The Last Days of the Renaissance: & the March to Modernity

by Theodore K. Rabb

There is little debate that the Renaissance began at the end of the fourteenth century. Its end, though, is much more difficult to pin down. Here, for the first time, renowned classicist Theodore Rabb defines the changes that marked the shift away from the Renaissance to Modernity, and explains why these changes took place. The European Renaissance is usually characterized by the belief that a distinct antique civilization represented the ideal for all human endeavors. But there were other unities that defined the era: a shift in the role of the aristocracy from a warrior class to a cultural elite, a growth in education, a more thoughtful probing into the sciences, and the use of the arts for nonreligious purposes.By the dawn of the seventeenth century, four developments had swept over the world, altering these unities and ending the Renaissance: a break with the period's obsession with the past, which invited openness to innovation; a quest for central political control to cure increasing instability; a change in direction of people's passion and enthusiasm; and a new commitment to reason. With thoughtful, wide-lens scholarship and close, detailed looks throughout at the significant moments of change, Rabb offers us a radically new understanding of one of the most pivotal shifts in modern history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, School, Renaissance

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

A specialist in early modern European history, Theodore K. Rabb was Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started with great lucidity but somehow drifted off in the end for me. I’m also not sure why Rabb felt the need to bring the book to contemporary times because it sounded a bit too “rah rah” to me.

[Charles Nicholas Saenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like bees to honey, historians are attracted to historical periodization. As an academic pursuit, the task of defining historical periods is a sticky subject - the value of which is rather questionable. In particular, defining the start and end of any period can prove a difficlt one. Though the rise of Italian urban life in the fourteenth century offers a common point by which to date the start of the Renaissance for may scholars, the precise end remains an unsolved question.

Theodore Rabb's "The Last Days of the Renaissance: And the March to Modernity," offers one solution to the problem. His writing takes the reader through an overview of the Medieval and Renaissance periods in order to lay out the unifying characteristics of these two historical eras and the traditional grounds for considering them as separate altogether. With regards to the arrival of the Renaissance, Rabb cites the special significance of the invention of gunpowder on the size of European armies and the nature of war, the new energy for state-building and the "domestication" of the aristocracy, the impact of overseas conquest and emigration, the rise of capitalism, a growing population (in the wake of the Bubonic plague of the 1340s), the new approach to Classical culture and the Catholic Church, and the growth of European universities. Interestingly, Rabb views both the Reformation and Scientific Revolution (important periods for other historians) as part of the same era.

By contrast, the following period was percieved to mark a grave crisis. The rise in population brought urban congestion and an economic downturn in the seventeeth century. The discovery of the New World, a deep religious schism brough about by the Reformation, the impact of the Scientific Revolution, and years of war brought about a great sense of pessimism and anxiety. Rabb argues this new era may be visialized by paying special note to antiwar sentiments expressed in artistic form and the declining severity of the superstitious mindset common to most Europeans of the age. In the end, Rabb contends the turbulence of this period shares a special bond with the present, a quality that unites our world with that of the late seventeenth century.

As an addition to the historiographical literature on the subject of the Renaissance, Rabb's book is rather lacking. In "The Last Days of the Renaisance," Rabb fails to shed new light on the transition from the Renaissance to modernity (as he would care to describe what followed). His account relies on much that has been stated already in far more lengthy studies. However, Rabb does manage to take a strong stance on the usefulness of historical periodization. Rabb's writing also offers a neat synthesis of material concerning this important historical transition in a manner that is both readable and enjoyable.

[Saettare · Rating 3 out of 5]

A popularizing account (written for a general audience, the publisher's name "Basic Books" says it all) of the Renaissance by a Princeton professor characterized by a "longue durèe" approach to historiography. He gives a pretty standard by-the-book vision of the period that begins with Petrarch and the rebirth of Classical learning and ends with the overturning of Classical authority by the horizon-expanding field of Modern knowledge.

Perhaps what makes his approach distinctly his own is that his hypothesis focuses on the shifting attitudes of society at large in two very specific areas: warfare and the supernatural. Prof. Rabb dabbles in art history to illustrate the point that the last Renaissance was characterized by an anti-heroic view of war that was impersonal and glorified no one. As a result of the rise of the cowardly (non-chivalric) use of gun powder and fire arms he persuasively follows the decline of heroic representations of leaders and individual fighters that had once been all the rage. As for the supernatural, he argues that the failure of the apocalypse to arrive in the year 1666 was the beginning of the end for over credulous religious sentiment and superstition. It was just a matter of time before the cold unimaginative rationality of the Enlightenment took hold. This brief portion of the penultimate chapter of the book was much less persuasively argued, though interesting in its own right due to the unique accounts he draws on from the period. However, it does give one pause to reflect on some of the similarities with our own period from Cold War paranoias to the superstitions and half truths the neo-Cons have tried to pawn off on us to the Millennium bug to any number of other things. Superstitions are either endemic to the human race or we're coming to the end of an era ourselves. Whither do we march from here?

He doesn't attempt to smooth out all of the tensions and contradictions that he detects prior to and throughout the Renaissance, which really draws attention to the problem of periodization more generally and the shortcomings of attempting to define any period with huge monoliths like "Renaissance" or "Modernity" that are meant to encompass not only several centuries, dozens of generations as well as vast geographical expanses. While Rabb's introduction grapples with these problems, the reader may be surprised to follow the relatively traditional approach the book then goes on to take.

