Aspects of the Renaissance 9781477300978

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ASPECTS OF

THE

Renaissance

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ASPECTS OF THE

Renaissance A Symposium Papers Presented at a Conference on the Meaning of the Renaissance

Edited by Archibald R. Lewis

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS • AUSTIN & LONDON

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 67-25232 C o p y r i g h t © 1967 by University of Texas Press All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America by the Printing Division of T h e University of Texas, Austin Bound by Universal Bookbindery, Inc., San Antonio

Contents General Introduction

vii

PART ONE : The Political

Scene

T h e Rebirth of the Citizen on the Eve of the Renaissance Period

5

WALTER U L L M A N N

Popular Initiative in Renaissance France

27

J. R U S S E L L M A J O R

PART TWO : Old and New Traditions of Culture Arms versus Letters : Towards a Definition of Spanish Fifteenth-Century Humanism

47

PETER R U S S E L L

Patronage and Music in England

59

W A L T E R L. WOODFILL

PART THREE : Arts and

Letters

T h e Equestrian Monument from Cangrande della Scala to Peter the Great

73

H . W. J A N S O N

Marguerite de Valois's Album of Verse

87

EUGÉNIE DROZ

PART FOUR: Renaissance

and

Reformation

T h e Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists

105

L E W I S W. S P I T Z

Renaissance Science in Puritan New England

.

.

.

.

123

M I C H A E L G. H A L L

PART FIVE : Science and Economic In Defense of Kepler EDWARD R O S E N

Life 141

Concerning Clio, Concepts and Quantities

159

HERBERT HEATON

Notes on Contributors Program Participants in the International Conference on the Meaning of the Renaissance . Index

169 .

.

.

173 175

General Introduction That era of Western European history which we know as the Renaissance has long represented a problem to those scholars who have studied its manifestations. Most of them would now agree that enough important changes in culture took place between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries so that one must consider this age a distinct historical period. On the other hand, there is little agreement as to when the Renaissance began, when it ended, and just what its distinctive elements really were. Especially perplexing is the complex problem of its relationship to the high Middle Ages, which preceded it, and the Reformation and the age of modern science, which followed in its wake. To characterize the Renaissance as an age of transition, as one scholar has recently done, is to beg the issue, since all historical periods are, in a sense, ages of transition. In an attempt to help clarify these problems an international conference was held at Austin, Texas, in April, 1964, jointly sponsored by the South Central Renaissance Conference and The University of Texas. Here a group of leading scholars presented papers dealing with various aspects of the politics, economics, literature, art, architecture, philosophy, music, religion, and science of this period in the hope that some pattern of meaning would emerge from such an examination. The scope of these papers was a broad one, since they dealt with almost every section of Western Europe and even the New World overseas and ranged in time from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. This volume presents to the scholarly world and the general public a selection of these papers in the hope that they will help illustrate the complexity of the Renaissance period and give some idea of recent scholarly thought concerning its significance. They will, above all, give the careful reader some idea of how varied the Renaissance really was and how regional and diverse its manifestations were in the various areas which made up Western Christendom. Even more important, they emphasize, as did the Conference itself, the fruitful way in which scholars concerned with art, liter-

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Aspects of the Renaissance

ature, science, music, and economic and political life can share their insights to give meaning to an important period of human history. Last of all the editor wishes to thank those scholars whose contribution to the Conference could not be represented by the papers included in this symposium and to acknowledge the generous support of the American Council of Learned Societies and The University of Texas, which made publication of this volume possible. ARCHIBALD R. LEWIS

Austin, Texas

The Rebirth of the Citizen on the Eve of the Renaissance Period by Walter Ullmann

A STUDY OF THE REBIRTH of the citizen, however crucial and fundamental it seems to the medievalist, may well appear only peripheral to the consideration of the Renaissance period. The subject, however, has not only direct relevance to the understanding of all that goes under the name of the Renaissance, but may even shed some light upon the very presuppositions and preliminary conditions without which the process of the Renaissance can hardly be properly appreciated. The character of the Renaissance itself, and above all of Renaissance humanism as a predominantly cultural and literary phenomenon, entails concentration upon its learning, its poetry, arts, language, its eloquentia, and above all the notion and philosophy of man. Indeed, the studia humanitatis would appear as a branch of intellectual pursuit which directed attention to the individual, to man, to the homo himself. The historian of medieval institutions—of medieval law, of medieval government—asks himself whether there was not also, and concomitantly and simultaneously, a development of thought that, if not the begetter, was at any rate the companion of Renaissance humanism. For it would seem to me that with the rebirth of the homo there was also a rebirth of the civis. To the historian of ideas relating to medieval governments a quite apparent synchronism exists between Renaissance humanism and the incipient and rapidly evolving theory of citizenship. Should it really be nothing but mere coincidence that during precisely the same period which witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and which fixed concentration upon man, there is noticeable a parallel development that fixed concentration on man in his political and social environs? This particular aspect of the Renaissance has not attracted the attention that

6

The Political Scene

is surely due it. I do not think that the topic of citizenship is in need of any justification: then as now, in the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, one of the crucial problems besetting reflecting man was the role the individual played within the framework of public bodies, and quite especially within the largest of them all, the State. The concentration on the homo as a philosophical and ethical unit finds its corresponding and synchronised concentration on the civis, but to view only the one in isolation would appear to be a somewhat selective process with all its attendant dangers. To emphasize therefore the pivotal position of the citizen merely demonstrates the need to widen the focus of attention. However much the Renaissance period was in some vital respects a continuation of the medieval period; however much the medieval period was the progenitor of some basic Renaissance concepts ;1 however much methodology, modes of argument and presentation, that is, the external apparel, were common to both periods, there is no gainsaying the obvious fact that on the one hand scholars and thinkers of the Renaissance period spoke and thought and wrote of a rebirth, and that on the other hand the concept of the citizen had, in the realm of thought, no distinguished pedigree in the high Middle Ages. The first question that confronts us therefore is why the emergence of a thesis of citizenship is contemporaneous with the Renaissance humanism, or, to put the same question differently, why was there no thesis of citizenship in the Middle Ages? A preliminary problem is, in what manner are the Renaissance views on man related to the concept of the citizen? Let me first deal with the question of why in the medieval period we cannot detect the concept of the citizen, of him who has autonomous, independent, and indigenous rights and as such is a member of the autonomous, self-sufficient, and independent body of citizens, the State. In so doing I must cover the barren ground of some medieval religious and ecclesiastical matters, because without at least putting them in their proper focus one cannot hope to grasp the essential meaning of the rebirth. At whatever time the term humanitas and the idea of a Renaissance made their debut, it cannot be denied that both concepts are not only thoroughly medieval, but have in fact a still more distinguished ancestry. Classical models aside, the concept of humanitas has been used in all Christological disputes concerning Christ's divinity and humanity, His 1 See Paul O. Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters in Storia e Letterature, LIV (Rome, 1956), 553 ff.

The Rebirth of the Citizen

7

divine and human being. Any more or less literate individual in the Middle Ages was familiar with the term. But is was not only the concept of humanitas which struck familiar chords, but also the corresponding concept of a renaissance too was drawn from the same storehouse, the Bible, or more precisely, the Pauline repository. The first rebirth, if I may employ such chronological language, was spoken of in connexion with baptism. And, most interestingly, the rebirth, the renaissance, concerned natural man, concerned the homo animalis? concerned the homo carnalis;3 it was he who through baptism was reborn, was re-natus.4 This status of being reborn was, furthermore, expressed by the metaphysical use of resurrection5 or of a regeneratio or renovatio.6 The glossa ordinaria on the Bible merely paraphrased exegetically what the Bible had already contained: "Renascitur homo ex aqua.. ."7 Two points immediately emerge. First, the sharp contradistinction between the baptised, reborn man, the Christian, on the one hand, and the man of nature, man in his natural state, on the other. Christ had said the "Quod natum est ex carne, caro est,"8 and St. Augustine made the point abundantly clear when he declared that the damnation inherent in original sin is incurred "carnali conceptione et nativitate." 9 Second, the Christian, the reborn man, stands on a level quite different from that of natural man. Above all, he has shed the characteristic features of his naturality and having been reborn has become a nova creatura.10 In theory at least this reborn man is a different being, because through the efficacy of divine grace he has undergone a metamorphosis, has conquered his own nature and now partakes in the divine attributes themselves. Thereby he is raised onto a different level altogether and, as far 2

I Corinthians 2:14. Ibid., 3 : 2 - 3 . See also I Peter 1:23. 5 As in Colossians 2:12. 6 Titus 3:5. We have in fact further evidence in the New Testament of Christ's own view on baptism as effecting a rebirth of the man of nature. He was asked, "Quomodo potest homo nasci, cum sit senex? Numquid potest in ventrem matris suae iterato introire et renasci?" To which the reply was "Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et spiritu sancto . . ." (John 3 : 4 - 5 ) . Italics in all quotations are those of the author. 7 Quoted from Gratian, Decretum, De consecratione 4. 1. 8 John 3:6. 9 Even children are to be punished "quia etsi propriae actionis peccatum nullum habuerunt, originali tamen peccati damnationem carnali conceptione et nativitate traxerunt" (Gratian, Decretum, cap. 3 ) . 10 "Novus homo" (II Corinthians 5:17 ; Galatians 6:15 ; Ephesians 4 : 2 4 ) . 3

4

8

The Political Scene

as the direction of his life is concerned, his orientation and being are no longer determined by the postulates emanating from his nature, but by those flowing from his participation in the divine attributes.11 The recognition of the dichotomy between natural man and the Christian supplies a firm basis, for the rebirth also entailed—and this is particularly important in the present context—the acquisition of membership in an organised body, the Church itself. The Christian, the fidelis, became incorporated in the Church and absorbed by it. The vital consideration, however, is that membership in the Church fundamentally affected the standing of the reborn man : he was now subjected, as far as his social and public life went, to the law as it was given to him, not made by him, and the law was given to him by those who were instituted over him by divinity. What counted was not the homo, was not the natural man, but the fidelis, the Christian, and within the precincts of public and social life he was merely the recipient of the laws as they were given by superior authority. Whatever power he may have possessed, whatever rights he may have had, whatever function he may have fulfilled were the result of a favour, of a gratia.12 In other words, the concept of the fidelis, or Christianus, in the medieval period perfectly corresponded to the underlying descending theme of government and law, according to which power and rights in the public sphere were distributed "downwards" from one supreme being: there is no power but of God, and the practical application can be found throughout the medieval period, in which we shall look in vain for the autonomous standing of the fidelis. Hence the elaboration of the hierarchical structure (especially under the influence of Pseudo-Denis) in which supreme public power was located in the pope and distributed downwards to the other ecclesiastical officers. There is a further reflexion. The Church itself was defined as the universitas fidelium (or congregatio fidelium), in which the accent was placed on the fidelis, and this universitas fidelium was all-embracing, all-comprehensive, included both lay and clerics, included empires and kingdoms. Indeed, the concept of fidelis dominates thinking and writing and acting in the medieval period, because what distinguished the Christian was his faith. This standpoint is not merely dogmatic or doctrinal, 11 For some remarks on this topic see Walter Ullmann, "Some Observations on the Medieval Evaluation of the 'Homo Naturalis' and the 'Christianus'," L'Homme et son destin d'après les penseurs du Moyen Age (Louvain-Paris, 1960), pp. 145 ff. 12 St. Paul: "Gratia Dei sum id quod sum" (Galatians 4 : 1 2 ) .

The Rebirth of the Citizen

9

but also and perhaps more so, it belongs to the field of public government. For just as the Church as the universitas fidelium had no autonomous character,13 so the members, the fideles themselves, had no autonomous standing. What is essential, furthermore, is that the fidelis qua fidelis had by definition no share in the creation of the very laws which directed his life and therefore no share in public government. He was given the law and he obeyed the law, because he had faith in the divinely conferred function of the lawgiver (who for practical purposes was the pope). Faith yielded the essential substratum for the efficacy of the law, that is, obedience. The element of obedience presupposed the existence of faith. It is conceptually impossible to say that the faithful as subjects shared in the government of the pope. Membership in the Church, achieved through baptism, accounted for the acceptance of the superior will, precisely because the fidelis had the required faith. As a matter of fact as well as of doctrine, only by identifying himself with the law and government of the superior, that is, by unconditional obedience, could the fidelis be and remain one.14 The individual became submerged in society itself.15 At the same time we take due note that the form of government postulated and enacted was the monarchic form. That on these presuppositions no thesis of citizenship could conceivably arise needs no lengthy explanation. The difficulties facing the emergence of a theory of citizenship were not, however, confined to the ecclesiastical field proper. In the royal field too the conceptual framework was fundamentally no different from that in the purely ecclesiastical sphere. The descending system of government stood here as much in the foreground as in the ecclesiastical system: the king himself was "King by the grace of God"—hence himself acknowledging his lack of autonomy—and whatever rights and powers the subjects had, they had as matter of royal grace, as a matter of royal good will, of favor by the king. The concept of subject— 13 See on this Walter Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London, 1961), pp. 33 ff. 14 See Michael Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 462, 37 ff. Cf. Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae 26: "Quod Catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae acclesiae." The Dictatus of Avranches, cap. 3 : "Qui decretis sedis apostolicae non consenserit ( ! ) , hereticus habendus est." 15 This leads on to the corporational thesis and the "mysticism" surrounding public bodies: it is they alone which mattered, above all the Church universal, the universitas fidelium, which was the point of reference of all discussions concerning public government. Hence also the often repeated thesis that utilitas publica praefertur privatae. Cf. below.

10

The Political Scene

sub/ditus, sub/jectus, the Uter/tan—is itself of course an infallible symptom of the underlying ideology. In some respects the royal field offers excellent practical confirmation of a standpoint rooted in religious doctrine. For the concession theory, according to which the subject had no autonomous rights—whatever rights he had were constructed as a concession by the king16—brings the Pauline viewpoint into clearest possible relief. The antipode of the sub/ditus, of the inferior, was the superior, set over the subject. And in the making of the superior the subject had no part, for the powers embodied in the superior were those granted by divinity, and not by the subjects. They themselves had none. This thesis —observable in all theocratic kingdoms—prevented not only the formulation of a right of resistance and of a right of deposition (for the subjects could not take away powers that they had not conferred on the king), but also the emergence of a thesis of autonomous citizenship. As long as the populus of a kingdom was considered on the same level as a minor, as something that had not yet achieved the maturity and the faculty of ordering its own affairs, as long therefore as the populus was in the Munt of the king,17 insurmountable obstacles were erected to the emergence of the very idea of citizenship. The test here too lies in the process and the machinery by which the law came to be created : within this descending-theocratic conception one cannot speak of lawmaking by those who were to be affected by the law, but only of lawgiving. And the operational element of obedience and its basis, faith, are in this field as paramount as in the purely ecclesiastical one. The point requires emphasis that the thousands of royal or imperial charters, encyclicals, in short, the thousands of public documents showed in their address how much this theme had become part of the governmental make-up : "Rex . . . omnibus fidelibus suis salutem" was the greeting formula invariably employed. In the third place, the estates into which medieval society was stratified must be classed as impediments to the emergence of a citizen. For it was precisely the hallmark of the member of a particular estate that he could not move out of his own estate and that whatever status he enjoyed he was rigidly controlled by the norms applicable to the estate. And these norms concerned the very standing within society, concerned 16

See Ullmann, Principles of Government, pp. 127 ff. Both concepts are indicative, but especially mundium, showing the lack of indigenous and legally and constitutionally valid manifestation of the will : therefore the need for the people to be in the Munt of the ruler (see also the German Vor/mund), who guides them and takes care of their interests; hence also the populus sibi commissus. 17

The Rebirth of the Citizen

11

the privileged position, the right of inheritance, of marriage; in short, the norms of the particular estate contributed to the petrification of society itself. In proximity to this feature stands the thesis that each member of society should fulfill the functions which are allotted to him, because this was in some respects the effluence of the divine ordering of things. "Unusquisque maneat ea vocatione, in qua dignoscitur esse vocatus"18 expresses the principle of functional ordering well enough, but the idea is also a symptom of the vocational-functional stratification of society, which thus becomes a stumbling block to the conception of man's autonomous character.19 Another consideration belonging to a different field concerns the practical application of the teleological principle in the public field. Its roots can again be traced back to Pauline doctrine, which depicted the human body as a basis of comparison for demonstrating the various functions within the unum corpus Christi.20 Accordingly, each part of the human body functioned for sake of the whole and not for its own sake. Transferred to the functioning of a body politic this comparison yielded the theory that the individual did not exist for his own sake but for the sake of the whole society.21 Hence the primary concern was the good of society22 and not of the individual; hence also utilitas publica praefertur utilitati privatae. The concentration on the totum, on the collectively organised whole, the thinking in wholly corporational terms, would seem to have erected a further rather effective barrier to the emergence of a thesis of individual, autonomous, and indigenous rights. In assessing the strength and tenacious character of what to my mind are the chief obstacles to the thesis of citizenship one should never lose sight of the background against which they prospered and flourished. We are today easily inclined to underestimate the force of the 18 Walter Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (2nd ed.; London, 1962), p. 446, n. 1. 19 See also Wilks, Problem, pp. 56-57 : "Man's relationship to the world is thus conceived of in terms of vocation and duty, and the society is pictured as a huge organism in which each member has been allotted a specific function which he pursues for the sake of the common purpose." 20 See Romans 12:5; I Corinthians 12:4 ff.; Ephesians 1:23, 4:10-16. 21 See the passages cited in Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government, pp. 438 ff.; also Walter Ullmann, "Introduction" to Henry G. Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, (2nd ed.; London, 1963), pp. 36 ff. 22 See again St. Paul, I Corinthians 12:26-27: "Et si quid patitur unum membrum, compatiuntur omnia membra . . . vos estis corpus Christi et membra de membro."

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religious and doctrinal cluster of ideas which had shaped men's minds for generations. It is advisable therefore to underscore, and precisely in the present context, the Christocentric and theocentric basis as well as the roots which gave rise to the conception of the inferior sub/ditus and of the superior auctoritas. The view that the individual had rights which pre-existed before they were conferred could not germinate in this soil. All these considerations, however, move, so to speak, within the higher echelons, that is, entirely within the intellectual or doctrinal fields. They reflect the state of thought entertained by those who set the tone. For a fuller picture the medieval scene can be profitably considered on at least two levels. The one level presents the official papal, royal, or imperial strata, which spoke with varying emphasis the same kind of language, the language of the monarchic governments. The other level presents the lower strata of society, in which the governmental and official theses may have found far less echo than one would perhaps have expected. In these lower ranks of medieval society we detect a number of features which may well be spoken of as harbingers or incubators of the very theme of citizenship. Yet we do not find any allusion or hint at a thesis of citizenship. There is no theoretical discussion, but there is all the more practice, all the more action, in short, an unadulterated practical application of the concept of citizen. The important point here concerns the numberless unions, communities, associations, fraternities, guilds, sodalities, and other associative groups, which not only governed themselves, but also by virtue of their self-government acted, without being aware of it, on the principle that their members possessed autonomous rights. What these communities presented was in actual fact the very antithesis of the standpoint held by governments and learned writers. The essential theme within the established doctrine was that corporate bodies came into existence by a definite act of superior authority: they were Anstalten, institutions; these unions, however, came into being as a result of a common will and for very practical purposes—they were Genossenschaften. Their presence was a reminder of the natural and ineradicable desire of men to constitute themselves in greater or lesser bodies; and just as these communal bodies were to all intents and purposes autonomous, albeit on a limited scale, in the same way the individuals composing them held themselves to be autonomous. The manifestation of a "citizens" spirit in these communities was to find also a complement in the emerging heretical sects, which in one way or another brought to the fore the refusal to accept

The Rebirth of the Citizen

13

doctrine as laid down and given by superior authority and to assert an as yet amorphous right to express even a view contrary to the orthodox standpoint. Again, no theoretical discussion can be detected which would have argued the right to propagate unorthodox theses, though that this right was claimed follows from the very fact of the advocacy of heretical opinion. T h e reliance on one's own judgment was therefore considered not only a sign of arrogance 2 3 but also a symptom of the refusal to play the role of the fidelis in the accepted sense and therefore to play the role —here in merely religious matters—of the sub/ditus obeying the superior, the instituted authority. Far be it from me to suggest that these and similar manifestations would show that they harboured anything even approaching the thesis of citizenship, but I would maintain that they provided, so to speak, a subterranean, invisible platform which was to prove of not inconsiderable assistance in the process of emancipating the fidelis from the restrictive role into which he was cast as a sub/ditus. A concrete approach to the thesis of citizenship is shown, however, in the north Italian cities. Their members were never designated in any other way than cives, their government was civic in every sense, their allocation of power and functions followed the lines of the ascending-populist thesis of government. Here indeed the practice of citizenship (as opposed to its theoretical elaboration) manifested itself. W h a t is more, the study of Roman law was cultivated in the north Italian cities to an extent rivaled nowhere else. And anyone acquiring the rudiments of R o m a n law cannot fail to become familiar with the very concept of civis, and quite especially in the Digest. W h a t I would like to stress is that the familiarity with R o m a n law in the north Italian cities provided a very fertile soil for the theory of citizenship in the hands of philosophers and also lawyers. Particularly where in the course of the thirteenth century the popolo had succeeded in establishing its sovereignty, its members were acknowledged as full bearers of civic rights and duties and as legal personalities. It would be erroneous, however, to assume that the rest of Europe was not familiar with the term civis. T h e inhabitants of every city, of every civitas, were designated by no other name than that of cives, and every king and emperor adhered to the designation when he addressed charters, etc., to them alone. Indubitably, the term was here as elsewhere derived from civitas, and although in the north of Europe it took a long time before the civitas or the cives could in governmental respects emu23 See Gratian, X X I V , iii. 30 : teachers of errors "ad semetipsos recurrunt" instead of relying on authority.

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late the Italian city-states, the point is nevertheless worth making that once again a designation that was in itself perfectly harmless greatly facilitated the process by which this term could become the core of a significantly new theory. The important fact therefore is that the linguistic usage of the term proved itself a carrier or a bridge between the medieval and indifferent meaning and the later pregnant substance of the citizen. If for a moment we change the subject from legal and abstract thought to sensual art, we shall see a not dissimilar development taking place in the course of the thirteenth century. Although the period was still predominantly that of the Gothic art, one can nevertheless witness some notable changes in sculpture and portraiture. With every justification has "diese mit Renaissancegeist erfüllte Gothik"24 attracted attention. What strikes the observant spectator is a realism, above all a naturalism, which stands in contrast to the typified if not stereotyped portraiture of the earlier period. The abstract image representing no one human being gives way to the concrete image and human personality in all its substantiality. Figures whether sculptured or painted (Giotto) represent or begin to represent a human personality with the infinite variety of personal, individual traits. It is not so much the fidelis, the Christian, in idealised form that constitutes the artist's subject matter as man as such, his humanity and individuality. And does not the natural landscape too begin to be considered a worthy subject in painting? To my mind it is not just sheer coincidence that landscape painting as such was found so little attractive in the Middle Ages, and, again, at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries makes its debut (Giovanni Pisano, Giotto, etc. ). Casting a glance at the literary scene we see, perhaps not without some significance, the rapidly increasing vernacular literature from the thirteenth century onwards. In some respects the emergence of vernacular literature is the parallel phenomenon to the artistic presentation. The Latin language would seem no longer sufficient to express those things which mattered most; it was no longer adequate to give vent to the subtle modulations of human feelings. The naturalness of the vernacular, precisely because it is natural, enables the writer to convey the naturalness of human emotions and affections and to reveal psychological insights for which the Latin would have sounded banal at best and would have proved more likely to be totally inadequate. Latin was adequate enough 24

Richard Hamann, Geschichte der Kunst (Berlin, 1933), p. 310.

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for learned treatises, for the abstract thought, for the mathematical scheme of logical and syllogistic deductions, but it was the language of abstractions and not that of ordinary humanity. Could the traditional Latin cope with the subtle multifariousness of human intensity of feeling and passions and motives? French as well as Spanish, let alone Italian, vernacular prose and poetry demonstrate this. Dante's powerful De vulgari eloquentia seems significant in precisely this context.25 In the thirteenth century can also be detected the embryonic beginnings of what since has been called the natural sciences. In that century observation and experiment make their their debut, and here the Oxford school deserves special consideration. Within such a framework it is useless to operate with the deduction from first principles, with a set of given and authoritative principles, with the presupposition of all theocratic thought, that is, faith. What was useful was the observation of the phenomena of nature itself, experientia. And what was positively harmful was adherence to auctoritas, because this was induced, as it was asserted at the time, merely credulitas. This incipient thirteenth-century science is indeed a radical departure from the antecedent neglect of the unrelated study of nature, if not aversion to it. Moreover, homo as the most conspicuous and readily available product of nature attracted due attention in medical science. The emergence of a proper anatomical science, it would seem, stands in closest proximity to the attention given to man as such. Both Italy and France are conspicuous in anatomy and surgery, and both are radical departures from the hitherto prevailing view on the fidelis, who by definition and by vocation was the proper subject of the theologian, not of the anatomist.26 The physician joined the company of the theologian and philosopher, but it was a company in which the principle of division of labour operated : the one looked at the fidelis and considered him as the subject of the faith and erected his doctrine by the manipulation of the deductive method; the other, the physician, looked at the physis of man and began to work with the inductive 25 At least mention should be made in this context of the great influence exercised by vernacular sermons directed to the laity; notable examples in Germany were Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Henry Suso. 26 It should be noted that Roger Bacon's ophthalmic achievements also include the rediscovery of the crossing of the optic nerves, the first mention of convex lenses for presbyopia, and the realisation that spectacles may be used to remedy visual defects. The first medical reference to spectacles actually comes from Montpellier in 1305 (Bernard Gordon) ; it is not without interest that according to a sermon by a friar the rediscovery of the art of making spectacles was made twenty years earlier, i.e., ca. 1285 (Arnold Sorsby, Modern Opthalmology [London, 1963], pp. 5, 2 9 - 3 1 ) .

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Scene

method. W h a t was of paramount interest to the one was of negligible interest to the other. It seems undeniable that in the late thirteenth century there was a veritable division of creative and intellectual activities. T h e resuscitation of the m a n of nature entailed the idea that he was to be as much worthy of consideration as the fidelis, who alone had hitherto claimed monopoly. T h e significance of this division is that the monopoly of the fidelis was broken and he had to share the attention with him whom he was alleged to have supplanted. T h e searchlight was now turned to that part of the individual which had lain so far in the shadow. O n e may well compare this discovery of man's real nature to the discovery of a new continent: a new subject matter, as it were, was revealed, and, as all new subjects, this one too aroused great initial enthusiasm and oftentimes overreached itself. I n consideration of this development it is no hyperbole to refer to a rebirth of natural man, of M a n himself: he who had for so long been overshadowed by the fidelis was reborn. T h e point of reference was his humanity ; the point of reference in the fidelis was his Christianity, was his faith, was the Christian norm itself. T h e very humanitas of man peremptorily demanded attention and received it in full measure. T h e vacuum which the homo renatus had left was filled : natural m a n was awakened from the slumber of centuries. But as in the antecedent period concentration was focused upon the fidelis; the recourse to the classical products of literature, poetry, arts suggested itself. Precisely because of its monopolistic orientation medieval literature offered little help in the quest for the now fashionable themes. T h e return to classical products was nothing but an attempt to orientate oneself by those creations of the h u m a n mind which were free from the incubus of abstraction and doctrine that had indeed reached virtually unmanageable proportions and dimensions. 27 This rediscovery of the homo in his naturalness and reality conditioned the renaissance of ancient literature 2 8 and of the classical writers' qualification as models. 29 27 One can, I think, understand why later a man such as Vasari could go as far as to identify a return to nature with a return to antiquity. 28 The traditional point of view was quite well expressed by Paul Joachimsen : "Die Ersetzung der Scholastik durch die Antike als ein selbständiges, geistiges Ganzes, das ist das eigentliche Problem, das sich der Humanismus stellt" ("Aus der Entwicklung des Italischen Humanismus," Historische Zeitschrift, CXXI [1920], 193). 29 In regard to classical literature and classical authors we may well detect a feature similar to that which we have tried to point out in the context of civis and civitas. T h a t is to say, a good deal of ancient literature was known throughout the Middle Ages, and the flood of classical learning becomes by the twelfth

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17

These observations appeared to be essential to placement of the topic of the rebirth of the citizen into its proper framework, for there is always an inclination to view a theoretical development in a vacuum instead of throwing it against the actuality of the historical background. The absorption of Aristotelian themes, in precisely that period which is of concern to me, the second half of the thirteenth century and the early fourteenth century, should, I think, be viewed in the light of the developments that had taken place in the spheres which I have sketched in such bare and tenuous outlines. To begin with, Aristotle's views set forth in the Politics, however simple they were, appeared to be eminently practical and sensible and to buttress theoretically what could be observed in practice. In particular, the two themes of Aristotle seemed to have great attraction—the theme of nature and the resultant natural law, and the theme of citizenship. Without the preparation of the ground by the diversified agencies it would be well-nigh impossible to explain the rapidity with which the Aristotelian theses came to be absorbed. There is no need to discuss the essential ingredients of the Aristotelian teleologically orientated concept of nature and the effects it had on the future development. All that needs repetition is that the Aristotelian naturalist theme can be reckoned to be the theoretical and conceptual confirmation of views already held. Aristotle's thesis that man was by nature a political animal succinctly expressed what was felt in any case somewhat amorphously and dimly. Once more, the very terminology struck quite familiar chords, for every literate and educated man was acquainted with the Pauline homo animalis. Aristotle provided an appealing and easily comprehended theory, culminating in the thesis of the State as a product of nature. The citizen was in the political sphere what man was in the philosophical or ethical field. century quite respectable. But classical authors were not taken as models, they did not serve as guides, they did not supply new norms, for the real problem was how to fit the emanation of the ancient (pagan) mind into the all-pervading Christian theme. Leaving aside some isolated instances of hostility to classical authors—e.g., that Homer and Virgil were criminals—medieval learning viewed them, so to speak, sub specie eternitatis, viewed them as intellectual products which, if they could be shown to be consonant with the Christian faith, were "canonised," but if they were opposed to the tenets of the faith, should be consigned to oblivion. But Renaissance humanism had no problems of fitting ancient products into the Christian framework : Renaissance humanism fully realised the potentialities of the ancients as avenues to a better understanding of man himself, of him who had hitherto been overlaid by the fidelis. The ancients became patterns, became models. But once again, the medieval familiarity with ancient writers greatly facilitated their becoming guides.

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Thomas Aquinas' flexible and pregnant accommodations of Aristotelian concepts to the prevailing Christocentric framework yielded a synthesis, and the division which I mentioned earlier now appeared as a conceptual duplex ordo rerum. There is a natural as well as a supranatural ordering of things. Applied to the sphere of public government there is the State and its citizens, which corresponds to the natural order of things, and the Church and its fidelis and the supranatural complement. True enough, the two orders live in the Thomist synthesis more or less comfortably together, though the doctor angelicus, on Aristotelian premises, uses language which indeed shows not only his remarkable penetration into Aristotelian thought, but also an equally remarkable departure from the hitherto accepted standpoint. For the concept of citizen belongs to the category of politics30 and is distinct from the concept of man: in other words, politics and ethics constitute distinctive sets of norms.31 The citizen is man acting as a member of a collective entity, the State. However much Renaissance writers and thinkers castigated scholasticism and its most pronounced representative, the part played by the doctor angelicus in assisting the resuscitation of the civis on however restricted a scale must be acknowledged, even if only as a matter of history.32 That on the basis of Aristotle the State was now conceptually realised, a notion which was not familiar to medieval man, and moreover that this entity was a product of nature is important enough to be stated, but is of no immediate relevance to the subject. What is relevant is that the same kind of dualism was now also operative in the membership of either body : next to the Church there was now the concept of the State —next to the fidelis there was now the civis. It therefore cannot surprise that Aristotle's definition of the civis as one who partakes in government33 supplied the solvent which was to release the inferior sub/ditus from superior Obrigkeit. For sharing in government was precisely what was denied to the sub/ditus: as we have seen, he had to accept the law 30

We should take note that this too was a new concept, since Moerbeke had translated the Aristotelian politeuesthai with politizare. See Franz Susemihl, Aristoteles Politica Libri Octo (Leipzig, 1872), p. 307. 31 "Contingit igitur aliquem esse bonum civem qui tamen non habet virtutem secundum quam aliquis est bonus vir . . . ex hoc sequitur quod non sit una virtus boni civis et boni viri" (quoted from Ullmann, Principles of Government, p. 248). 32 For the crucial influence of Thomas, see particularly Wilks, Problem, pp. 119 ff., 306 ff. It should also be noted that it was Thomas who operated with the very term of humanitas, which for him designated the essential being and nature of man himself (Ullman, Principles, p. 245). 33 Politics iii. 1.12 and especially iii. 2-3.

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as it was given to him—he himself had no share in its making. The absorption of Aristotle effected in the political and public sphere not so much a metamorphosis of the sub/ditus as the rebirth of the citizen who since classical times had been slumbering under the surface. Conceptually, the rebirth of the citizen was of crucial and fundamental importance. That the concept made rapid headway is, in view of the factual historical situation, not astonishing. Moreover, the terminology was by no means new, since every medieval civitas had in any case cives. And nothing facilitates the progress of a new theory better than familiarity with its terminology, however much a familiar term may have changed its meaning. The citizen was hitherto an indifferent and harmless term which now was filled with its appropriate contents and substance. It has always seemed to me one of the strangest features that the rebirth of man, the renovatio or regenerado hominis, should have attracted so much attention, and rightly so, and yet that the rebirth of man's complement in the public sphere, the citizen, should hardly have been noticed. But whilst what is usually considered the Renaissance in its purely intellectual and cultural respects was a phase in Europe's development, the renaissance of the citizen has in the end worked a complete change in the complexion of Europe and beyond : for the future development, as far as public and social life goes, belonged to the citizen, who was to create that social order which is even now not generally realised. The attractiveness of this concept of the reborn citizen to contemporary scholarship cannot cause much surprise. Whilst hitherto the jurists pure and simple virtually alone dealt with the problems of public government in their glosses and commentaries, from the turn of the fourteenth century onwards one can witness not only monographic literature specifically devoted to this topic, but also the loss of juristic monopoly. The publicistic tract now announces its arrival, not to disappear from the scene for a very long time, if ever. And the emergence of this new literary species finds its ready explanation, because its subject matter was one that had not existed in the Middle Ages before, the scientia politica. Here too we may well discern a rebirth, a rebirth of an old, but meanwhile forgotten, if not suppressed, science.34 Because the problem of citizenship and its attendant questions were shown to be accessible to 34 Once again the terminology itself was not new. There had been the virtus politica of Macrobian origin, though it assumed importance only in connection with philosophy and with theological questions. Although known, the virtus politica did not enjoy the same vogue as the other Virtutes.

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a solution exclusively other than the law—which after all was a consequence, not a cause—the scientific treatment of these questions had to begin ab ovo, so to speak, and without the easy recourse to a given set of principles. T h e new literary species and the nonjuristic genre of writers find their ready explanation in the new topic opened up by the concept of the citizen. Permit me to give one or two examples. I n the very first years of the fourteenth century a tract appeared by one of the masters of the University of Paris, Jean Quidort (Johannes Parisiensis). It is quite a short treatise, considerably less than one hundred pages in the modern edition. O n the basis of Aristotelianism, Quidort realised the potentialities of the distinction between the fideles and the cives, a distinction which assumes the significance of a fundamental operational principle with him. T h e fideles, united as they are by the bond of faith, are in no need of what he most significantly calls a politia communis, 3 5 the very entity created by nature for the cives. And at once the empirical argument appears : different languages, climates, geographical conditions, and so on, bring forth the need for diversae politiae. Not only does empiricism make its appearance—the abstract norm applicable to the fidelis allowed no empirical considerations 36 —but there appears also, in stark contrast to the principles appertaining to the faithful, the essential feature of citizenship, namely that ex naturali instinctu the citizens live in a community and elect their own governors and make their own laws: the civitas itself, composed of cives, is self-governing, and that civitas may well be a regnum. Because the cives are the natural bearers of power, their own civitas has self-sufficiency—". . . civitatis in qua invenitur maxima sufficientia eorum, quae pertinent ad totam vitam"—in all those matters which belong to the totality of life within it. T h e citizens deal with every aspect of social life, tota vita civitatis) the citizen stands, in other words, on his own feet and is autonomous. T h e fidelis orders his life in accordance with the law and the norm given him from "above" because in the last resort the law originates in divinity. T h e citizen orders his life in accordance with his own insight, so as to achieve the bene vivere, which is a mundane, earthy, above all, h u m a n aim affecting the tota vita. T h a t in this system of thought we meet the manifesta35

De potestate regia et papali, ed. Jean Leclercq (Paris, 1942), p. 181, cap. 3. This is what he means by saying that the pope is concerned with a mystical body, hence works only with the verbum, but the King must govern: his power is manualis—"facilius enim est extendere verbum quam manum" (Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government, p. 457, n. 2 ) . 36

The Rebirth of the Citizen

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tion of what is called the ascending-populist theme of government and law and that on this basis appears now also the principle of responsibility and accountability of the ruler himself to those who elected him is merely a self-evident, though highly important conclusion. The rebirth of the citizen enabled man at least in theory to view a society in which he himself was master. This is not to say that the fidelis was driven under or out : for a considerable time he still received a good deal of attention, but what is important to stress is that his monopoly was broken, and that in the public sphere he had to share the honours with his political antipode, the citizen. We meet here in fact the same duplex ordo rerum which has already engaged us.37 One cannot desist from the thought that this development was, to put it no higher, an epiphenomenon of the incipient Renaissance humanism and was, as far as a mere medievalist is able to perceive, a development conditioned by the nascent Renaissance movement. Twenty years after John of Paris's tract appeared, incidentally also at Paris, Marsiglio's work appears, which illustrates not only the rapidity of advance, but also the maturity which precisely because of its human character the new sciences had reached. The universitas fidelium had doctrinally and ideologically been credited with corporational substance, though it was not an autonomous and self-sufficient body. In Marsiglio we have now reached the stage in which the universitas fidelium had found its corresponding counterpart in the universitas civium. And this community of citizens is nothing but the State. A most fundamental concept has been given its precision as well as its substance. The fides no longer is the element that brings together the universitas, but rather the human-natural element brings forth the universitas civium, the hallmark of which was the feature that the universitas fidelium did not have—autonomy. Again, neither the concept of universitas nor that of the cives was in any way new, but the combination of the two was new, and in its succinct formula this combination at 37 The issue may be stated also in terms of nature and grace : each can serve as the starting point, each has its own inherent principles of working and operation. That the ancient condemnation of duo principia ponere hereticum est received its concrete precision in this very contest is understandable. How much in fact the dichotomy between the cives and the fideles had influenced even thorough-going hierocratic writers can be gathered from Paris's contemporary Durandus de S. Porciano: "Potestati temporali vel saeculari subsunt christiani non ut christiani . . . sed solum ut cives. Potestati autem spirituali et ecclesiae subsunt ut christiani et fideles" (cited from Wilks, Problem, p. 139, n. 2 ) ; "quilibet laicus christianus est utrique judicio subditus, uni ut civis, ali ut christianus" (ibid.).

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once gave birth to a whole cluster of new ideas. The laws are not given by some superior authority, but made by the cives, who in their totality are what Marsiglio so exquisitely termed the legislator humanus, where the accent lies on the humanus. Man himself determines the path of his own society by making the laws; the reverse is also true, that is, nonhuman, divine laws can by their very nature have no claim to be proper laws which can be enforced. The citizens, and no one else, have the faculty of discerning what is in their interests and what promotes the bene vivere within their own society. Once again we meet here the empirical approach, which upon closer inspection is the result partly of the autonomous character attributable to the citizens, and partly of the "naturalism" that underlies the theme itself. Marsiglio was indeed far from the traditional standpoint when he considered the law as an oculus ex multis oculis—it would be hard to improve upon this. What matters is the citizens' consent as the material ingredient of the law. Faith of the subjects in the function of the lawgiver is replaced by the consent of the citizens, the lawmakers, who thereby themselves infuse coercive character to the law. That the concept of nation though once again a term of some familiarity, assumed its peculiar flavour when thrown against the empirical background needs only to be mentioned to be properly appreciated. Similarly, that what is correctly termed constitutionalism could only now begin to be the subject of scholarly treatment seems equally understandable, for as long as the fidelis formed the backbone of society, as long as the universitas fidelium was the all-embracing entity, there could not very well come about anything even faintly approaching a constitutional development. But the universitas civium was a thisworldly human society, and the legislator was human. Evidently, the civis also could be a fidelis, but for matters which concerned the living in human society, the accent falls on the cives who, one ought to add, happen to be fideles.39 With the rebirth of the citizen there appeared also the practical implementation of the principle of division to which I have referred earlier, but with important consequences. For whilst in the antecedent period the fidelis embraced both the cleric and the layman, who in their aggregate constituted the universitas fidelium, now the civis came to embrace cleric and layman alike, who in their aggregate constituted the universitas civium. But the essential point is that in 38

See on this Ullmann, Principles, p. 250. This conception will in the late fourteenth century also invade the purely ecclesiastical sphere and emerge as conciliarism. 39

The Rebirth of the Citizen

23

the universitas fidelium it was the clergy which was the tonangebende Schicht, whilst in the universitas civium it is the laity, and this not for reasons of any special qualifications, but for reasons of sheer numbers. O n e of the most significant features is that the principle of numericalquantitative majority came of necessity to be applied, for as nothing in their value distinguished the citizens, only counting by heads remained. N o charismatic qualities were required for the status of the citizen: above all, he is not a subject, but is autonomous. Civitas sibi princeps (Bartolus) expresses this idea in contemporary juristic language. 40 There is no need for me to point out especially that the medievalmonarchic principle, culminating in the "Rex Dei gratia," had outlived its usefulness and that the only form of government that could reasonably be squared with the universitas civium was republican. Is the republicanism of the Trecento—even apart from Rienzo—and the Quattrocento a mere frill? Is not the development, especially in the fifteenth century north of the Alps a reminder of how little persuasive powers the (divinely) instituted monarchy h a d ? T h e universitas civium is the citizens' own, and theirs alone; it is natural and therefore human. This fundamental conception was a necessary prerequisite for the later emergence of civic rights, of the bürgerliche Grundrechte, though the claim to civic liberty was already embryonic in Marsiglio's system of thought. T h e resultant conception of a civilitas originalis and a civilitas acquisita (of an original and acquired Staatsbürgerschaft or cittandinanza), coined as this was by jurists in the late fourteenth century, reveals on the one hand the advance in thought, but shows on the other hand the dependence on properly medieval models : a comparison with John of Salisbury's use and meaning of the term civilitas with the later use, including Dante's and Rienzo's, demonstrates that once more from a harmless term a new concept emerged. It seems quite impossible to exaggerate the fructifying effects of this rebirth of m a n and of the citizen. At the very time when the professional jurist spoke of a civilitas originalis or acquisita, the humanist Salutati conveys in his own statement the very essence of citizenship : "Quid est Florentinum esse nisi tarn natura q u a m lege civem esse [Romanum] et per consequens liberum esse, nor servum." T h e appearance of a monographic literature specially devoted to the citizens' life, such as Palmieri's Delia Vita Civile (ca. 1430), is a significant signpost. Not only does a 40 For this see Walter Ullmann, "De Bartoli sententia : Concilium prepraesentat mentem populi," Bartolo da Sassoferrato: studi e documenti per il VI centenario (Milan, 1962), I I , 705 ff.

