THE RENAISSANCE

IT is often asked how it came to pass that Florence, rather than any other Italian city, enjoyed the distinction of reviving in Europe the cultivation of thought, of inspiring it with a sense of the beautiful, of giving the signal for progress in every branch of human knowledge, and of maintaining for so long a period the supremacy over all the other cities in the peninsula. In other words, what, it is asked, were the causes and origin of the Renaissance ?

It is no easy matter to analyze very accurately so vast and complex a movement ; for if, on the one hand, there is something logical and natural in this wonderful development, the country in which it took place must have possessed certain precious gifts which seconded it, and there must have been in the soil which gave birth to it a fertility which contributed to the abundance of the harvest. Study and economy were not the only factors ; there was a certain amount of intuition and good fortune which defies analysis. The mildness of the climate, the charm of the atmosphere, the native grace with which surrounding objects are enveloped, and an admixture of elegance and attractiveness, all told in favor of the movement. The co-efficients are manifold; some direct and permanent ; others indirect, remote and fleeting.

It will be my endeavor to explain them briefly in the course of a rapid review of the intellectual and artistic movements.

In his interesting book on the Renaissance, Burckhardt, in the chapter entitled "The Renaissance of Antiquity," says, "The social conditions of the time would have sufficed of themselves, without the aid of antiquity, to have raised the Italian nation to a certain degree of maturity, just as it is certain that most of the substantial innovations then introduced into public life would have taken place without the same aid."

If this assertion were correct and I venture to take exception to it, especially as regards literature and art we should have to eliminate one of the causes hitherto considered as among the most powerful, and to regard the elaboration of this great work as due solely to Florentine genius and the political and social conditions of the time. It is only fair to add, however, that Burckhardt acknowledges that antiquity gave to literature and art a coloring all their own, which may easily be traced in form, if not in substance.

The renovation, it must be said, made itself manifest in all directions. Not only was there a return to intellectual culture, inspired by the discovery of ancient works of literature and philosophy, but it seems as if the lost sense of plastic beauty had been recovered at the same time.

The constant struggle for independence, for the liberty of association which was the most powerful lever in the might of Florence, for the political autonomy of the city, and for the possession of communal rights, kept all the citizens interested in public affairs, compelling high and low alike to put forth a certain amount of activity, intellectual as well as physical, and impressing them with a sense of personal responsibility. From an early age each citizen of Florence belonged to some group and became the soldier of an idea, being liable to be summoned at a moment's notice to the defence of his banner and of the disregarded rights of his corporation.

All this tended to create originality and independence of character, and to excite a spirit of individualism. The power of a democracy, manifold as are its dangers, has this good side that it does not impose a common yoke on all, and does not put any other limit on individual ambition than that of the individual's capacities and energy. Upon the other band, there was an apparent incompatibility between the constant political agitation which prevailed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the germinating of fruitful ideas and the development of a nascent civilization. This is a point to which I shall often have occasion to refer, though it is perhaps impossible to define the precise causes of it. How was it that the Renaissance succeeded in taking root amid these constant struggles, instead of being choked at its birth ? How came it that while Pisa, Siena, and Perugia were being deluged with blood, artists and thinkers were able to work in peace?

Not only in Florence, but throughout Italy in Venice with its Senate and Grand Council, in Man with the Sforzas, in Mantua with the Gonzagas, in Ferrara with the Estes, in Urbino with the Montefeltros, in Rimini with Malatesta, in Naples with Robert and Alfonso, and at the Vatican with the Popes was this phenomenon manifested; and while neighboring states were at war with one another, poets, painters, and philosophers followed their peaceful pursuits, and even tyrants, as they were called, did not disdain to compete for the laurel crown.

