Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

For centuries, people have looked back at the Renaissance and seen it as an epochal cultural turn that marks the boundaries between the Middle Ages and modernity. Today, however, some historians dislike the term, on the grounds that it implies a dearth of invention or any transformations in thought during the centuries that preceded it. Others still have decided to co-opt and dilute the term “Renaissance” by applying it to earlier moments in the Middle Ages; we have already encountered the “twelfth-century renaissance” on our journey to this point (see chapter 11). So be it. The fact remains that whether we like the term “Renaissance” or not, it would be a brave or foolish person who denied that the fifteenth century in particular saw a groundswell of cultural and intellectual endeavor, which produced some of the most famous works of art and literature in human history, under the patronage of magnificent, if often rather grubby, customers.