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rational inquiry into the psychology of m a n now begin (e.g., Paolo Vergerio), but the first glimmerings of a historical scholarship proper also emerge. W h a t has once been so felicitously termed a Naturlehre des geschichtlichen Lebens 41 has appeared: nature itself has become the operational instrument with which to explain the historical process in place of the partly irrational, the partly abstract, of the resource to providence, to divinity, as the moving agent of the past. History was brought down from the pedestal of eschatology to the level of the natural, h u m a n reason. And is it not quite revealing that the tool which made possible this reorientation was the concept of the citizen, for it was through this concept that, to mention but one example, Leonardo Bruni could offer a historical and genetic explanation of the course of Rome's history? 42 It is time to offer some conclusions. As a historical phenomenon the Renaissance and its humanism cannot and should not be isolated from the historical framework and context within which it emerged and developed. Isolation of its purely cultural and literary aspects leads to a one-sided and hence unhistoric picture of the manifestations of a period which indeed have to offer more than merely schöngeistige reflexions. I n an entirely different context I have once spoken of the risky and dangerous procedure which bars a proper understanding of medieval history, due to the facile manner in which we are inclined to view medieval expressions, phrases, terms, intitulations, and so forth, as mere formulae which, because they are mere formulae, dispense us from analysing their contents and substance. Here we are confronted with a very similar feature : the concept and the resultant meaningful term of fidelis seems to me the obvious term with which to start. And once the intrinsic meaning of the fidelis is grasped, the consequences and implications at once appear, such as sub/ditus, the concession principle, the theme of royal grace, and so on. Concentration on the fidelis seemed to me an essential 41 Hans Baron, "Das Erwacken des historischen denkens in humanismus des Quattrocento," Historische Zeitschrift, G X L V I I (1933), 15. 42 See ibid., pp. 12 ff.; Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955) I, 49, 52 ff. See Leonardo Bruni, Historiarum Florentini populi Libri XII, ed. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Città di Gastello, 1915), pp. xix-3, p. 14, 11. 10 ff.: "Declinationem autem Romani imperii ab eo fere tempore ponendam reor quo, amissa libertate, imperatoribus servire Roma incepit . . . Quot enim reipublicae lumina sub Julio Caesare extincta sunt! quantis principibus civitas orbata! . . . quot absumpti cives! quod deleti . . . [Nero:] Quanta sub illo strages civium! quanta caedes patrum facta est . . ." Cf. also p. 22, 1. 2 7 : the Roman empire "a populo Romano institutum atque perfectum est," and the ruin of the empire lay in that the potestas populi Romani went over to the princeps.

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prerequisite, if the full significance of the emergence of the civis is to be understood, and only by contrasting two historically explicable notions can one hope to grasp the intrinsic meaning and import of both. From the rebirth of man, of him who had been washed away by baptism, was no more or less than his reinstatement, which led to the revival of the ancient classics, and to the rebirth of the citizen and the birth of the universitas civium standing next to the universitas fidelium. The law was fetched down from the heavens and put into the hands of the citizens, now considered quite capable of looking after themselves. The comparative ease with which the theoretical operation was performed is explicable, on the one hand, by the availability of an adequate vocabulary and terminology, though their contents experienced considerable change, and, on the other hand, by the manifestations, observable throughout the thirteenth century, of realistic naturalism in most forms of creative activities. That the soil in virtually all relevant parts of Europe was thus potently prepared for the very idea of this rebirth of the citizen is historically understandable. This part of the Renaissance was therefore a general European feature, and no one country or cultural circle can lay claim to a monopoly. The consequence was a veritable reevaluation of principles relative to public government, though it would seem profitable to stress that this reevaluation was conditioned, if not promoted, by properly medieval elements. The unipolarity of the fidelis was replaced by the bipolarity of fidelis and civis, bringing about, after terrible birth pangs and loss of blood, constitutionalism and republicanism. Precisely because the rebirth of the citizen was—to put it at its lowest—an epiphenomenon of the general Renaissance and had firm historic roots, it would seem to have embodied strong and resilient forces, so strong in fact that it emerged as a phenomenon of perennial interest to men of a reflective cast of mind. What once gave rise to the postulate of a vita activa civilis or a vita civilis politica has become the hallmark of political life in modern society, which has at least in this respect proved itself the heir of the Renaissance.

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Popular Initiative in Renaissance France1 by J. Russell Major

I

ACOB BURGKHARDT FOUND in the peculiar political situation in Italy one of the principal causative forces of the Renaissance, but instead of emphasizing the virtues of republican Florence and Venice, his book leaves the reader with the impression that the tyrant was the typical figure on the scene. Burckhardt attributed the growth of individualism to the struggle for power, and to this individualism, combined with the revival of antiquity and the genius of the Italian people, he attributed "the discovery of the world and of man," a phrase which he thought summed up the very essence of the Renaissance. Recent historians put more emphasis on the economic and social situation, but the picture of Italy as a land of petty tyrants remains in the popular mind. Most of those who study the kingdoms to the north during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stress the formation of territorial states and the growth of royal absolutism. With a few exceptions they avoid the use of the words "tyrant" and "despotism," but they leave the reader with the impression that the Renaissance saw the substitution of royal initiative and royal government for popular initiative and self-government. If this substitution actually took place, it becomes necessary to attribute the creative energy that led to new advances in the European civilization and that carried it far beyond the confines of the tiny peninsular continent primarily to the kings and not to the people. During the late nineteenth century there emerged in Germany a group of historians known as the corporative school, who advanced a completely contrary theory of the nature of the state and society, although, so far as I know, students of the idea of the Renaissance have blissfully ignored their existence.2 According to the corporative historians3 the 1 I am indebted to my colleague Professor George P. Cuttino for reading and criticizing this article. 2 Neither the school nor its most important members are mentioned in Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948). 3 For an essay on the writings of the corporative school see Émile Lousse, La

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feudal age was essentially individualistic because it was characterized by contracts between lord and vassal. From the dawn of the thirteenth century, however, men began to organize themselves into corporative groups, such as guilds, universities, and towns, and later, especially during the breakdown of monarchical authority in the fourteenth century, into local leagues of clergymen, nobles, towns, and other groups, that were called orders, or estates. These estates sent deputies to assemblies that met on their own initiative when the occasion demanded. Both the corporation and the estate were largely self-governing and they reached the peak of their independence during the first half of the fifteenth century. The revival of royal and princely power in the late fifteenth century led not to the destruction of the estates, but rather to a new constitutional arrangement. In Germany, the corporative historians argue, the princes persuaded their subjects to abandon their narrow provincialism by creating single representative institutions for all their lands to be used as instruments for welding into territorial states the haphazard conglomerations of estates, smaller corporative groups, and surviving feudal lordships. What emerged in Renaissance Germany, therefore, were not little absolute states ruled by the princes, but rather dualistic states, in which the power of the prince was balanced by the power of the estates as expressed by their deputies in their Landtage, or Estates-General. Only in the last half of the seventeenth century were the Landtage weakened or destroyed by the princes; only then did princely absolutism emerge in Germany. This interpretation of German history has become so widely accepted that it has found its way into such general surveys as those of Barraclough4 and Fay.5 Recently Carsten6 has published two excellent books, which, while eschewing most of the theoretical apparatus of the corporasociété d'ancien régime: Organisation et représentation corporatives (Louvain, 1943), I, 1-62. The remainder of the volume interprets medieval Europe from the standpoint of the corporatists. More recent writings of this school are often included in Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (Louvain, 1938). Album Helen Maud Cam (Louvain, 1961), II, contains a list of the contents of the first twenty-four volumes published in this series. 4 Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (Oxford, 1947). 5 Sidney B. Fay, The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to 1786 (New York, 1937). 6 Francis L. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia (Oxford, 1941); Princes and Parliaments in Germany (Oxford, 1959).

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tive school, provide conclusive proof of the widespread influence of representative institutions in Renaissance Germany. The corporatists have been less successful in imposing their interpretation on other countries, perhaps because when their influence reached its height in the late 1930's a new and perverted form of the corporative state was being established in many European countries. Nevertheless, the corporatists won some support outside Germany and count among their numbers such men as Émile Lousse, a Belgian who includes among his credentials the presidency of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions.7 The corporative school has found no adherents in the Anglo-Saxon world. English historians have been especially belligerent toward the attempts of the corporatists to force the facts of their country's history to fit into their theoretical pattern. Sir Maurice Powicke felt it necessary to remind the readers of the English Historical Review in 1946 that the corporatists were not "seers or prophets," but rather "distinguished historians" in their own countries.8 Since the end of World War II many studies of representative institutions have appeared. Few of them have adopted the theoretical framework of the corporative school, but they have clearly indicated that popular initiative was not lacking in the various European states. Histories revealing the role of the citizenry in municipal government also have appeared. The most significant of these works from the standpoint of the Renaissance was Hans Baron's The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance.9 Baron dared to argue that liberty, not tyranny, was the mother of culture and that in the active civic careers led by the citizenry, including the humanists, is to be found one of the principal motivating forces of the Italian Renaissance. Thus two conflicting approaches to the Renaissance confront each other. In one view the Renaissance is depicted as an age when tyrants in Italy and absolute monarchs in the north dominated the scene. In the other the Renaissance is seen as a period when the people themselves, through their representative, municipal, and other institutions 7 Leading French historians who have accepted many of the ideas of the corporatists are Georges de Lagarde, François Olivier-Martin, and Étienne Delcambre. 8 The English Historical Review, LXI (1946), 251. 9 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955), 2 vols.

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and through their individual deeds were the principal creative force. I suggest that the latter interpretation more nearly fits Renaissance France, a period which I see as lasting from the mid-fifteenth until the early seventeenth century. At first glance France appears to have been the country par excellence of the monarch because no Estates-General emerged as a permanent institution through which the people could act at the national level as a balance to the desires of the crown. But when one searches for the explanation of this failure he finds it not in the desires of an all-powerful ruler to destroy representative assemblies, but rather in the strength of provincial and local institutions through which the people preferred to exercise their initiative. Indeed, in several periods the French kings made sincere efforts to create an Estates-General just as the German princes and other Renaissance rulers were doing. Charles VII, for example, during the early part of his reign frequently summoned the deputies of the three estates from all or most of his kingdom in spite of the protests of the outlying provinces, but he abandoned this practice around 1440 because in the crucial matter of taxation he found large assemblies to be of propaganda value only. Time and again he had persuaded the deputies to vote large sums to combat the English invaders only to find that the provincial loyalties of the people were so strong that they refused to recognize the validity of a grant made in the national assembly. Before he could secure the money he had to win the consent of the provincial estates, for consent at the provincial level was not automatic. Indeed, Charles could rarely induce a locality to vote its share of the levy granted by the Estates-General. Thus, the three estates of La Marche voted only 2,500 of the 12,000 livres levied on the province as a result of a grant made by the larger assembly in 1425, and the three estates of Auvergne voted only 30,000 of the 45,000 livres levied on them as a result of a grant made to the King in 1431.10 The Estates-General did not meet to vote taxes between 1440 and 1483, but in 1484 the deputies assembled at Tours and consented to a taille of 1,500,000 livres. Once more the provincial estates had to be consulted before the money could be collected. The Burgundian delegates were so fearful that their constituents would accuse them of granting concessions to the king that they obtained a letter from him stating that they had not given final consent to any tax while at the Estates10 J. Russell Major, Representative 1559 (Madison, 1960), pp. 21-39.

Institutions

in Renaissance France,

1421-

Popular Initiative in Renaissance France

31

General and that all levies had to be approved by the three estates of the province. Their unwillingness to recognize the taxing authority of the national assembly was reinforced when the provincial estates met shortly thereafter and refused to vote a single livre of its share of the levy consented to at Tours. In 1485 when the king levied a larger tax than that which had been agreed upon by the Estates-General none of the provincial estates protested, and when he failed to convoke the national assembly to vote taxes thereafter they were equally indifferent. Thus the French people's loyalty to their provincial institutions, not the enmity of the crown, was the principal cause for the failure of the Estates-General to become an effective institution during the fifteenth century.11 In 1560 the crown renewed its efforts to make the Estates-General a useful institution, but the deputies who assembled at Orléans refused to vote a tax. The humanist chancellor, L'Hôpital, sent them home with instructions to consult their constituents on how the king should raise money to pay his debts, and a second assembly was ordered to hear their replies. The crown promised that the three estates could appoint a committee to supervise the collection of any tax they decided to vote, but even this concession brought no change of heart. When the deputies assembled again some months later at Pontoise the nobility and the third estate were once more recalcitrant. The clergy, frightened by their colleagues' suggestion that the king should solve his difficulties by helping himself to their revenue and temporal goods, proved more cooperative and voted a large sum. From that time until the Revolution the clergy were assembled periodically to consent to taxation. In return, the king gave them the right to collect the taxes that they granted, to have permanent syndics to look after their privileges, and to submit petitions for redress.12 In short, the clergy became as nearly a self-governing body as the estates did in Germany. Other orders would probably have won similar privileges if they had been more cooperative. Once more the people's preference for exercising their initiative at the provincial level had cost them the opportunity to make a permanent place for the Estates-General. Taxation was not the only matter that the crown consulted the people about, for the kings wanted to receive their subjects' advice and to associate them with their policies. Assemblies for such political purposes 11

Ibid., pp. 94-116. J. Russell Major, "The Third Estate in the Estates General at Pontoise," Speculum, X X X I X (1954), 460-476. 12

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rarely required a full meeting of the Estates-General; a group of specialists on the matter under discussion was sufficient. The towns were often asked to send deputies to advise the crown on economic and currency matters, the Parlements on judicial affairs, and mixed groups of notables on more general subjects. These meetings, especially frequent during the early stages of the Renaissance monarchy, lent a popular flavor to the government, but as no fixed composition or procedure was ever established they never became institutionalized.13 The Huguenots were the only other group that established a selfgoverning institution at the national level. They had two types of representative institutions, the synod and the political assembly, both being organized at the national and local levels. At the base of the synod was the consistory of the individual churches; above the consistories were the colloquies; above the colloquies were the provincial synods; and above the provincial synods was a national synod. Each type of assembly was composed of both ministers and elders. The lay-dominated political assemblies were organized in a similar manner and became the governing institutions of this religious denomination that truly formed a state within a state. They provide a signal proof of the initiative and selfgoverning capabilities of the French people of the Renaissance.14 Thus two groups in Renaissance France, the Catholic clergy and the Huguenots, formed effective national representative institutions over their local institutions because they felt threatened—the clergy by the laity and the Huguenots by the Catholics. Most of the population never felt that their privileges were in sufficient danger to warrant such action and they were unwilling to cooperate with the crown in forming an effective Estates-General even when offered the privilege of controlling the taxes that they voted, a practice which lay at the heart of the dualism of the German principalities so often described by the corporative historians. This situation gives rise to several questions. Why did the mass of the French people feel so secure in its privileges? The answer seems obvious: because the kings never threatened them. But why did the kings respect the privileges of their subjects? Why did they not break the power of the 13

Major, Representative Institutions, pp. 47-49, 52-53, 117-120, 127-130. There is no recent study of sufficient length on either Huguenot institution, but for two recent articles see Marcel Reulos, "Synodes, assemblées politiques des réformés français et théories des états," Anciens pays et assemblées d'états, X X I V (1962), 9 7 - 1 1 1 ; and Robert M. Kingdon, "Calvinism and Democracy: Some Political Implications of Debates on French Reformed Church Organisation, 1562-1574," The American Historical Review, LXIX (1964), 393-401. 14

Popular Initiative in Renaissance France

33

provincial estates, the municipal governments, and the other local institutions through which the people exercised their initiative to the point of transgressing the royal will? The answer, I think, lies in the fact that the kings lacked the power to take such action even if they had so desired.15 During the Renaissance the French army and militia rarely reached 25,000 men in time of peace and twice that number in time of war. Even with the rapid transportation and communication of today and with the immense superiority of the arms and the training of the modern soldier, such a force could hardly subject a population of 15,000,000 or more persons. This fact was doubly true at that time because the great nobles and towns could still put in the field armies that were nearly as well armed and well trained as those of the king. Furthermore, the king could not count on the obedience of his own troops. Mercenaries were notoriously unreliable, and the French contingents were officered by nobles who had no intention of making war on the privileged members of society. As late as the Fronde royal armies still changed sides at the beckoning of a Conde or a Turenne. The king might force a few individual nobles and towns or even several provinces to obedience, but he could not launch a successful frontal attack on the privileges of his subjects. A second factor that prevented the kings from destroying the people's role in government was that the royal bureaucracy was as inadequate as the royal army. Around 1505 about one Frenchman in 1,250 was a royal official. Today about one American in 20 works for the federal government. Each of us, therefore, claims 62.5 times as much of an official's time as the Renaissance Frenchman. Furthermore, in spite of shorter working hours and numerous coffee breaks, the American bureaucrat, with the aid of the telephone, typewriter, and numerous other machines, can do far more work in one day than the most conscientious official of four centuries ago. The historian is sometimes surprised at the minor affairs that occasionally claimed a Renaissance officeholder's attentions, but the documents concerning such activities should be weighed against the obvious fact that many details must have escaped the worker's notice. Montaigne was correct when he said that the average Frenchman did not have contact with royal authority more 15 For a general discussion of the nature of the Renaissance monarchy see Major, Representative Institutions, pp. 3-20; and J. Russell Major, "The French Renaissance Monarchy as Seen through the Estates General," Studies in the Renaissance, IX (New York, 1962), 113-125. The discussion in the two following paragraphs is taken from these works.

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than once or twice in a lifetime16 and Cardinal Richelieu was equally near the truth when he declared that the authority of the king was scarcely known in Languedoc.17 If the king left his subjects to their own devices to a degree that is difficult for the modern man to imagine, it becomes evident that the people must have had institutions through which they governed themselves. The most important of these institutions were the provincial estates. The first provincial estates were formed in the thirteenth century, but not until the Hundred Years' War were they established in most parts of France. In some instances the initiative seems to have emanated from the crown or the local royal officials; in others it came from the great feudal nobles who established representative assemblies in their fiefs or from the local inhabitants who bound themselves together for their mutual protection.18 At the close of the Hundred Years' War Charles VII ceased to convoke regularly a few of the provincial estates, but the crown never adopted a general policy of opposition to these institutions. Louis XI actually revived some of the provincial estates in the early part of his reign and from that time until the end of the Renaissance they met regularly in about two thirds of France and occasionally elsewhere.19 Although kings and royal officials must have been frequently irritated by the actions of the provincial estates, their overall attitude was friendly. In 1556 the leading inhabitants of the southwest pointed out to Henry II that although a number of local estates existed in their part of France, no general assembly was organized in which the estates in the entire region could meet and deal with their common problems. Henry, in keeping with the Renaissance attitude toward representative institutions, wrote his lieutenant general in Guyenne telling him to have 16 Cicely V. Wedgwood, Richelieu and the French Monarchy (New York, 1950), p. 133. 17 Cardinal Richelieu, Testament politique, ed. Louis André (Paris, 1947), pp. 233-234. 18 O n the diverse origins of the provincial estates see H. Prentout, "Les états provinciaux en France," Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, I (July, 1928), 632-647; Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, "De quelques problèmes relatifs aux états provinciaux," Journal des Savants (August—October, 1928), pp. 315-357; Étienne Delcambre, Les états du Velay des origines à 1642 (Saint-Étienne, 1938), pp. 5-10. 19 Major, Representative Institutions, pp. 39-45, 50-52. Later Louis X I may have become disillusioned about the estates (see Helmut G. Koenigsberger, " T h e Parliament of Piedmont during the Renaissance, 1460-1560," Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, X I [Louvain, 1952], 98, n. 1).

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35

the estates of every diocese and province in his government name one deputy from each order to attend an assembly to be held at a time and place of the lieutenant general's choosing.20 Between 1556 and 1605 the estates of Guyenne met over sixty times.21 Thus a Renaissance monarch had created a representative institution at his subjects' request, the deputies of which were drawn from a territory larger than any other in France with the possible exception of Languedoc. Most of these estates consisted of the leading clergymen, the nobles with fiefs, and the deputies of the principal towns of the province, but there were many exceptions. Only the bishops and twenty-two noblemen were permitted to participate for their orders in the estates of Languedoc during the Renaissance. At the opposite extreme there were some local assemblies to which only villages and small towns sent deputies. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the suffrage was decidedly extended. The parish priest, the noble without a fief, and the village peasant won voices in many of the assemblies of the estates from which they had formerly been excluded. In Languedoc, where no significant extension of the suffrage occurred during this period, the disfranchised elements of the population nevertheless demanded to be heard. Only the towns, where the bourgeois patricians, royal officials, and lawyers held control, generally failed to increase the suffrage, and even here the disorders of the Wars of Religion enabled the lower classes to win temporary recognition in many localities.22 This extension of the number of people who participated in representative institutions by attending the assemblies or by voting for deputies to attend was accompanied by an actual increase in the number of functions performed by the estates. We are often led to believe that their only important duty was to vote the taxes that the king requested, but this is not so. Through the petitions that they submitted to the crown they exercised an influence on royal policy in regard both to the nation as a whole and to their particular province. Within the individual provinces the estates were the dominant influence in law, legislation, and administration. During the Renaissance the customs of nearly every jurisdiction in France were codified. This codification was done in as20

Archives départementales, Haute-Garonne, G 3796, No. 3. T h e estimate of the number of meetings is based on research in the archives of southwestern France, especially at Agen. The provincial estates of Guyenne enjoyed a brief revival after the death of Henry IV, but the last known meeting was in 1635. 22 J. Russell Major, The Deputies to the Estates General of Renaissance France (Madison, 1960). 21

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semblies of the three estates. Thus, what we would now call private law as well as some aspects of public law were actually determined by the people, not by the king. If it became necessary to revise or clarify the custom, new assemblies were held for this purpose.23 Equally important was the administrative role of the estates. This role was exercised in several ways. In the first place, while the estates rarely appropriated all the money that the king requested, they levied additional sums to support a bureaucracy of their own. All the estates had permanent officials who acted for them during the period that the estates were not in session. In some of the smaller assemblies the municipal officials of the principal towns served by right as syndics or principal executives. Thus the consuls of Agen were also the syndics of the estates of Agenais. In all the larger estates and in many of the smaller ones syndics who served as administrators and permanent representatives were elected. Much of their time was spent at court on the affairs of the province, but even when at home they were ever watchful to protect local privileges and to carry out the administrative decisions of the estates. Often the estates appointed clerks and established archives to keep their records. The documentation that has come down to us from the estates of Burgundy and Languedoc is vastly superior to that of the English Parliament during the Renaissance. In most localities where provincial estates were active, the officials of the estates, not those of the king, apportioned and collected the taxes.24 The provincial estates used their power to tax and to hire officials to undertake projects that they conceived to be in their interests. They voted money to build roads, bridges, and canals, to establish postal services, and to support other activities that would help the economy. They raised and equipped armies, they built and repaired fortifications, they constructed buildings to house convents and hospitals, and they undertook to relieve the needs of the poor, although in the field of social welfare they lagged behind modern legislatures. Educational activities did not fail to receive their attention.25 In 1535 the estates of Languedoc 23

Major, Representative Institutions, p. 6. For a discussion of the sources and secondary works on the provincial estates see J. Russell Major, "French Representative Assemblies: Research Opportunities and Research Published," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, I (1964), pp. 181-219. 25 The introduction to the inventory of the archives of the estates of Burgundy provides an indication of the varied activities of such institutions. See Joseph Gamier, Archives départementales de la Côte-d'Or, inventaire sommaire, série C, introduction AUX tomes III et IV, pub. Jean Rigault (Dijon, 1959) ; Roger Doucet, Les institutions de la France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1948), I, 347-359. 24

Popular Initiative in Renaissance France

37

rejected the petition of the faculties of the Universities of Toulouse and Montpellier for exemption from the taille, and in 1579 the estates sought legal action from Parlement to prevent the faculties of these institutions from cutting classes so often. But if the estates were guilty of this all-too-modern legislative attitude of insisting that members of university faculties pay taxes and attend classes, they were also capable of a more helpful approach. In 1542 the estates of Languedoc sought the assistance of the king and the Catholic Church in increasing the salary of the faculty at Toulouse.26 By the late Renaissance the estates of Quercy appropriated annually 1,100 ecus for the support of the University of Cahors and 1,000 écus for those persons instructing the youth in the smaller towns of the little province.27 Individual faculty members and scholars occasionally received financial support from the estates if their projects seemed practical. A member of the medical faculty of Montpellier was given 60 écus by the estates of Languedoc in 1547 in recognition for his efforts to grow plants that had medicinal value.28 It was not an age, however, when financial support was given only to scientists, for the work of the historian won monetary recognition from the representatives of the people. When the estates of Languedoc learned that the royal historiographer was going to write a description of their province, they voted him 100 ecus and promised him an additional sum upon completion of his work if his book proved to be "useful," that is, if it supported their privileges.29 Financial support for historians who defended the rights and liberties of Languedoc increased rapidly during the second quarter of the seventeenth century, when the estates seemed threatened the most, but on the whole only after the close of the Renaissance did the estates display much interest in specific academic activities, and not until the Enlightenment did the artist and the humanist receive recognition. The Renaissance was an age of popular initiative, but in France this energy was not directed toward humanistic and artistic activities. The control that the provincial estates exercised over taxation also 26 André Baudouin and Felix E. C. Pasquier, Archives départementales de l'Haute-Garonne, inventaire sommaire, série C (Toulouse, 1903), II, 28, 89, 35-36. 27 Archives départementales, Gironde, G 3979. Bibliotèque Nationale, Ms. Clairambault 360, fols. 12-14v. 28 Baudouin and Pasquier, Archives départementales de l'Haute-Garonne, II, 149. 29 J. Russell Major, "The Grown and the Aristocracy in Renaissance France," The American Historical Review, LXIX (April, 1964), p. 643.

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Scene

enabled them to influence the actions of royal bureaucracy. I t was usually their task to vote and collect the taxes to pay the salaries of the governor, the lesser officials, and the troops located in their respective provinces. Failure to vote the necessary sum was exceptional, but the possibility of such denial of funds was always present and made officials hesitant to offend local susceptibilities even in the interest of the king. Furthermore, the estates often voted sums in addition to those requested by the crown in spite of the efforts of the Renaissance monarchs to check the practice. Part of the additional money appropriated was used to supplement the income of the governor and the other officials. I n 1620 the three estates of Languedoc not only voted their governor and members of his family their usual salaries and gifts, but also granted him 30,000 livres in consideration of his extraordinary expenses, 132,000 livres to reimburse him for recent military expenses, and 10,800 livres for "his great services." T h e king's secretary of state who handled the affairs of Languedoc was voted 1,500 livres and his assistant, 300. Other officials were often remembered. Thus the governor and the principal royal officials in the province were as much the representatives of the people as they were of the king, and to a lesser extent the secretaries of state and other officials at court were brought within their orbit. Under such circumstances a governor who could influence the king was more valuable to a province than one who could not. For this reason the three estates of Brittany asked the king to make Cardinal Richelieu their governor. W h o else was in a better position to protect their liberties and further their petitions at court? Provence sought the services of the Cardinal's demented brother. 30 A governor or other official who failed to cater to vocal elements of the population or who proved unable to influence royal decisions relative to a province could expect no special emoluments. Indeed, the estates of Provence failed to vote the ineffectual duke of Guise his salary or the money to pay his troops in 1629 or 1630. Thus the right to vote and collect taxes not only made it possible for the provincial estates to give the king less than he requested, as they usually did, but also enabled them to pay royal officials to persuade the king to accept their decision. 31 T h e provincial estates were not the only institutions through which Renaissance Frenchmen exerted their initiative in government and administration. Numerous towns throughout France possessed charters giving them considerable control over their internal affairs. I n spite of 30 31

Ibid. Ibid.

Popular Initiative

in Renaissance

France

39

statements to the contrary, the towns held their own, or nearly so, against the encroachments of royal authority during the sixteenth century. Indeed, some towns like Le Puy and Dijon actually increased their privileges, while many new towns won charters for the first time. This continued strength of the towns should come as no surprise when we remember that the French Renaissance was marked by economic prosperity and population growth. 32 Within their own jurisdictions the towns were even more active than the provincial estates were in theirs. They levied and collected taxes for their own needs and those of the king. T h e amount of the king's taxes was not as narrowly subjected to his will as has usually been supposed. Deputies from the various towns frequently journeyed to court to negotiate for reductions ; rarely did they return home without some success. Lyons thought that it could confront the crown better alone than in conjunction with the small, neighboring towns and villages. By refusing to cooperate with the outlying districts in such matters Lyons contributed to the failure of provincial estates to meet periodically in Lyonnais. 33 T h e towns were active in regulating economic matters, in enforcing law and order, and in rendering justice. They built fortifications, bought artillery and munitions, and employed troops that were normally used in self-defense but during troublous times were sometimes dispatched on military missions elsewhere. I n the fields of health, education, and welfare the towns were much more active than the provincial estates. T h e towns frequently financed and controlled primary and secondary schools, and occasionally financially aided universities. 34 T h u s the towns provide an excellent example of the initiative exercised by the people of Renaissance France. T h e sharp distinction that has so often been drawn between them and the towns of Italy had been exaggerated. Lyons may have been less independent of the king of France than Florence was of the emperor, but her citizens nevertheless possessed many rights and liberties. T h e vast majority of the inhabitants of Renaissance France still lived in the country. Here the seigniory, of course, has been depicted as dying in every century since the high Middle Ages, but the demands of the peasantry in 1789 suggest that it still had a considerable amount of life 32 Doucet, Les institutions, I, 360-363. Doucet does not go as far as I would in denying that the French towns lost most of their authority to the kings during the Renaissance. 33 Ibid., pp. 386-391 ; Major, Representative Institutions, p. 42. 34 Doucet, Les institutions, I, 380-393.

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at that date. Indeed, the codification of the customs during the Renaissance contributed to the preservation of most of the judicial rights of the seigneur. What he lost was the controlling influence that he had once wielded in village administration. It was not the king, however, who replaced him at the local level, but the villagers themselves. By the dawn of the sixteenth century they had organized themselves into corporate groups that could sue and be sued. When matters arose that affected their common interest they held meetings after church. Every head of a household was permitted to attend even if that head happened to be a woman. Among the duties of the village assembly was the election periodically of a syndic or other official to carry out the group's decisions and to represent its interest. These village communities attended to matters concerning the management of the common lands and the repairs of the church and the cemetery, and of other buildings. They defended their interests at court when they came into conflict with the seigneur, the curé, or other villages. In some instances the larger villages even operated schools for the young. During the course of the sixteenth century more and more of the villages were called upon to send deputies to bailliage assemblies to elect deputies to the Estates-General or to deal with matters concerning the bailliage itself. Most important of all, the village assemblies elected the official who assessed and collected taxes in the community. Thus even at the village level a wide degree of self-government was evident in Renaissance France and, if anything, the amount of self-government increased during the period.35 Popular initiative was less clearly felt in foreign matters than in domestic, but towns and representative assemblies were sometimes consulted before important actions were taken, or were asked to ratify treaties. The famous meeting of the Estates-General in 1439, for example, was summoned to advise the king on whether he should make peace with England. The invasion of Italy in 1494 was preceded by assemblies of prelates and nobles at Lyons on March 17 and of the deputies of the towns on April 7. The three estates at Troyes in 1420 ratified a treaty with England excluding the dauphin, Charles, from the throne. The treaties with Maximilian of Austria in 1482, with the Habsburgs, England, and Spain in 1492-1493, with England in 1525, and with Charles V in 1529 and 1544 were ratified by the provincial estates, by the towns, or by both. Sometimes the king joined the estates in break35

Ibid., pp. 396-402; Major, The Deputies, esp. pp. 124-127.

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41

ing a treaty. In 1506 Louis XII used the petition of the three estates of Tours as an excuse to break the treaty calling for the marriage of his daughter Claude to the future Emperor Charles V so that she could marry the count of Angoulême, afterwards Francis I. Francis I himself used the desires expressed by the three estates of Burgundy as an excuse not to cede the province to the Emperor as he had agreed to do by the terns of the Treaty of Madrid ( 1526) .36 Thus popular initiative was still a prominent factor in Renaissance France and, I suspect, in other countries as well. This fact, more than the role of the monarchs, should be stressed when we seek to explain the creative energy of an age that began to lift Western civilization to heights far above those attained by the Islamic and Chinese worlds and that began to carry this culture to other parts of the world. To popular initiative, largely, we should attribute what has been called somewhat inacurately "the discovery of the world and of man." 36 Major, Representative Institutions, pp. 45-47, 58-59, 120-125, 130-140. Both Louis XII and Francis I seem to have encouraged the estates to request that the treaties be broken, but it is nevertheless significant that the climate of opinion was such that a king could use his subjects' desires as an excuse to break his word.

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Arms versus Letters: Towards a Definition of Spanish Fifteenth-Century Humanism by Peter Russell

THE NOTION THAT IT MIGHT be fruitful to look at Spanish fifteenthcentury humanism in terms of a conflict between arms and letters is not—as might, perhaps, be supposed—wholly suggested by twentiethcentury historical hindsight. Fifteenth-century Spanish writers themselves frequently refer to the existence of such a conflict. Its existence is also confirmed in unmistakable terms by a number of Italian humanists who either knew Spain at firsthand or had dealings with Spaniards. All these witnesses testify to the presence in Spain—and particularly in Castile—of a strong body of opinion which regarded it as both professionally risky and socially unbecoming for any member of the knightly class to involve himself with learning or scholarship. We find this opinion firmly entrenched in 1417, when Enrique de Villena—himself a magnate—complained that many people believed that a caballero should be able only to read and write; he assured these people that, in fact, a knight who took up learning would not, on that account, lose his ability to handle arms. Yet more than seventy years later, in the time of the Catholic Kings, the same assurances were still being given and still being doubted. Only in the 1530's, when Castiglione's view that arms and letters together were an essential part of courtly training became well known in Spain, does this chivalric prejudice recede. The dominance over Spanish society exercised by the aristocracy in the fifteenth century makes it probable that the existence of such a prejudice may have influenced in various ways the development and character of Spanish humanism at that time. A number of general points need to be made now if our examination of the problem is to be undertaken with the correct perspectives. The

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view that there was a conflict between arms and letters is not a view peculiar to Spain. John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, had stressed the need for princes to develop a literary culture. The Provençal Roman de Flamenca depicts as a very unusual person a character who was not only a perfect knight but who had also studied at Paris. Pier Paolo Vergerio, about 1400, suggests that handling arms and studying letters are two disciplines each particularly able to win a man glory and make him virtuous. He suggests, therefore, that the new fame given by letters should also be sought by those who pursue the older fame of arms.1 The French nobility, not the Spanish nobility, is criticised in Il Cortegiano for esteeming only arms and for despising letters and those who cultivate them, though Il Galateo, writing about the same time, complains that Frenchmen and Spaniards share this erroneous belief.2 While I think it certain that the views criticised by Castiglione were held more tenaciously and to greater effect in Spain than elsewhere, they clearly stemmed from European chivalric theory. I must make it clear, too, that I am certainly not the first person to think this topic important. Its interest was detected as long ago as 1925 by Dr. Américo Castro.3 Very recently a young Oxford scholar, Mr. N. G. Round, published a selection of Spanish fifteenth-century references to it.4 Though one could add still more references to his list, the existence of Round's article releases me from any need here to prove how often Spanish writers talked of the conflict between arms and letters. The exact evaluation of all these references, however, is complicated. The arms-and-letters topic is a development of the Latin sapientia et fortitudo topic, used as a rhetorical commonplace in eulogies of princes and in laments for the dead. Some of the Spanish allusions to the topic occur in just such contexts and we have to be careful, therefore, that we do not mistake conventional rhetoric for realistic comment. Some of the Italian references to the contempt for letters felt by the Spanish nobles also must be placed in their correct historical context. As Croce has shown, Italian feeling towards the Aragonese conquerors was, on the 1 Vittorio Russo, "Cavalliers e clercs," Filologia Romanza, V I (1959) pp. 324-325. 2 Baldassare Castiglione, Il Cortegiano . . . annotato . . . da Vittorio Cian, (2nd ed.; Firenze, 1910), p. 104; Il Galateo, De educatione (1504). 3 Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes (Madrid, 1925), pp. 214-215. I am also indebted in this paper to the same author's discussions of the role of the conversos in fifteenth-century Spanish culture, especially in his La realidad histórica de España (México, 1954; México, 1962). 4 Nicholas G. Round, "Renaissance Culture and its Opponents in FifteenthCentury Castile," Modern Language Review, L V I I (1962), pp. 204-215.

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whole, decidedly hostile and sometimes at least Italian criticisms of Spanish lack of letters were inspired by nationalistic feelings.5 Moreover the Italian humanists sometimes had very exclusive criteria about what constituted literacy. Thus the Florentine humanist Vespasiano da Bisticci wrote of a highly cultivated Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458) "non era litterato, ma intendeva benìssimo la lingua toscana."6 The man whose culture was thus dismissed was the owner of the grandest private library in early fifteenth-century Spain, much of it bought in Florence. He was also a Dante specialist, an original poet of distinction, and the greatest patron of learning in the Spain of his time. I close this introduction with one further general observation. Scholars who are concerned with the Renaissance may perhaps conclude too readily that Castiglione's view of the arms-and-letters association was the only defensible one and that the Spanish view we are discussing was, by definition, uncivilised. No doubt in humanistic terms it was uncivilised. But from the point of view of a militant and imperialistic aristocracy the opinion that arms and letters did not easily mix, as a rule of thumb, was not necessarily unsound. The literary career of Santillana himself reveals a good deal about the arms-and-letters controversy in Castile during the first half of the fifteenth century. Santillana took up the topic in a book that he wrote in 1437 for the edification of Prince Henry of Castile, the heir to the throne. "Knowledge," he assured the Prince, "does not blunt the iron of the lance nor weaken the sword in a knight's hand." 7 He went on to show that this assurance was not merely a rhetorical figure appropriate to the dedication of a book to a young prince. He continued by warning Henry against those in his entourage who may decry such books and who may tell him that the business of a ruler or a knight is to concern himself solely with government, defence, and conquest. The need that Santillana felt to defend letters, even at the court of John II of Castile (1406-1454), is particularly interesting. John caused various works of Seneca to be translated into Castilian, and the translator, Alonso de Cartagena, the learned bishop of Burgos, praised John for his wide reading and his great familiarity with the Latin language. These lettered interests are confirmed by John's biographer, Sánchez de 5 Benedetto Croce, La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la Rinascenza (Bari, 1917). 6 Mario Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillan (Paris, 1905), p. lxvii, n. 3. 7 Iñigo López de Mendoza, Proverbios de gloriosa doctrina e fructuosa enseñança (Madrid, 1928), pp. 34-35, 36.

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Arévalo. Yet the King's example was evidently far from converting those, even at court, who thought letters no business of princes. Indeed, John was such an incompetent soldier and ruler that the critics may well have thought that his example proved their point. An interesting letter which Guiniforte Barzizza sent to the Castilian king from Milan in 1433 has some bearing on all this. Barzizza, at length, urges the King to pursue literary studies as well as military success; the splendour which literary studies bestow, he assures the King—possibly with deliberate irony—not only would not detract from his reputation but would enhance it.8 Barzizza had been in Spain (though not in Castile) in 1432. One may conclude that what he heard during that visit had made him, too, consider that a defence of letters was needed at the Castilian court. Perhaps, also, he did not think that the King's moral and theological studies yet qualified for recognition by Italian humanistic standards. When Santillana died, in 1458, the arms-and-letters theme was much to the fore in the laments that the occasion inspired. He was described as the first man of that age of such high rank who had brought together learning and chivalry, the cuirass and the toga. Less conventional comments on the theme had been made during his lifetime. One of his domestic translators, Antón Zorita, evidently seeing an unusual divergence from the aristocratic norm, noted that Santillana treated learned men with respect; Zorita was also bold enough to hint that, great though his master's fame as a warrior was, his love of learning and his knowledge had already secured him a larger reputation.9 Of course, such remarks need to be considered within the social context in which they occurred. Zorita, like other scholars of Santillana's household, was probably a converso—a descendant of Jews forcibly converted during the pogroms of fifty years before—and, as Dr. Castro's studies have shown, as a class the conversos had hopes of improving their own status by improving the social status of professional men of letters within the community. Not even Santillana's prestige, however, served to silence those who held that knights ought not to meddle in scholarship. In 1445 St. Basil's homily De legendis antiquorum libris was translated within his household for the purpose of refuting critics who objected to the study of classical literature there. The translator explains that Santillana, as well as his followers, had been openly criticised for this study. I note, in passing, that the expression studia humanitatis—characteristically translated 8 Text in Andrés Soria, Los humanistas de la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo (Granada, 1956), pp. 187-200. 9 Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillan, p. 376.

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into the vernacular—was used by this translator to describe the studies carried out until Santillana's patronage. They would, of course, hardly have been accepted as such in Italy. The emphasis was always on vernacular translation; Santillana did not know Latin and did not think this shortcoming very grave. He did know Italian very well, as Vespasiano da Bisticci recognised, and he immensely admired the great Italians of the Trecento, particularly Dante. But his basic attitude towards humanistic studies is indicated by a comment that he made about all the vernacular translations which he had commissioned for his own use or for the use of those who lacked his knowledge of modern languages. These translations, he said, offered "repose from the vexations and troubles which life continually brings."10 Learning and literature are thus a relaxation from everyday business, not part of that business. There is a similarity here with the humanism of the Burgundian court, where, too, venacular translation was particularly emphasied and where we encounter aristocratic laymen anxious to initiate themselves into the learning of the clerks. The similarity is not, perhaps, merely fortuitous. As far as I know the arms-versus-letters debate is not very much to the fore in fifteenth-century Catalan writing. Up to the end of the fourteenth century the Aragonese court in Barcelona had patronised all forms of learning and letters with such enthusiasm that such arguments could have carried no serious weight there. Indeed, Spanish critics, and others, often assume that fifteenth-century Italian humanism must have entered Spain through Barcelona and Valencia, particularly since Aragon was in close political contact with Italy at this time. But, in fact, Italian humanism's rather limited penetration of the Iberian Peninsula seems to have been a Castilian, more than a Catalan or Valencian, affair. Under its Castilian dynasty the kingdom of Aragon, moreover, seems to have adopted Castilian attitudes of suspicion towards the association of nobility and learning. When Antonio Becadelli—II Panormita—wrote his biography of Alfonso the Magnanimous, there was no doubt that he had a genuine humanist king to deal with; in that respect Alfonso continued the traditions of his Catalan predecessors. But Il Panormita contrasts the humanistic interests of the emigré Aragonese king in Naples with the dislike and contempt for letters of Spaniards in general. His opinion, presumably, was formed by his observation of the Catalan and Aragonese knights which he had known 10 J. Amador de los Ríos, Obras del Marqués de Santillana p. 482.

