Hildegarde

I have looked at the comments,  and beyond what’s obvious–I’m getting a little tired of being presented with demands to provide “evidence” of a fairly standard historical account by someone who never provides any evidence of anything at all, just assertions–

And I’ve decided the following:

I will in fact stick with the standard historical and academic accounts of the period between the Fall of Rome in the 5th Century and the Reformation and Counterreformation in the 16th.

That would make the period between the Fall of Rome and the investiture of Charlemagne the “Dark Ages” or what is known academically as the “early Middle Ages,” the period between that and the 15th century the Middle Ages proper (sometimes called the High Middle Ages for the period between that and the 15th Century, and the Renaissance follows that.

And yes, of course, I know no historical age halts abrutply.  And yes, I’ve been saying since this started that what we’re looking for is evolution, which means there are no abrupt beginnings and endings.

But to try to label an event–the signing of the Magna Carta, say–that occurred smack in the middle of the Crusades as being part of the Renaissance is something worse than ludicrous.

And I will say that no matter what personal commitments Machiavelli might have had, what this culture took from him and embraced was realpolitik–which is why when you describe a political policy as “Machiavellian” you’re not talking about limited government and the rise of representative politics.

That said–please note that I never claimed that the Renaissance was “stagnant.”  What I did claim that it was decadent, and that’s undeniable.

It was not just the increasing corruption of government and religion, which was destructive enough.  It was the entire screeching narcissism of a culture of money.  Cultures of money are always narcissistic, and they always trade substance for style.  There’s the endless mania for acquiring more and more “stuff,”  along with the obsession with displaying it in public.   There’s the casual acceptance of a kind of opportunism that, although practiced in all ages, tends to be considered shameful in periods when money is not the one and only point.

The career of Francis Bacon is illustrative on that last point.

And there was, of course, the art.  Decadent periods tend to be good for two things:  the art, and individual genius.   Think of it being one of those great flares of light that happen when the transformer blows up down the street.  In the long term, it’s dead.

Yes, there was some (steady) progress in some of the sciences, and a lot of progress in art–but the Renaissance is a picture of a society that had lost its belief in itself. 

Petrarch’s beloved Christian Humanism, which had originally been an attempt to wed Christian virtue to Pagan science, became, for most of the people who claimed it, mostly an accessory.  Rich men had palaces so that the people could see how well they lived, clothes threaded through with strands of gold so that the people could see how little they cared about money, and culture so that the people could how very different and superior they were to the ordinary common men who were supposed to be their fellow citizens.

As for evidence–I give you any history of the Medicis, or the Borgias, or any history of the fate of Florence in the Quatrocento, which, far from being an early model of Republican government, was ruled by its great families as absolutely as any monarchy. 

And when changes in the government came, they came increasingly through assassination and conspiracy rather than through elections or council meetings.

And if you want evidence of that, I suggest you compare what happened to Dante in Florentine politics with what happened to and through Lorenzo di Medici.  Dante was a figure of the Middle Ages.  Lorenzo was a figure of the Renaissance.

(Oh, an aside–there’s a nice little book out there on the subject of the attempted assassination of one of the Medicis, called April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against The Medici,   by Lauro Martines.  He’s one of the most respected Renaissance scholars in the world, and the book is concise and–well, illustrative.  Welcome to decadence.)

Anyway.

The Reformation (and the Counterreformation) happened because, faced with a counter-movement increasingly unhappy with the corruption of both religious and secular institutions, the Humanists themselves were increasingly unable to defend the society that Humanism had built.

In fact, not only were they unable to defend it, they often seemed embarrassed by it or ashamed of it.  Even great Humanists like Erasmas–who surely did try–couldn’t deny the corruption, debauchery, violence, opportunism, and immorality that had taken hold even in the Church.

I think it’s a reasonable question to ask if there is something about a liberal arts education–which is, after all, what Christian Humanism was all about–that inevitably leads to such decadance, or that makes such decadance more likely.

Certainly many people over the centuries have thought so, starting at least with Augustine (and plausibly going back to Cicero) and including such disparate figures as Martin Luther and the Ayatollah Khomeini. 

When periods of Humanism end, they always end in the same place:  in periods of resurgent religion.

And it’s not really difficult to understand why this happens. 

Events are driven not by “everybody” and what they want, but by a small subsection of the population that cares passionately about how things work out and is willing to fight for it.  Religion is a powerful motivator for people like that, and that’s true whether you’re talking about traditional religion or the secular political faux-religions we’ve gotten used to lately.

And the liberal arts tradition is a powerful pull away from religious certainty, because it stresses a comprehensive knowledge of all the ideas that have been central to this civilization and a spirit of open inquiry into them.

There is a natural tension here. It  may not be resolvable in the long run.

Ever.

But it left people like Luther and Zwingli with a problem–the liberal arts tradition led to the corruption of manners, morals, and religion; but lack of the liberal arts tradition led to narrowness and no less heresy than before.

In fact, Luther and Zwingli were products of a somewhat dumbed down version of Christian Humanism, and it soon began to look to them as if chucking out the whole of the liberal arts left Christians less capable than they should be of a “proper” interpretation of Scripture.

And that’s why, after the crash–the liberal arts came back again.

But more on that tomorrow.  It’s my Day from Hell.