Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance

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Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance

by John Rigby Hale

3.78 · rating details · 45 ratings · 3 reviews

In this extraordinarily rich and engaging book, John Hale has painted, on a grand canvas, what he calls "an investigative impression" of one of the highest points of European civilization: the flourishing, between 1450 and 1620, of the period we have come to call the Renaissance. It was an age that, wrote Marsilio Ficino in 1492, "has like a golden age resto...moreIn this extraordinarily rich and engaging book, John Hale has painted, on a grand canvas, what he calls "an investigative impression" of one of the highest points of European civilization: the flourishing, between 1450 and 1620, of the period we have come to call the Renaissance. It was an age that, wrote Marsilio Ficino in 1492, "has like a golden age restored to light the liberal arts which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music." The book contains memorable descriptions of all of these. But Hale is not concerned simply with the arts: his interest is much wider. "[This] was the first age in which the words 'Europe' and 'European' acquired a widely understood significance. It saw the emergence of a new and pervasive attitude to what were considered the most valued aspects of civilized life. It witnessed the most concentrated wave of intellectual and cultural energy that had yet passed over the continent...It was also a period in which there were such dramatic changes of fortune for better of worse - religious, political, economic and, through overseas discoveries, global - that more people than ever before saw their time as unique, referring to 'this new age,' 'the present age,' 'our age'; to one observer it was a 'blessed age,' to another, 'the worst age in history."'. Hale paints his picture with an astonishing multiplicity of themes, people, and ideas. How did Europeans see themselves and others? What united them and separated them, both geographically and within their communities? What languages did they speak and write, and how widely? How did they fix themselves in time and space? What did they call civilized? What did they buy and sell? How did they dress and eat? What did they think about and how did they communicate their thoughts? One of the strengths of this book, which moves far beyond conventional or social history, is that it resists the temptation to answer any of these questions simply or glibly, or to im(less)

Paperback, 672 pages

Published June 1st 1995 by Scribner

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Sep 21, 2011

P J rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: history

The European historical period is by common agreement divided into three parts – Ancient, Medieval and Modern. There is rather less agreement about the dating of when the dividing lines between these periods are. The fall of Rome is conventionally the beginning of the medieval period (in Britain this is often the withdrawal of direct Roman authority in 410 AD). The conventional date to end the middle ages is 1492 and Columbus’s discovery of the new world. Yet in itself this is fairly meaningless...moreThe European historical period is by common agreement divided into three parts – Ancient, Medieval and Modern. There is rather less agreement about the dating of when the dividing lines between these periods are. The fall of Rome is conventionally the beginning of the medieval period (in Britain this is often the withdrawal of direct Roman authority in 410 AD). The conventional date to end the middle ages is 1492 and Columbus’s discovery of the new world. Yet in itself this is fairly meaningless – other events would be more profound in the shaping of the individual nations of Europe – the fall of Granada in the same year, the destruction of Feudal England precipitated by Bosworth Field in 1485. But as J R Hale points out so lucidly, there were many themes which interplayed during the years 1480 to 1520 and signalled quite clearly the beginning of the modern western world. The centralization of government, as in the case of Henry VII’s England, and the growth of professional civil servants, are clearly ‘renaissance’ movements, in that they hark back to the classical, or more precisely the Roman age.
Similarly, intellectual thought, more directly inspired by the ancients, was being freed of many of the constraints of medieval Christianity - by 1496 it was possible for a Christian humanist like John Colet to lecture at Oxford on St Paul’s epistles by means of the Greek texts rather than Medieval Latin commentaries. In the 1490s Pico della Mirandola’s would rubbish astrology. Scientific analysis was more readily carried out - Leonardo realized that the presence of fossil shells in the Apennines meant that the sea had once been present there. Professor Hales also cites, as an example of the ‘rigorous commonsense’ the Inquest on the alleged suicide of Richard Hunne in 1515.
But there was more than just the returning to intellectual processes and governmental systems which had in fact been possible in the past. There was also the new. Foremost was surely printing with moveable type. By 1500 there were 73 places with printing presses in Italy, 50 in Germany, 45 in France and 4 in England. Possibly six million books had been printed by then. The spirit of modernism is epitomised by the Emperor Maximilian having himself portrayed in a printer’s workshop.
The range of this book is impressive, and occasionally overwhelming. But it certainly clearly makes the case that these forty years were critical, the turning point that led to the modern west.

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Jan 14, 2012

Dave rated it

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Shelves: renaissance, history, art-and-culture

A wonderful book and a fitting monument to an outstanding art historian. Takes a broad look at the impact of the Renaissance and the Reformation on the culture of all Europe at a time when the concept of "Europe" as we know it today was beginning to take concrete form. Thoroughly recommended.

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Jan 23, 2010

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Shelves: europe, history, a-own-softcover, german, manners, medieval, a-own-hardcover, renaissance, social-crit, history-of-ideas

The world's a big place.

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