(Madrid, 1852),

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there. Of course, once again, this is a strict Italian humanistic judgment. We know that Alfonso's knights wrote a great deal of poetry in Naples. But it is remarkable how little their literary horizons were extended in any way by their stay in Italy. I n a Spanish poem written there the only reading recommended for a court gallant in Naples is limited to romances of chivalry. Historians of Spanish culture have been anxious to appropriate the humanistic court of Alfonso the Magnanimous as part of the cultural history of fifteenth-century Spain. 11 A recent history of the Spanish universities 12 has even gone so far as to lay hands on the Universities of Naples and Catania at this time, claiming them as Hispanic universities because the Aragonese ruled Naples and Sicily—surely a dangerous approach to cultural history. In fact—and it is not for want of trying— the most reputable Catalan historians have been unable to find any significant cultural links between Alfonso's court in Naples and humanistic enterprises in the Peninsular territories of the crown of Aragon. Nor is there any evidence that Alfonso himself wished to foment humanism there. 1 3 One of the major Catalan poets of this period, Jordi de Sant Jordi, despite residence in Italy and proved acquaintance with the Rime of Petrarch, wrote entirely according to the poetic traditions of the thirteenth century. T h e Catalans, like the Castilians, appreciated the Latin works of Petrarch as well as the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. But, in a century of economic depression for them—and one during which the social importance of the middle classes declined—they do not seem to have been particularly receptive to the ideals of fifteenth-century Italian humanism despite the closeness of the political relationship with Italy. T h e theme of arms versus letters, as we shall see, continued to be much discussed in Spain during the latter part of the fifteenth century. Then, however, came something of a shift in the terms of the argument. This seems an appropriate point, therefore, to look at some of the implications of the material we have been discussing. Behind the theory that arms are opposed to letters lies, ultimately, the medieval theory of a society divided into immutable, God-given social categories, which perforce separate the knight and the letrado. This 11

E.g. Soria, Los humanistas. C. María Ajo G. y Sáinz de Zúñiga, Historia de las universidades hispánicas, I (Madrid, 1957), Ch. IV. 13 Jorge Rubió Balaguer, "Sobre la cultura en la corona de Aragón en la primera mitad del siglo xv" in IV Congreso de historia de la Corona de Aragón, ponencias, 7 (Palma de Mallorca, 1955), pp. 8-9. 12

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theory is used by Gutierre Díez de Games in his heroic biography of Don Pero Niño, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, to explain why his hero was a very successful knight—he studied nothing else but arms. Díez de Games explains that men who try to master skills which do not belong to the category to which God has assigned them (i.e., when a knight tries to be a letrado) work against Nature. 14 Clearly such a doctrine of social immobility, with the knight at the top of the pyramid secure from challenge, had a strong appeal to an aristocratically dominated society. The Castilian nobility was in a better position to demand respect for archaic chivalric ideals than any other nobility in the West. In alliance with France it had decisively won its battle with the crown in 1369. It was not threatened by any rising middle class. Castile's expanding pastoral economy was securely in the hands of the landowners. Continuous civil war and the continued existence of the kingdom of Granada served to support the notion that the role of the knight in Castilian society was justifiably paramount. With this, though, went a contempt for letters which political theory does not fully explain. We must, I think, relate the point, as Dr. Castro has shown, to the fact that professional men of letters, both in the church and out of it, frequently belonged to the converso community. Their support for the equality of letters with arms was as likely to weaken as to increase support for the notion that letters were a respectable pursuit for knights. Students of Spanish fifteenth-century secular writing may think that they detect an apparent paradox here. Spanish literature and Spanish scholarship during the fifteenth century, in fact, is closely associated with the names of some of the great magnates. The two greatest Catalan poets of the age were both nobles. But we must remember that most of the many powerful great magnates did not patronise serious literature and that the knightly class as a whole possessed a marked lack of interest in it. In the collection of historical biographies compiled about 1450 by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán the appearance of a cultivated nobleman or even a cultivated prelate is a rarity; since Fernán Pérez de Guzmán esteemed letters this point is telling.15 One must also ask whether, rich though Castilian literature of the fifteenth century is compared with that of England or France, it ought not to have been richer. The population 14 Gutierre Díez de Games, El Victorial, crónica de Don Pero Niño, ed. y estudio de Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid, 1940), pp. 83-85. 15 Garlos Clavería, "Notas sobre la caracterización de la personalidad en 'Generaciones y Semblanzas'," Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia, Seminario de Filología Románica (Murcia, 1953), p. 27.

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of Castile was between five and six millions—similar to that of France. Catalan literature and learning in its greatest period depended on demographic resources only a fraction of this figure. There was one area where the separation of arms and letters seemed to be opposed to the interests of the knights themselves. "If history is silent about the great deeds of Spain," wrote Pérez de Guzmán, "it is because she never had men to record them." T h e poet J u a n de M e n a also complained that the great achievements of the past lay forgotten in the shadows and with them were forgotten the famous deeds of famous men. 16 For a nobility which prized worldly reputation above any other personal aim, the point evidently was telling. Historians never lacked patronage in fifteenth-century Spain. It is not always noticed how great was the number of historical manuscripts in the private libraries of bibliophiles like Santillana or Pedro Fernández de Velasco, count of Haro. Spanish humanists of the time, too, tended to read Homer and Virgil, for example, as historical records rather than as poetry. Professor R. B. Tate's studies of Spanish historiography at this time have effectively shown that historical composition was one of the most practised and most experimental forms of writing. 17 Some of it was certainly influenced by Italian humanistic history. T h e Italian humanists Peter Martyr and Lucius Marineus Siculus both wrote historical works during their stays in Spain and the grammarian Nebrija also took time off from teaching Spaniards humanistic Latin to write history. T h e impact of humanism on history, however, was hardly beneficial. Medieval Spanish chroniclers had written about contemporary history with considerable objectivity. T h e new association between the historian and the princely or knightly object of his study proved to be the enemy of objectivity and the cause of much myth-making. I cannot discuss here the various references to the arms-versus-letters controversy which were made by individual writers in the last half of the century. Peter Martyr's correspondence from Spain has a great deal to say on this topic. Since Queen Isabella and her court are often cited as 16 María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La idea de la fama en la edad media castellana (México, 1962), pp. 272-274, 285. 17 See particularly Robert B. Tate, "Mythology in Spanish Historiography of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," Hispanic Review, X X I I (1954) ; "Nebrija the Historian," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, X X X I V ( 1 9 5 7 ) ; The Anace phaleosis of Alfonso García de Santa María, Bishop of Burgos, 1435-1456," Hispanic Studies in Honour of González Llubera, (Oxford, 1959) ; "Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo (1404-1470) and his Compendiosa Historica Hispanica," Nottingham Medieval Studies, IV (1960) ; "A Humanistic Biography of John I I of Aragon," Bulletin of Spanish Studies, X X X I X ( 1962).

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proof that, at least by then, an Italianate type of humanism had come to prevail in Castile, one of his comments is worth quoting in full. After the Queen, in 1492, had asked him to open a school to teach letters to the young nobles at court, he sent a gloomy account of his pupils to Ascanio Visconti in Rome : By order of the queen, who is a lover of the good arts, I have opened an academy for Spanish nobles, as Socrates did for the Athenians and Plato for many others. Of course there is a great difference [between then and now] as to the teacher and the taught. The pupils of old were, in fact, lovers of letters, anxious to cultivate them and respectful towards them. These present pupils, on the other hand, announce their abhorrence of letters, which they believe to be a hindrance to a soldier's career, to which career alone they want to dedicate themselves. They thus reject the seeds [of learning] I can bring them from our Fatherland. 18 Martyr, to his great credit, insisted on enlisting as a soldier in the Spanish army operating against Granada to prove that arms and letters were compatable. Spanish prejudices, however, were not so easily changed, and we soon find him complaining that the powerful Hernando de Talavera, the Queen's confessor, had been mocking him for thinking that, as a man of letters, he would ever make a soldier. 19 A professional lay humanism in some ways more akin to that of Italy did begin to appear in the last decades of the century, however. Thus Fernando de la Torre looks back on the work of Santillana and his generation and praises them in a rather backhanded way. "What polished things," he writes, "we have seen from unlettered men." 2 0 J u a n de Lucena, in a dialogue written in 1463, has Santillana make a posthumous declaration that his ignorance of Latin made him something less than a whole man. Gonzalo García de Santa María, a Saragossan humanist, complains that he has wasted three years of his life making vernacular translations for the benefit of the ignorant. There was now something of a reaction against the highly Latinised prose in which Santillana's protégés had often written to demonstrate their classicism. Instead, approval is given to a polished, concise, and unaffected style, though this battle was by no means won. In Castile and in Catalonia 18 Translated by José López de Toro, Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, IX, 113 (Madrid, 1953), 209. For other references to the arms-and-letters topic see ibid., Nos. 5, 46, 50, 102, 103, etc. 19 Ibid., No. 17, pp. 23-24. 20 Fernando de la Torre, Cancionero y obras en prosa, pub. por A. Paz y Mélia in Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 16 (Dresden, 1907), pp. xv and 56.

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there was recognition that Latin as written and as spoken in the universities and elsewhere was barbarous and that true learning depended on new teaching standards here. T h e colophon of an edition of Nicholas Perottus' Rudimenta grammaticae, made at Barcelona in 1475 from a copy found on the beach among some pirates' loot, thinks it remarkable that the secretary of the Aragonese king knew Latin well; it describes him as "vir etsi hispanus latinus tamen et in Latio educatus." It seems, then, that the topic of arms versus letters does help us come nearer an explanation of some features of Spanish fifteenth-century humanism. T h e few great lords who patronised it, and whose patronage was vital, affronted a deeply held prejudice among the knightly class. They were unlikely on this and other counts to be sympathetic to anything radical. Nor was their education such as to permit, in Spain, the development of a Latinate humanism. T h e converso professional men of letters were not secure enough to be radical either, nor is it likely that they wished to be, though they did want to claim for the profession of letters—with no great success, it seems—a status equal to that of the knights. Spanish humanism represents a widening and deepening of medieval classicism; evidence that its practitioners had a new vision of antiquity is always sporadic and seemingly accidental. Alonso de Cartagena allowed the study of pagan letters, but only on condition that the student frequently protected himself with draughts from the Christian Fathers. 2 1 Sánchez de Arévalo, after long residence in Rome, urges that youth should not be exposed to classical literature or philosophy until it had been thoroughly protected by a period of religious instruction. Spaniards felt much safer with the great Italian writers of the Trecento, and they were the principal gift of Italy to Spanish culture in the fifteenth century. Dante, discovered for Spaniards by Santillana at a time when the Italian humanists still rejected him, was a potent influence. Early in the sixteenth century he was still actively discussed and translated in Castile by writers who hoped to use him as a shield from behind which to attack new linguistic, poetic, and philosophical fashions. 22 Spanish humanism, with its insistence on ethics and piety, with its fondness for Seneca and Boethius, is in many ways akin to the thought of a Trecento humanist like Coluccio Salutati. Spaniards would 21 Alonso de Cartegena, Oracional, quoted by Francisco López Estrada, "La retórica en las *Generaciones y Semblanzas' de Fernán Pérez de Guzmán," Revista de Filología Española, X X X (1946), pp. 344-346. 22 See, for example, the Prohemio by the translator in Pedro Fernández de Villegas, La traducion del Dante de lengua toscana en verso castellano (Burgos, 1515).

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have agreed wholeheartedly with Salutati when he spoke of "humanitatis, hoc est eruditionis moralis."23 But I think modern Spanish scholars, perhaps, have looked too hopefully towards Italy when thinking about literature and letters in fifteenthcentury Spain. One can understand why. Spaniards were more closely involved in Italian affairs than any other foreigners. It is natural to fear that, unless Italian humanism can be shown to have rubbed off on them in influential quantities, they may be convicted of cultural insensitiveness. But such reasoning cannot survive analysis. The relation of an imperial garrison to the culture of those it has conquered is not easily that of disciple and master. Moreover, as Arnold Hauser reminds us, outside historical influences do not bring about intellectual revolutions unless the preconditions for the reception of such influences are already present. Such preconditions did not exist in Spain in the 1400's. If we are looking for outside influences, it is probably more profitable to look northwards, to France, Burgundy, and Flanders. Castile's close economic links with Flanders had made those with money look to Flanders for the civilised luxuries, including works of art. The rulers of Castile were associated with France by long and well-tried political bonds as well as by a similar devotion to aristocratic and knightly ideals. The University of Paris was still the foreign university most favoured by Spanish students. In the middle of the fifteenth century France is still praised by a writer with humanist ambitions as the centre of courtesy and chivalry from which all desirable virtues emanate.24 Isabella the Catholic is often presented to us as the patron of Italian humanism, but her library, with its volumes of French poetry, French song books, and copies of French romances of chivalry, warns us not to make too much of this.25 It has long been recognised that Flemish and German influences in the visual arts reached their apogee at the court of the Catholic Kings; the residence of Italian masters in Castile and Aragon had no discernible influence on Spanish painting. In the case of learning and letters so unambiguous a rejection of Italian influence obviously did not occur. But the first really influential changes in traditional ways of thinking and feeling which penetrated Spain early in the sixteenth century came from northern Europe, not from across the Mediterranean. 23 Berthold L. Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati (Padova, 1963), pp. 58, 74. 24 Fernando de la Torre, Cancionero y obras en prosa, p. 127. 25 Diego Clemencín, "Elogio de la reina católica doña Isabel," Memorias de la Real Academia Española, VI (Madrid, 1821), Ilustración XVII, Nos. 136-138, passim.

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Only a superficial and fiche-collecting kind of history, then, allows us to set up a phantom bridge linking Spain with Italian humanism in the 1400's. In this way the achievement of those Spaniards who, in the time of Charles V, made this connection in a really vital form gets obscured. These people recognised no pioneers or predecessors. They considered that a first step in aligning Spain with the Italian Renaissance must be the rejection of all—or most—of what had gone before. Thus the poet Garcilaso de la Vega wrote (1533), à propos of the translation of Il Cortegiano into Spanish: "I hold to be very great the benefit which is done to the Castilian language by translating into it things which are worth reading; for I know not why it has always been our misfortune that hardly anyone has written in our language anything except that which could very well be dispensed with."26 The judgment, of course, is absurdly harsh. Garcilaso rejects, by implication, a timeless work like the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, written at the end of the fifteenth century, which, by its new vision of the human situation and its new techniques of literary communication, fascinated European readers for two centuries and more. But his comment tells us how Spanish writing in the period we have been discussing seemed to one who had thoroughly imbided the ideas and the tastes of Italian humanism. It was Garcilaso, in fact, who, by the example of his life and his poetry, at last convinced Spaniards that arms and letters together were a proper and necessary goal for Spanish noblemen to aim at. All the same, we should not forget that even the narrow and militant chivalric ideals of fifteenth-century Spanish knights in their way made some important offerings to the history of the Renaissance. It was, for example, men sustained by such ideals who had the energy and stubbornness to find and conquer the New World, just as similar beliefs had provided the initial drive which led the Portuguese to Africa. 26 Garcilaso de la Vega, Libro llamado el cortesano traduzido agora nuevamente en nuestro vulgar castellano por Boscan (Salamanca, 1542), fol. iijv.

Patronage and Music in England1 by Walter L. Woodfill

that Tudor and early Stuart England produced a large body of fine music—anthems and services for the church, madrigals, lute ayres, and the rest. To some scholars it now seems that England should have produced a good deal more music during this period, and that intensive musical creativity should have continued longer than it did. A brief survey of the support that England gave music in this period may suggest hypotheses as to what inhibited great musical achievement. As Frank Harrison, in Music in Medieval Britain, has pointed out, the change in the middle of the sixteenth century from the Latin rite in liturgy and music marks the end of the medieval period and the triumph of Renaissance concepts of structure and style. The most obvious result, of course, was the creation of a great new body of ecclesiastical music, the work of Byrd, Gibbons, and others. The confiscations and refoundings brought other results strongly affecting the entire musical scene. The dissolution of many establishments which maintained choirs of men and boys, such as some of the larger monasteries, some colleges, chantries, and the song schools attached to elementary schools, led initially, perhaps, to a raising of the level of musical literacy in the public at large when the musically educated men and boys went into the world; it is possible that this is an element in the story of the rise of English secular music in the last decades of the century. In the long run the dissolution meant fewer places for trained singers and performers, less incentive for musical training in the hope of a career, and fewer opportunities for boys to learn music. In short, after the first decades IT

HAS LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED

1 In preparing this essay the writer relied chiefly on sources and authorities used in his Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, 1953) and on subsequent research as well.

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following the confiscations the general level of musical literacy was perhaps depressed, and it may be that this is an element in the story of the apparent decline of English musical creativity after the glorious peak early in the seventeenth century. The reconstituted church did, however, provide one of the principal parts in the musical edifice that appeared during Elizabeth's reign. Some two dozen cathedral choirs, royal peculiars such as Westminster, the principal colleges at the universities, and schools such as Eton, topped by the Chapel Royal—a much smaller number of choirs than before Henry VIII's time—called for the new services and anthems, maintained the composers who wrote them, and trained boys and men to perform them. The achievement was great; it could have been greater and longer sustained. The poverty from which most of these choirs suffered, whether caused by spoliation of endowments, failure of management, or both, and the abiding differences of opinion about the place and value of music in the religious service no doubt restrained the growth of the church's musical achievement. It is significant that a very large part of the best pre-Civil War Anglican music was composed by men trained in the time of Henry VIII or by men who grew up in association with them. The ecclesiastical musical establishment barely maintained itself. The Chapel Royal, the one conspicuously successful religious musical organization, stands by itself both because of its association with the monarch—it was not endowed—and because of its achievements. Upward of a score of singing gentlemen, the master of the children, and a dozen or more choristers, or children, making up the normal complement of the Chapel Royal, were recruited from the whole kingdom. Comparatively well paid in cash and perquisites, given preferment from time to time, regarded and treated as gentlemen—gentlemen of low degree, of course—and given opportunity to achieve some fame, the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal stood at the apex of the entire musical profession in England and provided most of the new ecclesiastical music. A few in other establishments, notably at Westminster and St. Paul's, associated with them and contributed to the greatness of the musical achievement of England in the decades about 1600. The King's Musick was the other great court establishment, the complement of the Chapel Royal : the men of each organization helped those of the other from time to time. The growth in the sixteenth century of the King's Musick is one of the clearest signs of the intention of the English monarchs to emulate the continental Renaissance princes not only

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in wealth and power but also in the accouterments and panoply that displayed power and place in the divinely decreed hierarchy. The lord chamberlain's accounts of liveries supplied to the household for the funeral of Henry VII list five minstrels, four sackbuts and shawms, eight other minstrels, three "tabretts," and trumpeters. By 1540 Henry VIII had attracted to his court, particularly from Italy, about thirty-seven minstrels and musicians; by 1547 he had perhaps fifty-eight. An aspect of royal influence, and the prominence of aliens in the musical development during this period, is vividly illustrated by a listing of musicians who seem to have been in the royal household in 1547: eight viol players, including Hans Hosenet, Fraunces de Venice, Marke Anthony Galyardo, and Ambrose (Lupo) de Milano; seven sackbuttists, including Robert May, Mary Anthony Petalo, and Anthony Mary (Galiardello) ; seven flutists, including Guillam de Trosse, Thomas Pagington, and Piero Guye; two lutanists, Peter and Philip van Welder; four English singers, nine singing men and children under Philips (Philips was in the Chapel but the others seem not to have been) ; a virginalist, John Heywood; three harpers; two instrument-makers; a song-pricker (copyist) ; a bagpiper; a Welsh minstrel; six men designated as musicians, including four or five by the name of Bassano; eight minstrels; and a rebec player, John de Severnake. Queen Elizabeth normally kept fewer musicians, an average of perhaps thirty; James, perhaps forty on the average ; and Charles, perhaps sixty-five. The comprehensive range of instruments in the King's Musick continued from the time of Henry VIII until the Civil Wars and included all the instruments that were important then in the music of Western Europe; some instruments, such as the rebec, seemed to drop out; some, such as the violin, which may not have been in Henry's establishment, were added. The cosmopolitan character of the membership continued, too; some Englishmen, many Italians, Frenchmen, or other continentals, or sons and grandsons of the original immigrants were always present. A roster of some thirty names for 1570 includes a Thomas Brown, several Lupos of Milan, several Bassanos, Nicholas Lanier, and Alfonso Ferrabosco. In 1590 nineteen of the twenty-nine musicians were aliens. In 1640 there were many Laniers—including Nicholas Lanier, master of the King's Musick—many Lupos, Ferraboscos, and Bassanos, as well as many English, including Henry and William Lawes, John Adson, John Wilson, and Robert Dowland. Study of the development of the royal establishment under the Tudors and the first Stuarts reveals that the attention-calling, ceremonial, or

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fanfare elements, and the story-telling and minstrel elements were declining while the truly musical elements were rising. Although loud summons were still used in the royal household, there was increasing demand for lute songs, virginal music, and music of various consorts; both the noise and the quiet music were needed in the court just as both were needed on the stage.2 Some of the demands are indicated in the accounts of the entertainments created for Queen Elizabeth on her progresses, in the accounts of the masques for King James and Queen Anne, and King Charles, as well as by the more or less permanent groupings within the King's Musick recorded in the reigns of James and Charles. By 1614 one group was known as "the consort," and later as "the lutes and voices," or "the lutes, viols, and voices"; by Charles's time the group included about twenty-five musicians, among them the master of the Musick, lutanist-singers, singers, a harper, players on the viol, and a virginalist. By this time, too, there was a band of fourteen violinists, including in 1631 three treble, two contratenor, two tenor, three low tenor, and four "basso" violins. In 1621 James appointed one of the players, Thomas Lupo, "composer for our violins" in order to "be the better furnished with variety and choice for our delight and pleasure in that kind . . . " The professional secular musicians of London constituted another, fairly important, musical resource, valuable for the services they could render the aristocracy, the citizens, and the companies of actors, valuable as a force which could furnish reinforcements to the King's Musick when special occasion demanded, valuable as a body of teachers, and as a supplier of recruits to the King's Musick. The most important body of these musicians was the city music, called the Waits of London, appointed, paid in money, kind, and privileges, and controlled by the government of the city. By council decision in 1475 there were to be six waits, each allowed, from 1502, two apprentices. Beginning in 1570, when a foreigner, Segar van Pilkam, became a seventh wait, the number grew. From 1605 to 1620 there were eight to ten men, and from 1620 to 1635, eleven men, besides apprentices. During the first half of the sixteenth century they played the old, louder and coarser instruments, shawns and sackbuts; they may also have played other instruments that they furnished themselves. In 1561, if not before, they became a more musical organization when, at the request of the Waits, the city bought a set of viols. Their musical virtuosity apparently 2 In this connection see Frederick W. Sternfeld, Music Tragedy ( L o n d o n , 1 9 6 3 ) .

in

Shakespearian

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grew again in 1568 when they acquired a set of recorders and six cornetts, and in subsequent years, to 1597, when the city also bought for them sackbuts and the bassoonlike curtal. Violinists, lutanists, and singers joined them in the seventeenth century. Starting in 1613 a section of the Waits to be known as "the city music of voices" was inaugurated by the appointment of another extra wait, a man "well known . . . for his rare and excellent skill in singing."3 Soon the city arranged for the keeping of singing boys and appointed a lutanist. In 1620 a man who sang and played the orpharion, poliphon (somewhat like a lute, with wire strings), and bass viol was appointed. Obviously the Waits of London were emulating, although at a later time and on a smaller scale, the development of the King's Musick. What they did as musicians is obvious, such as playing for the greater civic officers and playing in great processions or public ceremonies. The influence of the continent is shown conspicuously by a regular duty they had from 1571 to 1642, playing "upon their instruments upon the turret at the Royal Exchange every Sunday and holiday toward the evening" from Lady Day to Michaelmas; the Exchange had been completed the year before, in 1570, and perhaps its builder, Sir Thomas Gresham, had an interest in these concerts. One notes that the instrumental expansion of the band had started not long before this. Thomas Morley, in the Dedication of his First Booke of Consort Lessons, 1599, paid tribute to these waits when he recommended his book to their "careful and skilful handling." Before the period ended some of the larger towns may have progressed along London's musical path, but only Norwich seems to have gone so far as to have regular concerts at its guildhall, which it did from 1553 until the 1620's. London had also independent musicians, members of a fraternity or company which attempted to maintain a monopoly, to see that the lower classes learned music only by apprenticeship, and so on. That the company managed, with considerable difficulty it is true, to maintain itself throughout the period indicates that the group and its members probably served some useful functions. The other towns of England seldom maintained companies at all; their controlling functions were often attempted by the town waits. About another category of professionals, those attached to private establishments, cluster a number of problems. In the first place, the old 3 Repertory of the Court of Aldermen, X X X I , fol. 44-44v. The new section was called "the city music of voices" in 1637 (Repertory, LI, fol. 329-329v).

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minstrels, whose disappearance from the royal establishment has been noted already, disappeared from the country as a whole during the sixteenth century; their passing, the passing of the unlettered wanderer and the appearance of the educated musician, is another sign of the change from medieval to Renaissance. In part the minstrels were doomed by the need of Tudor society to reduce the number of wanderers. Too many of them fraudulently claimed to be the minstrels of this or that gentleman or lord; in the fifteenth century some had even claimed to be the king's own minstrels.4 By the middle of Elizabeth's reign (1572) in order to travel minstrels needed the authorization of a baron or a person of higher degree, or of two justices of the peace; and by the end of the reign (1597 ) they could not legally travel at all. Minstrelsy disappeared only partly because of Tudor efforts toward a more orderly, more profitable society. It passed also because the fortress-dwelling nobility of the Middle Ages disappeared or was transformed into an aristocracy dwelling at court and in great country houses. Minstrels bearing news, greetings, and song and other entertainment became less fashionable and less necessary. Most of the minstrels mentioned in sixteenth-century accounts seem to have been only nominally the servants of the gentlemen and lords whose badge they wore, to have contributed nothing to the creation of Renaissance music, and to have disappeared as a class during the century. This much about private households is reasonably clear: a whole great category of potential household retainers is, in effect, eliminated. What remains to be considered is unclear. While we can be sure that musicians resided in large households, we can only suppose that they were not many and, in the absence of positive evidence, that no one maintained regularly a sizable resident consort of professional musicians during the period when the King's Musick and the band of London waits were growing and flourishing. Moreover, even when it is clear that a musician, usually known because of his published compositions, was resident in a private household, it is not clear what the musician's status was. Was such a musician actually a professional musician, or was he, rather, a gentleman-retainer or a guest highly skilled in music? Some of the musicians seem to have been stewards. Undoubtedly some lower servants had musical skills and could assist in domestic music-making. Teachers, rather than domestic performers, seem to have been more 4 John E. Stevens (Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court [London, 1961]) has recently pointed out how rudimentary the art of the royal minstrels must have been if peasants could profitably imitate them (see pp. 302-303).

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commonly needed, as dedications and other evidence, such as Thomas Whythorne's autobiography, indicate. T h a t there was so little private patronage was a serious deficiency of English Renaissance society. In The Elizabethan Madrigal, published in 1962, Joseph Kerman points out that . . . it is significant that the first madrigalist of the English school [John Wilbye] should have been employed by that notably musical family [the Kytsons] and should have in fact lived not unlike many of his Italian colleagues. This system of patronage undoubtedly yielded the best artistic results at this time; the Church musicians who tried one patron and then another had not leisure to develop their styles and no fixed and receptive audience against which to test them. As it is, the highest tribute that can be paid to the musicality of the Kytson family is the formation of John Wilbye's style and musical personality. He is the one English composer who can be placed fairly with the better Italian madrigalists of the time as far as the sustained quality of his work is concerned, though he published only a quarter or a tenth of what they considered usual and necessary. A more vigorous musical society would have given us more madrigals by John Wilbye and allowed more young composers of his promise to develop along the same lines.5 We may well ask why there was so little of this patronage in England. Perhaps a beginning toward an answer to this question can be found when one considers the musical activity of the upper classes. Renaissance conceptions of the gentleman and lady became well established in England in the sixteenth century, and with them developed an attitude toward music which, in essence, held that gentleman and ladies, or their children, should study music, and especially singing, but that they should not study it so much as to put themselves into apparent competition with professional musicians, nor should they display their skill, especially before their social inferiors. Undoubtedly many children of the upper classes studied music, and undoubtedly many ladies and gentlemen sang and played on instruments, and so supported teachers and composers. Was there a vast amount of amateur music-making? A surprising amount of evidence survives to indicate that many did entertain themselves musically, but there are also indications that musical activity was far short of universal among the upper classes. Perhaps the most concrete evidence has been brought forth by K e r m a n in an appendix to his book on the Elizabethan madrigal, in which he points out how limited English publication of music was in this period. H e says that "Remark5 Joseph Kerman, The Elizabethan York, 1962), p. 243.

Madrigal:

A Comparative

Study

(New

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ably few reprints were called for. T h e volume of circulation of printed music in England contrasts markedly with that in Italy, where any work that attracted attention went almost automatically to several editions in Venice and Rome—also Antwerp." Later K e r m a n contrasts the printed musical output of England with the nonmusical output, and with that in France and the Netherlands as well as Italy, and points out that "this unhealthy publishing situation merely reflects the situation in the production of music; but on the other hand it must have controlled it to some extent." 6 Even taking into account music circulated in manuscript, one must conclude that a comparatively small portion of the richer people of England sang or performed music as adults ; this comparative lack of interest in making music would seem to lead naturally to the comparative failure to sustain many household musicians and composers. T o recapitulate : T h e musical structure of Renaissance England that created much great music had a rather small and insecure base. O n e of its principal supports was the church, a church that seemed poor and that had disagreeing friends as well as enemies. Its greatest support, by far, was the royal court. T h e City of London was an important but modest support, as were a few other towns. It had as regular patrons a few families such as the Kytsons and their connections; and it had in the upper classes as a whole apparently tepid enthusiasm for music as an accomplishment. Several possibilities come to mind when considering why this musical structure had so small and insecure a base. First, and most obviously, is the fact that there were no rival courts in England, and could not be in T u d o r and Stuart England. T h e new, great men, closely bound to the court, such as Burghley, Hatton, and Salisbury, could display their greatness and could fully employ their wealth by building great new Renaissance houses. When they entertained the monarchs in these houses, which were often built expressly for such hospitality, they could borrow musicians from the court or hire them elsewhere. They did not need to maintain large musical establishments in their country places, and the royal music was, in effect, theirs when they were at court. Consideration of the intensity of interest that gentlemen and noblemen had in performing and in composing music leads to further suggestions. A gentleman seeking fame, or power, or patronage by using his wits 6

Ibid., pp. 263, 267.

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would find literature more rewarding than music.7 Poetry glorifying the monarchy, the society, the patron (directly or indirectly), or prose, which could be propaganda, could be more obviously useful than most music. Literature ranked higher in the hierarchy of values than earthly music. It was more appropriate for a gentleman to write than to compose, and the education of a Renaissance gentleman was more likely to enable him to write well in verse or prose, on one of a vast number of subjects, than to enable him to compose music. Poetry might be written for the secret delight of one friend, and published posthumously, if ever; much musical composition could not remain as agreeably private—display of virtuosity was almost necessary—because much music required several performers. Whatever the reasons, intensity of interest in music was far less in England than in Italy. An Italian, Pietro Cerone of Bergamo, writing in Spanish about 1600, and quoted by Einstein in The Italian Madrigal, pointed out the importance of the academies in Italy, which gave many opportunities for musical development : In many cities of Italy there are several houses called "academies," which are solely places of reunion for singers, players, and composers, who devote themselves to their art for two or three hours [a day]. The most famous masters of the town usually take part in them, and after the performance of their [most recent] compositions and the termination of the concert, usually discuss some musical problem . . .8 Why did England lack such academies? Italian academies flourished partly because rulers, apparently seeking harmless outlets for the mental energies of their richer subjects, encouraged them; subjects should be diverted from potentially troublesome thoughts about government. In contrast, Englishmen had a great variety of interests and duties, as lords lieutenant, as justices, as members of Parliament; they had interests in religion, in rising trade and industry and exploration. Few members of the governing classes in England had the leisure for sustained concerns of the type that caused the Italian academies to flourish. It may be noted, moreover, that the English aristocracy on the whole continued to cling to the idea that its class should in no sense compete with or seem to emulate professional musicians and virtuosi, while in Italy rich men both 7 See Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester: Patron of Letters (New York, 1955), John Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (London, 1954), and Buxton, Elizabethan Taste (London, 1963). 8 Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (Princeton, 1949), I, 199-200.

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supported professionals and academies and participated with them in performing and composing. The ninth earl of Northumberland seems to have expressed an attitude widely held by the English aristocracy when he grouped "music, singing, cards, dice, chess and the rest of this nature" as "but lost labour, being qualities neither profitable to themselves, nor anything else. For pastimes and recreations they are of most men tolerated, but he that cannot pass his time without them . . . shall incur the suspicion of an idle member . . . in them to be pleased I nominate a fault."9 Eric Mercer, in English Art 1553-1625, suggests that the new developments in art and architecture in the first half of the seventeenth century came as results of the ideas and patronage of a group of virtuosi who were in the Stuart court or closely associated with it, and that these new developments failed to secure widespread adoption and backing partly because large parts of the governing classes disliked the government and its policies and administrators.10 Perhaps much the same thing happened with respect to the new musical developments: they were a court art, suspect therefore, and expensive and difficult to emulate in any case. A good deal of evidence could be found to support this hypothesis : it may be sufficient now to remember how the Stuart masques grieved or offended some men; how Laudian attempts to beautify churches and their services led to reaction both because of objection in principle and because of the expense; how some towns in the 1620's and 1630's discharged their waits and were inhospitable to visiting waits at a time when towns were hiring lecturers in divinity; and how in the spring of 1642, after the revolution in the government of the City of London, the new governors decreed the ending of the Sunday evening concerts given by the waits at the Royal Exchange. Perhaps one can conclude that the great musical achievement of Tudor and Stuart England reflected the force of various Renaissance ideals and continental—chiefly Italian—examples, and that the failure of this achievement to continue and grow may be attributed at least partially to the relatively low place that music held in the scale of English interest and values. Significant patronage was overwhelmingly and excessively bound up with the royal government. 9 Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland, Advice to His Son, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1930), p. 64. 10 Eric Mercer, English Art 1553-1625 (Oxford, 1962). See especially pp. 8-10.

The Equestrian Monument from Cangrande della Scala to Peter the Great by H. W. Janson

THOSE WHO DENY THAT the Renaissance—as distinguished from the various earlier classical revivals—deserves to be viewed as a major period intervening between the Middle Ages and modern times like to observe that each historic discipline provides its own unique definition of the Renaissance. The charge is not unfounded. I have heard historians of science place the beginning of the Renaissance as late as 1550, and literary historians, as early as 1300—an alarming discrepancy, although not, to my way of thinking, a valid argument against the concept of the Renaissance. Among art historians the anti-Renaissance trend has probably been weaker than in any other field; it attracted a number of scholars in the 1920's and 1930's, when, under the influence of modern Expressionism, the positive esthetic qualities of medieval art were being rediscovered, but it has found no conspicuous defenders in recent years. Nevertheless, we disagree among ourselves as to the meaning and the chronological limits of the Renaissance. Where and when did it start? Did it really begin in Italy, or more or less simultaneously throughout Western Europe? How long did it last? What phases can we distinguish within the Renaissance, north and south of the Alps? Let me describe the possible answers to these questions in terms of two extremes : the exclusive and the inclusive views. The "exclusivists" tend to narrow the application of the term; some would confine the Renaissance to a single hundred years' span, ca. 1420-1520, and to Italian art alone. To them, Italian fourteenth-century art and northern fifteenth-century art are "Late Gothic," while the art of the years 1520 to 1620 throughout Europe is "Mannerist," followed by the Baroque (ca. 1620-1750). The modern era, we all agree, began with the generation that made the

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French Revolution. T h e "inclusivist" view is about as follows, in its broadest form: the Renaissance is a "megaperiod" like the Middle Ages or classical antiquity, beginning ca. 1300 and ending ca. 1750, with the following subdivisions : Fourteenth century—"proto-Renaissance," confined to Italy Fifteenth century—"Early Renaissance," in Italy (and according to some in the north as well) Early sixteenth century—"High Renaissance," in north and south Later sixteenth century—"Mannerism," in north and south Seventeenth and early eighteenth century—"Baroque," in north and south. I myself am an "inclusivist," although with some reservations. And I have chosen the equestrian monument as my subject because it demonstrates, I believe, the fundamental unity of the Renaissance as well as the relationship of its various phases. Since equestrian monuments are inevitably public enterprises, they also serve to demonstrate the close involvement of the history of art with other areas of historic study; yet their clearly defined character as a formal type forces us to pay due regard to the evolution of this type in terms of style. I n order to define the equestrian monument—its power as a symbol of greatness—I must begin with a thumbnail sketch of its history before the Renaissance. T h e horse entered Western civilization about the middle of the second millennium before Christ, but the equestrian monument did not appear until a thousand years later. T o the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, horseback riding was not symbolic of high status, perhaps because they associated it with the nomadic enemies who had brought the horse to the Near East from Asia. We find few representations of riders in Egyptian art, and when we do find them they are incidental, such as that of a boy on a horse on one of the reliefs from the tomb of Horemheb. I n Mesopotamia mounted hunters in pursuit of swift game are represented, but the Pharaoh or the kings of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia appear standing in horse-drawn chariots. T h e ruler in his chariot, rather than on horseback, conveyed the sense of allconquering majesty. And this remained so even after mounted troops had developed into an important branch of the military forces. We see here, I think, a reflection of the peculiar Near Eastern conception of kingship, which lifted the ruler so high above all other men that horseback riding—a physically strenuous and, without benefit of stirrups, a somewhat precarious activity—must have seemed incompatible with royal dignity.

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The Greeks endowed riding with the aura of heroism that still clings to it. The earliest equestrian statues (preserved only in fragments) date from the sixth century B.C. and probably represented the victors of horse races—votive offerings to the god who had brought victory and at the same time memorials to the victor. Soon thereafter we find Greek tomb steles showing the deceased on horseback conquering a fallen enemy, a symbolic visual tribute to his bravery. The motif was to persist, under Roman auspices, until the very end of the classical era, almost a thousand years later. Alexander the Great, however much he may have borrowed from oriental ideas of divine kingship, remained a Greek hero. In the famous Alexander mosaic, reflecting a painting of the early third century B.C., we see him, on horseback, discomfiting Darius in his chariot. Hellenistic rulers must have been the first to adopt the equestrian monument as a symbol of majesty, but none of these statues have survived. As for the Romans, the equestrian statue became established during the later days of the Republic as the prerogative of the eques, the aristocrat, as evidenced by the equestrian figures of the Balbus family found at Pompeii. During the Empire, however, the privilege of being so represented was restricted to the emperor alone, as the most monumental and awe-inspiring visible expression of his authority. And the material of choice was the finest and most enduring—gilt bronze. The famous equestrian statute of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol in Rome is the only surviving specimen today. In the later days of the Empire hundreds similar to it must have been scattered throughout the Roman realm. They were destroyed by invading barbarians not only, or not mainly, for the value of the metal, but also for the imperial magic that clung to them. With one possible exception (a statue in Limoges about which we know very little) equestrian monuments survived into the Middle Ages only on ancient imperial soil—in Italy and Byzantium. The most famous of these in the East Christian world, and the only one of which we have any kind of pictorial record, was that of Justinian outside the Church of Hagia Sophia. It was toppled by the Turks soon after 1453, and the remains destroyed in the sixteenth century. In Italy the Marcus Aurelius survived because it had been rechristened Constantine and erected on the Lateran, thus conveying the relationship of Papacy and Empire. Florence had an equestrian bronze, locally known as "Mars," but surely also an emperor's image, which was thought to be linked with the legendary ancient origins of the city. It fell victim to a great flood of the Arno River in 1330, as it stood on a bridge that collapsed under the onslaught of the waters. At least two late Roman ex-

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amples, one representing Theodoric, were in Ravenna. The Theodoric was abducted by Charlemagne after his coronation as Western Roman emperor, and erected between the imperial chapel and the palace at Aachen, obviously as a visible embodiment of the renewed empire. With the division of Charlemagne's realm after his death the statue disappeared and Aachen lost its claim as the "new Rome." The other equestrian monument in late classical Ravenna was transported to Pavia, perhaps again by Charlemagne. It, too, was thought to represent Theodoric and thus received a place of honor in the forecourt of the palace of the Lombard kings. Later, it was re-erected in front of the Cathedral and became a symbol of municipal sovereignty, appearing even on the city seal. When Pavia was conquered—in 1315 by the Milanese and again in 1527—the statue, then known as the Regisole, was removed to humiliate the city, but both times it eventually was returned. Its final destruction dates from 1796; it fell victim to the local revolutionaries, who followed the French example in their iconoclastic zeal. To them, the statue was simply a symbol of tyranny. From visual records of the Regisole, we know that the statute stood atop a tall column, like that of Justinian in Constantinople. The Emperor, his right hand raised in the ceremonial gesture associated with the imperial adlocutio or adventus, appeared in military garb, including pants; he sat on a regular saddle, not merely a saddlecloth as does the Marcus Aurelius, and had his feet in stirrups (which had just been adopted). The rider, then, was of far less classical appearance than the Marcus Aurelius, a fact which helps to explain why the monument had only a limited influence on the equestrian statues of the Renaissance. The Middle Ages, as we have seen, retained an awareness of the ancient Roman meaning of these imperial images. And it was for that reason, apparently, that they produced no equestrian monuments of their own. There is a gap of about a thousand years between the last of the Roman examples and the first bronze equestrian monument since late antiquity. That pioneer achievement, contrary to general belief, was not Donatello's Gattamelata of 1448-1450, but a statue of Nicoló d'Este in Ferrara, commissioned in 1441 of two Florentine sculptors, Nicoló Baroncelli and Antonio di Cristoforo. It must have been a work of little artistic distinction, since it never became famous. In fact, we have no visual record of its appearance. Like the Regisole, it was destroyed by the Italian revolutionaries of 1796. We do, however, know where it stood—on a sort of extended bracket projecting from the ducal palace and supported by a column. It thus was not a truly free-standing monu-

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ment. While it is surely significant that the D'Este family should have dared to assert their own legitimacy and authority by erecting this rival to the Marcus Aurelius and the Regisole, it is equally characteristic that they did not yet dare to detach the statue from its architectural background. I n that respect, the Nicoló d'Este monument was still medieval. It recalls the equestrian monuments of stone done in Gothic times, such as the famous Bamberg Rider (whom O t t o von Simson has tried to identify as the Emperor Frederick I I ) or the posthumous monument of Otto I in Magdeburg. These, and their analogues elsewhere, are all encased in an architectural framework, or attached to it, and thus do not rival the ancient imperial statues in position or material. T o erect the equestrian statue of a modern sovereign, whether in stone or in bronze, on a tall, columnar pedestal of its own appears to have been unthinkable to the Middle Ages. T h e short life of Charlemagne's Theodoric in Aachen only reinforces this conclusion. Donatello's Gattamelata, as you all know, does away with these inhibitions. It stands on a tall, columnlike pedestal, and it is of bronze (though not gilded). And what makes it even more astonishing is that it represents not a sovereign but a mere condottiere, the captain of the land force of the Venetian Republic. T h e Venetian state, which must have pondered deeply before permitting its erection, had to suffer many a jibe in later years about the "imperial arrogance" of the monument, so unsuited to a reublic. H o w was all this possible? T h e prehistory of the Gattamelata is long and complicated. I can here offer only its highlights. T h e beginning of the tradition from which it sprang leads us back to the Florence of ca. 1300, but not to the equestrian Mars on the Arno bridge. Instead, we must enter the second cloister of the Church of the SS. Annunziata, where we find an inconspicuous but surprising object : the tomb of a certain Guglielmus, who died, so the inscription tells us, in 1289, in the battle of Campaldino. I t is the earliest appearance of a horseman on a medieval tomb, and, even more astonishingly, Guglielmus is not merely shown on horseback in order to indicate his status as an eques, a knight, but charging into battle with drawn sword, like the military heroes on Greek steles or certain R o m a n tombstones. This completely contradicts what Dr. Erwin Panofsky has so well defined as the "prospective" character of medieval tombs, that is, their exclusive concern with the afterlife of the deceased rather than the commemoration of his deeds on earth. T h e only exception to this rule, before the tomb of Guglielmus, are certain English tomb slabs of knights showing the deceased in a kind of death agony.

