The Battle of Grunwald (July 15, 1410), by Jan Matejko, 1878 / National Museum in Warsaw, Poland
Lecture by Lisa M. Lane / 10.09.2016
Professor of History
MiraCosta College
The Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages can create confusion among historians of Europe, because the dates (1350-1500) are the same as those of the Italian Renaissance. Although Italy began to recover from the effects of poor climate and plague by about 1400 (the date 1350 is only because of Petrarch), northern Europe continued in a mire of mud and pestilence for quite a while.
Climate Change and Black Death
Hunters in the Snow, by Peter Brueghel, 1565 / Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Beginning around 1300, there was a global climate change that affected not only Europe but all of Eurasia and Africa, and possibly the Americas too.The weather gradually became colder, wetter, and cloudier. Crops which had flourished before did poorly in the new conditions, and agricultural production declined. Famine resulted. Eventually the “Little Ice Age” would lead to advances in agricultural technology, but at the beginning people starved and there was little relief. Roads were made of dirt, and were often too muddy to get food by wagon to the hardest hit areas. This painting by Pieter Breughel, Hunters in the Snow, shows a common sight.
Starvation and poor climate got the better of people’s immune systems. If you went back in a time machine to 1340, you would notice that almost everyone seemed to have a head cold or upper respiratory infection. Weakened immune systems throughout Europe made conditions ripe for the form of plague that would be called the Black Death.
Wikimedia Commons
The bubonic plague was a disease already known in Central Asia. It was deadly, killing the infected person in a few days, but it was not highly contagious. Contact with the blood or pus of an infected person was necessary in order to contract plague. The bacillus that caused plague was carried by a particular flea that liked black rats. These black rats were highly sociable, and liked to tag along on caravan rides from Central Asia to the Mediterranean, eating grain out of sacks and sleeping in folds of the tents. They were also happy on ships, eating grain in the hold and running up and down the rigging. A bunch of happy black rats got off the boat in Italy around 1347 and made themselves at home. The black rat loved the crowded, unsanitary conditions of 14th century housing: close quarters, thatched roofs. They carried the infected fleas, which moved onto people after they killed their host rat.
What should have happened in 1347 was that the fleas should have given some poor Italians the plague by biting them. Society would have isolated these people to prevent infection. The people with plague would have died, and the spread would be slow. But instead, the plague spread like wildfire. Why?
Because, as I mentioned, the human hosts had weakened immune systems, and permanent upper respiratory infections. Instead of staying in the blood and only killing the host, the plague got into the lungs and was communicated through coughing and sneezing. The Black Death wasn’t just bubonic plague; it was pneumonic plague that spread as quickly as a head cold. The continuing poor climate in northern Europe exacerbated these conditions. By 1348 the Black Death was in England, in a very virulent form. A person was sneezed on one day, and noticed a boil appearing in his armpit or groin a few days later. This boil contained infected pus, which then went through the bloodstream, causing death in less than three days. Enlightened healers tried to lance the boils to drain out the pus. Some people recovered from this procedure and were cured; most died of the superinfection from unclean lancing knives.
What was particularly insidious about the plague was that it spared no one. It killed off one-third to one-half the population, and only those who had survived the disease once were immune to it. Children and the elderly were hit worse, and there was no maternal immunity for newborns. After the initial hit in 1348, the plague returned various times, the worst in London in the 1660s. Since no one knew about bacillus and fleas and rats, there were no rat-killing expeditions; in fact, the black rat did very well in the crowded towns of England and Europe. It wasn’t until the black rat’s feeding area was taken over by the brown rat that the plague ceased around 1750. The brown rat was not so social, and did not attract the same type of flea. Humans, of course, prided themselves that their better science and hygiene got rid of the plague. It’s the fields of climate history and biological history that give us the rodents’ side of the story.
The human side is best seen in literature. Giovanni Boccaccio witnessed the plague come through Italy firsthand, and described people’s reactions:
Boccaccio: The Decameron (c. 1350)
I say, then, that it was the year of the bountiful Incarnation of The Son of God, 1348. The mortal pestilence then arrived in the excellent city of Florence, which surpasses every other Italian city to nobility. Whether through the operations of the heavenly bodies, or sent upon us mortals through the our wicked deeds by the just wrath of God for our correction, the plague had begun some years before in Eastern countries. It carried off uncounted numbers of inhabitants, and kept moving without cease from place to place. It spread in piteous fashion towards the West. No wisdom or human foresight worked against it. The city had been cleaned of much filth by officials delegated to the task. Sick persons were forbidden entrance, and many laws were passed for the safeguarding of health…. Almost at the beginning of the spring of that year, the plague horribly began to reveal, in astounding fashion, its painful effects.