The true reason of it all lies in the fact that Italy did not have to make the same effort as the other nations of Europe to escape from the state of torpor into which all had sunk in the Middle Ages. It would be no difficult matter to write a history of the five or six centuries which followed the invasion of the Barbarians ; but this period, dark as it was throughout the rest of Europe, was not without its glory for Italy. The monuments with which Rome had covered the land were still standing : she still existed, like a fire of which the smouldering embers alone remain, and which no savage incursions could quite extinguish. All her triumphal arches, baths, votive columns, pantheons, amphitheatres, and temples still raised their heads, though entwined with creepers, which gave a new and additional beauty to these old ruins, showing how great must once have been that grandeur, the remembrance of which comes powerfully back to us in every moment of quiet reflection. It was the connecting link between Italy of the past and new Italy. The grandeur of the past could but raise hopes for the splendor of the future. Greece, which had been subdued and then exacted vengeance by imposing her intellectual yoke on her fierce conqueror, was something more than a mere geographical expression, a vague ideal, a land of sentiment, in which at one period human thought had enshrined itself. It was for the Italians a living reality, a friendly and neighboring land, which they could see far away on the horizon of the Adriatic sloping shorewards with its pale blue hills. Each day ships arrived from the Hellespont, their sails full in the breeze and edged with red, recalling in shape and color the ships of antiquity. The South of Italy was down to a recent period known as Magna Gr cia, and colonized by those who had come from the opposite shore, and there flourished in Calabria and other parts of Sicily a civilization of which traces are to be found everywhere. If Christianity had proscribed everything which recalled paganism, the traditions at least remained, and every day further traces of civilization were discovered in proportion as this chosen race was found to have established itself in the most remote villages. These two influences the Latin and the Greek had conjointly saved Italy from total ruin from an intellectual point of view ; and the Florentines were more open than any of their neighbors to the influences of culture for the most industrious and gifted of the colonies founded in the peninsula before the Romans, had left upon the soil of that country evident traces of their existence, not to speak of art monuments which are even still 'Worthy to be compared with those of Greece or of Florence in the fifteenth century.

When Italy had been conquered, Theodoric, Charlemagne, and Lothaire did not fail to encourage intellectual progress and anything which made for civilization. In the eighth century was promulgated Lothaire's edict, in which, following the traditions of Charlemagne, he provided for the formation of schools at Pavia, Ivraea, Cremona, Turin, Florence, Termo, and Vincenza; and there was spiritual light even in the darkness of the tenth and eleventh -centuries. The monks of the Abbey of Monte Cassino furthered this development of learning by copying Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Lucretius ; and throughout the whole of Southern Italy the Latin poets were read in the Roman amphitheatres, while in the Forum of Trajan men of letters would read extracts from the classic authors to the Senate, who conferred on the most successful competitor a floral crown and a cloth of gold. The Latin tongue, which was in itself a means of civilization, being as it were the key to the lofty conceptions and writings of the ancient authors, was in pretty general use during the first part of the Renaissance, and sermons were preached in Latin in many of the Tuscan churches. Nor was respect for ancient literature the monopoly of a sect or of a religious body ; it was an article of popular faith. A proof of this is given us at Mantua, where the statue of Virgil was decorated with flowers, like the altar of a god ; and at Brindisi, where the poet's house was shown to strangers with legitimate pride. Dante, in the thirteenth century, acknowledged Virgil as his master in the line, and he also did much to extend the knowledge of Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucanus, and of the greatest Greek writers of their day..

But the influence of Rome was predominant over Dante, and he regarded the inhabitants as his ancestors, " the Roman people being," to use his own expression, " the first-born of the Italian family."

The Latin tongue had never been lost, though it had been corrupted by the admixture of barbarisms, Two men of genius, Petrarch and Boccaccio, endeavored to revive the Greek language, and their efforts were not altogether in vain. Petrarch jealously preserved a MS. of Sophocles in the original Greek, which he could not read, and it seemed to him as if the letters, of which he was unable to understand the meaning, emitted rays of light full of fascination. It had been given him by Leonce Pilate, a pupil of Bernardo Barlaam, a Calabrian monk sent to Avignon as an ambassador to the Pope, and who was one of the promoters of the study of Greek in the West.

Boccaccio, more fortunate than Petrarch, was able to read the Iliad in the original with the help of a Latin translation, and having in 1360 received Leonce Pilate into his house, he induced the Signoria to establish a public professorship for him to explain the Iliad, the Odyssey, and sixteen of Plato's Dialogues.

This is a date to be remembered, for the secret of the superiority of Florence in the plastic arts is certainly to be found in the study she gave to the ancient monuments, while her intellectual superiority is not less certainly due to the discovery and diffusion of the MSS. of ancient writers. The manifestation of the genius of Dante, though he expressed himself in the vulgar tongue, was in a measure brought about by these influences seemingly so remote.

It may naturally be asked how it came to pass that while in the reign of Augustus Greek was spoken at Rome, even by women who prided themselves on their intellectual superiority, that language fell into disuse, and was soon unknown to all save a select few. The influence of Greek philosophy and literature in Italy continued to increase under the Antonines ; Marcus Aurelius wrote his "Maxims" in Greek, and two centuries later the Emperor Julian used it in preference to his own language in his defence of Polytheism.