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These, however, very probably represent a special privilege restricted to those who died battling the Infidels in the Holy Land and thus earned the honor of being eternalized in the act of dying for the Faith. In the case of Guglielmus, this religious aura is missing entirely; no religious issues were at stake in the battle in which he died, although for the Florentines it was a decisive engagement in which Dante also fought. Apparently, then, this is a true instance of secularization for political reasons. In a similar way, Dante introduced living characters into the Divine Comedy, thus suffusing it at times with the flavor of the politics of his own day, and certain Italian representations of the Last Judgment in the fourteenth century show specific, labeled individuals of recent memory in the jaws of Hell. Such intrusion of present-day, local concerns into sacred imagery—or into the realm of tombs—is a uniquely Italian venture at that time, indicative of the "proto-Renaissance." Since there are antecedents in classical art for equestrian images on tombs, we might expect our Guglielmus to be modeled on a Roman tombstone, but such is obviously not the case. Instead, the design derives from a northern source—the seals of knights in Gothic France and England, which show the same charging figure on horseback, simply as an identification of status, without reference to any specific battle and without commemorative purpose. They are, of course, purely secular works, a fact that makes their influence on the Guglielmus tomb particularly significant. Were such tombs built in the north, too, by any chance? We cannot be absolutely sure that they were not, but it seems highly unlikely, since not a single example is known to us. Equestrian images of the decreased appear north of the Alps only in the sixteenth century, under obvious Italian influence, and even then only rarely. Among them was one—now destroyed, but known from a seventeenth-century engraving—of Nicolas du Châtelet, who died in 1562, and who was shown in the same charging pose as Guglielmus; apparently this was another, quite independent, transfer of the pose from a seal, now transposed into a free-standing statue. But let us return to Italy. The Guglielmus tomb, it seems, started a tradition of honoring military heroes, especially condottieri, with tombs incorporating equestrian statues. At first, these statues were of impermanent materials such as wood; their primary purpose may have been to be carried in the funeral cortege. In any event, documentary notices of several of these from the later fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries exist in Florence and Siena. Sometimes, the eques-

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trian figures were only painted above the tomb. Paolo Uccello's famous John Hawkwood (or Giovanni Acuto, as he was known in Italy) of 1436 is a replacement of an earlier fresco of the same subject, done at the very beginning of the century in Gothic style. Uccello, perhaps under the guidance of his friend Donatello, transformed this earlier image into a strikingly Early Renaissance conception. This manner of honoring condottieri spread from central Italy to northern Italy, and produced the only two surviving examples of such wooden equestrian tomb statues, neither very impressive artistically: that of Paolo Savelli, soon after 1405, in the Frari, Venice, and that of Bartolommeo Colleoni in Bergamo seventy years later. This tradition eventually migrated to France in the sixteenth century and gave rise to the French equestrian tomb statues mentioned before. Meanwhile, however, and very soon after the Guglielmus tomb, a far bolder tradition of equestrian tomb statues arose in northern Italy : that of the Scaligeri, the lords of Verona. It may not be entirely coincidental that the Scaligeri were thoroughgoing Ghibellines, and that Cangrande, the most famous of them, became the host and protector of Dante in exile. Here the equestrian image clearly serves as a symbol of sovereignty, in conscious recall of the imperial significance of such images. The earliest, on the sarcophagus of Alberto I della Scala, about 1300, still is a modest relief, of about the same size as the image of Guglielmus, but the horse now has the walking gait of equestrian statues. Alberto is flanked by saints, to suggest divine sanction of his rule. Cangrande himself, however, thirty years later, eternalized himself as a lifesize stone figure proudly perched on a tall base in the shape of a truncated pyramid above his tomb. The monument has by now outgrown the interior of any church and is placed out of doors within the sacred precinct of Santa Maria Antica. Here we have indeed a free-standing equestrian statue, although not yet in the classical—or Renaissance— sense. Not only are the statue and the base made of the same material, but the motionless, arched form of the horse seems to grow, like a Gothic pinnacle, from the towering base that supports and at the same time dwarfs it. Cangrande himself radiates the brash self-confidence of the victorious captain; he appears in full armor, sword in hand, and with a broad grin on his face—the same grin that creases his features on the effigy of the tomb proper. (We must be careful not to interpret this facial expression psychologically; it is meant, like the "archaic smile" of Greek statues, to convey a generalized "aliveness"—what an incongruous notion in the solemn context of a tomb!) On the sarcophagus

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appear a number of biographical scenes showing the military exploits of Cangrande, another startling departure from the "prospective" character of medieval tombs. Unlike the battling Guglielmus, these reliefs are not linked to the circumstances of the Cangrande's death but cover a considerable portion of his earthly life. If we look for the antecedents of this monument, we can cite the imperial symbolism of the equestrian statue only on the plane of ideology. In terms of its shape, the Gangrande statue recalls, rather, another similar medieval monument, that of Henry the Lion in Brunswick, erected more than 150 years earlier. It shows an impressive bronze lion, the symbol of the arch-Guelph, on a tall base surprisingly similar in shape to that of the Cangrande statue. And the intention of the monument is, of course, to proclaim an authority equal to that of the emperor himself. Now Cangrande was a Ghibelline, who held Verona as an imperial fief, yet he fancied himself the equal of any ruler on earth. Hence this "imperial" equestrian statue, and hence also his chosen title, which originally meant not "the great dog" but "the great Khan," that is, the rank of that mysterious "emperor of the East" in the unknown reaches of Asia about whom Cangrande may have heard from Marco Polo or a similar source. He even had his body wrapped in a Chinese silk gown, as we learned some decades ago when the sarcophagus was opened. The imperial flavor of the monument is greatly enhanced by the tall pyramidal base, which must have carried a symbolic message of its own. Such structures are extremely rare in medieval art—in fact, the Brunswick lion is the only other example I have been able to find. Yet we have testimony linking this shape with imperial grandeur, and, more specifically, imperial tombs. According to a medieval chronicler, the equestrian Theodoric whom Charlemagne took to Aachen stood on top of a truncated pyramid in Ravenna; and in medieval Rome the huge obelisk behind St. Peter's (a shape not so very different from that of a slender pyramid) was regarded as the "tomb of Caesar." One of these traditions, or perhaps all of them, entered into the Cangrande monument. Its successors in the later fourteenth century were numerous, but none rivaled its boldness. The later members of the Delia Scala family continued to build outdoor tombs topped by equestrian statues, while the Visconti of Milan, who took over the type, moved it inside the church, behind the altar (as in the case of the tomb of Bernabò Visconti, now in the Castello Sforzesco). The fifteenth century in Italy thus inherited two separate types of

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equestrian monument from the fourteenth: free-standing stone statues for sovereigns, and wall tombs with wooden equestrian figures on sarcophagi for condottieri (cf. the Savelli monument in Venice and its lost antecedents in Florence and Siena). These two traditions now began to merge, as we can see from the tomb of Cortesia Sarego, about 1432-1435, in San Fermo, Verona. As a wall tomb, it follows the condottieri type, reflecting the station of the deceased; but the equestrian figure is now of stone, and a strong classical influence is beginning to make itself felt. The gait of the horse, with one front leg raised high, recalls the Regisole of Pavia; the rider is now bareheaded, another classical feature, and wears pseudoclassical rather than contemporary armor. And the same pseudoclassical costume occurs on the two soldiers who withdraw the curtains to reveal the equestrian image to the beholder. Here, then, we are approaching many of the qualities that distinguish the Gattamelata monument. In fact, there is reason to believe that originally Donatello was commissioned to do a monument rather like that of Cortesia Sarego—a wall tomb inside the Church of St. Anthony in Padua. I suspect that it was the artist himself who "escalated" the job, substituting a free-standing bronze statue in the cemetery next to the church but no longer containing the tomb. That would explain why the tomb of Gattamelata, a modest affair inside the church, was made only after the equestrian "monument to fame" had been completed. The only reference to burial in Donatello's statue is very indirect, and classical rather than Christian—the false doors on both sides of the pedestal, one set closed, the other slightly ajar, as on certain Roman sarcophagi. The statue itself is an attempt to rival the Marcus Aurelius in Rome; its scale is over life-size, and the gait of the horse is similar. The animal is, of course, of the heavy breed which alone can support a man in full armor, and probably a bit too large for the rider, while the horse of the Marcus Aurelius is a bit too small. This creates the impression that the rider dominates his mount not by sheer physical force but by intellectual superiority, or virtù. Gattamelata's armor is still more pseudoclassical than that of Cortesia Sarego, and richly encrusted with classical genii and allegorical figures, somewhat like the armor of Roman imperial statues such as the Augustus of Primaporta. The head, too, is an "ideal portrait" rather than an actual one. Gattamelata was at least seventy at the time of his death, two years before Donatello came to Padua, and had been incapacitated for some time by a series of strokes. If a death mask was taken of his features and supplied to Donatello, the artist must have transformed it

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completely, for the features of the statue are those of a man in vigorous middle age, instinct with a "Roman" nobility of character that recalls the finest portraits of the soldier-emperors of the second century. The precedent of the Gattamelata monument directly inspired the second bronze equestrian statue of the fifteenth century, that of Bartolommeo Colleoni. He, too, was the captain of the land armies of the Venetian Republic, and felt that he deserved the same honor granted to Gattamelata. Although he had made provisions for an elaborate tomb in his home town of Bergamo, in his last will he asked the Venetian Senate to erect his equestrian monument on the Piazza San Marco, an even more honorific spot than the Piazza del Santo in Padua. The Venetians honored his request but shifted the monument to a less conspicuous place in front of the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Again the commission was given to the best Florentine sculptor of the time, Andrea del Verrocchio, who must have stopped in Padua to admire the Gattamelata on his way to Venice. Yet the two monuments are so different that the Colleoni is in some ways the antithesis of Donatello's work. Standing in his stirrups, stiffly erect on a rather small and delicate horse, the Colleoni dominates his surroundings with an almost frightening sense of indomitable power. Some of the qualities of the Cangrande statue seem revived here; and why should not Verrocchio have visited Verona—the home of Dante in exile—on his journey, and retain a vivid impression of the Cangrande monument? Be that as it may, the Colleoni, unlike the Gattamelata, wears a helmet and a thoroughly modern suit of armor, so that the all'antica element is missing in his makeup. The Colleoni monument, in turn, furnished the model for the two equestrian statues designed (but never executed) by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan a few decades later. For the earlier of these, the Sforza monument, Leonardo explored the possibility of a radically new solution, the rearing horse, but in the end adopted a design not very different from that of the Colleoni monument. Leonardo's second venture in this field, the Trivulzio monument, would have shown the rider on a rapidly striding horse modeled on the Regisole, as we know from the artist's drawings. And the rider would have been bareheaded, and probably clad in armor all'antica, thus resuming elements of the Gattamelata monument. The quality that binds together the equestrian figures we have examined so far, from that of Guglielmus to Leonardo's Trivulzio monument, is the emphasis on virtù, the prowess of the individual hero. From

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the mid-sixteenth century on, with the growth of the idea of absolute monarchy, the equestrian monument assumes a different flavor and a different purpose : in conscious imitation of R o m a n imperial practice, it becomes a public assertion of dynastic authority. Space forbids me to examine here the development of this type in its early phases (i.e., the equestrian monuments of Giovanni da Bologna, Pietro Tacca, and Francesco Mocchi). Let us be content with a single specimen, the statue of Alessandro Farnese in Piacenza, of 1612, by Mocchi. Here again we find the rapid forward stride of the Regisole, while the costume of the Duke is a baroque version of R o m a n imperial garb—the lack of stirrups and saddle is notable among many other details meant to evoke analogies with the Marcus Aurelius. T h e great billowing cloak, reflecting the invisible force of the wind, gives the statue a dynamic quality thoroughly characteristic of the baroque style. When Bernini, the greatest sculptor of the seventeenth century, was commissioned to design an equestrian monument of Louis X I V in 1665, he carried this dynamism to its ultimate conclusion by placing the King (again in classical costume and without stirrups) on a rearing horse. T h e drawing of the projected monument shows the base Bernini intended for it: a mass of rocks to represent the top of a mountain. I n the artist's own words, recorded by his son : [The King is] not represented in the act of commanding his armies. That, after all, would be appropriate for any prince. But I wanted to represent him in a state which he alone has been able to attain through his glorious enterprises. And since the poets tell us that Glory resides on top of a very high and steep mountain whose summit only few can climb, reason demands that those who nevertheless arrive there . . . joyfully breathe the air of sweetest glory. . . . I have shown him as a rider on that summit, in full possession of that Glory which . . . has become synonymous with his name. Since a benignant face and a gracious smile are proper to him who is contented, I have represented the monarch in this way. T h e drawing and the splendid terra-cotta model of 1670 do not yet show the royal smile, but the statue itself must have done so—and that, as Rudolf Wittkower has pointed out recently, was the chief reason why the monument was rejected by the French monarch, as incompatible with his dignity. I suspect, however, that other considerations also entered into the decision. Bernini's monument was by definition unique, while the French court needed a prototype that could be varied and multiplied as necessary—in other words, an adaptation of the M a r -

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cus Aurelius. François Girardson, a French sculptor of far lesser talent than Bernini, provided such a prototype in his design of the equestrian monument of Louis X I V for the Place Vendôme. Dozens of others succeeded it in the next hundred years, all of them destroyed during the French Revolution, so that we know them only from a few models or from engravings. Their most distinguished surviving descendant is Andreas Schlüter's monument of the Great Elector of Prussia in Berlin, made about 1700. It combines the basic pattern of Girardon's design with some of the dynamism of Mocchi's Farnese statue. Thus Bernini's bold design of the rearing horse, first adumbrated by Leonardo da Vinci, left no trace on the baroque dynastic monument. His statue was banished to the farthest reaches of the park at Versailles and recarved into a Marcus Curtius, defeated, so to speak, by a combination of French classicism and court decorum. I t was revived only once, during the later eighteenth century, at the eastern periphery of Europe: in the monument to Peter the Great, the last and one of the most impressive of these descendants of the Marcus Aurelius statue. Étienne Maurice Falconet, who designed it, took over Bernini's "summit" idea as well, along with the classicizing costume. T h e allegorical message of the monument is stressed by the snake of envy which the horse is trampling underfoot. W h a t made this monument possible was the very fact that from the start it was meant to be unique, a homage by Catherine the Great to the founder of modern Russia—and simultaneously a tribute to herself as his legitimate successor (witness the inscription: Petro Primo Catharina Secunda). Peter the Great had been far too preoccupied with more practical matters to sponsor equestrian monuments of himself seriatim the way the French kings did. Fortunately, the Soviet revolutionaries of 1917 also were too busy with other things to destroy Falconet's masterpiece. It is not difficult to see why the French Revolution sounded the death knell of the equestrian monument as a viable artistic form. Neither constitutional monarchs nor dictators could very well present themselves as "rulers by the grace of God"—or as paradigms of R o m a n virtue. T h u s the equestrian monument soon degenerated to "the m a n on horseback," the holder of effective power by whatever means, but devoid of majesty. T h e aura of magnificentia (to use a favorite Renaissance term) that radiates from the Cangrande as well as from Falconet's Peter the Great could not be recaptured.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The only general history of the equestrian monument in Western art is Hjalmar M. C. Friis, Rytterstatuens History i Europa (Copenhagen, 1933), a book difficult of access, linguistically and physically, and by now out of date in many respects. The bibliographical references listed below, though far from exhaustive, will serve to lead the reader to the scholarly literature dealing with the main phases of my subject. Antiquity: Harold von Roques de Maumont, Antike Reiterstandbilder, Berlin, 1958. Ludwig H. Heydenreich, "Marc Aurel und Regisole," Festschrift Erich Meyer, Hamburg, 1959, pp. 146-159. Hans Hoffman, "Die Aachener Reiterstatue," Das erste Jahrtausend, ed. Victor H. Elbern, Düsseldorf, 1962, I, pp. 318-331. Middle Ages and Early Renaissance : Otto von Simson, "The Bamberg Rider," Review of Religion, V (1940), pp. 257-281. Horst W. Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello, Princeton, 1963, pp. 151-161, 250f. Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, New York, 1964, pp. 83-85, figs. 378-394. Dynastic Monuments, Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries: Sterling A. Callisen, "The Equestrian Statue of Louis X I V in Dijon . . .," Art Bulletin, X X I I I (1941), pp. 131-140. Valentino Martinelli, "Francesco Mochi," Commentari, III (1952), pp. 35-43. Rudolf Wittkower, "The Vicissitudes of a Dynastic Monument," De Artibus Opuscula XL, Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, New York, 1961, pp. 497-531.

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Marguerite de Valois's Album of Verse1 by Eugénie Droz

FOR THE BENEFIT OF YOUNG people who are thinking of marrying, to warn them of the dangers that beset ill-assorted couples, someone should write an "exemplum" recounting the disillusionments of Henry III of Navarre, the future Henry IV of France, and his bride, Marguerite de Valois. Rarely have political conditions, men, and the stars been so hostile to a marriage as to the union contracted by that prince and princess in 1572. Never has there been so mismatched a pair. The young man, heir to Navarre, Béarn, Albret, Foix, and a part of Gascony was a Pyrenean Protestant, son of the strong-willed Jeanne d'Albret and the unstable Antoine de Bourbon; he was the grandson of Marguerite de Navarre, author of the Heptameron, and hence a greatnephew of Francis I. It is not difficult to understand why Catherine di Medici, queen of France, was marrying her little Marguerite (called Margot) to this young Huguenot cousin. She wished to annex the region of the Pyrenees and to erect a barrier against Spain. Such political considerations dictated the marriages of all her children. Toward the end of the century the "blood relationship" of the two served as a pretext for their divorce. After hesitating for a long time—we can follow her waverings in the correspondence of the Queen of France—Jeanne d'Albret set out for Paris on the road along the Loire. Hardly had she arrived and almost completed arrangements for the marriage when she died, not of poison, as Huguenot historians maliciously assert, but of tuberculosis. This death was an ill omen which should have deterred Henri de Bourbon from marrying "the French pearl," but not at all. On August 18, 1572, the ceremony was performed by the Cardinal de Bourbon, in front of Notre Dame de Paris. Then the young bride entered the cathedral while the 1

Translated by Katherine Wheatley.

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bridegroom waited in the Bishop's Palace for Mass to end. T h e days that followed were a round of balls, celebrations, entertainments, until on August 22 the capital, then the realm, ran with the blood of the Massacres of Saint Bartholomew's Day. Rarely has a marriage been so ridiculous and so dramatic and rarely a couple so ill-matched. O u r purpose is not to dwell on the lack of harmony between King and Queen, but, by means of an unknown document, to shed some light on the happy years that the Queen spent at Nérac and in her kingdom from December 15, 1578, to January 29, 1582. Sully remarked on the upheaval which the court caused in the provinces of the southwest, where, among Huguenot nobles, you "no longer heard any talk of arms, only of ladies and of love." " W e became," says he, "complete courtiers and playing at being lovers, like the others, gave our attention to nothing but laughing, dancing, and tilting at the ring." Marguerite de Valois mentions in her Mémoires the "happiness" which she enjoyed in 1579 and 1580: Our court was so brilliant and so pleasant that we did not envy the court of France, for we had among us Madame la princesse de Navarre [sister of the King], myself and a number of maids and ladies-in-waiting; and the King, my husband, with his suite of lords and nobles, as polished as the most gracious I have seen at the court [of France]. And there was nothing about them to be deplored except that they were Huguenots. But no one spoke of this religious divergence; the King, my husband, and Madame la princesse, his sister, going to the preaching and my suite and I to Mass in a chapel in the park; and when we came from services we met to go strolling together; either in a beautiful garden with long walks bordered with lines of laurel and cypress trees, or in the park which I had had constructed, in paths three thousand paces long on the banks of the Baïse; and the rest of the day was spent in all sorts of genteel pleasures, a ball being held ordinarily in the afternoon or evening. T h e château had been refurbished. T h e once-bare rooms were filled with books, costly furniture and art objects, with mirrors, silver, Flemish linen, and beautiful tapestries brought from Pau, "that little Geneva," where the Queen refused to live. I n this luxurious setting the Queen lived in the company of thirty ladies-in-waiting (a detachment from the flying squadron of Catherine di Medici). Marguerite de Valois, then twenty-five, was in the full radiance of her beauty. "She was never so beautiful or so joyous," says one of her ladies, M a d a m e de Picquigny, writing at the time. Costly objects poured into the palace. A list of them is found in the accounts of the Treasury of Navarre. They were "a bird-of-paradise

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plume, a long string of pearls, four gold rings set with diamonds, an emerald ring, several watches, ten fans (gold- and silver-washed), perfumed gloves, scents, lengths of silk and velvet." Diversions were balls, hunting, tilting at the ring, tennis, bowling, and on rainy days, billiards and cards. T h e King often lost at these games. O n some occasions lute and violin concerts or theatrical performances were given by commedia dell' arte troops or groups of farce players. Never had the poor kingdom of Navarre seen living on such a grand scale, the more easily maintained because money was lacking and they lived on borrowed funds. Never had the old Château of Nérac, where Marguerite d'Angoulême had lifted up her soul unto God, where the austere Jeanne d'Albret had brought u p her son in the Christian faith, never had the old Château been the scene of such profligacy and such m a d adventures. Agrippa d'Aubigné, grown old, wrote sententiously : The court of Nérac teemed with brave nobles and excellent ladies . . . they thought themselves the equal of the other court [that of the Louvre]. Easy living brought vices as heat brings snakes. In no time at all Marguerite de Navarre polished wits and caused arms to gather rust. She taught the King, her husband, that a knight without love was a knight without soul, and her own practice of her theories was not concealed. All of this means that the illicit love affairs, the sensual pleasures, and the passionate sentiments fostered by the dolce fa niente of Nérac were known to everybody, paraded as they were in broad daylight. We can understand why Duplessis-Mornay was bold enough to write to his king in 1583 : "Sire, forgive your faithful servants a further word. Those love affairs which you carry on so openly and to which you give so much time now seem out of season." W h a t record remains of those brilliant years which the court spent at Nérac? Are we to be satisfied with the passage from the Queen's Mémoires, with Sully's Mémoires, and those of Aubigné, quoted above, with the remarkable Itinéraire of Philippe Lauzun and with the Treasury accounts? I t would be surprising if, in a milieu where love took precedence over all other pleasures, the sentiments of these courtiers had not been expressed in poetry, and if the nobles and the beautiful ladies who met on the banks of the Baïse had not exchanged love notes in rhyme, elegies, and sonnets. As a matter of fact, historians have hardly touched upon this short-lived cultural center except to speak of the scandalous life at Nérac; Armand Garnier, in his three-volume work on Aubigné, skims over the poet's relation to the Princess, rapidly and in gingerly

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fashion; P. de Vaissière devotes not a single line to literature; M . Jean Baillou neglects Nérac in his Recherches sur l'humanisme provinciale, and Jean-H. Mariéfol is the only biographer of Marguerite de Navarre that I know of to devote a chapter to the court of Nérac. But his documentation is a little meager, for, after citing D u Bartas, Aubigné, and Pibrac, he too relates the amorous adventures of the Queen. These amorous adventures, it would seem, continue to turn sober, scholarly heads. T h e fame of Nérac, a town of 15,000 inhabitants (6,000 at present) , which a young, beautiful, gracious, intelligent and cultivated princess had transformed into a capital, even reached England. Shakespeare laid the scene of Love's Labour's Lost there; the entire action of this comedy takes place in the Château of Nérac at the time of Marguerite de Valois and her husband. There is in existence, however, a document which enables us to imagine what the literary life at Nérac was like, to know who were the favorite poets whose poems were recited, or read, or sung there, which poets visited Nérac, bringing their verses with them, and what poems were composed there. In this document we see that Marguerite was deified, in accordance with her wishes, and we see how she imposed her tastes : on her admirers, a style of glorification all but unknown before ; on her husband and on the nobles of Gascony and Navarre, polite manners, an idle life of luxury, and the French language instead of the Pyrenean dialect; and on authors a précieux poetic style anticipating that of the seventeenth-century salon. This document is a collection of poems which Marguerite had copied by scribes and bound in brown calf by a local artisan during her sojourn at Nérac. T h e volume was acquired in 1822 by L. J. N . Monmerqué, member of the Institute, from the bookseller Rayer. " I gave him [Rayer] in exchange a few autographed letters and a little money," writes Monmerqué. And again, "This volume could put us on the track of interesting research," an opinion which our study will confirm. When Monmerqué's library was sold in March, 1861, the manuscript was bought by Charles Read, founder of the Société de l'histoire du protestanisme français; his heirs gave the volume to the library of this organization, where it is to be found at present, with the catalogue number 816. Struck by the great number of poems by Agrippa d'Aubigné included in the collection, Monmerqué had noted: " I t appears to have belonged to M a d a m e de Maintenon [Aubigné's granddaughter], for the names of the poets written in the margin of their poems seem to be in her handwriting, with which I a m quite familiar." Changing his mind about this attribu-

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tion he adds later: " I think rather, that this anthology belonged to the Abbé de Brantôme, and that the three sonnets at the beginning are his." T h e second hypothesis is as unacceptable as the first. N o one, in fact, has as yet offered an hypothesis of the slightest value concerning the original owner of this album of verses. While M . Jacques Lavaud has identified the one belonging to the Maréchale de Retz, and Pierre Champion has recognized the collection made by Nicholas de Villeroy and his wife, Madeleine de l'Aubespine, which contains the works of the great poets who frequented their house, historians still state that the MonmerquéRead volume originally belonged to M a d a m e de Maintenon. This attribution is a gross error. T h e problem presented by the Monmerqué-Read volume, a problem we think we have solved, is this : I n what milieu, in what salon or literary circle, was the anthology made? I n order to formulate an answer of any validity we should follow the method recommended by Pierre Champion, who says, "Manuscripts are like aggregates, representative of a person or a social group." H e adds authoritatively that the study of flyleaves, when by good fortune they have been preserved, of emblems, of poems added later to the original collection, is of great importance. Because they did not know these elementary rules of historical research, specialists in Renaissance literature have failed to recognize, for example, certain texts of Ronsard. Let us open this precious manuscript, preserved in its original binding and without having been cleaned or trimmed, and let us consider on page 4, opposite the beginning of the text, a Spanish motto: "Menos mal es el ser qael barrontello" ("Better the great lord than the little vassal"), and beneath the motto a drawing or "sign" which is probably a trident, the symbol of Neptune, separating two lovers. Around the drawing are four closed S"s, which symbolize unswerving fidelity. T h e handwriting is that of Marguerite de Valois, who had a passion for Spanish emblems, which she inscribed in her books, slipped into her love letters, and had planted on the walls of her palace in the Rue de la Seine. For her, Spanish was the language of love. T h e sign of the trident is one of those which she sketched on the flyleaf of a notebook belonging to her, a notebook which contains speeches delivered before the Palace Academy. B. D. Hobson has made a competent study of the decoration and of the peculiarities of this book, reproducing the page on which the Spanish mottos are inscribed with the three symbolic drawings and many closed S's. This study has greatly facilitated our task of identification. In this connection, I should like to call attention also to a recent article

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by M . Marcel Dommergues, in which he suggests an interesting explanation of the four closed S's appearing on bindings, around signatures, and in love letters. H e believes that these S's probably stood for sabio, solo, solicito, secreto, Spanish qualifiers which describe the four virtues essential for true lovers. Pierre de I'Estoile translates thus, " Q u a t r e choses requiert amour: Sage, Seul, Solliciteus, Secret." O n page 281 of the album a second scribe sets to work and draws several marguerites made of four pearls and two crossed strokes. All the authors who have mentioned the Princess knew that Margarita, the name of a flower, is also the word for pearl (Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, Pliny, and others). T h e passage in Matthew (7:6) where we are admonished not to cast pearls before swine, was familiar to them. Numerous closed S's are placed at the beginning and at the end of Spanish verses. T h e first of these verses, "por lo mas i no por mas," is precisely the one which Marguerite had jotted down in her notebook of the Palace Academy. Scholars, misled by erroneous identifications, have failed to recognize Jean de Rivason, barrister of Sarlat, an important personage in Périgord. Friend of Elie Vinet, principal of the College of Guyenne at Bordeaux, friend also of Pierre de Brach and of Clovis de Nuysement, he is the perfect man of letters, although he did not leave any important work. T h e first three poems of Marguerite de Valois's album and one of the last (pp. 5, 12, 14, and 375) are from the pen of this gentleman, who did not disdain to pay homage to the Queen. T h e n comes M a d a m e de Villeroy, that is, Madeleine de l'Aubespine, with her translation of Ovid's Second Epistle, which Roger Sorg published in 1923 at the same time as the Chansons de Callianthe. M a d a m e de Villeroy, wife of the minister of state, was made famous by Ronsard and Jamyn, and loved by Desportes, who took vengeance for her inconstancy by addressing to her the famous villanelle, "Rozette pour un peu d'absence / Votre cueur vous avez changé . . . " T h e poetic talent of this lady was esteemed by her contemporaries even though she had published nothing. Why did Marguerite de Valois choose to have a poem of such length (242 alexandrines) copied for her album? T w o possible explanations suggest themselves: the poem may have evoked the memory of those charming ladies of the French court, subtle, intelligent, profligate; or the complaints of Phillie to Démophon may have moved her by recalling her own emotions at the time of Bussy d'Amboise's departure for Poland with the duke of Anjou. We are somewhat surprised to read next some twenty poems by Salo-

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mon Certon, who served the King of Navarre faithfully for forty years and who is named by Nicholas Rapin together with Duplessis-Mornay, Aubigné, Constans, and La Noue in an elegy on the death of Desportes. It was a great honor for the old Huguenot to be represented in the Queen's anthology. He does his best to play the court poet, but the role does not suit him. His sonnets are among the poorest in the collection. While the barrister Rivason is cultivated and gifted, the notary Gerton is only a poor rhymester without talent or taste, quite out of his element in love poetry. He is more successful in 1584 when he composes an ode for La Seconde Sepmaine, defending Du Bartas against his calumniators. Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas, had been esquire trenchant (écuyer tranchant) to the King since 1576 and knew everybody at court. He had praised the Queen in dedicating to her his Judith and his Muse chrestienne (1574). He was in charge of the celebration welcoming the Queen when she and her mother arrived in Nérac on December 15, 1578. On this occasion three nymphs sang the praises of "the pearl of the French" in Latin, French, and Gascon. In Marguerite de Valois's album we find, without the author's name, the sixth of the Sonnets des neuf muses pyrénées, beginning: "L'ours qui fier brigandoit la frontiere eternelle . . ." It is not surprising that Marguerite chose only one poem of Du Bartas, her husband's poet. Précieuse that she was, she could hardly have been expected to have any liking for the Biblical, scientific, unpolished poetry of Du Bartas. The Baron de S , author of three sonnets (pp. 279-280) belonged to the same group of faithful followers of Henry. Charles Read erroneously identified this author as the baron of Surimeau, profligate son of Agrippa d'Aubigné, who was not born until after 1584. The three sonnets are the work of Jean de Gontaut-Biron, Baron de Salignac, eldest son of the first Maréchal de Biron. He became chamberlain of the King of Navarre in 1585, member of his Gouncil, governor of Périgord and of the viscounty of Limoges. Converted to Catholicism by his wife (says Aubigné), he was named ambassador to Constantinople and died there in 1604. While the court was at Nérac, he was involved in a bloody affair. He assisted Turenne in a duel with the two Duras brothers. The duel took place on the strand of Agen, March 17, 1579. Turenne received seven sword wounds. Now Turenne loved the Queen and rumor had it that she returned his love—despite the fact that he was a Huguenot. In the first of his sonnets, the Baron de Salignac seems to be speaking for Turenne :

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. . . peu me semble l'honneur de rester etendu Aiant tout seule défait une troupe ennemie . . . Parmi ces grands dangers je veus vivre amoureus Et mourant sans effroi rester victorieus Du ciel et de l'horreur qu'il fait de sa tempeste. T h e Baron was also a friend of D u Bartas and wrote an introduction in verse for his Seconde Sepmaine (1584) which comes just before that of Certon. T h e Baron's poem is short, light, and graceful. And here are the last Huguenot authors. First Monteil d'Agen, probably the person mentioned in the fortieth Ode, where Aubigné seeks to console him for an unhappy love. I n the album he has a seventy-twoline poem on L'amour de soy mesme; above this title has been added Filaftie. T h e word philaftie or philauté, derived from the Greek and used earlier by Rabelais, was a favorite with Marquerite de Valois. At the beginning of her Mémoires, she says, addressing Brantôme: " I should praise your work more if your work did not praise me so much, since I do not wish my praise to be attributed to philaftie rather than reason." She was fond of the learned word, and it occurred frequently in her conversation. She used it even in La ruelle mal assortie, where, speaking under the name of Uranie she says to the Gascon knight, "more beautiful of body than of mind" : "car les jeunes gens de ce temps ont beaucoup de consideration en leurs desseins, et cette douce Philaftie a un grand pouvoir sur leur âme." T h e word was certainly unknown to the Gascon, for he replies with his provincial accent: " Q u e beut dire Filafetie?" "Ce sont," says Uranie, "des mots dont on ne déjeune point en vostre pays." When she "polished the wit" of the nobles of her husband's entourage, she taught them to use such words. Next come ten poems of Jacques de Constans. H e had written these poems during Jeanne d'Albret's reign and had presented them to Louise de Coligny for her marriage (1572). I have related elsewhere how this soldier, entrusted with guarding his Queen, had expressed in poetry his anguish and his unhappy love with the wild country of the Pyrenees for a setting. Poets of Navarre often used this background, and Marguerite de Valois speaks in one of her letters of the "echo of these cavernous mountains, the horrid sound of a turbulent and fearsome stream." It seems likely that Constans had lent the manuscript of his Constantes amours to the Queen, who had the poems she liked copied, for example, the Stances des baings, composed at Eaux-Chaudes in 1567. This poem has just been wrongly attributed to Geoffrey de Galignon, at that time

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church deputy of Dauphiny. H e had no hand in the matter. T h e mistake has been made by a young specialist in literary creation, themes, and theory in poetry. If one may judge from this example, that type of literary study is probably of little use in identifying an author or dating a work, while the methods of historical research are still fundamental. T h e proper procedure is to apply them first, and then afterward one may deal validly with themes and style. A number of historians of sixteenthcentury literature are now going astray because they have forgotten these elementary principles. T h e most faithful of Henry of Navarre's followers, Agrippa d'Aubigné, is represented in the album by eighty-one poems: twenty-one Stances (out of seventy-two) and thirty-four Odes (out of fifty-two). Some of these poems are anonymous; other have "Aubigny" written in the margin. T h e poet signed his name thus in official documents of the same date. In 1573 he became equerry (écuyer) to the King of Navarre and served him at the Louvre (with some interruptions) until their flight from Paris in 1576. H e retired to his home in the Blois region and there composed a long autobiographical elegy (1577) and lamented the inconstancy and the death of Diane Salviati. Evidently quite recovered from his grief, he went to the Grande Jours at Poitiers and met there a number of old friends, with whom he led a very pleasant existence. They frequented the salon of the Des Roches ladies, provincial précieuses who entertained the members of this aristocratic circle most graciously. While at Poitiers, Aubigné composed several facetious poems concerning a fictitious love-trial. Friends who had come from Paris collaborated with him in this hoax. Finally, after two years of separation from his King, Aubigné stopped sulking and returned to Gascony in 1579. T h e King received him affectionately, promising to make amends for past injuries ("avec caresses et promesses expiatoires"), and the Queen welcomed him warmly. H e had been a court poet at the Louvre; he was to be a court poet at Nérac, where the daughter of the Valois, obeying her mother, Catherine di Medici, was allowing "arms to gather rust," thus curbing civil war. Of all the poets who brought their poems to Nérac or composed them there, Aubigné was the only real creative genius, a fact which accounts for the large portion of the Queen's album devoted to his works. We shall not draw up a complete list of Aubigné's poems found in the album. Let us note the autobiographical elegy of 1577, two poems composed at Poitiers, and all the Stances (except the last, which was composed later, as a sort of epilogue). T h e order in which Aubigné's poems

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appear in the Nérac manuscript makes it difficult to recognize those written for Diane. From Geneva collections, edited by the author in his old age, we can see that the first seven poems and the nineteenth were inspired by the young woman during her lifetime or after her death and by the countryside of Talcy, where she lived. T h e thirteen other Stances were very likely written for Marguerite de Valois, her sister-in-law Catherine de Bourbon, and their ladies-in-waiting. Among these ladies were some charmers and professional beauties who stirred the King's heart and the hearts of the gentlemen of his entourage. Aubigné sings of these ladies under the names of Olympe and Callirhée. In his old age Aubigné also changed the classification of the thirtyfour Odes of the album. Not only did he rearrange the poems in the third book of his Printemps, but he also dropped some twenty which had appeared in the album, replacing them with eighteen odes, for the most part mediocre, odes composed shortly before his arrival at Nérac or soon after his departure. They are, for example, a reply to the Rozette of Desportes ( 1 1 ) , verses on the death of Jodelle, which occurred in 1573 (13), one ode for the Isabelle of Mathieu de Laval, printed in 1576 ( 3 9 ) , four poems on the procuress of Agen (21, 23, 24, 25) which were composed in January, 1577, an epithalamium for his friend Fontlebon, who married in September, 1582 ( 3 0 ) , a Bacchic song ( 4 7 ) , verses for a masquerade ( 4 8 ) , and, finally, a sonnet for Amadis Jamyn and Vatel ( 5 2 ) , composed in 1576. All of these poems, with which he pretends to make the collection complete, actually destroy its unity; they give the book a lack of balance hitherto unexplained. We think we have found a reason for this unevenness: in the poems of the Queen's manuscript Aubigné cuts a figure of which he was later ashamed. H e appears in the album as a court poet, singing the praises of the Marguerite who in 1585 was to betray her husband by affiliating with the League. Aubigné recalled her only to heap abuse upon her, as he does, for example, in Le Divorce satyrique, a pamphlet which proves he knew her very well. In his old age he made every effort to erase from his memory and from his works the image of the court poet he had been. As for Diane, she appears only once in the odes which replace the discarded ones, in an affected poem ( 2 9 ) , unfinished, to which her name was added as an afterthought. This is no longer Diane Salviati; it is merely the theme of Diane, a name no longer designating one woman in particular but applied to all women loved by the poet. Here Aubigné follows the example of Jodelle and others of his contemporaries. For that matter, the name of Diane was sometimes used for Marguerite de Valois

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in the salon of the Maréchale de Retz. In the poet's old age, the springs of amorous lyricism having long since dried up, this name becomes a synonym of the beloved. It no longer has any connection with the young girl of Talcy (44 and 45). Just as the Huguenot nobles strolled with the Catholic lords on the banks of the Baïse, so their verses are mingled without distinction in the Queen's album. She had copied those of Desportes, who had been "her" poet, who had sung her praises since her early youth and glorified her as a new goddess. If we are not mistaken, the collection includes his Discours on the tragic end of Quélus, beloved favorite of Henry III. Quélus died in 1578, three months before the Princess left the court, of wounds received in a duel. We also find eleven sonnets of which three, never published, have the name of the author written legibly in the margin. These three should be added to the next edition of the Amours d'Hyppolite. Perhaps he had discarded them; perhaps he had lost the text. The first two of these sonnets concern Marguerite's departure from the French court in the summer of 1578. But are these three unpublished sonnets the only ones which may be attributed to Desportes? It would be rash to base an identification on theme and style alone. We have had the good luck to recognize the author of an Elégie, wrongly attributed in the album to Aubigné (p. 32), who dedicated it to the young Princess before her marriage. The album gives the first version of the poem; the second version appeared in the 1575 edition of Jamyn's works (Oeuvres, fol. 201-213ve) in the Book of Artemis, and the third in 1577. These three versions show Jamyn correcting his poems for stylistic reasons, for one thing, but more particularly because the verses were originally written for a young girl, but later addressed to a married woman, wife of a king. We must not forget that the poet had been Ronsard's secretary and had helped him with the innumerable revisions of his own work. Toward the end of the manuscript we find, without the author's name, the elegy which Ronsard addressed to Eurymedon (Charles IX) around 1570, but we do not find La Charitè, an epithalamium presented to Marguerite in 1572. The last poems of the collection, with the author's names written in the margin, were addressed to the Queen by or for men who loved her. First come two poems by Benjamin Jamyn, brother of Amadis, speaking for Jacques de Harlay, Seigneur de Chanvallon, equerry of the duke of Anjou. He was young, radiantly handsome, and a formidable duelist. The story of this mutual passion has often been told; Aubigné early dis-

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covered the secret romance and how it was born and developed during the winter of 1580-1581 at Fleix and Cadillac. As a public scandal this affair created grave consequences for Marguerite. It caused her to be exiled from the French court and finally from Navarre. T h e lovers exchanged letters written in affected and amphigoric style. These letters are documents which reveal the intimate emotional life of the Queen, the images dear to her heart, and the taste which she imposed on those who loved her. François d'Espinay, Seigneur de Saint-Luc, who bears the name of one of the four authors of the Gospels, writes under the pseudonym of the Evangelist. H e was one of Henry I l l ' s favorites, an intimate of Quélus, Saint-Mégrin, and Saint-Sulpice, and one of the most infamous men of the age. H e had succeeded L a Mole in Marguerite de Valois's affections. La Mole had been executed in 1574 for conspiring against the King. Saint-Luc was only a passing fancy for Marguerite. She soon fell in love with Bussy d'Amboise. But Saint-Luc's love endured. H e sometimes came from his government post at Brouage to visit Nérac "disguised and incognito." T h e two poems in which he complains that M a d a m e is driving him to suicide, as well as a poem pasted in the album and signed with his surname, belong perhaps to that period. After the debacle of September-October, 1585, when the Queen had to leave Agen and take refuge in Garlat in Auvergne—where for many months she was held prisoner—a secretary who did not understand what he was copying added on the blank pages of the album two sonnets on the captivity of the Queen and five poems on the death of Bussy d'Amboise, who had been brutally murdered on August 19, 1579. Not a word is found in Marguerite's Mémoires about this death, which occurred during her happy days at Nérac; and yet she must have been deeply moved, since she loved this handsome, cruel, blood-thirsty man. T h e most important of the added poems is the Dialogue de Flore et de Lysis. Here Marguerite speaks, under the name of Flora, with her lover Lysis. This is the work of her chancellor, Guy de Faur de Pibrac, who spent seventeen years in her household, serving her devotedly, advancing the money for the sumptuous life at Nérac, and, naturally, falling in love with her, despite his fifty-odd years. T h e letters which these two exchanged are among the strangest documents of this age. She is offensive and condescending, rich in her youth and royal beauty; he is crushed with sorrow, on the verge of a nervous depression. T o complete the picture of Marguerite's life in Gascony we should recall that Michel de Montaigne, after becoming a gentleman of the

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King's Bedchamber in 1577, frequented the court at Nérac during the winter of 1579-1580, and that he wrote for the Queen the Apologie de Raimond Sebon. In his château of Montaigne he was visited by Madame de Duras, lady-in-waiting to the Queen and a dangerous intriguer. For this lady he wrote a tirade against the medical arts to be found at the end of the Second Book of his Essays. Nor should we forget Simon Millanges, the first great printer of Bordeaux. All provincial literary production went to his press, set up in 1572. He published a certain number of books dedicated to the Queen of Navarre; first, in 1574 (when she was still in Paris) Du Bartas' La Muse chrestienne, then in 1578 and 1579 Laurent Joubert's Les Erreurs populaires de fait de la médecine and the Pimandre de Mercure Trismegiste, translated from the Greek by François de Foix-Candalle. In 1585 Pierre de Brach, poet and councillor of the King, had the "virtuous princess" read in manuscript his Imitations (of Tasso's Aminte and Ariosto's Olympia) and dedicated the work to her. The Queen herself, a very pious woman who assiduously attended Mass, had the same printer publish a Manuel de prières devotes, recueilles de divers opuscules et imprimées par son commandement. A more exhaustive study of the poems chosen by Marguerite for her album would make it possible to define the précieux style which she imposed on those around her, first on the poets at the Louvre, then at Nérac from 1579 to 1582. Her tastes did not change during the twenty years of solitude spent at Auvergne. And, when she returned to Paris in 1605 to live in her palace on the Rue de la Seine, opposite the Louvre, her court was the first salon précieux of the seventeenth century, fifty years earlier than the ones which were to become the butt of Molière's satire. Cardinal Richelieu said of this fallen Queen, of this true heir of the Valois, "She was the refuge of men of letters. She liked to hear their talk; they were to be found at her table; and she learned so much from association with them that she talked better than any woman of her time and developed a more elegant style of writing than a woman's occupations usually produce." This judgment is memorable, coming as it does from the founder of the French Academy. But, some might say, can it be impossible to identify more certainly this manuscript which, as we have noted, contains seven Spanish words written in the Queen's hand? Her handwriting is very individual and is easily recognized, especially if we compare it, as we have done, with letters addressed at the same date to the Duchess of Uzès, her old friend,

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whom she called her Sybil. We have another proof for those who still doubt our attribution. After Marguerite de Valois's death in 1615 her library was sold at auction. There is a catalogue of the thousand volumes of which it consisted. In this catalogue, listed among the manuscripts, we find a volume (doré) of Brantôme's works, a collection of the Discours de l'Academie du Louvre, to which we have referred twice, and a book entitled Les Amours de la Reine. It was, says one of her biographers, a collection of sonnets and other love lyrics. We could not better describe the album discovered by Monmerqué, which corresponds exactly to the manuscript described in the catalogue drawn up after the death of the Queen. REFERENCES

Bardon, Françoise. Diane de Poiters et le mythe de Diane. Paris, 1963. Bonnefon, Paul. "Deux poemes de Benjamin Jamyn," Bulletin du bibliophile (1892), p. 115. Champion, Pierre. "La légende des Mignons," Humanisme et Renaissance, V I (1939). . Ronsard et Villeroy. Paris, 1925. Coppin, Joseph. "Marguerite de Valois et le Livre des créatures de R. Sebond," Revue du XVI e siècle, X (1923), 57. Desgraves, Louis. Bibliographie des ouvrages imprimés par Simon Millanges, 1572 à 1623. Bordeaux, 1951. Diller, Georges. "Agrippa d'Aubigné à Poitiers en 1579," Humanisme et Renaissance, II ( 1 9 3 5 ) , 1 2 . Dommergues, Marcel. "A propos des S fermés," Bulletin du bibliophile ( 1960), p. 63. Droz, Eugénie. Jacques de Constans, l'ami d'Agrippa d'Aubigné. Geneva, 1962. . "Salomon Certon et ses amis," Humanisme et Renaissance, V I (1939), 179. Du Bartas, ed. Holmes, Lyons, and Linker. Chapel Hill, 1935-1940. 3 vols. Garnier, Armand. Agrippa d'Aubigné et le parti protestant. Paris, 1928. Vol. 3. . "Le séjour de d'Aubigné à la cour des Valois et ses poésies de cour," Mélanges J. Vianey (Paris, 1934), p. 151. Graur, Theodosia. Amadis Jamyn. Paris, 1929. Hobson, Geoffrey D. Les reliures à la fanfare: Le problème de l'S fermé. Londres, 1935. Lauzun, Philippe. Itinéraire raisonné de Marguerite de Valois en Gascogne. Paris, 1902. Lavaud, Jacques. Philippe Desportes. Paris, 1936. Lefranc, Abel. "Les éléments français de Peines d'amour perdues," Revue historique, C L X X V I I I (1936). Mémoires et lettres de Marguerite de Valois, ed. F. Guessard, Paris, 1842. Ratel, Simonne. "La cour de la reine Marguerite," Revue du XVIe siecle, X I (1924), 1, 1 9 3 ; X I I (1925), 1. Vaganay, Hugues. "Les vers de Pibrac sur la mort de Bussy d'Amboise," Revue de litterature comparée, XIII (1933), 336. Vaissière, Pierre de. "Le Divorce satyrique," Revue des questions historiques, L X I V , 131.

The Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists by Lewis W. Spitz

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FTER A FULL CENTURY of scholarly research, we are much better informed about the relationship of the Renaissance to the Middle Ages, much better informed than we are about its relationship to the period which followed. Similarly, we have learned a good deal more about the relationship of that cultural movement which we call humanism to its medieval sources of origin, to its scholastic predecessors, to its Byzantine inheritance, to its classical fountainhead than we have about its relationship to that movement which followed it, the Reformation. This paper is concerned with one facet of this relationship. Within the framework of the great debate on the medieval or the modern nature of the Reformation, exemplified best by Ernst Troeltsch and Wilhelm Dilthey, progress can be made only in terms of specifics, through an examination of the precise circumstances within which the Reformation developed. The juxtaposition of humanism and the Reformation, of humanists and reformers, may provide more concrete evidences than the general assertions with which the arguments on both sides of the question are usually promoted. The present problem was posed for historians by Luther himself, a man not insignificant in the events of his day, who, perceiving quite early that the Gospel made very little headway among the older men, wondered why. The Reformation was revolutionary, cutting deeper than had humanism, and breaking more decisively with the past. A young man's movement, it was in large part the work of the third generation of humanists in the north. The Christian humanism of the north reflected the pattern of development familiar from the Italian Renaissance. A literary-philological phase was in many areas followed by a Platonic metaphysical phase. To a

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greater extent than has heretofore been realized humanism also invaded the courts and chancelleries of the secular and ecclesiastical princes as well as the councils of the city-states in the Empire and played a formative role through R o m a n law and classical letters. I n the case of each of the major countries of the north it is possible to distinguish three generations of humanists: a pioneering generation, exhausting much of its energy in the acquisition of new classical learning and confronting some of the normative issues raised by the classical world view ; a second generation, marking the highest achievement of renowned humanists; and a third and younger generation setting out upon a course of action to change that society which their elders merely criticized. T h u s in England the pioneers in classical studies such as Grocyn and Linacre were followed by the high generation of Oxford reformers, More, Colet, and Erasmus. These, in turn, were superseded by the young activists such as Starkey and Morison, who became the founders and expeditors of T u d o r policy in statecraft, or Tyndale, Roger Ascham, and others, who became leaders in the religious and educational reform movement. In France the early pioneers such as Fichet, Standonck, and Gaguin were followed by the high generation of French humanism such as Budé and Lefèvre d'Etaples. T h e n came the young humanists, such men as Jean Calvin, who were no longer satisfied with criticism, but, following upon the impetus of conversion in many cases, were bent upon changing the world. T h e special vocation which this generation felt can be detected in Guillaume Farel's account of his dramatic interview with the aged Lefèvre. " T h a t pious old man, Jacques Faber, whom you know," wrote Farel, "having taken my hand there forty years ago, said to m e : Tt is necessary for the world to be changed and you will see it'." 1 I n German humanism such pioneers as Rudolph Agricola were followed by such great names as Mutian, Reuchlin, Ceitis, Pirckheimer, Wimpheling, Erasmus, and Peutinger. T h e younger humanists of the third generation were impatient for change and became the men who, with Luther, made the Reformation. Bernd Moeller at Heidelberg University asserts with epigrammatic force: Without the humanists there would have been no Reformation. 2 With the singular exception of Luther himself, the leaders of the Reformation in the German cultural 1 Comité Farel, Guillaume Farel, 1489-1565 (Neuchâtel and Paris, 1930), pp. 103-104, taken from Johann H. Hottinger, Historia ecclesiastica Novi Testamenti (Tiguri, 1665). Though not a learned humanist, to be sure, Farel nevertheless reflects the aggressive spirit of the younger generation. 2 Bernd Moeller, "Die deutschen Humanisten und die Anfänge der Reformation," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, LXX (1959), 47-61.

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area moved from humanism into the Reformation. Major figures such as Zwingli, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Bucer, or Vadian come immediately to mind.3 Scholarship has come increasingly to appreciate the importance of humanist learning also in the case of the radical reformers: Anabaptist leaders such as Balthasar Hubmaier, or the evangelical rationalists, or spiritualists such as Servetus or Sebastian Franck.4 But the historian must not stay with the major figures, leaping from peak to peak, for, like the alpinist, he must traverse also the valleys and lesser plateaus or foothills between the heights. A host of less wellknown men were Christian humanists in their formative years and became local leaders of the evangelical movement. Hubmaier once commented that almost all the learned were Lutherans.5 "Young men," observed Francis Bacon in his Of Youth and Age, "are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business." A list of lesser men who fall into this category might prove to be at least statistically reassuring. Johann Forster, a favorite pupil of Reuchlin, worked with Luther as a Hebraist in translating the Scriptures and was later a close friend of Melanchthon. Kaspar Peucer, mathematician and astronomer, was a son-in-law of Melanchthon and the electoral physician. Paul Eber as a philologue, historian, and natural scientist became a student and friend of Melanchthon. Friedrich Taubmann 3 Werner Näf, Vadian und seine Stadt St. Gallen (2 vols.; St. Gallen, 19441957), is a model study of a humanist turned reformer. Of special importance for the present problem is the section on Vadian's breakthrough to Reformation doctrine ( I I , 151-180). 4 Robert Kreider ("Anabaptism and Humanism: An Inquiry into the Relationship of Humanism to the Evangelical Anabaptists," Mennonite Quarterly Review, X X V I [1952], 123-141) illustrates the surprising connections between humanism and the radical reformation being established by current scholarship. Kreider is clear about the essential difference, however, stressing that the humanist "was a scholar, the Anabaptist was a disciple." Other representative recent studies are Thor Hall, "Possibilities of Erasmian Influence on Denck and H u b maier in their Views of the Freedom of the Will," Mennonite Quarterly Review, X X X V (1961), 149-170; Guy F. Hershberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottsdale, Illinois, 1957) ; John H. Yoder, "Balthasar Hubmaier and the Beginnings of Swiss Anabaptism," Mennonite Quarterly Review, X X X I I I ( 1 9 5 9 ) ; Heinold Fast, " T h e Dependence of the First Anabaptists on Luther, Erasmus, and Zwingli," Mennonite Quarterly Review, X X X (1956), 104-119; Robert Friedmann, "Recent Interpretations of Anabaptism," Church History, X X I V (1955), 132-151 ; Paul Peachy, "Social Background and Social Philosophy of the Swiss Anabaptists, 1525-1540," Mennonite Quarterly Review, X X V I I I (1954), 102-127. See especially the comprehensive work of George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962). 5 Torsten Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier (Kassel, 1961), p. 100.

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became professor of poetry at Wittenberg. T h e list might be extended almost indefinitely to include Aesticampianus, teacher of Hutten, who ended his days in Wittenberg; Franz Fritz (Irenicus); J o h a n n Brenz; Theobald Dillichanus; Heinrich von Eppendorf; Bartholomaeus Bernhardi; Hieronymus Schurff; Johann Rivius, educational reformer in Saxony; Michael Neander, rector of Ilfeld and textbook writer; or Johannes Zwick, the reformer of Constance; and many others. 6 During the decade of 1510 to 1520 a change is discernible in the atmosphere of the humanist microcosm. No longer satisfied with enjoying intellectually the stimulation of the classics, the humanists seek ways of applying their philosophy to life. T h e sharp criticism of abuse with its long ancestry back into the late medieval period is coupled now with a determined effort to effect the changes necessary to realize their ethical ideals. T h e libido sciendi is transformed into a wish to shape and form life. T h e interest in medicine becomes an insatiable desire to control nature. T h e scholarly pursuit of legal studies is transformed into a new preoccupation with jurisprudence and with entry into the political life of the Empire. In the humanist sodalities the humanist scholars and the political administrators, secretaries and bishops alike, reinforced their common interest in change. I n some men, such as Conrad Peutinger, the vita studiosa and vita activa blended harmoniously. Konstanze Peutinger, in a charming letter addressed to her father, who was representing the city of Augsburg at the Diet of Worms, writes that he should hurry back, for his books are longing for his return. In religious life the criticism of abuses and the desire for religious enlightenment merged into a universal readiness for reform and an eagerness to get on with it. Luther once commented that his Ninety-Five Theses had been carried within fourteen days throughout the length and breadth of Germany. T h e humanists were the chief agents for their distribution. Thus Christoph Scheurl in Nuremberg sent them to Peutinger in Augsburg, and they were quickly reprinted in Leipzig, Basel, and possibly Nuremberg. In 1520 Luther was the most read author in Germany, and Ulrich von H u t t e n the second most. There were strikingly few pamphlets and tracts or popular preachers active in those first years. Humanist support was comprehensive and universal. Without it Luther would not 6 Many of these lesser figures await their biographers. An exemplary illustration of the kind of monographs needed as a basis for sound generalization is Bernd Moeller, Johannes Zwick und die Reformation in Konstanz (Gütersloh, 1961), especially pp. 41-54.

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have succeeded. Almost all of the humanists of the older generation gave him a friendly word and at least provisional approval. And the younger humanists pledged him their loyalty and enthusiastic support. O n May 1, 1518, Bucer wrote about the Heidelberg disputation to Beatus Rhenanus: " H e [Luther] agrees with Erasmus in everything, except on one point he seems to exceli him, for what he [Erasmus] merely insinuates, he [Luther] teaches openly and freely." Even some theologians such as Fabri and Cochlaeus, who were soon to become his fierce enemies, at first were kindly disposed to Luther. Eck himself reacted in a not unfriendly fashion, however fleetingly. T o Crotus, Luther was like a god come to bring justice. His virtue and erudition were everywhere praised. Bernhard Adelmann in Augsburg identified doctus and Lutherus. " I see the whole world reviving!" exclaimed Beatus Rhenanus. T h e canon at Constance, Johann von Botzheim, an Erasmian, praised Luther as "the m a n who, after all the other disciplines have been renewed, is now renewing theology itself."7 Specifically, the humanists approved of Luther's uncompromising assault on scholasticism and his return to the pristine sources of Christianity, the Scriptures. Mosellanus in his description of the Leipzig debate wrote, "Ille [Lutherus] Philosophiam Aristotelicam . . . ex theologorum theatro explodit!" Melanchthon described the debate as a battle of primitive Christianity with Aristotle. Only a few, such as the keenminded Oecolampadius, perceived that Luther's objection to scholasticism was less to its barbarous dialectic than to its theologia gloriae and that his drive ad fontes was less a preoccupation with antiquity than a thirst for the content, for the gospel itself. T h e general humanist reaction to Luther's acts proved to be productive misunderstanding and without just this kind of felix culpa history would not move forward! But from 1520 on, the Reformation derailed humanism. T h e humanists h a d been attracted more by Luther's constructive educational and devotional writings than by his polemical treatises. His On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church seems to have opened the eyes of many of the humanists to the real thrust of his reform. Precisely this treatise which offended some of the older humanists inspired some of the younger to join Luther's movement. M a n y of the mature humanists now discovered that in their heart of hearts they were Catholic and had to stay with the old church. Others, like Mutian, were shocked at the revolutionary lapidatores and shrank away from the boisterous reformers. Many of the younger humanists became evangelicals. Almost all of the 7

Moeller, "Deutsche Humanisten," p. 5 1 .

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evangelicals were young, although not all of the young became evangelicals. I blush to suggest that what the social scientists refer to as a "generations problem" is apparent here. Sigmund Freud candidly conceded that the poets had anticipated many of his seminal insights. Social scientists must likewise confess that the literati first pointed u p the conflict of the generations. T h e theme is time-honored and even biblical, suggested in the mocking of the sons of Noah and given classic form in the story of David and Absalom. Literary historians from Herodotus to Voltaire have been aware of the generation factor. In the second book of his Histories Herodotus observed that for the Egyptians three hundred generations in the male line represented ten thousand years, for three generations made u p a hundred years. Voltaire conjured with the notion of generation in his Siècle de Louis XIV. I n modern letters this theme is the main burden of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Dostoevski's The Possessed, or Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again, and is prominent in Simone de Beauvoir's Mémoires d'une Jeune Fille Rangée, not to mention the unmentionable, John Osborne's Luther. Social scientists have undertaken to define, structure, and systematize this factor and make it useful to historians. T h e most masterful description of the problem of generations is clearly that of Karl Mannheim, who has described the two approaches as "positivist" and "romantic-historical." 8 T h e different ways in which the two schools approach the problem reflect the contrast in their basically antagonistic attitudes toward reality. T h e methodological ideal of the positivists naturally is that of reducing all problems, including the generations problem, to quantitative terms, attempting to establish a quantitative formulation of factors which ultimately determine the forms of h u m a n existence and the movement of h u m a n history. T h e second a p proach may be characterized as qualitative, shying away from the clear daylight of mathematics, introverting the whole problem. T h e intellectual ancestry of the positivist approach can be traced back to David H u m e and Auguste Comte. H u m e translated the principle of political continuity into terms of the biological continuity of generations. Comte, whose six-volume Cours de philosophie, which appeared between 1830 and 1842, linking sociology closely to biology, thought that man's span 8 Karl Mannheim's essay, " T h e Problem of Generations," is the most useful single summary of the generations factor as seen by social scientists (Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge [New York, 1952], pp. 176-320, specifically, pp. 2 7 6 282).

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of life and the average generation period of thirty years were necessary correlatives of the human organism. The discussion of the length of a generation continues today, with some theorists such as Ortega y Gasset setting the limits dogmatically at fifteen years, others arguing that a generation diminishes rapidly in length as the tempo of social change accelerates.9 A man whose importance for historical thought in the twentieth century is enormous and whose influence upon historical methodology has increased tremendously in recent years, Wilhelm Dilthey, in his essays on the Geisteswissenschaften gave to the generations problem a peculiarly Germanic romantic-historical turn. He shifted away from the positivistic quantitative approach to an interiorized qualitative method. Possibly taking his cue from St. Augustine—and no Reformation research paper, as Santayana once remarked of sermons, is complete without at least one reference to St. Augustine—Dilthey saw the phenomenon of generations as the problem of the existence of an interior time that cannot be measured but only experienced in purely qualitative terms. Dilthey was concerned with the generations problem primarily because the adoption of the generation as a temporal unit in the history of intellectual development makes it possible to replace purely external chronological units with a concept of measuring qualitatively from within (eine von innen ahmessende Vorstellung). Dilthey held that the use of generations as interiorized units makes it possible to appraise intellectual movements by an intuitive process of re-enactment. A second proposition which Dilthey advanced in connection with the generations problem is that the co-existence of a generation in many individuals is of more than mere chronological significance. Not only is the succession of one generation after another important, but the fact that the same dominant influences deriving from the prevailing political, social, religious, and intellectual circumstances are experienced by contemporary individuals, both in their early formative and in their later years, is of great significance to the interior, qualitative measurement of intellectual or cultural evolution or devolution, as the case may be. Individuals are contemporaries and constitute a single generation precisely because they are subject to common influences. Wilhelm Pinder referred to this phenomenon as the "noncontemporaneity of the con9 José Ortega y Gasset, El Torno a Galileo (Vol. V of Obras Completas [Madrid, 1947]), Leccíon III, "Idea de la generacíon"; Leccion IV, "E1 Metodo de las generaciones en historia"; Leccion V, "De Nuevo, la idea de generación," pp. 29-67, specifically, p. 50.

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temporaneous." T h e generation is thus conceived of as a collective of mentality which tends to become the basis for social groups. From the point of view of intellectual history, contemporaneity, then, means not merely something chronological, but a state of being subjected to similar influences and a state of collectively escaping other influences. This formulation of the concept shifts the discussion, while complicating it, from a level on which it ran the risk of degenerating into a kind of Pythagorean number mysticism to the sphere of interior time which can be appreciated and at least partially comprehended by intuitive understanding. 10 A survey of the extensive literature in the field reveals that a commonly accepted formula for a quantitative/qualitative correlation or even a uniform approach to the problem does not exist today among social scientists (such as Eisenstadt, Mentré, Pinder, Rintala, Berger, or Heberle). Nevertheless, as genial eclectic Renaissance dilettantes we shall make bold to apply some of the social-scientific techniques in a most humanely humanistic fashion. 11 T h e quantitative or statistical analysis of the positivists when applied like a census-taking to the men around Luther yields interesting if not deeply satisfying results. In that fateful year 1517 Luther was thirty-four years old, a man who was moving out of his youth toward maturity. It is intriguing to discover that nearly all of Luther's followers at Wittenberg and abroad were younger than Luther, most of them thirty years old or younger, and that nearly all of Luther's opponents (except Eck) were older than Luther, most of them fifty years old, or older. At the calculated risk of trying the reader's patience, we shall now quantify. T h e younger Wittenberg faculty members were among the earliest of Luther's followers. Amsdorf was born on December 3, 1483, 10 Mannheim, "Problem of Generations," Essays, pp. 280-282. Wilhelm Dilthey, "Über das Studium der Geschichte der Wissenschaften vom Menschen, der Gesellschaft und dem Staat" (1875), Gesammelte Schriften (2nd ed.; Stuttgart, 1957), V, 31-73. O n Dilthey's contribution to contemporary intellectual movements, see the excellent chapter, "Dilthey and His Influence," in Kurt Müller-Vollmer, Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Literature: A Study of Wilhelm Dilthey's Poetik (The Hague, 1963), pp. 1-32. 11 A few representative titles from the impressive volume of literature on the generations problem are Samuel N. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (Glencoe, Illinois, 1956) ; Marvin Rintala, Three Generations: The Extreme Right Wing in Finnish Politics (Bloomington, Indiana, 1962); François Mentré, Les générations sociales (Paris, 1 9 2 0 ) ; Wilhelm Pinder, Das Problem der Generation in der Kunstgeschichte Europas (2nd ed.; Berlin, 1928) ; Bennett Berger, "How Long is a Generation?" British Jour(New nal of Sociology, X I (1960), 1 0 - 2 3 ; Rudolf Heberle, Social Movements York, 1957), pp. 118-127.

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less than a month after Luther (November 10, 1483). Bartholomäus Bernhardi von Feldkirch was born in 1489. Melanchthon was born in 1497; August Schurff in 1495; Heinrich Stockmann in 1495; Stephan Wild in 1495; Tilemann Plettner in 1490; Paul Knod in 1490; Johannes Eisermann in 1490. Outside of the University and even beyond Wittenberg, Luther's first adherents were younger, with the exception of Link and Lang, who were approximately the same age as Luther and had shared common experiences with him. Bugenhagen was born in 1485; Stiefel in 1486; Jakob Propst in 1486; Heinrich von Zütphen in 1488; Mykonius in 1488; Bucer in 1491 ; Billican in 1491 ; Justus Jonas in 1493; Pfeffinger in 1493; Agricola in 1494; Schnepf in 1495; Brenz in 1499; Cruciger in 1504. Oecolampadius was just a few months older than Luther, and Kasper Güttel, Eberlin von Günzburg, and Aesticampianus were the chief exceptions in the long list of Luther's supporters. Conversely, the older men at Wittenberg and elsewhere for the most part turned against Luther. Staupitz, as is well known, could not stay with him. At the University, Henning Goede, seventy, the first ordinarius in canon law, could not grasp Luther's theology. Peter Burchard in medicine split with Luther on questions of university discipline and returned to his home university at Ingolstadt, in 1523, signing the University's condemnation of Luther. Johannes Dölsch, a canon at All Saints, was only slowly convinced and then later broke with Luther on the question of the Mass. Christian Bayer, second professor for the Pandects, opposed Luther for minimizing the importance of canon law, and Luther often complained of Bayer's legalism. Three older canons at the famous Castle Church, Beskau, Elner, and Volmar, put u p a stiff resistance and only when the students broke in Beskau's windows did he see the light. They resisted until 1524. Otto Beckmann continued to read Masses until he was released in 1523. Sebastian Küchemeister remained a convinced Scotist and finally in 1522 left the heretical city for Ducal Saxony. Johann Rochais was fifteen years older than Luther and remained his opponent. Ulrich Dinstedt, born before 1460, undertook no changes in his parish at Eisfeld. T h e dean of the Castle Church, born sometime before 1450, was a stubborn opponent of Luther. In 1518 Johann Böschenstein was appointed to the chair of Hebrew. H e was forty-six years old, or twenty-five years older than Melanchthon. When he did not work out he was replaced after an interval by Arrogallus, who was thirty and who lived until 1543. Luther's opponents in the larger arena were also older men. Cochlaeus was born in 1479; Berthold von Chiemsee in 1465; Wimpina around

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1460. Emser was six years older; Dungersheim was eighteen years older; the famous Hochstraten of Cologne was twenty-three years older; and Erasmus, the "flitting Dutchman," as E. Gordon Rupp has dubbed him, was, of course, forty-eight or nearly fifty in 1517. The same age differential exists between Luther and his opponents at Louvain and Paris. Nothing can be gained by multiplying instances.12 At this point one might be tempted to conclude that we have arrived at the perfectly obvious. Social scientists, after all, are quite often the apostles of the obvious. It is a clearcut case of the conservative nature of the old and the liberal propensities of the young. In that case we would have advanced very little beyond Pope's lines in his Essay on Criticism : We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. Socialization and progressivism tend to decelerate with age, we are told. Such a conclusion would indeed be prosaic to the point of being banal. The reader would justifiably be tempted to quote the lines of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Apostrophe to a Katydid: "Thou sayest an undisputed thing in such a solemn way." But complications remain. The generations problem cannot be merely the time-honored or dishonored father-son conflict at work, for in that case the young humanists might have revolted against their humanist mentors. In our own day we see young shallow conservative quietists or noisy conservative activists reacting against their genial bewildered liberal professors. Moreover, not all of the young humanists turned reformer. Not all of the young whom we have surveyed above were humanists. Romantic-historical techniques must be adduced to describe and analyze the qualitative differences of those for whom quantification provides no key. Psychoanalysis will not help, for we do not have the information needed for this approach to a whole generation.13 As Roland Bainton once expressed the problem, there are 12 T h e sociologist of religion and Anglicist Herbert Schöffler (Die Reformation [Frankfurt, 1936], pp. 33-40) cites as important factors, and provides much data on, the age differentials of Luther's supporters and opponents, the recent founding of Wittenberg University, and the four zones of the Ghristianization of Central Europe: the area still within the old Roman limes, the area converted between the seventh and ninth centuries, that between the ninth and tenth, and the last converted between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Protestantism scored its most complete success in the reverse order of their conversion. This interesting essay has been republished in Wirkungen der Reformation: Religionssoziologische Folgerungen für England und Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1960), pp. 105-188. His thesis runs into difficulties in view of the CounterReformation successes in Eastern Europe. 13 There is much to be learned from such efforts, for all their limitations so

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grave difficulties to psychoanalyzing the dead.14 More can be gained by a cultural analysis of their "common" humanist experience in order to improve our understanding of why the young humanist reformers reacted as they did, and by an examination of the nonhumanist young reformers in order to underline the "noncontemporaneity of the contemporaneous" or the polyphonous cultural pattern of the epoch, each voice sounding out the verbum evangelii vocale in its own way and at its own time. The young humanists who joined the Reformation did indeed have common experiences which qualify them for collective generational identification. These intellectual coevals played the "sonata appassionata" of their lives upon fundamentally the same keyboard of environment. They were witnesses of the same events, they read the same books, they were all university men. They had all encountered classical culture, posing alternatives to traditional values. They showed an openness to new ideas, they observed the same deficiencies in society, they concurred in the chorus of criticism against abuse. They reacted negatively to scholastic philosophy, many of the younger escaping the study of scholastic theology altogether. They were deeply concerned with the search for religious enlightenment. They were captivated by the evangelical appeal, either from Luther, or, in surprisingly many cases, from the Scriptures themselves. Between 1518 and 1523 most of them changed their callings, many from law, for the preaching office. A certain dynamic in humanism and a set of attitudes with latent implications simply required time and an interiorized appropriation to begin operating in a collective way. For the Germanies, that time began in the 1510's and 1520's with the third generation of humanists. This pattern is evident in the life of Justus Jonas (1493-1555), who was typical in almost every respect. Precisely because he is less well known, he may be of special interest here.15 Jonas enrolled at the Univerobvious to trained historians, at a psychoanalytical approach, as Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York, 1958), or even Norman Brown, Life Against Death (Middletown, Connecticut, 1959). Thus Erikson's application of the identity crisis to Luther's case or Brown's pointing up the prominence of the Thanatos motif in late medieval culture are definitely useful contributions, even though their work as a whole may not measure up to the demands of sound technical history. 14 Roland Bainton, "Interpretations of the Reformation," The American Historical Review, L X V I (October, 1960), 81. 15 See the excellent biography by Martin Lehmann, Justus Jonas Loyal Reformer (Minneapolis, 1963). Cf. W. Delius, Lehre und Leben: Justus Jonas 1493-1555 (Gütersloh, 1952).

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sity of Erfurt when only thirteen years old. H e first studied law, then theology. At Erfurt he was a friend of Johannes Lang, a m a n of humanistic interests and a friend of Luther. Jonas became an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus and other leading humanists. H e made a pilgrimage to Basel in order to visit the most famous scholar of the day and returned to Erfurt with such prestige for his Erasmian friendship that he was elected rector. This was in 1519, the year in which Luther wrote a postscript to Lang which reads: "P.S. Especially remember me to our Jonas, and tell him that I like him" (April 13, 1519). Jonas was drawn to Luther and accompanied him to the Diet at Worms for his ordeal. O n April 17, 1521, the day of Luther's first appearance before the Diet, Hutten wrote to Jonas: "And so you have followed the preacher of the Gospel to be in his garden! O piety worthy of love! Truly, Justus, I loved you before, but on this account I love you a hundred times more." O n May 10, 1521, Erasmus wrote from Louvain: There has been a persistent rumor here, dear Jonas, that you were with Martin Luther at Worms; nor do I doubt that your piety has done what I would have done had I been present, to assuage the tragedy with moderate counsels, so that it would not in the future burst forth with greater damage to the world. But Jonas went all the way with the evangelicals. Some time later Luther wrote: "Dr. Jonas has all the virtues which a preacher should have, but he clears his throat too often." T h e circuit was completed. T h e pattern is similar among most of the other Wittenbergers in the inner circle, Georg Spalatin, Caspar Cruciger, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Philip Melanchthon. They changed the frontier city in the sandbox of the Empire into a "little Athens on the Elbe." Spalatin (1484-1545) had belonged to the most outspokenly critical circle of humanists at Erfurt under the leadership of the intellectual canon of Gotha, Mutianus Rufus. Mutian once posed for Spalatin the question loaded with universalist implications: "If Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, how then were people saved before the birth of Christ." 16 At no point in Spalatin's development, however, did he ever deviate from basically Christian presuppositions. Since he had never studied theology on the university level, he was never encumbered with a load of scholastic learning. Even Hutten had freed himself only gradually from scholastic dialectic acquired on the arts level, but Spalatin approached Biblical studies unencumbered, thanks to his early and sustained humanist in16 Irmgard Höss, Georg Spalatin 1484—1545: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation (Weimar, 1956), p. 31.

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terest. H e followed Erasmus' counsel to approach the Scriptures directly and with benefit of guidance from patristic literature. Luther's exegesis of the Scriptures captivated him and he became a devoted follower of the reformer. Luther's forces were divided between the radicals pressing for a strong confessional stand and the Melanchthonian moderates favoring accommodation and a search for common ground. It is typical that Spalatin, the young humanist turned reformer, belonged to the moderates both at Augsburg in 1530 and thereafter. 17 T h e youngest and most precocious of the Wittenberg circle of Luther's associates was Caspar Cruciger (1504-1548), the most regular professor of theology at the University, which was crippled by the frequent absences of its key professors. Cruciger was twenty years younger than Luther and seven years younger than Melanchthon. Instructed as a child by the humanists Georg Helt and Caspar Borner, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig at the age of nine. As a teen-ager he was present at the famous Leipzig debate between Eck and Luther. Though in the opinion of the majority of those present Eck carried the day, Luther convinced young Cruciger, who followed him to Wittenberg in order to study theology. At twenty he was appointed rector of the City School in Magdeburg, but four years later returned to Wittenberg for life. Cruciger was quiet and unassuming, a mediating spirit. I n 1529 he accompanied Luther to Marburg. After Zwingli's death he and Melanchthon persuaded the Swiss to come to Saxony for discussions in May, 1536. T h e Wittenberg Concord was the result. Luther, who had called Cruciger his Elisha "who will teach theology after my death," sent him with Melanchthon to the Colloquies at Worms and Regensburg in 1540 and 1541, the last attempt before Trent to reunite the church. During the period of the Smalkald War, Cruciger as rector stayed in Wittenberg and saved the University. Together with Melanchthon he drew up, shortly before his death, the Leipzig Interim, a compromise document, held by the orthodox to be a compromising document. 1 8 A third figure among Luther's intimate friends illustrating the pattern emerging from the bewildering number of humanist reformers is Dr. Pomeranus. O n September 20, 1522, Luther directed Spalatin to do 17

Ibid., pp. 423, 345. Walter G. Tillmanns The World and Men around Luther (Minneapolis, 1959), pp. 94-98. O n the role of the humanists in the attempts at effecting the reunion of the church, see Robert Stupperich, Der Humanismus und die Widervereinigung der Konfessionen (Leipzig, 1936), pp. 133 ff. (SVRG, No. 160). Of interest in this context is the modest study by Werner Kaegi, Humanistische Kontinuität in Konfessionellen Zeitalter (Basel, 1954). 18

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some academic wirepulling: "It remains for you to accept the task of securing from the Elector for John Bugenhagen one of those stipends that have heretofore been thrown away on the sophists. For next to Philip [Melanchthon] he is the best professor of theology in the world."19 Bugenhagen (1484-1558) was the son of a city councilor in Wollin. He studied at the University of Greifswald and became a teacher at Treptow in 1503. He is an instance of the subtle influence of humanism upon a not very subtle personality. A practical, not particularly creative, type, he is perhaps representative of a large body of clergy who helped effect the reformation on the parish level. Although the sources are not adequate for the study of his early intellectual development, every indication is that his theology was colored by Erasmian humanism. Even before 1517 he was interested in the reform of the church on that level. He wished to combine classical learning with a practical Erasmian piety. The humanist Murmellius recommended to Bugenhagen readings in such modern theologians as Pico, Lefèvre, Bouillus, Reuchlin, and Erasmus.20 His history of Pomerania was in many ways a typical humanist production. But in 1520 upon reading Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity he wrote to Luther declaring for the Reformation. The next year he moved to Wittenberg, where he became a professor and preacher. But for the remainder of his life, whenever he was not immediately under Luther's influence, he habitually reverted to a moralistic emphasis not unlike Erasmus' philosophia Christi. He seemed to be almost blissfully oblivious to the radical Copernican (Son-centered) revolution Luther had launched in theology. The story of Melanchthon is so common that, to turn a phrase from Chaucer, every wit that hath discretion knows all or part of it.21 He remains the true archetype of the young humanist turned reformer. A student of his, Johann Agricola, tagged with the nickname "Magister 19 Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs, eds., Luther's Correspondence (2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1913), I I , 141, cited in Tillmanns, The World and Men around Luther, p. 90. 20 Otto Vogt,ed., Dr. Johannes Bugenhagens Briefwechsel (Stettin, 1888), pp. 309-310. See Hans Eger, "Bugenhagens Weg zu Luther," Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde, XLIV (1935), 123-133. See Otto Clemen, "Bugenhagen als Mensch," Monatshlätter der Gesellschaft für pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde, X L I V (1935), 112, for such piecemeal information as exists on Bugenhagen's early learning. 21 See Adolf Sperl, Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation (Munich, 1959). Of special interest is Heinrich Bornkamm's essay, "Humanismus und Reformation in Menschenbild Melanchthons," Das Jahrhundert der Reformation (Göttingen, 1961), pp. 69-88.

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Eisleben," was his pale shadow. Agrícola (1492- or 1494-1566) studied the arts at Leipzig, escaped any training in scholastic theology, and came to Wittenberg, where he was overwhelmed by the personality of Luther. He studied philology with Melanchthon and theology with Luther. He was embroiled in the antinomian controversy, eventually helped to frame the Leipzig Interim with Melanchthon, and outlived his major opponents.22 Of the two dozen leaders at the time of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 all except Luther and Nicholas von Amsdorf (1483-1565) had come to the Reformation from humanism. Very possibly the lack of a humanist experience led Amsdorf in later years to exaggerate the effects of original sin upon man in the loss of the image of God and to caricature Luther's theology, holding to such extreme statements as that good works are harmful. He held to his positions with an inflexibility which can most charitably be described as singlemindedness. He sided with Flacius Illyricus against Melanchthon.23 In the other centers of Protestantism the humanist-reformers also assume the leadership. Strassburg had Martin Bucer, Wolfgang Capito, Nicholas Gerbelius, Caspar Hedio, and Jakob Sturm.24 It was Sturm who wrote to his humanist uncle, Jakob Wimpheling, "If I am a heretic you have made me one!" The Swiss reformers in this pattern included Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Pellicanus, Vadian, Myconius, and preeminently, Calvin. Where the dynamic of humanism was still in process the Reformation took especially creative forms. The leadership of the Reformation was in the hands of the young men with a humanist experience. Many of the young men who turned reformer did not enjoy a humanist education or even a vicarious experience of humanism. Hajo Holborn has pointed to the fact that at least during the first phase of the Reformation period nearly all of the reformers were recruited from the ranks of disaffected priests and monks.25 The roster of students at the University of Wittenberg indicates a major flow of such men who came 22 Joachim Rogge, Johann Agrícolas Lutherverständis (Berlin, 1960), pp. 253-256. 23 T h e recent monograph by Peter Brunner, Nikolaus von Amsdorf als Bischof von Naumburg (Gütersloh, 1961), brings interesting new material on Amsdorf as an ecclesiastical figure. 24 See Heinrich Bornkamm, Martin Bucers Bedeutung für die europäische Reformationsgeschichte (Gütersloh, 1952), p. 9. 25 Hajo Holborn, " T h e Social Basis of the German Reformation," Church History, V (1936), 330-339, specifically 338-339. A typical example of a Dominican turned reformer is Jacob Strauss at Eisenach. He did not really appreciate Luther's central stress on sola fide and was a moralist. See Joachim Rogge, Der

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to Wittenberg for education or re-education. Their encounter with humanism was through the Biblical humanist curriculum adopted in 1518. It followed rather than preceded their turn to the evangelical faith. These men did not provide the intellectual or organizational leadership of the movement, but, representing great numerical strength, they responded loyally to the confessional stand of Protestantism and became the bulwark of orthodox conservatism in subsequent decades. The young humanists who either remained loyal to the Catholic confession or reverted to it shortly, such as George Witzel, born in 1501, are difficult to categorize, and complicate the problem of generations a great deal. Very preliminary studies indicate in some cases a thorough and unreserved commitment to an Erasmian philosophia Christi theology which outlasted any evangelical experience.26 The importance of the humanist ingredient in both confessions during subsequent religious history is a story which carries us well beyond our theme and even more hopelessly beyond our space limitation. You will bestow upon me Spalatin's nickname, "Loquax," for that prolix humanist chancellor wrote over eight hundred letters to Luther alone. Perhaps the factor of the generation in the historical context of humanism and the Reformation will find its place side by side with such generalized concepts as the growth of bourgeois optimism and self-confidence, the birth of the lay spirit, the rising tide of religious expectations, or the well-worn notion of a new individualism.27 At that time it was at most only one of many factors at play in the great historical drama. Moreover, only at certain widely separated junctures in history has the generation element been an important contributing cause to Beitrag des Predigers Jakob Strauss zur frühen Reformationsgeschichte (Berlin, 1957). Strauss lived from 1480 to 1527. 26 See John Patrick Dolan, The Influence of Erasmus, Witzel and Cassander in the Church Ordinances and Reform Proposals of the United Duchies of Cleve during the Middle Decades of the 16th Century (Münster, 1959) ; Albrecht B. Ritschl, "Georg Witzels Abkehr vom Luthertum," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, I I (1887-1888), 386-417, which I have been unable to consult. 27 T h e concept of generations may have at least some minimal value for improving our understanding and conceptualization of the various factors involved in the Reformation, the most drastic spiritual revolution ever experienced by a single people in so short a time, according to Leopold von Ranke. In contributing to a better insight into the casual nexus, the stock in trade of historians, it may help historians beyond the naive description level of Karl Eder, Deutsche Geisteswende (Salzburg, 1937), or even beyond Willi Andreas' brilliantly written Deutschland von der Reformation (5th ed.; Stuttgart, 1948), a grand narrative, but somewhat lacking in third-dimensional analysis.

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historical events. It is not possible to generalize the generation factor into a universally applicable formula.28 The modest assertion of this paper is simply that the generation factor played a significant though minor part in the genesis and development of the Lutheran Reformation. We must, of course, beware of scientizing and bedeviling the world of history with impersonal abstractions and invisible powers or mysterious entelechies. If the idea of generation, understood in a qualitative even more than in a quantitative sense, as one of the mutually interdependent variables in the etiological syndrome of Reformation history is to be of value, it must be given substance from the realities of history itself. This is the difficult task of the historian. Humanists engaged upon such an undertaking can find solace in Plato's words : Chalepa ta Chala The good is always difficult! 28 Henri Peyre, Les Genérations Littéraires (Paris, 1948), discusses the difficulties of other divisions in literary history, the antiquity and history of the generations concept, and applies generational grouping to each of the major national literatures. The value of the concept, he argues, is not mysterious, but heuristic and practical. Careful reading and reflection upon the numerous exceptions, however, suggest that this bold attempt is only a qualified success.

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Renaissance Science in Puritan New England by Michael G. Hall

I

C O N F E S S THAT AS A STUDENT of Puritan New England I felt some

anxiety at participating in a symposium devoted to the Renaissance. I feared that like a visitor to Procrustes in ancient Attica I might be cut and stretched to fit between the headboards a n d footboards of what has ordinarily been taught as T h e Renaissance. Several delightful papers, however, relieved my mind from the fear that by carrying my own remarks to 1700 I would be overstepping the appropriate terminal date acceptable for this discussion. A geographical novelty, however, still remains—treating New England as part of the Renaissance. Although historians have written of the Renaissance a n d the Baroque in Spanish America, they have seldom done so with regard to New England. I t has been as if the Renaissance were a geometric space, a n d when Englishmen shoved off from the shores of Europe, they left the Renaissance behind. Despite the fact that as long as twenty-five years ago Perry Miller characterized the New England Puritans as "spokesmen for what we call the Renaissance," 1 very few historians have so treated them. I n fact a long and, I believe, regrettable tradition of treating early American history as sui generis and outside the paradigms of European history prevails. I believe that Miller was right, a n d I shall try to sketch out a case for the stand as regards the history of science. T h e history of science in New England does not show a pattern of development that coincides temporally with changes in political a n d economic life. This situation, in which one area of h u m a n activity pushes far ahead or lags behind developments in other areas, is frequently met in the history of science. Over a n d over again the b a d fit that the his1 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: York, 1939; 1961), p. ix.

