) solo, tremolo, 'cello, who owns the works ,of Aristotle and other prima donna, bravo, and many more?

Italian remained the obligatory language for men of letters down to fairly
;feceflt times: th*y must read Boccacciq Tasso, and

Ariosto in the original, parr of "the cari.on" and inspirers of operas, the genre itself being an Italian invention and for a time a monopoly (159;
174>).

philosophers. The students at the new university devote themselves largely to pleasure and are avid for food and wine, nor are they restrained by any discipline. D"y and night th*y roam about inflictjing iniuries on citizens and their heads are cornpletely turned by the shameless women.
Prus

-Pops

II anour VmuNa, c. 1458

For all these reasons, during the 17th and 18C the young well-to-do from elsewhere must make the GranrJ Tlo.tr, of which the peak expe:rience was to enjoy, under a tutor's informed gtridance, the art and easy life of Rome and Flotence, possibly of Naples and \Ienice. Milton's tour was decisive for his 'itocation, and it has been plausibly suggested that Paradise Lostou/es much to rfie Italian author of Adamo Caduto (The Fall of Adam)." As for rhose aspirlng to be artists, it was imperative that th.y go and "finish" themselves at the {iource, Italy. Ftance and the United States still maintain for them under the name of Academy residences in Rome. That the rest of Europe freely conceded its own barbartsm and praised ritaly was not a wholly poised judgment. It partook of the social climber's repudiation of his origins and eagerness for acquiring abroad the right tastes and behavior. To be fashionable in some particular foreign way has been a recurrent phenomenon in the west. After ltaly, it was Sp^in that radiated light; then France imposed its v/ays and later went Angtophile, not once but trrrice

magnets that drew adventurous minds from other countries, just as Wittenb.,g and Lyon, Strasbourg and Geneva successively drew partisans of the new creeds. Nor was it learning and atmosphere alone that brought the talented young and the inquisitive tourist: the new prirting and sculpture and their amazing new methods, the ancient ruins and the new churches and
palaces were also powerful atffiactrons. Still other minds felt the pull of Italy's advanced ideas in sciellce, la-, and business methods, to which m^y be added a new regard for elegance in cookery and table manners (183>). Returning horne, the visitor spread the nevrs of this many-sided civilizing influence, which other counties acknowledged in the catchphrase "Italy the

(361;498>). After a short-lived Germanism in England and France, th. Orient, and last the United Statr:s have been the irresistible model, followed
even when denounced.

Almost always, though not in that first Italian example, these fads come in the wake of the political or economic might of the admired nation. This is curious, since it is artists and intell.ecflrals, noted for being abor,'e such mundane realities, who generate these cultural infaruations.

rnest

At the beginning of the successive "ages of the Renaissance" north and of ltaly, when Italian poeffy, dtama, and prose fiction urere taken as

models, together with the Humanist scholady methods, attention to the writ-

54 @ FRoM DawN ro DEcADENCE

ren

TsB Gooo Lsrrsns @

law, history, politics, and religion.

55

word affected enlightened opinion on

Establishing a text by comparing sources, veriSring dates, weighing evidence and witnesses' credibility, while also analyztng usage, impressed on the European mind the effect of the passage of time: documents began to be read critically; oral traditions lost authority unless confirmed. The age of indispensabie literacy hacl begun. The first fruit of this org nrzed skepticism was the demonstration by Lorenzo Valla that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. This document, purportirg to be from the hand of the first Christian empero r, gayethe popes their territorial possessions, thus adding the worldly to the spirinral powei Vu[, showed that the languzge andallusions belonged

iry

The uuth that religion and rnoralwith each other is rarely acknowledged, probably because the two desires are equally strong in the
are at odds

Mry not a man be a Christian who cannot

explain how the nativiry of the Son differs from the procession of the Holy Spirit? If I believe in the Trinity in lJnity, I want no arguments. If

human breast, reflecting there the respective demands of sociery and of the self. The dogma that a repentant sin-

do not beliere,

I shall not be con-

ner-say, the Prodigal Son-is to

be

vinced by reason. The sum of religion is peace, which can only be when definitions are as few as possible and opinion is left free
on many subiects. Our present problems are said to be waiting for the next Ecurnenical Council. Better let thern wait till we see God face to face. (1522)

cherished ahead of the merely moral chancter has great appeal. Uke Luther,

to alatet age than the

emPeror's.