It did not work as it had in the East, where anyone who bled from the nose had a manifest sign of inevitable death. But in its early states both men and women acquired certain swellings, either in the groin or under the armpits. Some of these swellings reached the size of a common apple, and others were as big as an egg, some more and some less. The common people called them plague-boils. From these two parts of the body, the deadly swellings began in a short time to appear and to reach indifferently every part of the body. Then, the appearance of the disease began to change into black or livid blotches, which showed up in many on the arms or thighs and in every other part of the body. On some they were large and few, on others small and numerous. And just as the swellings had been at first and still were an infallible indication of approaching death, so also were these blotches to whomever they touched. In the cure of these illnesses, neither the advice of a doctor nor the power of any medicine appeared to help and to do any good. Perhaps the nature of the malady did-not allow it; perhaps the ignorance of the physicians (of whom, besides those trained, the number had grown very large both of women and of men who were completely without medical instruction) did not know whence it arose, and consequently did not take required action against it. Not only did very few recover, but almost everyone died within the third day from the appearance of these symptoms, some sooner an some later, and most without any fever or other complication. This plague was of greater virulence, because by contact with those sick from it, it infected the healthy, not otherwise than fire does, when it is brought very close to dry or oily material.
The evil is still greater than this. Not only conversation and contact with the sick carried the illness to the healthy and was cause of their common death. But even to handle the clothing or other things touched or used by the sick seem to carry with it that same disease for those who came into contact with them….
Such events and many others similar to them or even worse conjured up in those who remained healthy diverse fears and imaginings. Almost all were inclined to a very cruel purpose, that is, to shun and to flee the sick and their belongings. By so behaving, each believed that he would gain safety for himself. Some persons advised that a moderate manner of living, and the avoidance of all excesses, greatly strengthened the resistance to this danger. Seeking out companions, such persons lived apart from other men. They closed and locked themselves into those houses where no sick person was found. To live better, they consumed in modest quantities the most delicate foods and the best wines, and avoided all sexual activity. They did not let themselves speak to anyone, nor did they wish to hear any news from the outside, concerning death or the sick. They lived amid music and those pleasures which they were able to obtain.
Others were of a contrary opinion. They affirmed that heavy drinking and enjoyment. making the rounds with singing and good cheer, the satisfaction of the appetite with everything one could, and the laughing and joking which derived from this, were the most effective medicine for this great evil. As they recommended, so they put into practice, according to their ability. Night and day, they went now to that tavern and now to another, drinking without moderation or measure…. With this inhuman intent, they continuously avoided the sick with all their power.
Many others held a middle course between the two mentioned above. Not restraining themselves in their diet as much as the first group, nor letting themselves go in drinking and other excesses as the second, they satisfied their appetites sufficiently. They did not go into seclusion but went about carrying flowers, fragrant herbs, and various spices which they often held to their noses, believing it good to comfort the brain with such odors since the air was heavy with the stench of dead bodies, illness and pungent medicines. Others had harsher but perhaps safer ideas. They said that against plagues no medicine was better than or even equal to simple flight. Moved by this reasoning and giving heed to nothing but themselves, many men and women abandoned their own city, their houses and homes, their relatives and belongings in search of their own country places or those of others. Just as if the wrath of God, in order to punish the iniquity of men with the plague, could not pursue them, but would only oppress those within the city walls! They were apparently convinced that no one should remain in the city, and that its last hour had struck.
Although these people of various opinions did not all die, neither did they all live. In fact, many in each group and in every place became ill, but having given example to those who were still well, they in turn were abandoned and left to perish.
We have said enough of these facts: that one townsman shuns another; that almost no one cares for his neighbor; that relatives rarely or never exchange visits, and never do they get too close. The calamity had instilled such terror in the hearts of men and women that brother abandoned brother, uncle nephew, brother sister, and often wives left their husbands. Even more extraordinary, unbelievable even, fathers and mothers shunned their children, neither visiting them nor helping them, as though they were not their very own.