The Seventeenth

Century (New

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tory of science makes with historical periods based on artistic or political epochs has been demonstrated. In New England the half-conscious developments in political and economic institutions proved to be a century or more in advance of similar changes in Europe. But when we look for the ideas which the intelligentsia of Puritan New England held about the natural world, we see that even as late as the 1680's a very large part of those ideas stemmed directly from the past. It is true that these Renaissance ideas were rubbing shoulders with much more modern concepts and methods of inquiry. This situation, of course, was little different from conditions in Europe. Everywhere in the seventeenth century the profile of scientific advance was extremely irregular. In some respects the scientific revolution made it possible to discard sixteenth-century ideas. In other respects, however, the attitudes of the Renaissance bloomed on well into the eighteenth century. The life of Francis Bacon is instructive. Born in 1561, Bacon was indubitably a Renaissance man; just as surely he was a patron of the Age of Enlightenment. A pale image of Bacon may be seen in the life of John Winthrop, Jr., a son of the founder of Massachusetts Bay, governor of Connecticut, scholar, diplomatist. Winthrop was born in 1605. He spent his adult life mostly in the American Desert, yet he was an enthusiastic investigator, a fellow of the Royal Society, a true dilettante who maintained his cabinet des sciences and brought at least two telescopes to the wilderness. Winthrop maintained a regular correspondence with Henry Oldenburg, secretary to the Royal Society, and other like-minded Englishmen. The letters were often directly inspired by Bacon's Novum Organum, but read like nothing so much as preliminary work for Diderot's Encyclopédie.2 The seventeenth century was, in short, a century of transition. I hope to delineate in this paper how some of the scientific attitudes and beliefs of the Renaissance persisted in the thinking of seventeenthcentury Puritan New England, and when and how these attitudes and beliefs were displaced at the very end of the century. Such a task may begin with consideration of a long poem, some sevenhundred lines, written in Massachusetts in the very early days of the colony, a poem which is so classical in its motifs, Aristotelian in its physics, and Galenist in its physiology that it may stand as an epitome of the ordinary nonspecialized outlook of the sixteenth century. The poem consists of several dialogues among the four elements, the four correspond2 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society X V I (Boston, 1879), 220 ff. See Charles A. Browne, "Scientific Notes from the Books and Letters of John Winthrop, Jr.," Isis, X I (1928), 325-342.

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ing humors, the four ages of man, and lastly the four seasons. Consider this excerpt in which Air speaks to the other elements : "I help to ripe the corn, I turn the mill, And with my self I every Vacuum fill. The ruddy sweet sanguine is like to air, And youth and spring, Sages to me compare, My moist hot nature is so purely thin, No place so subtilly made, but I get in. I grow more pure and pure as I mount higher, And when I's throughly rarifi'd turn fire: So when I am condens'd, I turn to water, Which may be done by holding down my vapour. Thus I another body can assume, And in a trice my own nature resume. Some for this cause of late have been so bold, Me for no Element longer to hold, Let such suspend their thoughts, and silent be, For all Philosophers make one of me." 3 O r this passage, where Choler disputes with Blood and Phlegm: "Nor sister sanguine, from they moderate heat, Poor spirits the Liver breeds, which is they seat. What comes from thence, my heat refines the same And through the arteries sends it o're the frame : The vital spirits they're call'd, and well they may For when they fail, man turns unto his clay. The animal I claim as well as these, The nerves, should I not warm, soon would they freeze."4 Anne Bradstreet wrote these lines sometime before 1647 when, as a young housewife, she had lived in Massachusetts for seventeen years. Bradstreet's poems are commonly denigrated, even by those who have anthologized them. I see no reason, however, to doubt that her understanding of natural science was any different from that of her coreligionists and contemporaries. T h a t understanding was typical of the sixteenth century. T h e form and much of the content of the poem came directly from the Calvinist, Provençal poet Guillaume du Bartas, spe3 The Works of Anne Bradstreet, ed. John H. Ellis (Charlestown, 1867; New York, 1932, reprint), p. 120. 4 Ibid., pp. 126-127.

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cifically his La Sepmaine, a ravishingly popular story of the creation of the world, which had been translated into English by Joshua Sylvester. What after all is to be expected other than that a well-educated Puritan should possess an understanding of the natural world, and that it should consist of not the most exotic edges of scientific discovery, but the common, garden variety? The major bases for the Puritan world view at the outset of the seventeenth century have been fairly well identified. Like their logic, their science was Aristotelian, somewhat modified by Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572), the great sixteenth-century reformer of university education. Ramus' recasting of the terms of logic, grammar, and rhetoric had deep influence among New England Puritans. He was not, however, a systematist, nor did he replace Aristotelian logic with an alternative. "For all his eloquent attacks," says Miller, "Ramus was not fundamentally opposed to Aristotle . . ."5 Ramus played an important role in developing theories of Congregational church government.6 Like Bacon, but unlike Descartes, he greatly influenced the shaping of attitudes toward natural science without making significant substantive contributions of theory or observation. Ramus persuaded his followers that it was reasonable to replace Aristotelian science with a better science, but he himself did not write an exposition of physics or other parts of the quadrivium as he did for the trivium.7 Consequently the physical theories learned by New England Puritans remained "Aristotelian," despite the influence of the anti-Aristotelian Ramus. Indeed, although Ramus was a Copernican, Harvard graduates continued to accept a Ptolemaic view of the solar system until mid-century. Other important sources of scientific ideas were the massive encyclopedias of Johann Alsted and Bartholomäus Keckermann. Alsted (15881638) was a devotee of Ramus, but Keckermann (1571-1608) was one of his most prominent opponents.8 Both were used extensively in New England. As the century wore on, the influence of Sir Francis Bacon was felt, as indeed it must have been in an English-speaking community which always maintained close contact with those Puritans in England 5 Miller, New England Mind, p. 494. See Charles Waddington, Ramus, Sa Vie, Ses Écrits, et Ses Opinions (Paris, 1855), pp. 342-343. 6 Robert N. Kingdom, "Calvinism and Democracy: Some Political Implications of Debates on French Reformed Church Government, 1562-1572," American Historical Review, L X I X , No. 2 (January, 1964), 393-401. 7 Reijer Hooykaas, Humanisme, Science, et Réforme: Pierre de La Ramée (Leyden, 1958), pp. 33-35, 42-43. 8 Miller, New England Mind, pp. 496, 498.

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who founded the Royal Society, and which counted Robert Boyle among its principal benefactors. T h e appeal of Bacon, however, was sharply limited by his emphatic separation of science and religion. T h e New England writers never achieved that separation, which became such a significant characteristic of European science. T h e influence of Descartes was felt in New England tentatively by mid-century, and unambiguously in the last quarter of the century, when William Brattle, tutor at Harvard College, 1686-1697, prepared a digest of Cartesian ideas in usum pupillorum.9 W h a t interests us, however, is not so much the existence of a climate of knowledge—every m a n lives in some climate and even the most primitive people have some understanding of the natural world—but rather the active participation of New England Puritans in the new exploration of the world. W h a t interests us may fairly be called scientific activity, be it observation, experiment, or just plain book learning. With this in mind I shall concentrate here almost exclusively on astronomy, for in astronomy the evidence is most direct and the issues most clearcut. This is not to say that the only active scientific interest in Massachusetts was in astronomy. A very similar course of development could almost certainly be traced in the biological sciences. Indeed, the number of books concerning biology and medicine which are known to have circulated in Massachusetts at this time is far greater than the number of books about physics or astronomy. 10 T h e evolution of New England thought about astronomy can best be followed in a succession of almanacs published at Cambridge and Boston. T h e earliest surviving issue is for the year 1646. I t might be supposed that a church-oriented, agricultural, and maritime community might find considerable use for a calendar to assist in locating religious days, seasons for planting, the rise and fall of the tides. In point of fact Puritan New England eschewed the observance of feast days; agricultural advice is noticeable by its absence; and the ebb and flow of tides was intermittently given not as an aid to navigation, but as a means of telling the time of day. Almanacs gave the dates for meetings of colonial governments, the days of the month and week, and phases of the moon. Prefaces, footnotes, and postscripts were filled with instruction on the 9 Samuel E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), I, 192-193. Several of Brattle's Cartesian essays are in Harvard College Archives. 10 See the book lists in Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, X X V I I I (1935).

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nature of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, poetry à la mode, chronologies of world or local history, and essays about the movements of the planets. O n e thing that the seventeenth-century almanacs did not provide was practical or prudential advice. Poor Richard was still out of sight over the rim of the next century. T h e transition from the traditional geocentric cosmography to the acceptance of first a Copernican and eventually a Keplerian view of the solar system can be traced in the almanac essays. In the earliest (1646) Samuel Danforth, a graduate of Harvard College, wrote in the terms of traditional astronomy: The aequinoctial points are not fixed but move under the 8th orb . . . The diurnall revolutions of the sun differ amongst themselves, which discrepancy partly ariseth from the suns excentricity, whence its motion is swifter in the Perigaeum, slower in the Apogaeum, partly from the obliquity of the Ecliptick or sunsway.11 T e n years later another graduate, Thomas Shepard, offered "A Briefe Explication of the most observable Circles in the Heavens," a painstaking explanation of those circles which appeared on an armillary sphere. 12 Shepard made no mention of the dispute over the solar system then raging in Europe. But in 1659 Zechariah Brigden, a Connecticut farm boy gone to Harvard, produced an essay entitled "A Brief Explication and Proof of the Philolaick System." 13 Brigden defended the Copernican system, he wrote, as it was accepted by Kepler, Galileo, Digby, Origanus, and Gassendi. T h e facts of the case, Brigden said, could be demonstrated by either sexigesimal or logarithmic arithmetic. With that essay a corner was turned into the world of scientific revolution. Thereafter the dominance of the heliocentric system seems to have been safe among the almanac makers. Judging from their repeated polemics, however, the younger generation had a hard time persuading its elders. Samuel Cheever's almanac of 1661 contained "A Brief Discourse on the Rise and Progress of Astronomy," in which the relationships between the theories of Eudoxus, Aristarchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Longomontanus, et al. are more or less correctly stated, although the weird chronology then in vogue makes the essay seem at 11 [Samuel Danforth], Almanack for 1646 (Cambridge, 1646), under May and June. 12 Thomas Shepard, MDCLVI. Almanack (Cambridge, 1656). 13 Zechariah Brigden, An Almanack (Cambridge, 1659). See Samuel E. Morison, "The Harvard School of Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century," New England Quarterly, VII (1934), 9-12.

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first glance almost ridiculous. 14 T h e next year appeared an essay, " T h e Primum Mobile," which expounded briefly Kepler's explanation of the force which causes the planets to move : As the Sun Gircumvolves his acis, he sends forth efluxes of light, laden with Electrical Virtue which is the primary cause, amongst Secondary causes of the diverse motions of the greater and lesser planets, according to their intervall distance, or disposition in them to motion, with which magnetical Virtue (whilst he wheels about) he beates them the same way.15 John Foster's almanac of 1681 contained an essay on comets with such sophisticated sentences as these: the author will "treat only such things as come under a mathematical Demonstration, as their Motion, Distance, and Magnitude . . . Where there is nothing to impede, retard or accelerate a motion, that motion needs continue the same." 1 6 T h e New England almanacs, however, demonstrate something far more significant than what can be deduced from these little essays. They were not, in fact, almanacs of the kind familiar to the rural American culture of a later age, but ephemerides, compilations of the positions of the stars and planets indispensable for astronomical observations. However much it goes against the grain to imagine an enthusiastic coterie of amateur astronomers in the tiny frontier settlements of the American wilderness, such a group is just what the seventeenth-century almanacs imply. From the earliest surviving copy (1646) to the death of J o h n Foster (1681) 1 7 the almanacs provided greater and greater amounts of astronomical information. T h e issue for 1647, for example, gave no more than the times of expected eclipses, the "signe of the Zodiack, wherein the moon is everyday at noon," lunar syzygies, and a few mutual aspects of the planets. T h e next year the times of the rising and setting of some few mixed stars were added. I n 1656 the moon's perigee, apogee, and nodes were included. Then, in 1660 we find also "the orientality, occidentality, direction, retrogradation, and station of the Planets," plus the "latitude of the Planets . . . fitted to the meridian of every fifth day, which whether it be Septentrionall or Meridionall, Ascendent or Descendent, the letters there set down will demonstrate." 1 8 Planetary eclipses came to be noted with great precision, and by 1664 the times 14

Samuel Cheever, An Almanack . . . for 1661 (Cambridge, 1661). Nathaniel Chauncy, An Almanack (Cambridge, 1662). John Foster, An Almanack (Boston, 1681 ) . 17 Foster was the last of the able compilers in Boston. His almanac was continued by the Mather family, but much reduced. 18 Samuel Cheever, MDCLX. An Almanack (Cambridge, 1660). 15

16

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of the rising and setting of fixed stars so filled the tables that there was barely room enough to squeeze in important political dates. T h a t one such ephemeris was maintained at Cambridge and another soon started at Boston a few miles away is indirect evidence that a surprising number of people were actively engaged—as amateurs, of course—in astronomical observations. A little—precious little—direct evidence of this craze for astronomy survives. T h e small telescope brought to America by John Winthrop, Jr., in 1660, and later given to Harvard College, is well known. It now appears that Winthrop also had in America a larger instrument of ten feet. 19 At the close of the century a quadrant with telescopic sight, which is supposed to have been one that E d m u n d Halley carried to St. Helena, and several other telescopes are known to have been in use. Some observational data have survived, particularly William Brattle's observations on the Comet of 1680, which were sent to Flamsteed and were commented on by Newton in the Principia. 20 Most observations could have been and undoubtedly were made without the use of telescopes or graduated quadrants. T h e ring dial was still very much in use. Arthur Storer, who had on his Patuxent River plantation in Maryland far fewer resources to fall back on than anyone in the Boston-Cambridge area, sent observations of comets to England and requested Isaac Newton to send him a forestaff four to six feet long. Storer had at first only a pocket "perspective glass" and a homemade quadrant of twelve-inch radius. But he was able to turn out quite respectable data. 2 1 I wish to suggest that probably a good many more amateur astronomers lived in the English colonies in the third quarter of the seventeenth century than we can name, and that the two annual almanacs published in New England served as ephemerides for their use. This kind of hobby was novel to the seventeenth century. T h e development of logarithms and the telescope made observation both easier and more rewarding. T h e popularity of astronomy in the seventeenth century in Europe led to the blossoming of amateurism in the Age of Enlightenment. T h a t a similar popularity for stargazing occurred in New England has been heretofore little noticed. 19 Ronald S. Wilkinson, "John Winthrop, Jr., and America's first Telescope," New England Quarterly, X X X V (1962), 520-523. 20 Morison, "Harvard School of Astronomy," New England Quarterly, pp. 20-21. See also I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science (Cambridge, 1950). 21 Herbert W. Turnbull, ed., The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, I I (Cambridge, 1960), 368-371, 387-393.

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Why astronomy did not gain more widespread and recognized support in New England is, I think, connected with the rise of astrology. Astronomy and astrology had always been twin sisters seldom found very far apart. It should be no surprise (although it is) to discover that the young men graduating from H a r v a r d College were seriously interested in astrological mysteries. T h e New England Puritans are supposed to have been such sober intellectuals! T h e case is clear enough, however. From the earliest surviving almanac onward came an increasing amount of information on aspects of the planets, mutual aspects of planets, and most powerful aspects of planets, until at last in 1663, the matter was out in the open in an essay, " T h e Natural Portents of Eclipses according to approved authors." 2 2 T h e author opened this almanac with a description of a "Notable Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter on the 1 day of October," proceeded with an essay describing the effects of the Fiery and H u m a n e Triplicities, and ended with a crudely sketched horoscope of the heavens at the middle of the solar eclipse forthcoming in August. T h e tables themselves devoted as much space to conjunctions, semi sextile, square, or trine, as they did to the more usual fare. This early in their history, then, we can see another purpose for New England's almanacs besides their usefulness to would-be astronomers. They also served, and continued to serve through the rest of the century, those people who wished to speculate about the mystical influence of the stars on the fate of man. This first astrologically oriented almanac in 1663 was but the opening wedge. It contained no predictions or warnings and gave only in generalized statements what was the common starting place for more fully blown astrology. Nevertheless, it seems to provide the basis from which we must examine the New England Puritan's whole attitude toward the new astronomical science. T h e religious leaders of New England always condoned scientific observation. T o examine, to measure the natural world was acceptable, even obligatory. There was Biblical justification for it : Psalms 111:2, " T h e works of the Lord are great, sought out [by] all that have pleasure therein"; or Job 36:24, "Remember that thou magnifie His work, which men behold." 2 3 If the older generation was not eager to accept the heliocentric system, that was not because of any theological implications in it. Notice, for example, the old, archconservative divine, John 22

Israel Chauncy, MDCLXIII. An Almanack (Cambridge, 1663). Both passages were often quoted. T h e Puritan attitude is described at length in Miller, New England Mind, pp. 216-218. 23

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Davenport, on the subject of Zechariah Brigden's Copernican essay. "Many thanks for . . . the Almanack," he wrote Winthrop, who h a d sent him a copy. " T h e author of it is wholly unknowne to me. . . . Now the place, whereon we live, is the earth. T h e place, I say, not the planet. . . . " Brigden, of course, had argued that the earth also was a planet like the others circling the sun. Davenport continued : For his 4 propositions [Brigden] produceth, in his last page, sundry authors, who, he saith, have answered the objections from scripture against this opinion. I have not read theyre answers. But, if that be the briefe or summe of them, which he notes, it will not be found upon an exact search, to be satisfying. However it be; let him injoy his opinion; and I shall rest in what I have learned, til more cogent arguments be produced than I have hitherto met with.24 A more open, tolerant reaction can hardly be imagined. If the heliocentric theory was indeed "the most disturbing of all modern discoveries," the New England clergy were very slow off the mark to recognize it as such. They were very much disturbed, however, by the more blatant forms of astrology, particularly the so-called judicial astrology. Increase M a t h e r complained in 1683, "If an Astrologer (as the blind m a n hits the mark) chance to praedict right once, more notice is taken of that than of his mistaking an hundred times over." 25 T o disavow astrology was difficult, for the doctrines were so many-sided that a person could accept what he wished and reject the rest. T o hedge on the subject was always possible. Another difficulty, from the point of view of the New England Puritan clergy, was that a goodly number of their most respected authorities (Johann Alsted, for example, or Joseph Scaliger) subscribed to one astrological principle or another. T h e author of the 1663 almanac had been careful to mention in the title to his essay that the "portents" were all according to "approved authors." T h e fact is that ever since the end of the fifteenth century the rank growth of astrology was likely to be discovered in any garden. England in the seventeenth century was just as much the England of Lilly and Fludd as it was the England of Bacon and Boyle. It may well be imagined that astrology had far wider appeal than astronomy for the reading public of New England almanacs. John Tulley turned the Cambridge Almanack into a mouthpiece for astrology in the 1690's, and although 24 Quoted in Morison, "Harvard School of Astronomy" New England terly, p. 13. 25 Increase Mather, Kometographia (Boston, 1683), p. 17.

Quar-

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he was made to back down from his most advanced claims, the Almanack never returned to the form of ephemeris, which had once distinguished it. More than any other natural phenomena, comets flaring across the night sky seemed to call for an explanation from the New England divines and at the same time to open the door to astrology. The first book printed in New England on a specifically scientific subject was a slim volume by Samuel Danforth, An Astronomical Description of the Late or Blazing Comet (Cambridge, 1664). As a fellow at the College, Danforth had compiled the earliest almanac. Now, as Congregational minister at Roxbury, he opened his book on comets with a quotation from Guillaume du Bartas. In the intervening eighteen years Danforth had not given up his attachment to the Ptolemaic system. He denied all the traditional, "Aristotelian" ideas: comets were neither sublunary meteors nor exhalation of the earth; they were not opaque but transparent, and their light was not flame but irradiation from the sun's light; they were not new fixed stars like the nova of 1572, but wandered, like the planets ; their tails aways pointed away from the sun, their motion was retrograde and appeared elliptical and accelerated toward perigee. The proper motion, however, was circular and uniform Danforth wrote: The proper Circle of the Comets motion is Eccentrical, ie it hath a center diverse from the center of the world. . . . The apparent motion of the Comet was anomalous and unequal but it's motion in it's proper Orb or Circle, was very neer equal and uniform. . . . The cause of which anomaly and inequality, was the Comet's Eccentricity.26 Nineteen years afterward, inspired by the great Comet of 1680 and Halley's Comet in 1682, Increase Mather published New England's second astronomical book, Kometographia, or a Discourse on Comets (Boston, 1683). Much had happened to the local practice of astronomy between the two publications. By 1680 several astronomers at Cambridge and Boston were adept at accurate telescopic observations. One of them was John Foster, printer, almanac compiler, engraver, and philomath. Another was Thomas Brattle. We know that Mather, who was then president of Harvard College, was closely associated with a small band of enthusiastic observers. Mather's own enthusiasm led him to visit Gresham College when in London, to help found the Philosoph26 Samuel Danforth, An Astronomical Description of the Late or Blazing Comet (Cambridge, 1664), Sections 10, 13.

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ical Society in Boston in 1684, and to read widely in scientific literature, including the Philosophical Transactions, the Ephemeridum Germanicarum Curiosarum, and the Acta Eruditorum. T h e most noteworthy aspect of Increase Mather's book on comets, however, is not its modernity. T h e superiority of "mathematical instruments" and "ocular demonstrations" was by this time no novelty in Boston. Nor did M a t h e r add anything of importance to what Danforth had written almost two decades earlier, despite Mather's much more extensive study of the subject. His mainstay was Johannes Hevelius' Cometographia: totam naturam cometarum . . . exhibens, published in 1668, a massive, finely illustrated folio volume. I n addition to Hevelius there seems to have been hardly an author in Europe pertinent to his subject with whom Mather was not familiar at firsthand or secondhand. Kometographia was the most industrious New England effort in the scientific literature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Increase Mather's main concern, nevertheless, was not science but astrology. Were comets more than signs of God's wrath? Did they have causal effects on the earth? Mather answered no to both questions, and referred to William Lilly as a "blind insolent buzzard." 27 But further on, snared by his credulity in the "best authors," Mather did admit that comets indeed affected the earth: " I find that judicious Writers are of Opinion that such a Saturnine Comet as this was [in 1682] hath a natural influence into, and therefore does portend a cold and tedious Winter . . .; Malignant and Epidemical Diseases; in Special the Plague." 2 8 And later, "I see no sufficient reason why we should not suppose them to be not only signal but causal. . . . It is undubitable that the true Planets and fixed Stars have a natural influence into such things." 2 9 So Mather, who had started out to declare that comets are natural events which are also signals of God's wrath, ended u p by conceding many of the basic assumptions of the astrologers. Not only comets, but planets and fixed stars as well had causal effects. H e did deny that "us silly Mortals" could predict in detail what the effects would be regarding the personalities or fates of individual persons. T h e scholar who might have done most to bend New England thought toward the natural sciences as they were developing at the close of the seventeenth century in Europe was himself enmeshed in the fruitless speculation about astrological mysteries. I n the end it was not Mather's European con27 28 29

Mather, Kometographia, Ibid., p . 130. Ibid., pp. 132-133.

p. 112.

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temporaries—he was an almost exact contemporary of Isaac Newton— who had the last word for him, but the ubiquitous D u Bartas and the late fifteenth-century humanist Jovianus Pontanus, who had defended astrology against the attack of Pico della Mirandola. T h e cumbersome marriage thus consummated between Renaissance scholarship and a more modern science ended soon afterward in divorce. As the eighteenth century opened, younger men in Massachusetts increasingly sent purely secular observations to England in the hope that they would be published in the Philosophical Transactions. Cotton Mather, Increase's son and the direct inheritor of his father's literary tradition of scientific scholarship, experimented in botany and medicine, and published in 1720 The Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature (London, 1721). Cotton Mather found it unnecessary to have recourse to the miraculous literature of the Renaissance. Writing a professed exposition of natural theology, he relied almost exclusively on contemporaries like George Cheyne, William Derham, and Nehemiah Grew. When he did quote or refer to older writers, nine times out of ten they were men of the recent past like Newton, Hooke, and Huygens. "Philosophy," Cotton M a t h e r wrote, "is no enemy, but a mighty and wondrous Incentive to Religion." This natural theology was, of course, nothing new to New England. T h e works of the Lord are great and sought by all that have pleasure therein. T h e only open conflict in New England between theology and science had come from the attempt to reintroduce pagan astrology along with astronomy. But a covert war between science and theology began long before the century's end. Not science per se, but secularism threatened the Puritan position. Already in 1682 Pierre Bayle had published his letter, "Wherein it is proved in the light of various arguments derived from Philosophy and Theology that comets are in no sense portents of disaster." 30 In reply to this secularism Increase Mather insisted doggedly on the religious significance of comets. Not the removal of the earth from the center of the universe, but the removal of God from the earth brought about the war between science and theology. T h e seventeenth century passed in New England before anyone believed in the new secularism, or at least before anyone dared publish the belief. At the outset of the century the founders of New Zion seemed to have had no more than a passive interest in natural science. T h e science of 30

Paul Hazard, The European Mind

(London, 1953), pp. 155-156.

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religion obsessed them. But when a generation born in New England grew to maturity and studied at the College in Cambridge, young men whose interest turned straight away to the exciting discoveries in the sciences cropped up at once, no less than at Oxford or Paris. To think of the intellectual community in Massachusetts (or in Guatemala City or Lima, for that matter) as being outside the European world would be absurd. The winds blew from the same quarter wherever books and letters passed. So after mid-century the young men in New England turned their telescopes heavenward and ordered the best books from home. Increase Mather was of this generation, but he was a book scholar, not an experimenter. Mather wrestled with the well-nigh impossible task of winnowing from the accumulated publications of two hundred years what was sound and what was false, always bearing in mind that the purpose of it all was the glorification of God. Long before his death the sources of information on which he had to rely were eclipsed by a new synthesis. The Renaissance was passed, the scientific revolution was accomplished.

PART FIVE

Science and Economic Life

In Defense of Kepler Edward Rosen City College of New York Concerning Clio, Concepts and Quantities Herbert Heaton University of Minnesota

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papers characterized by a certain encyclopedic quality that manages to encompass the entire Renaissance period. The first of them is Edward Rosen's spirited defense of Johannes Kepler, that most fascinating of the scientists of this age, whose wide-ranging mind not only concerned itself with most of the important cosmological knowledge of the period, but contained much else besides, from mysticism and superstition to a seer's view of the future. To understand Kepler is in many ways to see the Renaissance whole. The second and last paper represents the after-dinner remarks of America's dean of economic historians, Herbert Heaton. In witty fashion Professor Heaton has managed in a few short pages not only to sum up the major controversies which those concerned with the economic history of the Renaissance period have recently engaged in, but also to add some special words of wisdom concerning the use of imperfect statistical evidence in resolving such controversies. He also reminds us all that we badly need the insights of those in other disciplines if we wish to understand properly the problems of our own. Only in adopting something of the broad spirit that animates Professor Heaton's remarks can we hope to understand that tantalizing era we call the Renaissance. THIS LAST SECTION CONTAINS

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In Defense of Kepler by Edward Rosen

IN HIS History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York, 1923— 1958), Volume VII, page 11, the late Lynn Thorndike, accused the great Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) of holding "the erroneous view . . . that the world had been asleep for a thousand years after the fall of Rome and the barbarian invasions, plunged in barbarism and ignorance." Did Kepler really believe that medieval people slept fifty times as long as Rip Van Winkle? Obviously not, for in this same context Kepler said, "I do not deny that many great deeds were done by many persons." Why was this essential part of Kepler's view omitted from Thorndike's summary of this passage? Surely Kepler would have rejected a recent writer's contention that great deeds were done by sleepwalkers. Since, on the contrary, great deeds require great alertness, Kepler's millennial slumber evidently affected some aspects of human life, but not all. It was his opinion that, while the arts and sciences lay dormant, a brutalized feudality and narrow-minded clergy were wide awake. If we wish to understand Kepler's view aright, let us look not at a seriously distorted summary of it but at his whole statement. In his New Star, of 1606, Kepler said : "Reawakening in the year 1450, the world returned to its ancient vigor. Previously states had been overturned, wholesome customs had been trod underfoot, and barbarous practices implanted, some vestiges of which we laugh at and ridicule today. Justice was at an end, and force prevailed. The robberies of the barons were routine exercises. Christian doctrine was uprooted, and a great part of the world accepted the detestable and absurd teachings of Mohammed. Among Christians, language was greatly barbarized, there was much ignorance, and so on; the details make a long story. . . . I do not deny that many great deeds were done by many persons. But if you compare those deeds with ours, you

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will find that the former were accomplished by sheer numbers, by many hundreds of thousands, rather than by wisdom, and that they were not enduring. Most of the arts known to the ancients died out. The pursuit of literature, compressed within the narrow confines of monasteries, was carried on wretchedly there too. The courts of the rulers, especially in Germany, were under the control of clerics. These were the only people for whom an education was not a disgrace. The most important languages, Greek and Latin, were ruined everywhere, merely by the dearth of learning and books, and by the tidal wave of barbarians. How many celebrated works of the ancients, how many histories, how many treatises by theologians, indeed, how many whole libraries have been lost by this negligence, so that no hope of recovering them remains? "But now observe the marvelous change of the past 150 years. In the first place, the laws of the empires, especially the German, have been improved. Public order has been established and strengthened. Highway robbery has been supressed. Tribunals have been set up. Beneficial practices have been instituted, not the least of which is the introduction of couriers or postmen. Even the Turkish people are shedding their barbarousness, and learning to be civilized. Europe has begun to calculate and understand its own strength, and to use ingenuity rather than impetuosity, especially since the loss of Constantinople and the destruction of the Byzantine Empire. War machines have been invented, and their usefulness has been improved by many hands. The Turkish people have made very great progress in watchfulness, energy, and courage, whereas the Greeks have either become lethargic or they quarrel among themselves, as the Europeans do too. The Spaniards have expelled the Moors. With the utmost zeal they have devoted themselves to navigation. In an effort extending over many years they finally discovered the way to the East Indies, at first by despatching explorers throughout Africa and afterwards by equipping ships and sailing around Africa. Such intense activity has been favored by fortune too, with the discovery of the West Indies. As a result of these developments European trade has climbed by unbelievable leaps to the highest peak "All by itself the art of printing alone provides ample proof that in those days men were efficient to a degree that cannot be expressed in words, if you pay careful attention to how many hands are required by the art; next how many copies are produced by how few hands; and finally how many steps intervened before our ancestors, having been appraised of printing, advanced from solid blocks . . . to the present high state of the art. After the invention of printing, books became wide-

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spread. Hence everybody throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature. Hence many universities came into existence. At once many well-informed men appeared, with the result that in a short time the authority of those who clung to barbarism was eroded. Men's longings were not satisfied until the creator of a new order emerged which explicitly devoted itself to the pursuit of literature. From that time on almost all the prestige of the religious orders has passed to the new order, save insofar as those older orders, while occupied with their own affairs, also take up the study of literature. Voyages and trade have offered Europeans the opportunity of spreading the Christian faith far and wide among barbarous and previously unknown nations. On the other hand, the universities with their academic freedom, the abundance of books and the convenience of printing, and doubtless too, knowledge and public dissatisfaction, gave rise in the end to that immense and forever memorable secession of very many parts of Europe from the See of Rome. . . . What shall I say about today's mechanical arts, countless in number, incomprehensible in subtle design? Do we not today by the art of printing bring to light all the ancient writers, as many as are extant? Does not Cicero himself again learn from our many critics how to speak Latin correctly? Every year, especially since 1563 [a year in which a close conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter occurred] in all subjects the number of authors whose writings are printed is greater than the number of all the authors over the past one thousand years. Through them a new theology has been created today, and a new jurisprudence ; the followers of Paracelsus have created a new medicine, and the followers of Copernicus a new astronomy. "For my part, I believe that now at last the world is alive, and indeed is in a state of intense excitement." Having concluded this ecstatic contrast of the lively Renaissance culture with the somnolent medieval dogmatism, Kepler continued: I called astrologers stupid if they think that in the next 200 years we must look forward to more and greater events than those which occurred in the past 150 years . . . unless perhaps they believe that some New World will be discovered, or an art offlyingwill be found by which we may go to the moon or to some other sphere in the universe.1 Kepler's reference to "some New World" (novum aliquem orbem) was 1 Johannes Kepler, New Star (Prague and Frankfurt, 1606), pp. 185-188; Gesammelte Werke (Munich, 1937 ) , I, 329-332. In this article the quotations from Kepler and other foreign authors have been translated by Edward Rosen.

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equated by Thorndike ( V I I , 12) with "some new orb." According to Thorndike, Kepler was particularly shortsighted in failing to foresee in 1606 that Galileo would discover Jupiter's satellites in 1610. But did Kepler actually suppose that the planets known before 1610 completed the category, or did he imagine that their number could be increased? A decade earlier than his New Star, in his first major publication, the Cosmographic Mystery (Tübingen, 1596), Kepler said in the Preface to the Reader : Between Jupiter and Mars I interposed a new planet, and also another one between Venus and Mercury, both being invisible perhaps on account of their small size, and I assigned them their periods of revolution.2 Clearly, then, Kepler envisaged the possibility of unknown planets becoming known. Hence, when he implied that the discovery of "some New World" was extremely unlikely, he was thinking, not about an undetected cosmic body, but about an extensive portion of the earth's surface still undisclosed after the pioneering voyages to the East Indies and the West Indies. I n his time the Americas were often called the New World (novus orbis), and the skepticism in his reference to "some New World" concerned undiscovered land on this planet approximating the Americas in magnitude, and not any as yet unknown planet. Galileo's announcement in 1610 that he had discovered four satellites of Jupiter and other previously undetected features of the cosmos was enthusiastically welcomed by Kepler as providing visual confirmation of earlier speculative ideas. Is this not one of the ways in which science advances? Consider the rotation of Jupiter about its own axis. Galileo did not discover this rotation, nor did he suspect its existence. But one of Kepler's friends who loved to dabble in astronomical speculations leaped to this conclusion long before the rotation of Jupiter was actually observed. 3 T h e origin of the basic concept in Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery was discussed by Thorndike in connection with the Renaissance astronomer's attitude toward medieval science. According to Thorndike, this concept was perhaps "subconsciously suggested" to Kepler if he read a certain passage in a work by Prosdocimo de' Beldomandis (d. 1428). 4 2 Johannes Kepler, Cosmographie Mystery (Tübingen, 1596), p. 7; Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, I, 10. See also Gesammelte Werke, XIII, 28. 3 Edward Rosen, Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger (New York, 1965), p. 42. 4 Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York, 1923-1958), V I I , 13.

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Although Prosdocimo studied also at Bologna University, he obtained his Master of Arts degree from the University of Padua in 1409, and two years later his degree in medicine from the same institution, where he subsequently became a member of the faculty. In 1418 he composed, or completed, a commentary on Sacrobosco's Sphere for students beginning the study of astronomy. Three manuscript copies of his commentary were found by an assiduous Italian scholar, who published a thorough monograph on Prosdocimo.5 All three of these manuscripts are located in Italy, which Kepler never visited, either before or after the Catholic condemnation of Copernicanism. Presumably, therefore, he never saw any of these manuscripts. One of them is in the library of St. Mark's in Venice. Copied in 1448, it may well have been the basis for the one and only printing of Prosdocimo's commentary (in the astronomical collection entitled Spherae tractatus, Venice, 1531). No copy of this collection is known to have reached Kepler. Hence we may reasonably conclude, I believe, that Prosdocimo's commentary, whether in manuscript or in print, was not read by Kepler, in whose time many vastly superior introductions to astronomy were readily available. If the foregoing analysis is sound, and if it is true that Kepler never laid eyes on Prosdocimo's commentary, should we immediately discard Thorndike's theory that the basic concept of the Cosmographic Mystery was "subconsciously suggested" to Kepler by his reading? Not yet, for in this passage of his commentary on Sacrobosco's Sphere Prosdocimo said virtually nothing on his own account and merely quoted from Campano of Novara's thirteenth-century commentary on Euclid's Elements. Now it so happens that Campano's commentary on Euclid was cited by Kepler, who was then a teacher of mathematics, in his Cosmographic Mystery.6 What is more, Kepler cited the last proposition of Book 15, just below Thorndike's passage, which occurs in the next to the last proposition of Book 15 (ed. Venice, 1482, fol. r7v; Vicenza, 1491, fol. r7v; Venice, 1509, fol. 144r-v; Paris, 1516, fol. 258v-259r; Basel, 1546, 1558, p. 478). It is practically certain, therefore, that Kepler did read Thorndike's passage in Campano, where Prosdocimo also read it. Now, just as Prosdocimo in the fifteenth century said virtually nothing on his own account but merely quoted from Campano, so Campano in 5

Antonio Favaro, "Intorno alla vita ed alle opere di Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi," Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze mathematiche e fische, X I I (1879), 1-74, 115-251; X V I I I (1885), 405-423. The Bullettino has been reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York. 6 Kepler, Cosmographie Mystery, pp. 44, 46; Gesammelte Werke, I, 44-45.

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the thirteenth century likewise said nothing on his own account, but merely quoted from "the ancient disciples of Plato." According to Campano, then, The ancient disciples of Plato ascribed the figure of the dodecahedron to the heavens. In the same way they attributed the form of the pyramid to fire, because it soars upward in the shape of a pyramid. They assigned the octahedron to air. For, just as air follows fire in lightness of motion, so the form of the octahedron is grouped with the form of the pyramid in suitability for motion. The twenty-sided figure, however, they associated with water. For with its larger number of sides, it approaches the roundness of the sphere more than the other figures do, and it seemed to be more appropriate to the motion of what flows than of what rises. The figure of the cube was granted by some to earth. For among the figures, what requires a more powerful thrust to be set in motion than dice do? On the other hand, among the elements what is found to be more stationary and fixed than earth? I n the foregoing passage four of the five regular solids are linked with the four elements: the pyramid, with fire; the cube, with earth; the octahedron, with air; and the icosahedron, with water. Since the elements were then thought to be precisely four in number, and since it had been established that there are five, and only five, regular solids, one solid could not be tied to an element. This remaining solid, the dodecahedron, was attached to the heavens. This specimen of ancient cosmological speculation was familiar to Kepler, not only as quoted by Campano, but also in Campano's ultimate source, Plato's Timaeus. Hence Kepler's unfamiliarity with Prosdocimo did not in the least affect his attitude toward medieval science. For, what Kepler missed in Prosdocimo, he found in C a m p a n o (although Thorndike gives no indication that he was aware of that fact). W h a t Kepler found in Campano, he found also in Plato. W h a t Kepler found in Plato surely had no effect on his attitude toward medieval science. I just said that for Campano, Plato was the ultimate source. But obviously Plato was not his immediate source, since Campano attributed the doctrine, not to Plato himself, but to "the ancient disciples of Plato." Moreover, Campano and his immediate source asserted that "the figure of the cube was granted to earth by some." Plato himself, however, stated succinctly, " T o earth let us give the cubic form." 7 T h e only other equally definite pronouncement on this subject in the Timaeus declared, "Let the solid which has taken the form of the pyramid be the element and 7

Plato, Timaeus, 55 D.

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seed of fire."8 The rest of the doctrine was conveyed in the Timaeus by such murky utterances as assigned "to water, the least mobile of the remaining figures . . . and the intermediate to air"9 and as declared that "since one compound figure still remained, the god used it for the universe."10 No wonder that Campano's immediate source, whether Arabic or not, preferred the clearer formulations offered by "the ancient disciples of Plato." Kepler, on the other hand, relied on a doxographical compilation, The Opinions of the Philosophers, which in his time was still clothed with the immense authority of Plutarch. Although the critical study of classical texts was initiated in the Renaissance, even so astute a scholar as Guillaume Budé (1468-1540) translated The Opinions of the Philosophers from Greek into Latin (Paris, 1510) without suspecting its true nature. Only much later was this compilation declared to be a literary fraud, typical of its time, the middle of the second century after Christ.11 Plutarch had then been dead about a generation. His fame already resounded throughout the Greek-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire. Under these circumstances his illustrious name was surreptitiously attached to The Opinions of the Philosophers, a jejune digest unworthy of his talents. The actual compiler has not yet been identified, and may never be, so skillfully did he conceal his hand when he put his pseudonymous product into circulation. His real name being still unknown and perhaps forever unknowable, he has been called, with complete justification, "Pseudo-Plutarch." All these results of recent research were achieved long after Kepler's death. He believed that The Opinions of the Philosophers was an authentic work of Plutarch, whom he described as "the eminent philosopher who . . . governed Epirus with the power of a proconsul under the Caesars."12 Overawed by this combined cultural and political prominence, young Kepler accepted without question what he read in The Opinions of the Philosophers. I say "young" Kepler, because he himself tells us that he followed "in the footsteps of . . . Plutarch [really, Pseudo-Plutarch] long ago in a disputation written at Tübingen in the year 1593," while he was still a university student aspiring to enter the Lutheran ministry.13 When Kepler followed in the footsteps of Pseudo8

Ibid., 56 B. Ibid., 56 A. Ibid., 55 G. 11 Herman Diels, Doxographi graeci (3rd ed.; Berlin, 1958), pp. 64-66. 12 Rosen, Kepler's Conversation, p. 14. 13 Ibid., p. 28.

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10

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Plutarch, he encountered this passage ( I I , 6) : "Since there are five solid figures, which are called also the mathematical figures, Pythagoras says that the earth arose from the cube, fire from the pyramid, air from the octahedron, water from the icosahedron, and from the dodecahedron the sphere of the universe." Thus in his early twenties Kepler was already acquainted through Pseudo-Plutarch with the doctrine which Thorndike thinks may have been transmitted to Kepler by Prosdocimo, whom Kepler almost certainly never read at any stage in his life and about whom he may never even have heard. After ascribing the doctrine in the first instance to Pythagoras, PseudoPlutarch added: "Plato follows Pythagoras in these matters too." This is why Kepler attributed the doctrine neither to Plato nor to the ancient disciples of Plato. Instead, in his Cosmographic Mystery, he said about Pythagoras : He matched earth with the cube, because both are stable, although this statement is not properly applied to the cube. He gave the icosahedron to the heavens because both can turn, and to fire, the pyramid, since this has the form of a leaping flame. He divided the other two bodies between air and water, on account of their like kinship with their neighbors on both sides.14 But in the dedication of the Cosmographic Mystery Kepler drew a distinction between Pythagoras' doctrine and his own by saying that his work was, on the one hand, ancient, "having been attempted 2,000 years ago by Pythagoras" and, on the other hand, new, "being divulged to mankind by me now for the first time." 1 5 Kepler emphasized what was new in the doctrine divulged for the first time in the Cosmographie Mystery. H e also explained why Pythagoras had only made an attempt : " T h a t man did not have Copernicus to tell him beforehand what there was in the universe." 16 This absence of the Copernican features from Pythagoras' universe is crucial for our discussion. For throughout the centuries any number of philosophers and astronomers had known about the PythagoreanPlatonic association of the five regular solids with the four elements plus the heavens. But before Copernicus changed the cosmic status of the earth, moon, and sun, nobody had connected the five regular solids with the planets. It was Copernicus who finally assigned to the earth its actual rank as 14 15 16

Kepler, Cosmographie Mystery, p. 23; Gesammelte Werke, I, 26-27. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 27.