This proof gave comfort to the Reformers: their enemy the pope v/as a usurper on earth as he was in heaven. And although the Evangelicals looked down on the Humanists' pursuit of the telltale word, pious students of Scripture had to use that same method themselves. The many new editions

popular opinion prefers the rogue, once he is tamed, to those dull clods urho have resisted temptation. But if adopted by most people as a rule of

-Enasuus

and translations of the Bible could not have been made without it. These works embod.ied the primary criticism of Scripture. Soon followed what is known as the "higher criticism" ofthe Testaments: questioning the substance after questioning the words (359>). This discipline is still at work today, thoogh v/ith a freedom that would have petrified the pioneers. The specialtzed,journals discuss such questions as whether I(ng David ever existed and .,Did Sarah Have Seminal Emission?"" In general, 16C scholarsfip ^ strengthened the Protestant idea that the gosPel, not the church, was the founi of doctrine. Xt is a Humanist principle that if you want to know the truth, go to the sources, not tkre commentators. In short, Humanism and Reform, without being allies, converged in one point toward the same goal. This factwould seem enough to lusti$l th. usual phrase "Renaissance and Reformation" to label the culture of the 16C'

The leading Humanists did not, of course, share the Evangelical passion. The Renaissance popes, Humanists by taste if not by wotks, despised the
protestants
as

life, the sentiment would make for anything but peaceful sociery. The Italian Humanists witnessed one fit of^Evangelical zeal and it was enough. Toward the end of the L5(l the monk Girolamo SavonarcLa roused the Florentines to a high pitch of dcvotion that led to the famous; "bonfire of tlre vanities." Such a high ideal tension cannot be sustained by corn^whole nrunity for very long, and when this one broke, the prophet u/as declared a heretic and burned at the stake with public approval. Savon arolahad been too literal-too Evangelical-in using the words of Chdst to convert the masses. Good Christian Humanists were moral beings of the conve:ntional sort, but their trained minds wanted something more: a metaphysics that would reformulate or at least parallel in classical terms the Catholic theology. Most of thenn found it in Plato. He had taught that human beings are in a c vewirh their backs to the entrance and lc'oHng at the inner wall, which reflects di*ly the reality outside. Interpreted, this means that the senses give an imperfect c,)py of the eternal forms of Being. These are the proper object of human attention. By steady effort, the individual can raise his sight fronr the love of earthly things to the love of eternal beaury which consisrs of those pure fotms. Such is the Platonist's grace and salvation.
Perhaps because this prospect is somewhat dry and abstract, tlrese Neo-Platonists added to it rrarious beliefs
;2

frurrlber

of

bigors and heretics. S7ere the Humanists in fact atheists? If not, faith? Erasmus, \trze know, u/as sure he was a good Christian. was their what petrarch went from fairhful to devout, first wooing the world then wanting to these two representative positions is one of ,1ve it up. The d.ifference bet'ween L."l"gy, of ideology. Each is Jrased on different parts of the gospel: Christ c me to forgive sini aspur to living the right life; this is a moral and social ^s concefn. He also preached giving up the wodd, a prerequisite to the soul's sal-

from the Cabbalaand the traditions of "white magic." Plato, drus turned into a theolo gun,harl the advanttge of getting rid of Atistotle, the great buttress of scholastic theology, novz
rejected. Aristode was a physicist, b,iologist, social scientist, and aesthetician. Flis system gave matter basic importance. He taught that wealth, friends, and

vation. Canone follow both comrnands?

comfort were Paft of the good life and prerequisites of virrue; fo:r every ideal possibility rests on a natural (material) base. Though Plato's laddr:r to eternal fclrms u/as closer to Christian aspiration, a minoriry among Humanists,

"56

,a

FRoM DawN To DEcADENCE of science, still adhered to the Aristotelian Phi-

Tr+B

Gooo LpTTERS @

57

texts, another fruit of losophy, especially afterit became known in its original the new scholarshiP. carried From then on, the two parties-are they tempefaments?-have succesIn terms. equal on not but ldea, and Matter ovef on this same debate eate every intelsive periods one outlook tends to predominate and to perm

attracted by the new fittdittgs

Favoring neithet Plato nor l\ristotle, Valla has even been classed among

Luthet's forerunners.' His chief interest, historg led

lfm to

translate

of lectual activity, incl.uding natu:ral science itself, where the opposite has been greatly Materialism takes the n*. Vitalisrn (665>). This seesaw
a culnrral conproductive; the stimulating effect of toppling the orthodoxy is I(risteller.] Itant. [The book to read ts Rena'issance Thoughtby Paul Oskar

