The Portable Renaissance Reader

by James Bruce Ross (Editor), Mary Martin McLaughlin (Editor)

Essential passages form the works of more than 100 fifteenth-and sixteenth-century thinkers and writers, including Erasmus, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Bodin, Dürer, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Rabelais, Leonardo, Cellini, Copernicus, Galileo, Savonarola, Luther, and Calvin.

It was the age in which Europe rediscovered antiquity even as it built the foundations of the modern world; when Christendom lost its eastern empire and conquered a new world to the west; an age in which Leonardo and Michelangelo glorified the human body while Andreas Vesalius stripped bare its skeleton; an age in which a revolution in scientific knowledge coexisted with a religious inquisition and the hysterical persecution of suspected witches. The 200 years we call the Renaissance were so eventful and contradictory that one man, Erasmus of Rotterdam, could decry their tyranny, avarice and iniquity, yet proclaim the "near approach of a golden age."

Genres: History, Renaissance, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Anthologies, European History, Essays

756 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1953

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so enjoyed The Medieval Reader that this seemed a natural follow-up. The last fifty or so pages of monk wonks debating the nature of free will I could have did without. Still, it was not as difficult reading as the vivisection of a dog described in detail by Andreas Vesalius.

I enjoyed the rest. One bit is ready for treatment by Monty Python. In The Perfect Gentleman, Giovanni della Casa seeks to lay down the guideline for the Medieval man who gives a damn. In these pre-plumbing days that includes knowing how to handle stink"

... when a man chances to see, as he passes the way (as many times it happens) a loathsome thing that will make a man to cast his stomach, to turn unto the company and show it them. And much worse I like it, to reach some stinking thing unto a man to smell unto it, as it is many a man’s fashion to do with importunate means, yes, thrusting it unto their nose, saying, “Foh, see I pray you, how this does stink,” where they should rather say, "Smell not unto it, for it has an ill scent ”

As a music enthusiast, I can appreciate this from "Music and the Courtier" from Baldassare Castiglione:

Do you not then deprive our Courtier of music, which does not only make sweet the minds of men, but also many times wild beasts tame, and whoso savours it not, a man may assuredly think him not to be well in his wits

While I have read this before, I am still awed by the oversharing and anatomical confusion of Girolamo Cardano in On Himself and His Life.

...I have discovered, by experience, that I cannot be long without bodily pain, for if once that circumstance arises, a certain mental anguish overcomes me, so grievous that nothing could be more distressing Bodily pain, or the cause of bodily distress in which there is no disgrace—is but a minor evil Accordingly I have hit upon a plan of biting my lips, of twisting my fingers, of pinching the skin of the tender muscles of my left arm, until the tears come Under the protection of this self-chastisement I have without disgracing myself I am by nature afraid of high places, even though they are extensive, also of places where there is any report of mad dogs having been seen. At times I have been tormented by a tragic passion
so heroic that I planned to commit suicide ...

It IS my custom to remain m bed ten hours, and, if I am well and of fair and proper strength, to sleep eight hours, in periods of ill health I can sleep but five hours I arise at the second hour of the day insomnia troubles me, I get up, walk around the bed, and count to a thousand many times I also diet, cutting down on my food by more than half At such times make small use of medication beyond a little poplar ointment or bear’s grease or oil of water lilies. With this I anoint seventeen places the thighs, the soles o my feet, the cervix, the elbows, the wrists, the temples, the regions of the jugular, heart, and liver, and last of all my upper lip...

Cardano was not the only one prescribing. Ambroise Paré in A Surgeon in the Field conjured up a plaster for gunshot wounds:

...I had not yet seen wounds made by gunshot at the first dressing It is true I had read in John de Vigo, m the first book of wounds m general, the eighth chapter, that wounds made by fire did participate of venomosity, by reason of the powder, and for their cure commands to cauterize them with oil of elders scalding hot, in which should be mingled a little treacle And not to fail, before I would apply of the said oil, knowing that such a thing might bring to the patient great pain, I was willing to know first, before I applied it, how the other surgeons did for the first
dressing, which was to apply the said oil the hottest that was possible into the wounds, with tents and setons, insomuch that I took courage to do as they did At last I wanted oil and was constrained instead thereof to apply a digestive of yolks of eggs, oil of roses, and turpentine...

While I am no painter myself, I enjoyed reading from teh Bob Ross of the 17th Century Karel Van Mander in On Landscape Painting:

One should only stipple the smallest tree trunks. Yet before we hasten on to our trees m the foreground, let us climb a way up the steep cliffs, the s moistened with wet lips by the drifting clouds which wash their highest summits In general, their colour is light grey, and often they raise their bare peaks out of the midst of a dense forest of fir trees.

See how the stones hang like icicles on the rocks irregular and green with moss, in this waterfall and how the water rushes drunkenly through the twisting paths helter-skelter until it falls below, now you wise serpents of art, see how these mastic trees grow here an how strangely they lie! Who could dream of such a thing!

[Niall O'Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true feast of a book, although not without a flaw or two. Given so much content, it seems churlish to ask for more context. Yes, I should know my history far better, and this does serve as an incentive to find out more, but often I longed to long more about the piece I was writing. Sometimes too, the actual substance of an argument being presented is removed, presumably for space. I understand you can't have the full text of everything, but what we end up with is bookending text that, while pretty, is rather empty.
The main issue though is the huge bias towards male authors. As far as I can see there are only two female writers included. I simply cannot believe the editors could not find works by women of the era. Certainly some pieces, such as the two by vain windbag Leon Alberti, could be sacrificed to allow a more representative selection. It's a shame. Such a diverse selection, while already rich, would benefit hugely from a woman's perspective.
All in all though, what this amazing collection does is to highlight how little things have changed. It is clear the hopes, troubles, and solutions that preoccupy us today, are the same, or similar to, those that motivated so many back then. It's a useful and sobering vision of a key time in Western history.

[Joslin]

Read all but a couple pages. Some very boring, some very interesting stuff! Glad to be finished with it though. But I do love anthology books where the editors bring together key texts that other wise would be buried under mountains of content irrelevant to your interests. Makes research so much easier.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection!

[1.1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the subject interests you at all, this book is incredible, at worst a pretty good find, or redundant. Still, a complete reading is an ambitious and informative project, though I suspect most readers will seek out pieces that speak to them. It took me a couple of months to get through, but in the interim I got a lot of other assorted reading finished, having something nice to fall back on whenever I felt aimless but willing to read. Nevertheless – a fine collection full of big names.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays written by people who were living at the time of the Renaissance. The Renaissance took a different form in each European country from Germany to Spain, depending on their various religions and forms of government.

[Lettie Laferriere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a class at WSU.