Reference
- RenaissanceFrom the French for ‘rebirth’, the term is applied to several significant revivals of interest in the classical past which punctuate European history. One such revival is identified with the age of the Emperor Charlemagne (hence ‘Carolingian Renaissance’), another with the Emperor Otto I, the Great in the 10c (‘Ottonian Renaissance’) while the ‘12c Renaissance’ was marked by the fusion of Christian learning with the rediscovered works of Aristotle in the great intellectual synthesis known as scholasticism. Most famously, however, the term is applied to the cultural achievements of the Italians in the 14c and 15c. In turn, the absorption of Italian values in a general European context in the 16c then paved the way for the Scientific Revolution of the 17c and the Enlightenment of the 18c. The idea was first formulated by the Florentine Vasari in his Lives of the Artists (c.1550). He identified three great eras of creativity: the first, c.1300, identified above all with Giotto; the second, around 1400, with the architect Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello and the painter Masaccio; while the climax, he thought, was reached in his own time in the work of Michelangelo. Vasari's vision was confined to achievements in the visual arts and within them he laid particular stress on the unique achievements of the Florentines. Subsequently, particularly since the work of Michelet and Burckhardt in the 19c, the application of the term has broadened to take in intellectual and social developments and other centres of creativity, notably Rome and Venice.
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Perspectives
The Church and Galileo
This collection of first-rate essays aims to provide an accurate scholarly assessment of the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and Galileo. In 1981, Pope John Paul II established a commission to inquire into the Church's treatment of Galileo "in loyal recognition of wrongs, from whatever side they came," hoping this way to "dispel the mistrust . . . between science and faith." When the Galileo Commission finally issued its report in 1992, many scholars were disappointed by its inadequacies and its perpetuation of old defensive stratagems. This volume attempts what the Commission failed to provide--a historically accurate, scholarly, and balanced account of Galileo and his difficult relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Contributors provide careful analyses of the interactions of the Church and Galileo over the thirty years between 1612 and his death in 1642. They also explore the attitudes of theologians to the Copernican innovation prior to Galileo's entry into the fray; survey the political landscape within which he lived; assess the effectiveness (or otherwise) of censorship of his work; and provide an analysis and occasional critique of the Church's later responses to the Galileo controversy. The book is divided into three sections corresponding to the periods before, during, and after the original Galileo affair. Particular attention is paid to those topics that have been the most divisive among scholars and theologians. The Church and Galileo will be welcomed by all those interested in early modern history and early modern science.
Renovatio Urbis
Examining the urban and architectural developments in Rome during the Pontificate of Julius II (1503-13) this booknbsp;focuses on the political, religious and artistic motives behind the changes. Each chapter focuses on a particular project, from the Palazzo dei Tribunali to the Stanza della Segnatura, and examines their topographical and symbolic contexts in relationship to the broader vision of Julian Rome. This original work explores not just historical sources relating to buildings but also humanist/antiquarian texts, papal sermons/eulogies, inscriptions, frescoes and contemporary maps. An important contribution to current scholarship of earlynbsp;sixteenth century Rome, its urban design and architecture.
Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, women assumed public roles of unprecedented prominence in Italian religious culture. Legally subordinated, politically excluded, socially limited, and ideologically disdained, women's active participation in religious life offered them access to power in all its forms. These essays explore the involvement of women in religious life throughout northern and central Italy and trace the evolution of communities of pious women as they tried to achieve their devotional goals despite the strictures of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The contributors examine relations between holy women, their devout followers, and society at large. Including contributions from leading figures in a new generation of Italian historians of religion, this book shows how women were able to carve out broad areas of influence by carefully exploiting the institutional church and by astutely manipulating religious percepts.