Herodotus and Thucydides into Latin, for most readers \ilrere as yet unable to read Greek. This reminds us that for agood while afterthe Humanist awakening half the ancient wodd and its fund of wisdom were still a vague or secondhand reality. The entry of Greek into minds overflowing with Cicero's Latin 'v/as a dtarrtatic event and another Italian scoop. With Greek came Plato in the gulse just described, and through rhe career and works of Valla's contemporary

Marsilio Ficino
$re see at close range how lives and culture mesh. Chief rnover of the Florentine Academy, inspirer of poets and statesmen, teacher of the l.gendary Pico della Mirandola, Ficino $/as acclaimed in his time as supreme. T'hen he was unread for along time and he remains largely untranslated. He was six years old about the mid-15C when the Byzanttne emperor
came to Rorne with one of his scholars, the 80-year-old Geminthus Pletho. T'hey were seeking an alhance against the Turks, who were advancing upon Clonstantinople, the Byzantine capital. A reconciliation of the Greek with the

Poqphyty' For natures inclined to mysticisrn, Plato (and his later expounder satisfied beaury) who showed hour to lift one's gmefrom sensuous to absuact examfor faith- Michelangelo, a strong desire akin to the Reformers' for apure wod':s his valued ple, *hlr. hand was subdued to nrratter like any ditch digger's, but do, u/e as merit, artistic not for their

No mortal thing enthrall these longing eye$

When perfect Peace in thy fair face I found; But far within; where all is holy ground, My soul felt Love, her comracle of the skies
FRoM

for the ideat beauty that he Put into them and that, for him, made theit
materiality disappear. His love sonnets worship the same ineffable entity tn a

Solxnr 52

woman, Vittoria Colonna,

to

whom

-MTcHELANGELo,

popular ,yp.^r reduction of an important idea prevents one from lrsing the term the longing con r.niently to deno te afecuffent stfiving in occidental culnrre, of metareligion in for the pure. Individuals and rnovelnents, not all tooted of achievement their physics, have repearedly proclaimed their pursuit or yearni:rg a is It p*. love, pufe thought, pure forrn in art (622; 63940>)' akin to PRIMITvISM.

thev arc addtessed. says that the ideal does not exist opposition materialist To all this the concrete. It is too bad that in the from abstract the nanrral, apartfrom the ..platonic love" rn.eans only absence of sexual relations. That use

Roman church might also be discussed but it vras not concluded. Pletho lectured in Rome and startled his hearers by showing a firsthand larowledge of Plato, rvho 'v/as still generally thought aninfidel. The Byzantines themselves were deemed schismatics: th.y did not accept the Holy Ghost as an equal rnember of the Trinif, th.y celebrated Easter on the wrong date, and gave o'ther slgns of wrong-headedness. Accordingly, when Pletho talked Plato, the lecturer was suspected of being the Devil come to seduce the taithful. But Cosimo de' Medici, the wealthiest banker and political boss of Florence, took a chance and invited Pletho to dinner. At the end of it Cosimo decided to found a school of Greek

*rought. The idea simmeted a while, and four years after the falt of
Constantinople in 1'453 the school opened. Cosimo called it Accademia in honor of the place where Plato trad taught in Athens, a grove honoring the hero Academos. Hence the modern term for schools, universities, and official
gtrardians of learning, while "acadernic" has had a checkered career in fine art arrd social opinion. (B.rrt Academe is not a synonym of academy: it is a variant

A chutch hidrarchy deserves to be called "toleration by absentmindedness." of religious expevarieties the appreciate to able is thoroughly Humanistified variations' permit to tends savonarola's, as such rience and, short of extremes and f'elt orders holy in were Platonists ard-ent those of many After alJ., asood he when example: a good provides valla Lorenzo role. their easy about fl'ed and exposed the Donation of Constantine, he feared sanctions in Rome But to Naples, where like a true Humanist he opened a school of oratory. secretaryship. a him even at thateady date, the pope forgave him and found

The Humanist fusion of fairh and philosophy had a by-product which

of scholwho met regulady to keep abreast of one another's.'findings. It needed a director, and Cosimo appointed ro the post the son of his own son's physician: Giovanni de' Medici and Nlar:silio Ficino v/ere close frienrJs. Though Marsilio v/as only 25,hewas already a fine Latinist. He had also a passion for
ats

sprelling of Academar.) Cosimo's instirution was a self-selected group

music and a boundless curiosiry. About that time, another Byzannne, & refugee from the Turks named