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a planet. Hence, in his system, the moon no longer revolved around the center of the universe, and therefore it lost its pre-Copernican rating as a primary planet. Moreover, for Copernicus the sun was no longer in motion, and consequently it too was removed from the roster of the planets. Accordingly, for Copernicus there were no longer seven planets, but only six. Copernicus himself, however, attached no particular importance to mere numbers as such. But the same cannot be said for his first disciple, George Joachim Rheticus. I n his First Report, the earliest printed account of the Copernican astronomy, Rheticus went into raptures over the number six: There are only six moving spheres which revolve about the sun, the center of the universe.. . . Who could have chosen a more suitable and more appropriate number than six? . . . For the number six is honored beyond all others in the sacred prophecies of God and by the Pythagoreans and the other philosophers. What is more agreeable to God's handiwork than that this first and most perfect work should be summed up in this first and most perfect number? 17 Although the foregoing passage was translated into French by the late Alexandre Koyré in his La Révolution astronomique, 18 Koyré expressed astonishment that Rheticus did not "invoke in favor of the number six the fact that the universe was created in six days." 19 But when Rheticus spoke of "this first and most perfect work," he was, of course, referring to the Hebrew legend of the creation. While Rheticus' numerology was explicitly rejected by Kepler, 20 Rheticus' next statement that "the celestial harmony is achieved by the six aforementioned movable spheres" may well have been the direct inspiration for Kepler's lifelong search for the celestial harmony (if we wish to believe that his scintillating brain had to be inspired by something he r e a d ) . Nor should we smile condescendingly at Kepler's search for the celestial harmony. If his quest was in vain, as most of us believe today, science might well profit a great deal from other such vain quests, for Kepler's quest led him to discover his third law of planetary motion. "Every theory that tends to stimulate empirical study of nature, however untenable it may ultimately prove to be, always makes a positive 17 Edward Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (2nd ed.; New York and London, 1959), pp. 146-147. 18 Alexandre Koyré, La révolution astronomique (Paris, 1961), p. 56. 19 Ibid., p. 383, n. 26. 20 Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, I, 10.

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contribution to the growth of science." 21 Thus the basic concept of Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery—a "fantastic aberration" in the judgment of the "modern historians of science" consulted by Thorndike— led him to discover a whole new class of mathematical figures, the rhombic solids. But with regard to the five regular solids, let us see how Kepler distinguished between their place in the Pythagorean-Platonic cosmos on the one hand, and in his own universe on the other hand. Twenty-five years after the first edition of his Cosmographic Mystery Kepler brought out a second edition, in which he made many annotations on various passages in the first edition. I n one such note he said, with regard to Pythagoras and Plato, "to them and to me the same five figures [regular solids] were available; they and I had the same universe; yet the parts of the universe were not the same in both cases." 22 Previously Kepler had declared: "I demonstrated to the ancients the error in the way in which they thought the five [regular] solids were expressed in the universe, and I substituted the correct and absolutely true way." 2 3 T h e contrast between the ancient error and his own thinking was stated with the utmost clarity by Kepler in his Harmonics of the Universe: " T h e Pythagoreans attributed these figures [the five regular solids] to the elements, not, as I did, to the spheres of the cosmos. . . . This error of theirs with regard to the true place of the figures was corrected by me." 2 4 And in his Epitome of Copernican Astronomy Kepler explained exactly how he attributed the five regular solids to the six planetary spheres : Two thousand years ago . . . the five regular solids were called the "Cosmic figures" by the Pythagoreans, who thought that the four elements and the heavens (fifth essence) were formed on the pattern of those solids. But there is greater truth in the reasoning that those five figures shape an equal number of intervals between the spheres, which enclose one another. Therefore, if there are five intervals between the spheres, there must be six spheres.25 Yet in the end Kepler was not happy about the divergence between his own doctrine and that set forth by the ancient Greek thinkers whom he revered. T o effect a reconciliation between the two points of view 21

Eduard J. Dijksterhius, The Mechanization of the World Picture (Oxford, 1961), p. 81. 22 Kepler, Cosmographie Mystery, (2nd ed.; Frankfurt, 1621), p. 6; Gesammelte Werke, VIII, 22. 23 Rosen, Kepler's Conversation, p. 38. 24 Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, VI, 17. 25 Ibid., VII, 267.

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Kepler resorted to a technique in which he had been trained as a student of theology26—let us never forget that he did not receive a primarily scientific education. Thrusting the plain meaning of the Greek words into the background, Kepler bestowed upon them what he called the "mystical interpretation of the Pythagoreans."27 By ingenious manipulation of the classical nomenclature Kepler succeeded in emerging with a doctrine which agreed with his own at the cost of retaining only the most tenuous connections with the ancient texts. Let us charitably close our eyes to this exercise in hermeneutic semantics, but not to the deep chasm historically separating the PythagoreanPlatonic doctrine from Kepler's. Can this chasm be bridged by Thorndike's theory that Kepler's doctrine was "subconsciously suggested" to him by something he read? Kepler himself tells us that he "had never read such things in a book by any philosopher."28 Since this statement is quoted by Thorndike (VII, 12), his theory implies that he knows more about the operations of Kepler's subconscious mind than Kepler's conscious mind did. Furthermore, Thorndike's theory implies disbelief in Kepler's own circumstantial account of exactly how he discovered his doctrine. He had spent nearly the whole summer of 1595 looking for a relation between the distances of the planets from the sun in the Copernican astronomy and their orbital speeds : "Finally I came closer to the goal at a certain less tense moment. In my opinion it happened by divine intervention that I found by chance what I was never able to attain by any amount of hard work. And I believe this all the more because I had constantly prayed to God for the success of these efforts, since Copernicus had spoken the truth. Well then on July 9/19, 1595 I was about to show my students how the major [planetary] conjunctions leap over eight signs [of the zodiac], and how they gradually cross from one [zodiacal] triplicity to another. I inscribed many triangles or near-triangles in the same circle in such a way that the end of one was the beginning of another. Therefore, at those points where the sides of the triangles intersected one another, a smaller circle was outlined. For, the radius of the circle inscribed in the triangle is half of the radius of the circumscribed circle. To the eye the proportion between the two circles seemed to be quite similar to the proportion between 26 Ibid., XIII, 40. 27 Ibid., VI, 17-18, 81. Kepler, Cosmographic Mystery, 2nd ed., p. 1 ; Gesammelte Werke, VIII, 15.

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Saturn and Jupiter; and the triangle was the first of the [plane] figures, just as Saturn and Jupiter are the first planets [as you move from the stars toward the sun]. At once I tried the second distance, that between Jupiter and Mars, with a quadrangle; the third distance, with a pentagon; and the fourth distance, with a hexagon. . . . To follow up the details is a limitless task. "The end of this unsuccessful effort was the same as the beginning of the last and successful effort. For I realized that, since I wished to preserve the order of the figures, by this method I would never reach the sun, nor would I have the reason why there are six rather than twenty or a hundred movable spheres. And yet I liked the figures, because they were quantities, and matter is prior to the heavens. For, quantity was created in the beginning with body, whereas the heavens were created on the second day. But if (I thought) instead of the quantity and proportion of the six heavens as determined by Copernicus, only five figures amid the countless others could be found to have certain special properties beyond the rest, the matter would stand as I wished. But again I was stuck. Why should there be plane figures between solid spheres? Rather, let solid bodies be tried. Behold, dear reader, the new discovery and the subject matter of this whole work. . . . In commemoration of the event, I write down the idea for you, just as it occurred to me and as I conceived it at that moment : \The orbit of] the earth is a circle, the measure of everything. Around it circumscribe a dodecahedron. The circle enclosing this will be Mars. Around Mars circumscribe a tetrahedron. The circle enclosing this will be Jupiter. Around Jupiter circumscribe a cube. The circle enclosing this will be Saturn. Now, within the [circular orbit of the] earth inscribe an icosahedron. The circle inscribed within it will be Venus. Within [the orbit of] Venus inscribe an octahedron. The circle inscribed within it will be Mercury. Here you have the reason for the number of the planets."29 This blow-by-blow narrative of how he hit upon the basic concept of his Cosmographic Mystery is typical of what Kepler did in his later works as well. How many other examples are there in the entire history of human thought of an author who publicly and manfully admits his blunders, appeals for the help of others, confesses his doubts and miscalculations, wholeheartedly and generously praises his co-workers in 29

Ibid., I, 11-13.

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the vineyards of research? As a distinguished scientist and historian of science, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, put it, over a century ago : Kepler has fortunately left behind him a full account of the methods by which he arrived at his great discoveries. What other philosophers have studiously concealed, Kepler has openly avowed, and minutely detailed; and we have no hesitation in considering these details as the most valuable present that has ever been given to science, and as deserving the careful study of all who seek to emulate his immortal achievements. . . . Such was the candor of his mind, and such his inordinate love of truth, that he not only recorded his wildest fancies, but emblazoned even his greatest errors.30 In like spirit another biographer of Kepler had said: " T h e history of philosophy affords no more remarkable instance of sincere uncompromising love of truth." 3 1 Are we to cast aside such a unique scientist's unembellished recollection, echoing with the very ring of veracity, in favor of a newfangled theory, advanced for extraneous reasons, that the basic concept of the Cosmographic Mystery was "subconsciously suggested" to Kepler by his reading of an author about whom he may never have heard? Thorndike asserts that "Kepler's attitude underwent a marked change with the appearance of" Galileo's Sidereal Message in 1610: "Now he . . . suggests t h a t . . . our moon . . . may be inhabited." 3 2 But Thorndike does not point to any passage in Galileo's Sidereal Message about inhabitants of the moon. T h e absolute silence of Galileo's Sidereal Message with regard to this subject could not have produced a marked change in Kepler's attitude. I n any case Kepler did not have to wait for Galileo's Sidereal Message of 1610 to start believing in inhabitants of the moon. I have quoted Kepler's statement that he followed "in the footsteps of . . . Plutarch [really Pseudo-Plutarch] . . . in the year 1593." Now is the time to say that in 1593 Kepler followed Pseudo-Plutarch in "supposing that there are living beings on the moon." 3 3 For according to Pseudo-Plutarch's Opinions of the Philosophers ( I I , 3 0 ) , "the creatures living on the moon are fifteen times stronger [than their terrestrial counterparts] since they void no excrement." Moreover Kepler "enjoyed toying with this idea" in his Optics of 1604, where he said: "Let us too speak in jest, in company with Plutarch. Among us it happens that men and beasts con30 David Brewster, The Martyrs of Science (London, 1841), pp. 263-264; 7th ed. (London, 1870), pp. 217-218. 31 John E. D. Bethune, Life of Kepler (London, 1830), p. 1. 32 Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, VII, 13. 33 Rosen, Kepler's Conversation, p. 28.

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form to the type of their region or province. Therefore the creatures living on the moon will have much more massive bodies of a much tougher caliber than ours." 34 And in 1609 Kepler "even . . . founded . . . a new astronomy for the inhabitants of the moon, as it were." 3 5 Hence, despite Thorndike, Kepler's attitude toward inhabitants of the moon underwent no marked change with the appearance of Galileo's Sidereal Message. In keeping with his teleological outlook, Kepler raised the question for whose sake the satellites revolved around Jupiter "if there are no people on Jupiter to behold this wonderfully varied display with their own eyes." 36 This question shows, according to Thorndike, "that for Kepler m a n is still the measure and center of all things." 37 But just as Kepler's imaginary moon-dwellers were quite different from h u m a n beings, so too he concluded that "these four new planets were ordained not primarily for us who live on the earth, but undoubtedly for the Jovian beings who dwell around Jupiter." 3 8 This distinction between man the earth-dweller and the creature who inhabits Jupiter was emphasized by Kepler in the following argument : We on the earth have difficulty in seeing Mercury, the last of the primary planets, on account of the nearby overpowering brilliance of the sun. From Jupiter . . . how much less distinct will Mercury be? Hence this [earthly] globe seems assigned to man with the express intent of enabling him to view all the planets. Will anyone then deny that, to make up for the planets concealed from the Jovians but visible to us earth-dwellers, four others are allocated to Jupiter, to match the four inferior planets, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, which revolve around the sun within Jupiter's orbit? Let the Jovian creatures, therefore, have something with which to console themselves. Let them even have, if it seems right, their own four planets arranged in conformity with a group of three rhombic solids.39 Kepler's Jovian creature, therefore, was not man, despite Thorndike, who was equally mistaken in saying "that for Kepler m a n is still the . . . center of all things." But m a n is not at the center of Kepler's universe : In the center of the world is the sun, heart of the universe, fountain of light, source of heat, origin of life and cosmic motion. But it seems that man ought 34

Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, II, 220. Rosen, Kepler's Conversation, p. 26. Ibid., p. 40. 37 Thorndike, History, VII, p. 13-14. 38 Rosen, Kepler's Conversation, p. 41. 39 Ibid., p. 46. 35 36

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quietly to shun that royal throne. . . . In the interests of that contemplation for which man was created, and adorned and equipped with eyes, he could not remain at rest in the center. On the contrary, he must make an annual journey on this boat, which is our earth, to perform his observations.40 In the development of the modern concept of gravity Kepler played an important part, which was overstated by Thorndike when he said that in the New Astronomy, of 1609, Kepler "correctly described gravity as follows: 'Gravity is a mutual physical affection between related bodies towards union or conjunction (the magnetic faculty is of this order) V' 4 1 Now, a magnet will attract certain substances, such as iron, strongly; other substances, such as nickel, feebly; and still other substances, not at all. In other words, the attraction exerted by a magnet is selective, and not universal. In Kepler's thinking, gravitational attraction was of the same order: it operated only between "related bodies" or kindred or cognate bodies (cognata corpora). T h e notion that there are noncognate bodies, between which Keplerian gravitation would not operate, makes Kepler's description of gravity less than correct. T h e correct description of gravity emerged only after all bodies without exception came to be regarded as cognate with all other bodies, in short, when there were no longer any noncognate bodies. T h e universal brotherhood of material particles was an indispensable prerequisite for the theory of universal gravitation and the correct description of gravity. Kepler's partly correct and partly incorrect description of gravity was overvalued by Thorndike as a correct description. Was this overvaluation consistent with Thorndike's later statement that Kepler merely made "momentary approaches toward a correct theory of gravitation"? 4 2 Kepler's enduring contributions to the correct theory of gravitation were called "momentary approaches" by Thorndike because he supposed that Kepler "also kept suggesting other explanations." Other explanations of what, we may ask. Kepler did indeed suggest other explanations of planetary motion, but for him gravitation was not a cause of planetary motion. It was a "mutual corporeal striving of kindred bodies toward union." I n Kepler's thinking, gravitation accounted for certain natural movements but not for the motions of the planets. According to Thorndike, Kepler "speaks of the earth as moved by animal or rather magnetic motion" 4 3 and of its being "transported 40 41 42 43

Ibid., p. 45. Thorndike, History, VII, 29; Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, III, 25. Thorndike, History, VII, 31. Ibid.

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wheresoever by its animal faculty." It is not only Kepler's earth that is moved by animal motion or animal faculty, according to Thorndike. H e generously extends this attribute to the moon too by translating one of Kepler's suppositions as follows: "If the moon and earth were not retained, each in its circuit, by animal force or something equivalent... ," 44 I n all three of these passages Kepler's Latin word was animali.45 We need not be reminded that animali is an adjective derived from anima, meaning "soul." When Kepler wrote these passages, he still adhered to the traditional belief that the earth had a soul. This earth-soul was in Kepler's mind when he said that the "earth is moved by an animate (animali) or rather magnetic motion." In like manner all the planets had "intelligences and souls (animarum) to move" them. 46 T h e motion of the earth as the distinctive feature of the Copernican cosmology was accepted as a physical fact by Kepler. Nevertheless extraneous considerations having nothing to do with his intellectual convictions compelled him in his New Astronomy to discuss the rival system of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who had denied that the earth moves. Both the Tychonic and the Copernican astronomy agreed, however, in having five planets revolve around the sun. This luminary, accompanied by the five planets, revolved around Brahe's stationary earth. O n the other hand, Copernicus' earth, accompanied by the other five planets, revolved around a stationary sun. I n support of Copernicus and in opposition to Brahe, Kepler argued as follows : Whether you follow Copernicus or Brahe, for both of them the source of the motion of the five planets is in the sun; for Copernicus, [the source of the motion] of the sixth planet, namely, the earth, also [is in the sun]. But it is more probable that the source of all motion remains in its own place than that it moves. Yet if we follow Brahe's opinion and say that the sun moves . . . we would have to construct this novel principle of physics, that the sun together with that whole very heavy burden of the five [planetary] eccentrics (to express it crudely) is moved by the earth, as though the source of the motion of the sun and of the five eccentrics attached to the sun were in the earth. However, let the bodies of the sun and the earth be both of them examined, and let a judgment be rendered about both: which of them is better suited to be the source of the motion of the other body? Is the earth moved by the sun, which moves the other planets, or does the earth move the sun, which is so 44

45 46

Ibid., p. 29.

Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, III, 24, 25, 37-38. Ibid., p. 23.

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many times greater than it and which moves the other planets? To admit that the sun is moved by the earth is absurd.47 In Kepler's whole discussion of which body moves which, it will be observed, gravitation plays no part whatever. Nevertheless Thorndike misplaced this discussion in the context of gravitation, and emerged with the perplexing comment that "Thus a relation between two bodies which are not cognate is made a matter of bulk." 48 T w o bodies which are cognate "would come together at an immediate place," says Thorndike, where Kepler says "intermediate place." I n his New Astronomy Kepler, who, according to Thorndike, "was still obsessed by the simplicity and naturalness of circular motion," 4 9 rejected circular motion for elliptical motion as the natural p a t h of the planets. I n that same work Kepler regarded the earth and moon as cognate bodies. For example, in the supposition cited above as mistranslated by Thorndike, Kepler reasoned as follows : If the moon and the earth were not kept, each on its own course, by an animate force or some other equivalent, the earth would rise toward the moon . . . the moon would come down toward the earth . . . and they would be joined together. . . . If the earth stopped attracting its own waters to itself, all the water in the oceans would rise up and flow into the body of the moon. The sphere of the attractive force in the moon extends as far as the earth. 50 But in his Dream Kepler asserted that when the sun and the moon are in line, they exert a joint pull on the water which he imagined to be present on the moon. 5 1 H e said this in the text of his Dream. I n Note 202, however, which was written much later, Kepler declared : The causes of the [earth's] ocean tides seem to be the bodies of the sun and moon attracting the ocean waters by a certain force similar to magnetism. Of course the body of the earth likewise attracts its own waters, an attraction which we call "gravity." What therefore prevents us from saying that the earth attracts the lunar waters too, just as the moon attracts the terrestrial waters?52 I n Kepler's Dream, then, which was not published until four years after 47 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., pp. 23-24. Thorndike, History, VII, 30-31. Ibid., p. 30. Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, III, 25-26. Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, VIII, 38. Ibid., p. 61.

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his death, the sun was added to the restricted group of cognate bodies that exerted gravitational attraction upon one another. This expanded group may well have constituted the platform from which Newton made his great leap forward to the principle of universal gravitation, the grand culmination of the scientific advance that began in the Renaissance.

Concerning Clio, Concepts and Quantities by Herbert Heaton

IN

MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS of making or listening to after-dinner

speeches, I've often wondered what is the function and purpose of these postprandial products. Four kinds seem to be extant. The first is what used to be described as a combination of mild laxative and soothing soporific, or in today's TV jargon a regularizer and tranquilizer, replete with stories, and maybe a substitute for port or liqueurs in prohibition days. The second is the "greeter" pattern which became popular when New York City appointed Grover Whalen to be its Official Greeter of VIP's; but obviously that greeting had to be followed by a long reply from the greetee, and at the end of such a conference as this the theme has to be de-greeting. The third is the "view-with-alarm" tocsin, sounded to awaken the assembled lawyers, doctors, pastors, teachers, morticians, or realtors to the dangers that confront their world or besmirch their "public image." The fourth is what might be called the "homage" pattern, when the speaker is an amateur talking to professionals, a general practitioner confronting specialists, or at best an expert straying beyond the bounds of his own expertise into that of his hearers. That obviously must be my approach. For you are frontiersmen opening new lands or subsoil deposits in your chosen time span, while I am a backtiersman, whose task is to transmit your discoveries to my students and to consider how far those discoveries throw new light on that part of my footpath which runs through your three-and-a-half centuries. Let me therefore begin by expressing my gratitude and admiration to you for sticking loyally to that old familiar label "Renaissance"—with specific dates, two spellings, and three pronunciations—for the current tendency is to lambast labels and clobber concepts. Some of this iconoclasm we can welcome. For example, the nineteenth-century periodization—Germanic, I believe—of Ancient History to 476, Medieval, 476-

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918, and Modern European, 918-1273 seems to have been abandoned. As late as the early twenties an Australian colleague was still giving a graduate course in Modern European History with those dates, but I believe things have changed since then. And we must accept, with at least some good grace, the fact that many concepts which historians have fabricated, filched, or had foisted upon them by philosophers and sociologists have become suspect or even scrapped. It may be true, as Heckscher, the Swedish economic historian, once said of one of the concepts—Mercantilism—that they were "instrumental concepts which, if aptly chosen, should enable us to understand a particular historical period more clearly than we otherwise might." T h e list includes a lot of "-isms"—Nationalism, Capitalism, Imperialism, Feudalism, and so on all the way from A to Z ; also some "-tions," covering a swarm of revolutions or reformations, political, social, economic, intellectual, and lots of others. But these useful servants have had a way of becoming bad masters. Either we tried to make them so precise that they became ideal types, whose contact with actual historical conditions was rare and coincidental, or we allowed them to become so vague, broad, and imprecise, especially in popular or junior-college use and in public controversy, that every man could frame his own definition and our ivory tower became a Tower of Babel. So it is that Hancock, a leading student of modern empires, after counting ten different meanings of Imperialism by as many writers, decided that the word was one which no self-respecting scholar can use. So it came about that Ashton, our greatest authority on the Industrial Revolution, resolved that no word ending with "-ism" should sully the pages of his economic history of eighteenth-century England—but somehow let "baptism" slip in. So it was that my own careful reading of Heckscher's two massive volumes on Mercantilism led me to ask, not " W h a t was Mercantilism?" but rather "Was there ever any such thing?" So we find Dr. D. G. Coleman, economic historian at the London School of Economics, urging students of the seventeenth century to start by "jettisoning that misleading and cumbersome portmanteau, that unnecessary piece of baggage—the idea of mercantilism." And when a "-tion" and an "-ism" were mated, as Weber and Tawney did with the Reformation and Capitalism, the inevitable attack killed two birds with one stone. And when the Price Revolution was given as the cause of the Reformation and hence of the lusty adolescence of modern Capitalism, a simple chronological list of relevant dates blew the thesis to smithereens.

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These casualties of concepts are, of course, the consequence of the intensive research, partly nuclear-fueled by abundant research grants, during the last twenty years. T h e chief American victim has been Beard's economic interpretation of the Constitution. I n my own special field of European economic history I have to tell my classes that anything I say is subject to revision or ruin by some forthcoming monograph or an article in the next issue of the Economic History Review. T h e academic explosion of these decades has not, however, been solely a more intensive cultivation of old fields. There is another side to it—an extension of our view beyond European horizons to cover the globe, to put a girdle round the earth and some facets of its history in a Pelican book which contains 117 pages and sells for eighty-five cents. T h a t is what Professor Cipolla has done in his Economic History of World Population (1962). His aim is "to describe from a global point of view the development of mankind in its material endeavour; its growth in numbers and levels of living." I n that story only two highlights are deemed important : ( 1 ) T h e Agricultural Revolution ca. 8000-7000 B.C., with its development of cultivation of plants and domestication of animals; and (2) T h e Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century A.D.—1780, to be precise—which tapped new sources of inanimate energy and applied them to industry and transportation. True, each revolution had its roots in the past, and, like a good Italian, Cipolla gives the Renaissance a pat on the head for making "the conscious systematic investigation of phenomena revealed in man's environment . . . a fundamental trait of early modern Europe." But other "revolutions" which scholars have been detecting during the last generation—Lynn White's harness revolution of the eighth or ninth century, Miss Carus-Wilson's industrial revolution and Raymond de Roover's commercial revolution in the thirteenth, and John Nef's industrial revolution of the sixteenth—all are deemed "scarcely revolutionary" since they did not alter the fundamentally agrarian character of the societies involved. Only the Great Twain "created deep breaches in the continuity of the historical process" and started a "new story." Hence if you are in a hurry you can now "blast off" from the eighth millenium B.C. to the latter part of the second millenium A.D. with only a moment's glance at the geographically widening conversion of hunters and food gatherers into farmers and shepherds. If you wish to make a gentle landing you can switch on your retro rockets a bit earlier to slow down your arrival at 1780. T h a t will give you time to survey "the cul-

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tural, social, and economic changes that had occurred in the British Isles between 1550 and 1780," and thereby prepare yourself for watching the farmers and shepherds "being transformed into operators of 'mechanical slaves' fed with inanimate energy." T h a t retarded landing will make it easier to understand the way the farmers and shepherds are behaving around London Bridge, in the West Riding, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Manchester. If this demand that you learn some prehistory seems an undue burden, perhaps you need not bother with that first Revolution, because it still left the world's population "underdeveloped" nine millenia later. T h a t at least seems to be the view of the devotees of "economic growth" and "economic development." T o quote one of t h e m : " U p to the middle 18th century every country in the world was underdeveloped; no country, that is, had yet discovered, let alone opened u p for economic use, the full natural resources with which it was endowed." Hence all you need to know is the characteristics and disadvantages of being underdeveloped. As I read this sentence a bell rang in my mind, or rather a quotation from George Orwell's Animal Farm. T h a t parable—an animal story with a h u m a n meaning—tells how the animals revolted against their h u m a n oppressors, and, following a good precedent, issued their Declaration of Independence. It began somewhat as follows : "We hold these truths self-evident—that all animals are created equal" and so on. But as politics, parties, and power struggles developed, some kinds of animals became rulers, and felt it desirable to amend the basic document to read "All animals are created equal, but some are equaller than others." In like manner I feel that the omnibus statement about every country's being underdeveloped in 1750 should be augmented to admit that some were less underdeveloped than others; and that probably all of them were less so than they had been in earlier centuries. Further, as a horrible afterthought, it may be that the advances in resources discovered and developed during the next two centuries will be so great that an economic historian writing in 2164 will condescendingly declare that "up to the middle twentieth century every country in the world was underdeveloped." All this is evidence that some members of the historians' guild have fallen victims to the general and educational obsession with Presentism, with today's problems and with policies which they believe will cope with these problems without creating any new ones. As a septuagenarian I may perhaps be permitted to "view with alarm" some features of this trend. Economists insist that all future citizens be prepared in high

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school for intelligent voting by being taught the Keynesian or postKeynesian economics, with its "Goals"—free enterprise, constant growth, full employment, stable prices, and security for everybody—all to be attained or maintained by government policies and if possible before the next election. Social science teachers and curriculum experts are ditching traditional history courses for new ones which will cover, with a layer as thin as a sheet of colored Kleenex, global history, world civilizations, problems of democracy, government, comparative economic systems, sociology, car-driving, and (maybe) sex. University schools of business five years ago made a joint study of how to revamp their curricula and decided that they needed, inter alia, a course on "the legal, political, and social framework of business, with considerable emphasis on historical developments." The result, except in the best schools, has been a crop of courses and textbooks called "Business and Its Environment," which, according to an expert's survey of the matter, "dismiss the past in a few pages and rush pellmell into what one author has called 'The Quagmire of Confusion Termed Contemporary Society'." And in two of our largest universities the department of economics has replaced its economic historian with a mathematical economist. What then of the state of History generally, especially of courses— Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and the like—which offer no simple solutions to current problems? From the zest and spirit evident in this conference I deduce that Renaissance Studies are thriving, and am delighted at having had the chance to learn much from the discussions. The first thing that I learned was that the Renaissance started in 1300. In my high school days I was taught that it began in 1453—and in college that it started in the 1390's—when the Turks captured, or at any rate besieged, Constantinople, and a ship laden with Greek scholars and manuscripts fled to Florence. To me, a teen-age Liberal and an admirer of the late Mr. Gladstone, this was a characteristic dirty trick, true to pattern. The Turks were always bad guys; the standard adjective for them was "unspeakable"; the standard proverb ran "Where the foot of the Turk has trod, no grass ever grows." In the nineteenth century his main outdoor sport was massacring Armenians. In the fifteenth century he tried to torture European Christians by depriving them of cinnamon for their buns and cloves for their ham. A spiceless Europe was his ambition; but Díaz, Da Gama, and Columbus, in the words of Liza Doolittle, "they done him in." Meanwhile he had provoked the Renaissance, the maritime explorations, and America. My only trouble in accepting your earlier date is that I've found it

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hard to discover any important thing that happened in 1300. Langer's Encyclopaedia of World History gives only three items. The first was the Great Papal Jubilee in Rome, the zenith of the pontificate : a magnificent pageant managed with tremendous pomp by Boniface, and huge donations raked in by papal croupiers to finance an attempt to subjugate Sicily. When that attempt failed, no wonder the Pope died of humiliation and within a decade that monstrous mountain of stone was being piled up in Avignon for the new papal residence. The second recorded event in 1300 was a revolt in Venice; the leaders were hanged. The third item has a Christmas flavor. Good King Wenceslaus (of Bohemia) looked out over Hungary and Poland; but his son was driven out of the first country and murdered in the second. What a way to start the Renaissance! I like the old story better, and didn't have the heart to look up 1650 to learn how it ended. But what an exciting 350 years it proved to be, and how full of controversial topics for historians of all kinds—religious, political, scientific, economic, social, intellectual. And what a pity that we have not yet developed emotional history, rather than leaving it to the psychiatrists ! The interrelations between our different approaches are so many and complex that each of us needs to keep his eyes, ears, and sense of scent alert for hints, tips, insights, and cautions. We economic historians strive to keep up with you, and hope that you get a bit of help at times from us. For few of us west of the Iron Curtain are economic determinists. We regard our story as just one thread, and not always the most colorful one, in the warp of the tapestry we jointly are engaged in weaving. Our economic interests have ranged widely in the last two decades, from biographies of business and landowners, through regional studies which give depth, color, and variety to wider panoramas, to the opportunities and problems that confronted Europeans during your half of the five centuries' venture in Europeanizing the rest of the world. As I've said already, we've become a bit leery about concepts and have turned more—though not exclusively—to the quest of the quantitative. The late Sir John Clapham, one of the greatest names on our roster, once pleaded that "every economic historian should acquire what might be called the statistical sense" and strive "to offer dimensions in place of blurred masses of unspecified size." He had particularly in mind that "nesting place for legend," the Industrial Revolution, especially the legend that "everything was getting worse for the working man" between 1770 and 1850. But his plea was applicable to all periods, including the medieval and your own; hence the search for statistics of every kind—

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population trends, prices and wages, measurements of economic growth, stagnation, and decline, even of national income. Perhaps the outstanding recent venture is that herculean example of "Gallic indefatigability," the dozen volumes by M. and Mme. Chaunu entitled Séville et L'Atlantique, 1504-1650, based on the records of 17,967 transatlantic voyages during that period, and the similar smaller job done by Professor Mauru on Le Portugal et L'Atlantique, 1570-1670. Running through all these attempts to quantify is the lament that the figures are scanty or lacking; that many collections have been victims of fire, flood, blitz, or just sheer thoughtless failure to preserve. At any rate they are gone, just as may be the personal records that we may need to support our claims for deductions on our income-tax forms. I was very conscious of this parallel during the first half of this month as I prepared my two returns for Uncle Sam and two for Uncle Ole (the state of Minnesota). During those days an Inland Revenue Center, covering fifteen acres, was formally opened just south of Austin. It will "process" federal income returns from eight adjacent states with computers that work literally with the speed of light. Similar centers cover other parts of the nation, and the tape records they make will be "master-filed"—I almost said Big-Brother-filed—in a central center in West Virginia, where machines will be able to make 125,000 comparisons per second. The ceremony which opened the Austin center included an invocation by a Presbyterian pastor and a benediction by a Catholic-college dean. Whether these prayers will make the Center, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Income Tax unconstitutional only the Supreme Court can say. But the incident evoked a memory and a daydream. The memory was that passage in Luke 2:1 : "And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." The daydream was that the decree was obeyed; that this tax was on incomes; that it had been collected ever since; and that Archimedes, instead of fooling around trying to make a lever and find a fulcrum capable of moving the world, had invented an Iota Beta Mu (I.B.M.) computer which had been at work since "those days" of Caesar Augustus. If only all those "ifs" had been true, how easily and quickly we could have answered many of the questions over which we toil so hard and so long. Doomsday Book would have solved the problems of three generations of Doomsdayologists in about thirty seconds. Professor Lopez could have got the figures of Gross National Product and National Income per capita for any part of Europe, and in half an hour could be

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sure whether, when, and where the economy was booming, stagnating, or sinking, and at what point the rich Genoese and Florentines began to spend their money on objets d'art because business h a d ceased to produce lush profits. Professor Russell would have quickly been able to determine the average number of dependents of each taxpayer and thereby know whether the "multiplier" applied to calculate the medieval population was 3.5, 4.5, or 5. Professor Bruun would not need to spend much time searching for evidence to refute the legend that the Thirty Years' War reduced the population of Germany by at least one third. Professor de Roover would need only to push a button or two to learn how much of the Medici income was the profit of politics and how much was declared in Schedule C as "profit (or loss) from business or profession." Anyone interested in the Fuggers could discover how much they wrote off as bad debts—"uncollectible accounts receivable, business loans, and payments under guarantees"—when the Spanish kings defaulted at least six times between 1554 and 1647, or when popes cut the interest rate or the principal sum of their debts. Professor Habakkuk of Oxford could ascertain for sure whether the sellers of monastic lands made fabulous capital gains or were operating only as realtors on a percentage-commission basis. And, finally, Tawney could quickly have learned how many "gentry" were gentry, how many were rising, falling, or just staying put. T h e n Trevor-Roper would not have been able to question his figures and we would have missed what Professor Hexter has called " T h e Storm over the Gentry." But, alas, all this, and much more like it, must be put aside as a mighthave-been. There are no magnetic tapes to read; no clattering computers; no escape from the patient hunt, often in a dark cellar, for a cat that may not be there. And if we should find some figures, we must suspect them from the very start, even if—or especially if—they seem to be official. Some of the most resolute patient hunting during the last forty years has been done by Professor Carus-Wilson, of the London School of Economics, whose most recent work is probably the best measure we will ever have of England's Export Trade, 1275-1547 (1963). H e r Preface contains a discussion of the reliability of medieval records which should be required reading in every historical seminar and compulsory reading in every advanced economics or statistics course. Let me quote her words of warning : It is, of course, well known that medieval official documents are not always strictly factual statements of what they purport to record. A manorial reeve may enter up wage payments at rates lower than those which in fact he paid,

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in order not to fall foul of the Statute of Labourers, confident that the difference will be made up to him. A litigant may prove his age to the satisfaction of a court of law by reference to an imaginary event alleged to have occurred in the year of his birth. Bailiffs and stewards may repeat year after year precisely the same rent list, regardless of the fact that the names of the rentpayers are those of men long since dead, just as reeves may return precisely the same yield of crops and livestock year after year since they were concerned, not with the quantities actually produced, but with the quantities for which they would be expected to account according to the targets set. Here speaks the voice of experience which began in the twenties when Miss Carus-Wilson examined the annual accounts (1467-1477) of the aulnagers who collected the subsidy and aulnage of 4.5d. on each salable woolen cloth produced in the West of England textile counties. These accounts gave the total number of taxed cloths in each county, the names of each payer and the number of fabrics on which he paid the levy. In my earlier work on the Yorkshire woolen industry I had welcomed the very few accounts available for my county as "statistical evidence of an accurate character." But intense scrutiny of the numerous West of England returns quickly revealed that (a) the totals were fictitious, (b) the numbers alongside each name were fictitious, and (c) even the names might be fictitious. T h e moral is obvious, and probably applies to the twentieth century as it does to the fifteenth, not to mention those in between. Figures can lie, whether they refer to the number of unemployed, the balance of payments, the size of a population in a census year, or that of an annual crop. We may think we know how to apply correctives, as did the Moscow statistician in the mid-thirties when he assured a visiting Minnesota agricultural economist that the Soviet annual grain figures were completely trustworthy. Pressed for the ground of his confidence, he replied that the returns received from each local reporting official were amended by applying to them the sender's known "coefficient of mendacity." If therefore your individual interest lies outside the measurable, in quality rather than in quantity, count yourself lucky that you can tell your story in words rather than in numbers. And please spare a little sympathy for those of us who are less fortunate.

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Notes on Contributors EUGÉNIE DROZ is perhaps the greatest living authority on the literature of Renaissance France. She is the founder of the distinguished scholarly publishing house Libraire Droz and the author of numerous scholarly articles and books. Among the most important are an edition of Du Bellay's writings, Barthélemy Berton, 1563-1573 (Geneva: Droz, 1960), La veuve Berton et Jan Portau, 1573-1584 (Geneva: Droz, 1960), and Jacques de Constam, l'ami d'Agrippa d'Aubigné (Geneva: Droz, 1962). MICHAEL G. HALL is one of the younger American scholars who have concerned themselves with the early, or seventeenth-century, period of American colonial history and especially its intellectual aspect. He is an associate professor of history at The University of Texas, and the author of a number of publications, among them Edward Randolph and the American Colonies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960) and The Glorious Revolution in America: Documents on the Crisis of 1689 (Ghapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964). He is also the joint author of a book on science in America, soon to appear.

is the dean of American economic historians. Now retired as professor of history at the University of Minnesota, he has been a visiting professor at a number of American universities, including Princeton, Johns Hopkins, The University of Texas, University of California, Davis, and University of California, Riverside. His bestknown books are his Economic History of Europe (New York: Harper, 1948) and The Yorkshire Woolen and Worsted Industries (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). HERBERT HEATON

H. W. JANSON is a distinguished art historian of the late medieval and the Renaissance periods, who has concerned himself with Renaissance Italy. He is professor of arts at New York University, and his most important recent publications are Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute, 1952), The Sculpture of Donatello (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), and A History of Art (New York : Abrams, 1961 ).

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ARCHIBALD R. L E W I S is a medieval historian concerned with economic, social, and maritime history. H e is professor of history at T h e University of Texas and the author of a number of publications, including Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterannean, A.D. 500-1100 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951), The Northern Seas, A.D. 300-1100 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958), The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), and coeditor, with Thomas F. McGann, of The New World Looks at Its History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961 ) . J. R U S S E L L M A J O R is one of a group of younger, brilliant scholars who have been reinterpreting political institutions and attitudes of the Renaissance—especially those in France. A professor of history at Emory University and a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1966, he is the author of a number of books and articles on this subject. Among the more important are The Estates of 1560 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951), The Deputies to the Estates-General in Renaissance France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960), and Representative Institutions in Renaissance France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960). H e is also the author of a recently published survey of Western European civilization. EDWARD R O S E N is a distinguished young historian of science in the Renaissance period. H e is a professor of history at City College of New York and the author of a number of important publications in his field, especially relating to Kepler. Among his more important books are his translation of Johannes Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1965) and The Naming of the Telescope (New York: H . Schuman, 1947). PETER R U S S E L L is one of the few well-known non-Hispanic scholars who have concerned themselves with late medieval or early Renaissance Spain and Portugal. H e is the King Alfonso X I I I Professor of Spanish and the director of Portuguese studies at Oxford University and the author of several important publications, including English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), and Prince Henry the Navigator (London: Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Councils, 1960). L E W I S W. SPITZ is the world's leading authority on German humanism and its relationship to Luther and the Reformation. H e is a professor of

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history at Stanford University and the author of a number of books, of which the most important are Conrad Ceitis, the German Arch-humanist (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957) and The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanist (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963). WALTER ULLMANN is probably one of the leading scholars now living who concern themselves with medieval political thought, especially that of the church and the Papacy. He is a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the author of numerous books and articles in this field. Among his more important publications are The Medieval Idea of Law (London: Methuen, 1946), The Origins of the Great Schism (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1948), The Growth of Papal Government (2nd. ed. ; London : Methuen, 1962), and A History of Political Thought in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965).