Fire in the City
A gripping and beautifully written narrative that reads like a novel, Fire in the City presents a compelling account of a key moment in the history of the Renaissance, illuminating the remarkable man who dominated the period, the charismatic Savonarola.Lauro Martines, whose decades of scholarship have made him one of the most admired historians of Renaissance Italy, here provides a remarkably fresh perspective on Girolamo Savonarola, the preacher and agitator who flamed like a comet through late fifteenth-century Florence. The Dominicanfriar has long been portrayed as a dour, puritanical demagogue who urged his followers to burn their worldly goods in "the bonfire of the vanities." But as Martines shows, this is a caricature of the truth--the version propagated by the wealthy and powerful who feared the political reforms herepresented. In fact, Savonarola emerges as a complex and subtle man: compassionate, wise, a poet and scholar, and even, at critical moments, a force for moderation. The friar, a mesmerizing preacher, set the city afire with his message of Christian charity wedded to republican ideals.It is this reality--of Savonarola as both religious and civic leader--that Martines captures in all its complexity, showing how he inspired an outpouring of political debate in a city newly freed from the tyranny of the Medici. In the end, the volatile passions he unleashed--and the powerfulfamilies he threatened--sent the friar to his own fiery death. But the fusion of morality and politics that he represented would leave a lasting mark on Renaissance Florence.For the many readers fascinated by histories of Renaissance Italy--such as Brunelleschi's Dome or Galileo's Daughter, and Martines's acclaimed April Blood--Fire in the City offers a vivid portrait of one of the most memorable characters from that dazzling era.
Forbidden Prayer
This book delineates the attempt, carried out by the Congregations of the Inquisition and the Index during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, to purge various devotional texts in the Italian vernacular of heterodox beliefs and superstitious elements, while imposing a rigid uniformity in liturgical and devotional practices. The first part of the book is focused on Rome's anxious activity toward the infiltration of Protestant ideas in vernacular treatises on prayer meant for mass consumption. It next explores how, only in the second half of the sixteenth century, once Rome's main preoccupation toward Protestant expansion had subsided, the Church could begin thinking about a move from a rejection of any consideration of the merits of interior prayer to a recovery and acceptance of mental prayer. The final section is dedicated to the primary objective of the Church's actions in purging superstitious practices which was not simply the renewal of the spiritual life of the faithful, but also the control of the religious and social life of many faithful who were uneducated. Based on a careful examination of the archival records of the two Roman dicasteri in question, many of which have only been accessible to scholars since 1998, as well as a close reading of the many of suspect devotional texts themselves, this book offers a fascinating contribution towards a fuller appreciation of the complex landscape that characterized the spiritual realities of early modern Italy.
St. Peter's Basilica
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Experience the splendor of the world's largest church and the seat of the papacy, among the most iconic creations of the Christian world. Trace the history of the complex as you take in the resplendent dome by Michelangelo and the Renaissance grandeur of statuary, monuments, papal tombs, and the grand baldacchino by Bernini.
Protest and Division: Saints and Sinners—The History of the Popes
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The Renaissance led to a period of cultural greatness for the Church, but it also reached a pit of spiritual degradation. This film examines the reign of Pope Alexander VI, the Borgia pope. Despite rampant nepotism on behalf of his seven known children, Alexander is said by some to have gotten a bad rap. Known for his patronage of the arts—Raphael and Michelangelo both worked for him—it was also said that he purchased the job of pope for himself. Wherever the truths lie, his Papacy led directly to the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and plunged Europe into religious wars.
Online Resources
- The Reception of the Church Fathers and Early Church Historians in the Renaissance and the Reformation, c. 1470–1650The age of Renaissance and Reformation, it is increasingly recognized, was marked not only by a new era in the reception of classical antiquity, but also the beginning of 'nearly three centuries of unprecedented developments' in the field of patristics.[ 2] In this period, well-known Church Fathers were disseminated in new, ground-breaking editions, many hitherto lost Greek church authors were rediscovered and made available in the original language or in translation, and patristic texts were closely read by the many, often feuding, confessional groups who sought answers to the questions that had been raised by contemporary debates about the past and present of the church.
- Performing Renaissance Church Music in Nineteenth‐Century Germany: Issues and Challenges in the Study of Performative ReceptionCrucial to understanding the reception of early music in the nineteenth century is an appreciation of the complex plurality of approaches to its performance. In contrast to our received view, musicians seeking to revive the works of Palestrina, Lassus, and contemporaries engaged seriously with the aesthetic and historical complexities of this task. The varied strategies of performers and the ideological factors shaping them are explored via a series of case studies: Thibaut, Zelter, and Vormärz choral societies; Proske, Haberl, Witt, and the Allgemeine Deutsche Cäcilien‐Verein; the arrangements and adaptations of Wagner and others. Fundamental is a broader consideration of the pertinence and value of studying performative reception.