The Renaissance in Italy and Beyond

This is Unit Thirteen of Western Civilization One, part one of two: the Renaissance in Italy, from why it happened there to Dante's Tuscan. Unit twelve closed on northern Italy rising on trade while the rest of Europe suffered. Carry one idea through this unit. The anchor's chapter is a chain from money to marble. Italy had no Hundred Years' War, its popes were away at Avignon, and it sat at the center of trade with the Middle East. Italians learned bookkeeping and credit from the Arab world, defied the usury ban, and turned wool into cloth and cloth into gold. Weak feudalism let cities rule themselves under the fat people, and the Peace of Lodi gave forty years of quiet. Then the conversion: banking wealth became patronage, patronage became public art, and art meant the classics reborn. This part carries the chain to humanism; part two takes the writers, the artists, and the crossing of the Alps. By the end you will be able to say what Renaissance claims and why Italy. To describe the business techniques and their cost. To describe the cities and the popes. To tell print from Mainz to the Index. And to explain patronage, humanism, education and Dante.

Two entries on what, when and why: rebirth as a claim for cities and elites, and Italy's luck of peace, cities and a distracted Europe.

Rebirth, for cities and elites.

WC1 1201 What Renaissance Claims, and When: 1300 to 1500

Renaissance means rebirth: innovation in art, learning and culture from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, Italy first, about thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred. The anchor calls the Dark Ages conceit off-base yet the achievement real, and says the Renaissance never truly ended. Most of Europe stayed medieval, and Italian villages were unchanged in fifteen hundred: a rebirth for cities and elites.

No war at home, no pope interfering.

WC1 1202 Why Italy: Peace, Cities, and a Distracted Europe

Northern Italy had no Hundred Years' War, and the anchor calls the Captivity and Schism a benefit, since popes could not interfere, while England and France fought and the Empire fragmented. Twenty-three city-states passed twenty thousand people by thirteen hundred, the anchor's count, and Florence and Milan passed a hundred thousand. The crises centered elsewhere; Italy's luck was location and timing.

Three entries on business and trade: the techniques Italians learned from the Arab world, interest lent in defiance of the ban and what that cost the Jews, and wool going in as luxury came out.

Try multiplying in Roman numerals.

WC1 1203 Double-Entry, Commenda, Bills of Exchange: Business Rationalized

Italians learned from the Arab world double-entry bookkeeping, the commenda, a risk-sharing partnership, agents, bills of exchange and credit, and Arabic numerals over Roman, the anchor's example being to try multiplying in Roman numerals. Business became rational, and Italy sat at the center of Europe's trade with the Middle East. Technique came east to west, and the exam may ask the direction.

A sin practiced by the Church's own bankers.

WC1 1204 Usury Defied and Its Cost to the Jews

Italian bankers, the Medici among them, lent at interest in defiance of the usury ban while the Church was fragmented, a sin practiced by the Church's own bankers. The stigma stayed, and as Christians took over money-lending, the anchor records more anti-Semitism, not less. The link between banking and anti-Semitism is the anchor's finding, stated as such.

The Silk Road's European terminus.

WC1 1205 Wool In, Luxury Out: Italy as the Silk Road's Terminus

Italy worked English and Spanish wool into cloth and made the best luxury goods and weapons, trading with Byzantium's remnant and the Ottomans for spices, silks and porcelain against bullion and crafts, the Silk Road's European terminus. Conspicuous consumption turned banking wealth into patronage. Where the anchor lists coffee among the imports, it arrived after fifteen hundred.

Five entries on the politics of the cities: the fat people who needed peace, Lodi and Milan's despots, Venice's Doge and ducat, Florence's republic under the Medici, and popes who lived like kings.

Five percent, given to vendetta, needing peace.

WC1 1206 The Popoli Grossi: Honor, Vendetta, and a Taste for Peace

Feudalism was weak in Italy, and by twelve hundred most cities were independent. Power sat with the popoli grossi, the fat people, about five percent: rich, noble or not, given to flattery, backstabbing and vendetta, yet needing peace for commerce, with no police, private mercenaries, and Cosimo with book and sword. The central irony is that most Italians gained little.

Forty years without major war.

WC1 1207 The Peace of Lodi, 1454, and Milan's Despots

Rivalry and absorption ran to the mid-fifteenth century, then the Peace of Lodi in fourteen fifty-four, against France and the Ottomans, gave forty years without major war, the Renaissance's height. Milan was the despot archetype under the Visconti, twelve seventy-seven to fourteen forty-seven; the Sforza who followed are a course disclosure. Lodi's peace ended in fourteen ninety-four, and unit fourteen tells how.

A coin that never changed weight.

WC1 1208 Venice: Doge, Ducat, Spices, Banks, and the First Ambassadors

Venice was a merchant council under an elected Doge, coining more gold than England and France together in a ducat that never changed weight. It carried the anchor's forty percent of spice ships about thirteen hundred and sixty by fifteen hundred, ran the first true banks, and posted the first resident ambassadors. The rotten-meat spice myth is false, the anchor says.

A republic run by a family of bankers.

WC1 1209 Florence: Republic, Medici, Signoria, Schools

Florence was a republic with elected offices and terms, dominated by families; the Medici controlled the Signoria from fourteen thirty-four as papal bankers and patrons of churches, orphanages and the cathedral dome, with Donatello and Michelangelo on Medici money and laborers quoting Dante. The anchor's eight thousand children in school out of a hundred thousand people. Primacy faded about fifteen hundred with foreign invasion.