L. WOODFILL is one of the few American scholars concentrating on English Renaissance music. He is professor of history and chairman of the History Department at the University of California, Davis. Perhaps his most important publication is Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953). WALTER

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Program Participants in the International Conference on the Meaning of the Renaissance Morton M. Bloomfield—Harvard University Willis H. Bowen—University of Oklahoma Américo Castro—University of California, La Jolla Robert G. Colmer—Wayland Baptist College Michel Dassonville—University of Texas Marian B. Davis—University of Texas Eugénie Droz—Geneva, Switzerland Norman Hackerman—University of Texas John Hale—Oxford University Michael G. Hall—University of Texas Frank Halstead—University of Mississippi Denys Hay—University of Edinburgh Herbert Heaton—University of Minnesota U r b a n T. Holmes—University of North Carolina Haydn Huntley—Northwestern University H . W. Janson—New York University Sears Jayne—Queens College Frederic C. Lane—Johns Hopkins University Stanford E. Lehmberg—University of Texas Archibald R. Lewis—University of Texas Robert S. Lopez—Yale University H . Malcolm Macdonald—University of Texas J. Russell Major—Emory University Charles Mitchell—Bryn M a w r College Robert L. Montgomery—University of Texas Panos P. Morphos—Tulane University Reinhold Olesch—University of Cologne John H . Parry—University of Wales John H . Randall—Columbia University Raymond de Roover—Brooklyn College

174

Aspects of the Renaissance

Edward Rosen—City College of New York Edward L. Rudolph—University of Arkansas Peter Russell—Oxford University Edward Scriven—Indiana University Lorraine Shirley—Texas Christian University Isadore Silver—Washington University Lewis W. Spitz—Stanford University Helen S. Thomas—University of Houston Walter Ullmann—Cambridge University Walter L. Woodfill—University of California, Davis

Index Aachen, Germany: 76, 77, 80 Absalom: 110 academies: in Italy, 67 Acta Eruditorium: 134 Acuto, Giovanni: 79 Adelmann, Bernhard: 109 Adson, J o h n : 61 Aesticampianus : 108, 113 Africa: 58, 142 Agen, France: 36,98 Agenais, France : 36 Age of Enlightenment : 124,130 Agrícola, Johann: and Luther, 113, 118-119 Agrícola, Rudolph : 106 Agricultural Revolution : 161 Air (personification) : 125 Alberto I della Scala: 79 Albret, France: 87 Alexander the Great: 75 Alfonso the Magnificent: 52 almanacs: contents of, 127, 128, 129, 131 ; purpose of, 130, 131, 132; quotations from, 128, 129 Alphonsus a Santa Maria. SEE Cartagena, Alonso de Alps: 78 Alsted, Johann: 126, 132 American Desert: 124 Aminte (Tasso) : 99 Amour de la Reine, Les: 100 Amours d'Hyp polite (Desportes) : 97 Amsdorf, Nicholas von : 112,119 Anabaptists: 107 anatomy: 15 Angoulême, Count of: 41 Angoulême, Marguerite d' : 89 Animal Farm (Orwell): 162 Anjou, Duke of: 92,97

Anne, Queen of England : 62 Antwerp, Belgium: 66 Apologie de Raimond Sebon (Montaigne) : 99 Apostrophe to a Katydid (Holmes) : 114 Aquinas, Thomas: 18, 18 n. 32 Aragon (Spain) : 5 1 , 57 Aragonese : 48, 52 arch-Guelph: 80 Archimedes: 165 architecture: 68 Arévalo, Sánchez de : 50, 56 Aristo, Lodovico : 99 Aristarchus: 128 aristocracy: 47 Aristotle: themes of, 17, 18; science of, 124, 126; mentioned, 109 Aristotelianism : 20, 133 Armenians: 163 arms-versus-letters controversy : i n Spain, 45, 50, 5 1 , 5 2 ; causes of, 47, 5 3 ; locations of, 4 8 ; Italian opinion of, 4 8 ; comments on, 5 4 ; role of Martyr in, 5 5 ; as factor in Spanish humanism, 5 6 ; Garcilaso's influence on, 58 Arno bridge: 77 Arno River: 75 Arrogallus : on Wittenberg faculty, 113 art : in thirteenth century, 13 ; classical, 16, 74; developments in, 68, 73-84; k 'Late Gothic," 73 artists: 37 ascending-populace theory: 21 Ascham, Roger: 106 Ashton,T. S.: 160 Asia: 74,80 Assyria: 74

176 astrologers: 142 astrology: 131, 132, 134 Astronomical Description of the Late or Blazing Comet, An (Danforth) : 133 astronomy: in New England, 127-134; evolution in, 128; interest in, 129, 130, 133; Copernican, 151, 156; Tychonic, 156. S E E ALSO Kepler, Johannes, cosmography of Athenians: 55 Athens : 116 Attica, Greece : 123 Aubigné, Agrippa d' : 89, 93, 94, 95 Augsburg: Diet of, 117; mentioned, 108, 109 Augustus of Primaporta : 8 1 authors, classical: 16 n. 29 autonomy : in Middle Ages, 8 Auvergne (France) : 30, 98, 99 Avignon, France : 164 Babylonia: 74 Bacon, Francis: 124, 126, 132; on young men, 107 Bacon, Roger: ophthalmic achievements of, 15 n. 26 Baillou, M . J e a n : 90 Bainton, Roland : 114 Balbus family: equestrian statues of, 75 Bamberg Rider (monument) : 77 baptism: 7, 25 Barcelona, Spain : 51 Baron, Hans: 29 Baroncelli, Nicoló : 76 Barraclough, Geoffrey : 28 Bartolus: 23 Barzizza, Guinforte : 50 Basel, Switzerland: 108, 115 Bayer, Christian : and Luther, 113 Bayle, Pierre : on comets, 135 Beard, Charles: 161 Béam, France : 87 Beauvoir, Simone de : 110 Becadelli, Antonio (Il Panormita) : 51 Beckmann, Otto : and Luther, 113 Beldomandis, Prosdocimo de' : 144-145 Bergamo, Italy: 67, 79, 82 Berger, Bennett : 112

Aspects of the Renaissance Berlin, Germany: 84 Bernhardi, Bartholomaeus. S E E Feldkirch, Bartholomäus Bernhardi von. Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo: 83 Beskau: and Luther, 113 Bethune, John E. D. : on Kepler, 153 Billican: and Luther, 113 biology: 127 Birmingham, England: 162 Biron, Maréchal de: 93 Bishop's Palace (Paris) : 88 Bisticci, Vespasiano d a : 49, 51 Blood (personification) : 125 Boccaccio: 52 Bologna, Giovanni da : 83 Bologna University: 145 Book of Artemis: 97 Bordeaux, France : 9 2 , 9 9 Borner, Caspar : 117 Böschenstein, Johann : 113 Boston, Massachusetts: 130 botany: 135 Botzheim, Johann von: on Luther, 109 Bouillus: 118 Bourbon, Antoine de: 87 Bourbon, Cardinal de: 87 Bourbon, Henri de. SEE Henry I I I of Navarre Boyle, Robert: 127, 132 Brach, Pierre de: 92,99 Bradstreet, Anne: 125 Brache, Tycho: 128, 156 Brantôme, Abbé de: 91, 100 Brattle, Thomas: 133 Brattle, William: 127,130 Brenz, Johann: 108, 113 Brewster, David : on Kepler, 153 "Brief Discourse on the Rise and Progress of Astronomy, A " : 128 "Briefe Explication of the most observable Circles in the Heavens, A" : 128 "Brief Explication and Proof of the Philolaick System, A" : 128 Brigden, Zechariah: 128,132 British Isles. SEE England Brittany (France) : 38 Brouage, France : 98 Brown, Norman : 114 n. 13

Index Brown, Thomas : 61 Bruni, Leonardo: 24 Brunswick lion (monument) : 80 Bucer, Martin: 107, 109, 113, 119 Budé, Guillaume: 106, 147 Bugenhagen, Johannes (Dr. Pomeranus) : 113, 116, 118; as supporter of Luther, 117-118 Burchard, Peter: 113 Burckhardt, George. SEE Spalatin, George Burckhardt, Jacob : 27 bureaucracy: in France, 33 Burghley, William: 66 Burgos, Spain : 49 Burgundy, France: 30, 36, 41, 57 Byrd, William: 59 Byzantine Empire : 142 Byzantium: 75 caballero: 47 Cadillac, France: 98 Caesar Augustus : 165 Calignon, Geoffrey de : 94 Calvin, John: 106,119 Cambridge, Massachusetts: 127, 130, 136 Campaldino, battle of : 77 Campano of Novara: 145,146 Cangrande della Scala: tomb of, 79, 82,84 capitalism: 160 Capito, Wolfgang: 119 Carlat, France : 98 Carsten, Francis L. : 28 Cartagena, Alonso de : 49, 56 Carus-Wilson, Miss : 161,166 Castiglione, Baldassare: 47, 48, 49 Castile (Spain) : arms-versus-letters controversy in, 49, 50; humanism in, 52; literature of, 5 3 ; connection of with France and Italy, 57; mentioned, 55, 56 Castilian (language) : 49 Castle Church: 113 Castro, Dr. Américo: 48, 50, 53 Catalonia (Spain) : 51, 52, 53, 55 Catania, University of: 52

177 Catherine the Great : 84 Catholic Church: 32,37 Catholic Kings: 47,57 Catholics: 97, 109 celestial harmony: Kepler's search for, 149 Ceitis Conradus : 106 Cerone, Pietro: on importance of academics in Italy, 67 Certon, Salomon: 92, 94 Champion, Pierre : on manuscripts, 91 Chansons de Callianthe : 92 chantries: 59 Chanvallon, Seigneur de (Jacques de Harlay) : 97 Chapel Royal: 60 Charlemagne: 76, 77, 80 Charles, King of England: 61, 62 Charles VII of France: 30, 34, 40 Charles V, Emperor of Holy Roman Empire: 4 0 , 4 1 , 5 8 Charles IX of France: 97 charters: 38 Châtelet, Nicolas du : 78 Chaucer: paraphrased: 118 Cheever, Samuel: almanac of, 128 Cheyne, George : 135 Chiemsee, Berthold von: and Luther, 113 Chinese worlds : 41 chivalric theory: 47, 48. SEE ALSO arms-versus-letters controversy choirs: 60 Choler (personification) : 125 Christ: 7 , 7 4 Christianity: 109 Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature, The (Mather): 135 Christians: 7,8, 141 Christmas: 164 Church: 8 , 9 , 6 6 Cicero: 92, 143 citizenship: growth of, 5-25; thesis of, 6, 12-14; obstacles to, 10; features of, 20 City School (Magdeburg, Germany) : 117

178 city-states: 14 Civil Wars ( E n g l a n d ) : 61 civis. SEE citizenship ; fidelis Clapham, Sir John : 164 Claude (daughter of Louis X I I ) : 41 clergy: in France, 3 1 ; of New England, 131, 142 Cochlaeus, Johannes : 109, 113 cognate bodies : 155, 157, 158 Coleman, Dr. D. C : on mercantilism, 160 Colet, J o h n : 106 Coligny, Louise de : 94 Colleoni, Bartolommeo : 79,82 colloquies: 32 Columbus, Christopher: 163 Comet of 1680: 133 Cometographia: totam naturam cometarum . . . exhibens (Hevelius) : 134 comets: 129, 133, 134 composers: 60 Comte, Auguste : 110 concession theory: 10 condottieri: tombs of, 81 Congregational church : 126 Connecticut: 124 consistories: 32 Constance, Germany: 108,109 Constans, Jacques de: 93, 94 Constantes amour: 94 Constantine: 75 Constantinople: 75, 93, 142, 163 constitutionalism: 2 2 , 2 5 conversos: 50, 53, 56 Copernicanism: 118, 128, 132, 145, 156 Copernicus: 126, 148, 149, 151, 152 Cortegiano, Il: 48, 58 Cosmographic Mystery (Kepler) ; 144, 145, 148, 150, 153 cosmography: 128 Cours de philosophie (Comte) : 110 Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Baron) : 29 Cristoforo, Antonio de : 76 Croce, Benedetto : 48 Cortus Rubianus : and Luther, 109

Aspects of the Renaissance Cruciger, Kaspar: and Luther, 113, 116, 117 curtal (instrument) : 63 Da Gama, Vasco: 163 d'Agen, Monteil: 94 d'Albret, Jeanne: 87, 89, 94 d'Amboise, Bussey : 92, 98 Dansforth, Samuel: on solar system, 128; on motion of comets, 133 Dante: influence of in Spain, 5 6 ; secularization by, 78; in exile, 79, 8 2 ; mentioned, 15, 23, 49, 5 1 , 52 Darius I I I : 75 Dauphiny, France : 95 Davenport, John: on Brigden's Copernican essay, 132 David (Biblical king) : 110 da Vinci, Leonardo : 82 Delcambre, Étienne: 29 n. 7 Delia Scala family: 80. SEE ALSO Alberto I della Scala; Cangrande della Scala Della Vita Civile (monograph) : 23 Démophon: 92 Derham, William: 135 Descartes, René : 126 d'Espinay François, Seigneur de SaintLuc (the Evangelist) : 98 Desportes, Philippe: 92, 97 Des Roches ladies : 95 d'Este, Nicoló: statue of, 76 Dialogue de Flore et de Lipis: 98 Díaz, Bartholomeu : 163 Diderot, Denis : 124 Diet of Augsburg : 119 Diet of Worms: 108, 116 Díez de Games, Gutierre: 53 Digby,Kenelm: 128 Digest, Roman : 13 Dijon, France : 39 Dillichanus, Theobald: 108 Dilthey,Wilhelm: 105,111 Dinstedt, Ulrich: and Luther, 113 Discours de L'Academie du Louvre: 100 Divine Comedy: 78 Divorce satyrique, Le (Aubigné) : 96

Index Dölsch, Johannes : and Luther, 113 Dommergues, M. Marcel : 92 Dobenek, Johann. SEE Cochlaeus, Johannes Donatello: Gattamelata of, 76, 77; as friend of Uccello, 79; commissioning of, 81 Doomsday Book: 165 Dostoevski, Fëdor Mikhailovitch: 110 Dowland, Robert : 61 Dream (Kepler) : 157 dualistic states: 28 du Bartas, Guillaume: as Calvinist poet, 125; quoted by Danforth, 133; defense of astrology by, 135; mentioned, 93 Dungersheim: and Luther, 114 Duplessis-Mornay : 89, 93 Duras brothers : 93 Duras, Madame de: 99 Dyksterhius, Edward J.: on theories, 149 earth: 152,154 earth-soul: 156 East Indies: 142, 144 Eaux-Chaudes, France: 94 Eber, Paul: 107 Eck, J o h a n n : 109,112,117 Eckhart, Meister: 15 n. 25 eclipses: 129 economic development : 162 Economic History of World Population (Gipolla): 161 Economic History Review. 161 education: 36, 37, 39 Egyptians: 74 Einstein, Alfred: 67 Eisenstadt, Samuel N. : 112 Eisermann, Johannes: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Elbe River: 116 Elegie: 97 elements: 146, 148, 150 Elements (Euclid) : 145 Elisha: 117 Elizabeth, Queen of England: 60, 6 1 , 62

179 Elizabethan Madrigal, The (Kerman) : 65 Elner : and Luther, 113 empiricism: 20,22 Emser, Hieronymus : and Luther, 114 Encyclopaedia of World History (Langer) : 164 Encyclopedia (Diderot) : 124 England: music in, 5 9 - 6 8 ; governing classes in, 67, 6 8 ; Gothic, 78; news of Nérac in, 90; generation of humanists in, 106; astrology in, 132; mentioned, 40 England's Export Trade, 1275-1547 (Cams-Wilson): 166 English Art 1553-1625 (Mercer) : 68 English Historical Review: 29 Enlightenment: 37 Ephemeridum Germanicarum Curiosarum: 134 Epirus (Greece) : ruled by Plutarch, 147 Epitome of Copernican Astronomy ( K e p l e r ) : 150 Eppendorf, Heinrich von : 108 Erasmus: philosophia Christi of, 118, 120; on Justus Jonas and Luther, 116; as humanist, 106, 118; as Luther opponent, 114; mentioned, 109,117 Erfurt, Germany : 116 Erikson, Erik: 114 n. 13 Erreurs populaires du fait de la médicine, Les (Jourbeit) : 99 Essay on Criticism (Pope) : 114 Essays: 99 estates: in medieval society, 10, 28 Estates-General: 28, 30-31, 40 Eton College: 60 Euclid: 145 Eudoxus: 128 Europe: 123 Eurymedon (Charles I X ) : 97 evangelicals: young humanists as, 109 Evangelist, the (François d'Espinay) : 98 Expressionism: 73

180 Faber, Jacobus (Fabri). S E E Lefèvre d'Etaples, Jacques faith: 9 Falconet, Étienne Maurice: 84 Farel, Guillaume: on Jacques Faber, 106 Farnese, Alessandro: statue of, 83, 84 Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) : 110 Faur de Pibrac, Guy de: 98 Fay, Sidney B. : 28 Feldkirch, Bartholomäus Bernhardi von: 108, 113 Ferrara, Italy: 76 feudal age: 28 Fichet, Guillaume : 106 fidelis: 8,9, 13,20 Filaftie (d'Agen) : 94 First Book of Consort Lessons (Morley) : 63 First Report (Rheticus) : 149 Flamsteed,John: 130 Flanders: humanism in, 57 Fleix, France : 98 Florence, Italy: 27, 39, 75, 77, 78, 81 Florentines: 166 Fludd, Robert: 132 Foix (France) : 87 Foix-Candalle, François de : 99 Forster, Johann : 107 Foster, J o h n : almanac of, 129, 134 France: taxation in, 3 0 - 3 1 ; government of, 31, 32, 33, 34, 40, 8 8 ; military in, 3 3 ; connection of with Castile, 5 7 ; printed music in, 66; Gothic, 78 ; and Catherine di Medici, 87; generations of humanists in, 106; mentioned, 53 Francis I, King of France: 41 Franck, Sebastian: 107 Frari (museum) : 79 Frederick I I , Holy Roman Emperor: 77 French: language in literature, 15; clergy, 31 ; in King's Musick, 61 French Revolution : 74, 84 Freud, Sigmund: 110 Fritz, Franz (Irenicus) : 108

Aspects of the Renaissance Fronde: 33 Fugger family: 166 Gaguin, Robert : 106 Galateo, I l : 48 Galen: 124 Galiardello (Anthony Mary) : 61 Galileo: 128, 144, 153 Galyardo, Marke Anthony: 61 Garcilaso de la Vega (poet) : 58 Garnier, Armand : 89 Gascony (France) : 87, 90, 95, 98 Gassendi, Pierre: 128 Gattamelata (statue) : 76, 77, 8 1 , 82 Geisteswissenschaften : 111 generations problem: 110, 111, 114, 120, 120 n. 27 Genoese: 166 gentleman : as concept, 65 Gerbelius, Nicholas : 119 Germany: Renaissance in, 2 8 ; dualism in, 32; influences of in Spain, 5 7 ; humanists in, 106, 115; courts in, 142; population of, 166; mentioned, 27. S E E ALSO humanists, Reformation Ghibellines: 79, 80 Gibbons, Orlando: 59 Giotto: 14 Girardon, François: 84 Gladstone, William: 163 Goede, Henning: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Gontaut-Biron, Jean de, Baron de Salignac: 9 3 , 9 4 Good King Wenceslaus: 164 Gospels: 98 Gotha, Germany : 116 Gothic art : 13 government: concepts of, 8, 9. S E E ALSO France, government of Granada (Spain) : 53, 55 Grande Jours (Poitiers) : 95 gravity: 155, 157 Great Elector of Prussia : 84 Great Papal Jubilee : 164 Greek language : 142 Greeks: 75, 142, 163

Index Gregorian calendar : 128 Gresham, Sir Thomas: 63 Gresham College (London) : 133 Grew, Nehemiah: 135 Grocyn, William : 106 Greifswald, University of : 118 Guatemala City, Guatemala : 136 Guglielmus: tomb of : 77-79 guilds: 12,28 Guise, Duke of: 38 Günzburg, Eberlin von : as Luther supporter, 113 Güttel, Kasper: as Luther supporter, 113 Guye, Piero: 61 Guyenne, France : 34 Guyenne, College of: 92 Guzmán, Fernán Pérez de: 53, 54 Hagia Sophia, Church of: 75 Halley, E d m u n d : 130 Halley's Comet: 133 Habsburgs: 40 Harlay, Jacques de (Seigneur de Chanvallon) : 97 Harmonics of the Universe (Kepler) : 150 Haro, Count of: 54 Harrison, Frank : 59 Harvard College: 126, 127, 128, 130, 131,135,136 Hatton, Christopher : 66 Hauser, Arnold: 57 Hawkwood, John : 79 Heberle, Rudolf: 112 Hebraists: 107 Heckscher, Eli: 160 Hedio, Caspar: 119 Heidelberg, Germany: University of, 106; disputation of, 109 heliocentric system: 128, 131 Helt,Georg: 117 Henry, Prince of Castile : 49 Henry I I , King of France : 34 Henry I I I of Navarre: family of, 87; at Nérac, 8 8 - 8 9 ; followers of, 93, 95 ; favorites of, 98 Henry IV, King of France: 35 n. 21.

181 SEE ALSO Henry I I I of Navarre Henry V I I , King of England : 61 Henry V I I I , King of England : 60, 61 Henry the Lion : 80 heretics: 12 Herodotus: 110 Hevelius, Johannes : 134 Heywood, J o h n : 61 historians: corporate 27, 2 8 - 2 9 ; in Spain, 5 4 ; economic, 164 Histories (Herodotus) : 110 history: affected by humanism, 54 History of Magic and Experimental Science (Thorndike) : 141 Hobson,B. D . : 91 Hochstraten, Jacob von : as Luther opponent, 114 Holborn, Hajo: on Reformation, 119 Holmes, Oliver Wendell : 114 Holy L a n d : 78 Homer: 16 n. 2 9 , 5 4 Hooke, Robert : 135 Horemheb : tomb of, 74 horse: introduced into Western civilization, 74, 75 horoscopes: 131 Hosenet, Hans : 61 Hubmaier, Balthasar: 107 Huguenots: as national self-governing institution, 32 ; Henry I I I of Navarre as, 8 7 ; in Nérac, 97 humanism: and citizenship, 6; history of, 6, 24, 105, 108, 118; in literature, 16 n. 2 9 ; in Spain, 47, 5 1 , 52, 5 4 ; views of, 4 9 ; in France, 5 1 , 5 7 ; and history, 54 ; of the laity, 55 ; in Flanders, 5 7 ; and Reformation, 105, 106, 109, 119; generations of, 106; Erasmian, 118; mentioned, 5, 21 humanists: recognition of, 37; of Italy, 4 9 ; of Spain, 5 4 ; three generations of 106, 109, 114; third generation as reformers, 106, 115-119; Christian, 107; as distributors of NinetyFive Theses, 108; support of Luther by, 108-109; as Catholics, 109 Hume, David: 110 Hundred Y e a r s ' W a r : 34

182 Hungary: 164 Hutten, Ulrich von: 108, 116 Illyricus, Flacius: Melanchthon opponent, 119 Imitations (Brach) : 99 individual : role of in public bodies, 6 individualism: growth of, 27. SEE ALSO citizenship Industrial Revolution : 160, 161, 164 Ingolstadt, Germany: 113 institutions, medieval: 5 International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions: 29 Irenicus (Franz Fritz) : 108 Iron Curtain : 164 Isabella, Queen of Spain: 54, 57 Islamic worlds: 41 Italian: language in literature, 15; musicians in King's Musick, 61 Italian Madrigal, The (Einstein) : 67 Italy: in Middle Ages, 13; petty tyrants in, 27; towns of, 39; invasion of, 40 ; political contact of, with Aragon, 51 ; humanism in, 5 4 ; musicians from, 6 1 ; music in, 66, 67-68. SEE ALSO monuments, equestrian Itinéraire (Lauzun) : 89 James, King of England: 6 1 , 62 Jamyn, Amadis: 96, 97 Jamyn, Benjamin: 97 Jaochimsen, Paul: quoted, 16 n. 28 Jews. SEE conversos Job, Book of: 131 Jodelle, Étienne : 96 John I I of Castile: 49 Jonas, Justus: as Luther supporter, 113, 115 Jovian creatures, 154 Julith (Du Bartas) : 93 Julian calendar: 128 Jupiter (planet) : 143, 152, 154 Justinian: 75, 76 Keckermann, Bartholomäu : encyclopedia of, 126

Aspects of the Renaissance Kepler, Johannes : on medieval people, 141; on Renaissance culture, 141, 143; on future, 143; cosmography of, 144, 149, 154-157; and medieval science, 146; on Plutarch, 147; sources of, 147, 148, 151; on Pythagoras, 148, 150; on Plato, 150; discovery of rhombic solids by, 150; on regular solids, 150; on discovery of basic concept of Cosmographic Mystery, 151; reconciling his theories with Greeks, 151; honesty of, 152-153; on moon, 153; following Pseudo-Plutarch, 153; on Jovian creatures, 154; on Copernician astronomy, 156 Keplerian theory: 128-129 Kerman, Joseph: on madrigals, 65 Keynesian economics: 163 kingship: Near Eastern concept of, 74 King's Musick: 60-64 passim Knod, Paul: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Kometographia or a Discourse on Comets ( M a t h e r ) : 133, 134 Kreider, Robert: on Anabaptists and humanism, 107 n. 4 Küchemeister, Sebastian: as Luther opponent, 113 Kytson family: 65, 66 lady : as concept, 65 Lagarde, Georges de: 29 n. 7 L'amour de soy mesme (d'Agen) : 94 La Mole: 98 Lang, Johannes : 113, 116 Languedoc (France) : 34, 35, 36, 38 Lanier, Nicholas : 61 La Nove: 93 La ruelle mal assortie : 94 Last Judgment : 78 Lateran: 75 Latin: as literary language, 15, 59, 142 l'Aubespine, Madeleine de (wife of Villeroy): 91 Lauzun, Phillipe : 89 Lavaud, M. Jacques : 91 law: medieval concept of, 8; creation

Index of, 9-10, 21, 22; Roman, 13; in Renaissance France, 35 Lawes, Henry: 61 Lawes, William: 61 Lefèvre d'Etaples, Jacques: 106, 108, 118 Leipzig, Germany: 108, 109; University of, 117, 119 Leipzig Interim : 117, 119 Le Puy: 39 l'Estoile, Pierre de: 92 L'Hôpital, Michel de : 31 Lilly, William: 132,134 Lima, Peru: 136 Limoges, France: 75, 93 Linacre, Thomas: 106 Link: as Luther supporter, 113 literature: vernacular, 14; medieval, 16; classical, 16 n. 29; in Spain, 53, 5 8 ; patronage of, 6 7 ; at Nérac, 90. SEE ALSO arms-versus-letters controversy liturgy: 59 Loire River: 87 Lombard kings : 76 London: music in, 62, 63, 66; Increase Mather in, 133 London School of Economics: 160, 166 Longomontanus : 128 Louis X I of France: 34 Louis X I I of France: 41 Louis X I V of France: statue of, 83, 84 Lousse, Émile: supporting corporate historians, 29 Louvain, Belgium: 114, 116 Louvre, court of: 89, 95, 99 Love's Labour's Lost: 90 Lucena, Juan de : 55 Lupo, Thomas : 62 Luther, Martin: translation of scripture by, 107; Ninety-Five Theses of, 108; compared with Erasmus, 109; followers of, 109, 112, 117; opponents of, 109, 112, 113; on Justus Jonas, 116; on Cruciger, 117; debate of with Eck, 117 ; on Dr. Pomeranus, 118; on Melanchthon, 118; mentioned, 105, 106

183 Luther (Osborne): 110 Lutherans: 107 Lyons, France: 39, 40 Magdeburg, Germany: 77, 117 Maintenon, Madame de: 90 Manchester, England: 162 "Mannerist" art : 73 Mannheim, K a r l : and generations problem, 110 Manuel de prières devotes, recueilles de divers opuscules et imprimées par son commandement: 99 Marburg, Germany: 117 Marche, L a : 30 Marco Polo: 80 Marcus Aurelius: equestrian statue of, 75,77,81,83,84 Marcus Gurtius: 84 Margarita: 92 Marguerite of Navarre: 87 Mariéfol, Jean-H. : 90 Mars (god) : 75, 77 Mars (planet) : 152, 154 Marsiglio of Padua: 21-23 Martyr, Peter: 54 Mary, Anthony (Galiardello) : 61 masques: 62, 68 Mass: 113 Massachusetts Bay Colony: 124 Massacres of St. Bartholomew's Day: 88 Mather, Cotton : 135 Mather, Increase: 132-136 passim Matthew, Gospel according t o : 92 Maximilian of Austria: 40 May, Robert: 61 medical science: 15 Medici, Catherine di: 87, 88, 95 medieval period. SEE Middle Ages Melanchthon, Philip: on Leipzig debate, 109; story of, 118; mentioned, 107, 113, 117 Melanges, Simon: 99 Mémoires (Marguerite de Valois) : 88, 89, 98 Mémoires (Sully) : 89

184 Memoires d'une Jeune Fille Rangée (Beauvoir) : 110 Mena, Juan de: 54 Mentré, François: 112 mercantilism : 160 Mercer, Eric : 68 mercernaries : 33 Mercury (planet) : 152, 154 Mesopotamians : 74 Middle Ages: lack of citizen concept in, 6 - 8 ; society in, 1 0 - 1 1 ; communities in, 12; equestrian monuments in, 76 Milano, Ambrose (Lupo) de: 61 military: 33 Miller, Perry: on New England Puritans, 123; on Ramus, 126 minstrels: 6 1 , 64 Mocchi, Francesco: 83 Moeller, Bernd : on humanists and Reformation, 106 Moerbeke, Jan A. : 18 n. 30 Mohammed : 141 monarchy: in France, 3 3 ; absolute, 83 monasteries: 59 monks: 119 Monmerqué, L. J. N. : 90, 100 Monmerqué-Read volume: 87-100 Montaigne: 33, 98-99 Montpellier, University of : 37 monuments, equestrian : pre-Renaissance history of, 7 4 - 7 6 ; types of, 77, 8 1 ; on tombs, 78; imperial symbolism of, 79, 80, 8 3 ; binding qualities of, 82; designed by Da Vinci, 8 2 ; degeneration of, 84 moon: 153, 156 Moors: 142 More, Henry: 106 Morison, Richard: 106 Morley, Thomas: 63 Moscow: 167 Mosellanus: on Leipzig debate, 109 Murmellius: 118 Muse Chrestienne, La (Du Bartas) : 93, 99 music: secular, 5 9 ; ecclesiastical, 59, 60 ; composition of, 60 ; contributions

Aspects of the Renaissance to by minstrels, 64; publication of, 65 ; attitudes toward, 65-68 musical instruments: 61-63 musicians, 62-65 Music in Medieval Britain: 59 Mutian: 106, 109 Myconius: 113-119 Naples, Italy: 5 1 , 5 2 ; University of, 52 natural man : 8, 16 "Natural Portents of Eclipses according to approved authors, T h e " : 131 natural sciences: 15 Navarre, France : 87-90 Neander, Michael : 108 Near East: 74 Nebrija: 54 Nef, J o h n : 161 Nérac, France. SEE Marguerite de Valois Netherlands: 66 New Astronomy (Kepler) : 155, 156, 157 Newcastle, England : 162 New England: influences in, 126-127; almanacs in, 127—129; study of astronomy in, 127-135; astrology in, 131, 133-135; books published in, 133 New Star (Kepler) : 141, 144 Newton, Sir Isaac: 130, 135, 158 New World: 58 New York City: 159 New Zion: 135 Ninety-Five Theses (Luther) : 108 Niño, Don Pero: 53 Noah: 110 Northumberland, Ninth Earl of: 68 Norwich, England : 63 "Notable Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter on the 1 day of October": 131 Notre Dame de Paris : 87 Novum Organum (Bacon) : 124 numerical-quantative majority, theory of: 23 Nuremberg, Germany: 108 Nuysement, Clovis de : 92

Index obelisk: 80 Odes (Aubigné): 94,95 Oecolampadius: 107, 109, 113, 119 Of Youth and Age (Bacon) : 107 Oldenburg, Henry : 124 Olivier-Martin, François: 29 n. 7 Olympia (Ariosto) : 99 On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Luther) : 109, 119 Opinions of the Philosophers: 147, 153 optic nerves: 15 n. 26 Optics (Kepler) : 153 Origanus: 128 Orléans, France: 31 Ortega y Gasset, José : 111 Orwell, George : 162 Osborne, John : 110 Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor: 77 Ovid: 92 Oxford University: 15, 136, 166 Padua, Italy: 8 1 , 8 2 ; University of, 145 Pagington, Thomas : 61 painting: 14, 57 Palace Academy: 91,92 Palmieri: monograph of, 23 Pandects: 113 Panofsky, Dr. Erwin: 77 Panormita, II (Antonio Becadelli) : 51 Papacy: 75 Paris, France: 48, 87, 114, 130; University of, 20, 57 Parisiensis, Johannes (Jean Quidort) : 20 Parlements (France) : 32, 37 Parliament (England) : 36 patronage : 64-65, 66, 68 Pau, France : 88 Pauline doctrine: 7, 10, 11, 17 Pavia, Italy: 75,81 Pellicanus, Konrad : 119 Percy, Henry: 68 Périgord, France: 92,93 Perottus, Nicholas : 56 Persia: 74 Peter the Great : 84 Petrarch: 52

185 Peucer, Kaspar : 107 Peutinger, Conrad: 106,108 Peutinger, Konstanze: 108 Peyre, Henri: on generation concept, 121 n. 28 Pfeffinger: as Luther supporter, 113 Pharoah: 74 Phillie: 92 Philosophical Transactions: 134, 135 Phlegm (personification) : 125 physics: 127 Piacenza, Italy: 83 Piazza del Santo: 82 Piazza San Marco: 82 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni: 118, 135 Picquigny, Madame de : on Marguerite de Valois, 88 Pilkam, Seger van : 62 Pimandre de Mercure Trismegiste: 99 Pinder,Wilhelm: 111, 112 Pirckheimer, Willibald: 106 Pisano, Giovanni: 14 planetary motion : 149,155 planetary spheres: 150 planets: 148, 149 Plato: 5 5 , 1 2 1 , 1 4 6 , 1 5 0 Plettner, Tilemann: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Pliny: 92 Plutarch: 147,153 poetry: 16, 67 Poitiers, France: 95 Poland: 92, 164 Politics (Aristotle): 17 Pomerania (Bugenhagen) : 118 Pomeranus, Dr. SEE Bugenhagen, Johannes Pompeii: 75 Pontanus, Jovianus: 135 Pontoise, France: 31 pope: 9, 20 n. 36 Pope, Alexander : 114 Portugal et L'Atlantique, Le, 15701670 ( M a u r u ) : 165 positivists: 110 Possessed, The (Dostoevski): 110 post-Keynesian economics: 163

186 Powicke, Sir Maurice: 29 précieux style: 90, 93, 95, 99 presentism: 162 "Primum Mobile, T h e " : 129 Principia (Newton) : 130 printing: 142 Procrustes: 123 Propst, Jakob: as Luther supporter, 113 Prosdocimo: 148 Protestantism: 119, 120 "proto-Renaissance" : 78 Provence, France: 38 provincial estates: formation of, 34; membership of, 35 ; functions of, 3 5 38 passim Psalms, Book of: 131 Pseudo-Plutarch: 147, 153 Ptolemaic system: 133 Ptolemy: 126, 128 Puritans: 123,126,135 Pyrenees: 87, 94 Pythagoras: 148, 150 Pythagorean-Platonic doctrine: 148, 150, 151 quadrants: 130 Quattrocento: 23 Quélus, Jacques de Levy, Sieur de: 97, 98 Quercy, France: 37 Qui dort, Jean (Johannes Parisiensis) : 20 Quintilian: 92 Rabelais, François : 94 Ramée, Pierre de la (Peter Ramus) : 126 Ranke, Leopold von: 120 n. 27 Rapin, Nicholas: 93 rationalists, evangelical: 107 Ravenna, Italy: 76, 80 Read, Charles: 9 0 , 9 3 Recherches sur l'humanisme provinciale (Baillou) : 90 Reformation : relationship of with Renaissance, 105-121; and humanism, 105, 107, 107 n. 4, 109; humanists

Aspects of the Renaissance in, 106; leadership of, 119; causes of, 160. SEE ALSO humanists, third generation as reformers Regensburg, Germany: 117 Regisole (statue) : 76, 77, 81, 82, 83 Renaissance: factors of, 17; views on, 27-29, 73, 141-143; in various countries, 28, 30-41, 105, 123; relationship of with Reformation, 1 0 5 121; science in, 124 republicanism: 25 Retz, Maréchale de: 9 1 , 97 Reuchlin, J o h a n n : 106, 107, 118 revolutionaries: 84 Rhenanus, Beatus: 109 Rheticus, George Joachim: on the number six, 149 Richelieu, Cardinal: on Marguerite de Valois, 9 9 ; mentioned, 34, 38 Rienzo, Cola di: 23 Rime ( P e t r a r c h ) : 52 Rintala, Marvin: 112 Rivason, Jean d e : 92, 93 Rocais, Johann: as Luther opponent, 113 Roman de Flamenca: 48 Roman Empire: 75 Romans: 75 "romantic-historical" approach: 110 Rome, Italy: 56, 66, 80, 8 1 , 143, 164 Ronsard, Pierre de: 92, 97 Roover, Raymond de: 161, 166 Round, Nicholas G. : 48 Royal Exchange : 63, 68 Royal Society: 124, 127 Rudimenta Grammaticae (Perottus) : 56 Rue de la Seine: 9 1 , 99 Rufus, Mutianus: 116 Rupp, E. Gordon: 114 Russia: 84 S , Baron de: 93 Sacrobosco, Johannes d e : 145 Saint Anthony, Church of (Padua) : 81 Saint Augustine : 7, 111 Saint Basil: 50

Index Saint Helena (island) : 130 Saint-Luc, Seigneur de : 98 Saint Mark's, Church of (Venice) : 145 Saint-Mégrin: 98 Saint Paul's (London) : 60 Saint Peter's (Rome) : 80 Saints Annuziata, Church of t h e : 77 Saints Giovanni e Paolo, Church of: 82 Saint-Sulpice: 98 Salignac, Baron de (Jean de GontautBiron) : 93, 94 Salisbury, John of: 23, 48, 66 Salluste, Guillaume de. SEE du Bartas, Guillaume Salutati, Coluccio: 23, 56 Salviati, Diane : 95 San Fermo (Verona) : 81 Santa María, Gonzalo García de: 55 Santa Maria Antica (sacred precinct) : 79 Santayana, George: 111 Santillana, Marqués d e : 49-50, 5 1 , 54, 56 Sant Jordi, Jordi d e : 52 Sarego, Cortesia : tomb of, 81 Saturn (planet) : 143, 152 Savelli, Paolo: 7 9 , 8 1 Saxony: 113, 117 Scaliger, Joseph : and astrology, 132 Scaligeri (lords of Verona) : 79 Scheurl, Christoph: 108 Schlüter, Andreas : 84 Schnepf, Bernhard : as Luther supporter, 113 Schöffler, Herbert: 114n. 12 scholarship: 24, 53. SEE ALSO armsversus-letters controversy Schurff, August: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Schurff, Hieronymus: 108 science, history of: in New England, 123-136 Scriptures: 107, 109 Second Epistle (Ovid) : 92 Seconde Sepmaine, La (Du Bartas) : 93, 94 secularism: 135

187 seigniory: 39 Seneca: 4 9 , 5 6 , 9 2 Sepmaine, La (Du Bartas) : 126 Servetus, Michael (Miguel Serveto) : 107 Severnake, John de : 61 Séville et L'Atlantique, 1540-1650 ( C h a n a u ) : 165 Sforza monument : 82 Sforzesco, Castello: 80 Shakespeare, William: 90 Shepard, Thomas: 128 Sicily: 52, 164 Siculus, Lucius Marineus : 54 Sidereal Message (Galileo) : 153, 154 Siecle de Louis XIV (Voltaire): 110 Siena, Italy: 78,81 Simson, Otto von : 77 singers: 61, 62 Smalkald W a r : 117 social immobility: 52-53 social welfare: 36 Sociéte de l'histoire du protestanisme français: 90 Socrates: 55 sodalities: 12 solar system: theories of, 128 solids: regular, 146, 148, 150; rhombic, 150 song schools: 59 Sonnets des neuf muses Pyrénees (Du Bartas) : 93 Sorg, Roger: 92 sovereignty: symbol of, 79 Spain : treaties with, 40 ; humanism in, 47, 52, 56, 5 7 - 5 8 ; aristocracy in, 4 7 ; Jews in, 50, 5 3 ; literature in, 5 3 ; rule of in Naples, 51 ; mentioned, 87. SEE ALSO arms-versus-letters controversy Spalatin, Georg: as Luther supporter, 116,117,120 Spaniards: in Italy, 52, 142 Spanish (language) : in literature, 15, 91 Spanish America: 123 spectacles: 15 n. 26 Spherae tractatus (Kepler) : 145

188

Aspects of the Renaissance

Sphere (Sacrobosco) : 145 spiritualists: 107 Stances des baings (Constans) : 94 Stances (Aubigné) : Standonck: 106 Starkey, Thomas: 106 State, concept of: 17, 18 Staupitz: 113 steles: 75, 77 Stiefel, Michael (Stifel) : as Luther supporter, 113 Stockmann, Heinrich: on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Storer, Arthur: 130 Strassburg, Germany: 119 Strauss, Jacob: 119 n. 25 Stuarts: music under, 6 1 , 66, 68 Sturm, Jakob: 119 Sully: on court at Nérac, 88 Supreme Court : 165 Surimeau, Baron of : 93 Suso, Henry: 15 n. 25 Sylvester, Joshua : 126 syndics (executives) : 36, 40 synods: of Huguenots, 32

Torre, Fernando de la: on Spanish humanism, 55 Toulouse, University of : 37 Tours, France: 30, 41 towns : in France, 39 tracts (publicistic) : 19 Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea: 58 treaties: 40 Trecento: 2 3 , 5 1 , 5 6 Trent, Council of: 117 Treptow, Germany: 118 trident: 91 Trivulzio monument: 82 Troeltsch, Ernst: 105 Trosse, Guillam d e : 61 Troyes, France : 40 Tübingen, Germany: 147 Tudors: music under, 6 1 , 64, 66, 106 Tulley, John: 132 Turenne, Henri de, Vicomte: 93 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich: 110 Turks: 75, 142, 163 Tyndale, William: 160 tyrants: in Italy, 27

Tacca, Pietro: 83 Talavera, Hernando de: 55 Tasso, Torquato : 99 Taubmann, Friedrich : 107 Tauler, Johannes: 15 n. 25 Tawney, Richard Henry: 160, 166 taxation: 30-31, 36 teachers : of music, 64 teleological principle : 11 telescopes: 130 Thanatos motif: 114 n. 13 theocracy: 10 Theoderic: 76, 80 theologians: 15 theology: natural, 135 Thirty Years' War : 166 Thorndike, Lynn: as Kepler critic, 141-157 passim tides: 127 Timaeus (Plato) : 146 tombs: 7 7 , 7 9 , 8 0

Uccello, Paolo: 79 unions: in medieval society, 12 universities: Hispanic, 52 Uzés, Duchess of: 99 Vadian: 107, 119 Vaissière, P. de : 90 Valencia, Spain: 51 Valois, Marguerite de: marriage of, 8 7 ; on her happiness, 8 8 ; deification of, 90; and Spanish language, 9 1 ; and Turenne, 9 3 ; vocabulary of, 94; departure of from French court, 9 7 ; poetry written to, 97, 9 9 ; exile of, 98 ; affair of with Jacques de Harlay, 9 8 ; loves of, 9 8 ; tastes of, 99 Vasari, Giorgio: 16 n. 27 Vatel : sonnet for, 96 Velasco, Pedro Fernández d e : 54 Venetian Republic: 77, 81 Venetian Senate : 82 Venice, Frances d e : 61

Index Venice: 27, 66, 78, 81, 145, 164 Venus (planet) : 152, 154 Vergerio, Paolo: 24, 48 Verona, Lord of (Scaligeri) : 79 Verona, Italy: as imperial fief, 80 Verrocchio, Andrea del : 82 Versailles, France: 84 villages : in France, 40 Villena, Enrique de : 47 Villeroy, Madam de (Madeleine de l'Aubespine) : 92 Villeroy, Nicholas: 91 Vinet, Elie: 92 Virgil: 16 n. 2 9 , 5 4 Visconti family: 80 Visconti, Bernabò : tomb of, 80 Volmar: as Luther opponent, 113 Voltaire: 110 Waits of London (city musicians) : 62, 63, 68 Wars of Religion : 35 Welder, Peter van: 61 West Indies: 142, 144 Westminster, England: 60 West Riding, England: 162 West Virginia : 165 Whalen, Grover: 159 White, Lynn: 161 Whythorne, Thomas: 65 Wilbye, John: 65

189 Wild, Stephan : on Wittenberg faculty, 113 Wilson, John: 61 Wimpheling, Jakob: 106,119 Wimpina, Konrad: as Luther opponent, 113 Winthrop, John, Jr.: 124, 130 Wittenberg Concord : 117 Wittenberg, University of: faculty of, 112, 113; as "little Athens on the Elbe," 116; and Cruciger in, 117; students of, 119; curriculum of, 120 Wittkower, Rudolf: 83 Witzel, George: 120 Wolfe, Thomas: 110 Wollin, Germany: 118 World War II: 29 Worms: Diet of, 108, 116; Colloquies at, 117 Yorkshire, England: 167 You Can't Go Home Again Wolfe): 110

(Thomas

zodiac: signs of, 129, 151 Zorita, Antón: 50 Zurik, Johannes: as reformer, 108 Zütphen, Heinrich von : as Luther supporter, 113 Zwingli: 107, 117, 119