Overall, a portrait painted in very, very broad brush strokes that again and again sums up the vast and complicated sweep of hundreds of years of history (from the fall of the Rome to Picasso and recent American history in the concluding chapter) in just a very pages. By no means boring due to the fact that it is hardly an arduous read.

[Ms. Carlino · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a doozy for me...I very clearly remember why history was never my favorite school subject. The number of dates and references in this text made it immensely slow reading for me and I had to really WORK at it. This is a reminder to me of how fiction is for some of my students: work.

I am proud of myself for reading this and feel I've learned interesting information, but I don't see myself delving into another history text any time soon!

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readable history of the rise and decline of the Renaissance. The author concentrates on describing the basic assumptions on the Medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods, and discussing the causes of change. The title is something of a misnomer, the book is actually an overall history of the Renaissance, from its emergence to its demise.

[Haley]

I had to read this for my history class and write a 5 page review so If you want to know what I think ask my history teacher. No just kidding i'll tell you. If you are interested in the Renaissance this is something I think you should read. The author makes it very easy to understand and the information is not a dense as you would think. It is very light and really interesting.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grand historical synthesis of the coherent forces in the European cultural environment durning the last 1000 years. There are few books of this quality that venture into the debate of historical coherences over centuries of time. Students of European history should not miss reading this interesting material. I give this the highest rating.

[Thom Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic Books, 2006

[Metal Nyankos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's the issue - this book is very readable and very well-written, however (and it's as big or as little of a "however" as you want it to be) Rabb doesn't seem to reach his goal of stating when, in his opinion, the Renaissance ends. Maybe I missed it! But knowing he was intending to state, semi-definitively, when the era ended I was looking for a date (something like 'the Renaissance ended on a Tuesday in June of 1620') or some sort of declarative statement and, while I kept looking for it, never found one. That said, the lack of closure in that regard never overrode the fact that Rabb wrote an interesting and informative book.

Again, the book is readable and well-written so even though he never states when the Renaissance ends he does a fabulous job of explaining what sets the Renaissance apart from, say, the medieval era and then the eras that came after it: the Age of Revolution and contemporary modernity. I loved his chapter "Art, Prophecy, and the End of Renaissance" because his explanation of the mid-seventeenth century representing a significant shift in thought as explained by the burgeoning anti-war sentiment among the eras chief artists (Rubens and Velazquez) and even rulers during and after the Thirty Years' War was something I had never read before. Rabb's sections on the rise of universities and the shift in European nobility from seeking glory on the battlefield to seeking urbanity via increased learning and intellectualization were also fascinating. The book was worth reading for those three topics alone.

I think that Rabb's book is ideal for someone who has read a book or two on the era and is looking for something that brings everything together. It was serendipitous for me that I read The Last Days of the Renaissance: & the March to Modernity directly after finishing William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age. The two books, though written almost 20 years apart and by two separate historians, act as a kind of unofficial 'Renaissance/Reformation' set in my eyes. The two works pair with each other marvelously.

[Flynn Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very fun little book. While it does sacrifice nuance for the sake of narrative overall, it does a fine job of contending for genuine signposts of change between the medieval, early modern, and modern periods.

[Monty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book, it was a quick read however that didn't provide a bibliography for reference.
Thank you

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd really give it a 3.5. Read it for my Renaissance History class and liked what it had to offer, but felt that it was - not disorganized, but rather thrown at the reader in an overwhelming way, presuming quite a bit of background. I got most of the early Renaissance stuff, but not the later because we focused mainly on Italy during the class, and there is a major group of scholars who see the Renaissance as having happened in Italy and the spread of Renaissance ideas in Europe as being just that - repercussions. So, I liked Rabb's thesis of periodization being incredibly important in the study of history and when and why they form and how, and when and why and how they break down, but I didn't really go along with his timing exatly, and because of how he did time the period, I was quite lost. The book should have been longer and included more detail, to my mind.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for my AP European history class and wrote a paper on it. That was two years ago, and looking back on reading this book- the only things I remember are note-taking and hating every second of reading it.
I don't actually remember anything about the book, which is weird because I usually do when I read about history, which probably means that it wasn't very good.
Good books are supposed to be memorable.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

As long as you are looking for an overview of the Renaissance, and not an academic study, this is excellent. Rabb avoids the dangers of oversimplifying the causes of historical change and instead highlights the interplay among technology, ideas, and behaviours. Especially enjoyable for the non-art historian is his ability to draw connections between the philosophical changes and their appearance in the major works of art of the day, including opera.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthew had to read this for AP European History and said it was good. So, I picked it up. He was right, it was really good. This is a very readable text covering the institutions that formed the Medieval period, how they worked and changed during the Renaissance, and what happened to them that led to the last days of the Renaissance. Good stuff!

[Joe Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of an extended overview in essay form then a full scholarly undertaking, this is a solid overview of this period of time. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a bit more context for our current period, by reflecting on what has come before.

[Albie]

The Last Days of the Renaissance: & the March to Modernity by Theodore K. Rabb (2006)

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad if you have a couple of hours to kill on a flight.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tremendously conservative book.

[Tom N · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too repetitive on theme of historical cadences, but did find new historical figures and places to research.