Popes who lived like kings.

WC1 1210 The Renaissance Popes: Julius II, Alexander VI, the Papal States

Popes restored control of Rome and the Papal States and lived like kings, the anchor's judgment, rebuilding Rome from under twenty-five thousand people. Alexander the Sixth, fourteen ninety-two to fifteen oh three, ruled with his Borgia children; Julius the Second, fifteen oh three to thirteen, led troops and hired Michelangelo for the Sistine ceiling. Spiritual authority was not restored, and that is unit fifteen's opening.

Three entries on print: Gutenberg's press and Bible, how print spread and what it changed, and the censorship and standard spelling it made necessary.

Movable metal type, and a Bible as best-seller.

WC1 1211 Gutenberg, Mainz, and the Bible of 1455

Gutenberg of Mainz, in the late fourteen forties, built a press with movable metal type, and his Bible of fourteen fifty-five, the Vulgate, was the first best-seller, with fewer copying errors and cheaper than manuscript. Chinese and Korean printing came earlier with no evidence of transmission, the anchor says. The anchor's spelling of the city is corrected to Mainz.

More books in fifty years than since Rome.

WC1 1212 How Print Spread and What It Changed

Presses reached every major western and southern city within twenty years and replaced the scribal trade by fifteen hundred. More books appeared in fifty years than had been copied since Rome, the anchor says, religious first, then literature and politics, with broadsides read aloud in taverns for the illiterate. Scribes kept documents and luxury work; print took the rest.

Censorship made necessary.

WC1 1213 Censorship, the Index, and the Standardizing of Language

Print made censorship necessary: The Imitation of Christ, salvation without the Church, was a best-seller by the fourteen sixties, and the Index of Prohibited Books followed in fifteen fifty-nine, the witness's date, where the anchor gives three dates. Print also standardized language and spelling. Use fifteen fifty-nine.

Five entries on patronage and humanism: competition by commission, what was reborn and how pious it was, civic humanism and the new schooling, the Renaissance man's virtues, and Dante's choice of Tuscan.

Competition by commission instead of street fighting.

WC1 1214 Patronage as Politics: Cosimo's Council of Florence, 1439

Patrons paid in advance for public art and gained honor and influence, competing by commission instead of street fighting. Cosimo de' Medici, a king in all but name in the anchor's words, hosted the Council of Florence in fourteen thirty-nine, with Greek lectures and a doomed reunion of the Latin and Orthodox churches. Without competitive patronage the masterpieces are doubtful, the anchor says.

Greece and Rome, imitated and then built on.

WC1 1215 Humanism: What Was Reborn

What returned was Greece and Rome, imitated first and then built on. Humanism held humankind rational, beautiful and noble, celebrated body, mind and society, and grounded its optimism in classical achievement as God's crowning creation, the anchor says, the roots of modern individuality and the well-rounded education. Humanism was pious; do not read it as secular.

Rhetoric and history for business and politics.

WC1 1216 Civic Humanism and Humanistic Education

Civic humanism tied moral standing to one's city, and the witness credits Leonardo Bruni where the anchor credits Petrarch. Education shifted from scholastic law, medicine and theology to rhetoric, mathematics and history for business and politics, in civic schools for girls and boys, spreading across Europe by the late fifteenth century. The anchor's Petrarch is recorded; Bruni is the witness's name.

Virtues reachable through the classics, with piety.

WC1 1217 The Renaissance Man's Virtues, Not Quite Christian

The well-rounded man pursued classical virtues, understanding, benevolence, fortitude, judgment, eloquence and honor, a virtuous life not identical with Christian virtue and reachable through the classics with piety. Girls were educated for obedience and modesty, and the querelle des femmes asked whether women were naturally weak or made so by lack of schooling. Women humanists joined the debate; most men still held women inferior.

Hell, purgatory and heaven, in Tuscan.

WC1 1218 Dante's Comedy and the Making of Italian

Dante, twelve sixty-five to thirteen twenty-one, anticipated the Renaissance, the anchor says. The Divine Comedy, in Tuscan with Virgil as guide through hell, purgatory and heaven, peopled the afterlife with ancients and contemporary Italians, indifferent to the Middle Ages and full of Romans, and made Tuscan the basis of Italian. Vernacular, not Latin: the choice mattered as much as the poem.

Look at what you can now do. You can say that Renaissance claims a rebirth for cities and elites from thirteen hundred, and that Italy had it first by peace at home, big cities and a distracted Europe. You can describe bookkeeping, partnerships and bills of exchange learned east to west, usury defied at a cost to Jews the anchor records, and wool in and luxury out. You can describe the fat people who needed peace, Lodi's forty years, Milan's despots, Venice's Doge and ducat, Florence's republic under the Medici, and popes who lived like kings. You can tell Gutenberg's Bible of fourteen fifty-five, presses in every city within twenty years, and an Index in fifteen fifty-nine. And you can explain competition by commission, a pious humanism that reborn Greece and Rome, civic schools of rhetoric and history, the Renaissance man's virtues, and Dante's Tuscan. Part two opens on Petrarch, who coined the phrase the anchor rejects, and runs through the artists to the crossing of the Alps.