From such abandonment of the sick. . .and from the scarcity of servants arose an almost unheard-of custom. Once she became ill, no woman, however attractive lovely or well-born, minded having as her servant a man, young or old. To him without any shame she exhibited any part of her body as sickness required, as if to another woman. This explains why those who were cured were less modest than formerly. A further consequence is that many died for want of help who might still be living. The fact that the ill could not avail themselves of services as well as the virulence of the plague account for the multitude who died in the city by day and by night. It was dreadful to hear tell of it, and likewise to see it. Out of necessity, therefore, there were born among the survivors customs contrary to the old ways of the townspeople….
Countless times, it happened that two priests going forth with a cross to bury someone were joined by three or four biers carried behind by bearers, so that whereas the priests thought they had one corpse to bury, they found themselves with six, eight, or even more. Nor were these dead honored with tears, candles or mourners. It had come to such a pass that men who died were shown no more concern than dead goats today.
Every hour of every day there was such a rush to carry The huge number of corpses that there was not enough blessed burial ground, especially with the usual custom of giving each body its own place. So when the ground was filled, they made huge trenches in every churchyard, in which they stacked hundreds of bodies in layers like goods stowed in the hold of a ship, covering them with a bit of earth until the bodies reached the very top.
And so I won’t go on searching out every detail of our city’s miseries, but while such hard times prevailed, the surrounding countryside was spared nothing. There, in the scattered villages (not to speak of the castles which were like miniature cities) and across the fields, the wretched and impoverished peasants and their families died without any medical aid or help from servants, not like men but like beasts, on the roads, on their farms, and about the houses by day and by night. For this reason, just like the townspeople, they became lax in their ways and neglected their chores as if they expected death that very day. They became positively ingenious, not in producing future yields of crops and beasts, but in ways of consuming what they already possessed. The oxen, the asses, sheep, goats, pigs and fowl and even the dogs so faithful to man, were driven from the houses, and roamed about the fields where the abandoned wheat grew uncut and unharvested. Almost as if they were rational, many animals having eaten well by day returned filled at night to their houses without any shepherding.
Peasant Revolts
The Peasants are Revolting, 1381 / Lisa M. Lane, MiraCosta College
With about half the population dead, social conditions changed. There were labor shortages everywhere, in towns and on manor estates. There weren’t enough people to do the work, so workers were worth more. The result was an economic phenomenon known as rising expectations. Let’s say you know you’re about to get a raise in wages at work. You plan for this increase; you will be richer, able to buy more things. Then your raise comes, and you find that the cost of living has increased so much that you are not richer at all, or that your raise is far less than you expected. Your expectations have been dashed.
The same thing happened to peasants. Essentially, the Black Death marked the end of the manorial system. With half the peasants dead, and often half the lord’s household, it was impossible to hold peasants to the land if they could get a better deal elsewhere. And they could, because every surviving lord needed agricultural labor or they couldn’t make any income from the land. The aristocracy was completely dependent on the peasants. The same situation existed in towns, where the guild system was hit by the deaths of both members and consumers. Labor was at a premium, so peasants and workers had rising expectations. They felt they could name their price.
Legislation like the Statute of Laborers of 1351 in England were designed to protect the elites, and the economy, by not allowing people to pay more for labor. It was a wage freeze, trying to hold all wages to pre-plague levels. With their expectations dashed, many peasants rebelled. Large groups of angry peasants would raid the manor house, raping the noble woman and her daughters and killing the lord. They would take goods from the house and run off. It was class warfare, and it took a long time to gather enough knightly retainers together to put down a revolt. Peasants with land could do very well in this climate, since prices for their agricultural goods increased, but landless peasants found rebellion to be a good outlet for their frustration. Taxes designed to make up for the loss of wealth also set off violence, as in the many revolts of peasants in the countryside.
Hundred Years’ War
Edward III, detail from his bronze effigy / Westminster Abbey, London
Frustrated nobles could join the Hundred Years’ War as an outlet for violence. The war was begun because of the claims of King Edward III. Edward III had images of chivalric times, creating the Order of the Garter in an effort to imitate King Arthur’s Round Table of knights. His military exploits were expensive, leading to large sums being borrowed from Italian banks and necessitating at one point the pawning of the crown jewels. I find his claim to the throne of France ironic, since he was one of the first English kings to actually speak English instead of Norman French.
His claim to the throne was through his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair. Essentially, Edward was breaking a feudal tie, since the kings of England were supposed to be vassals of the French crown, at least in their position as dukes of Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine. There are two main phases of the Hundred Years War (which was more than a hundred years because it went off and on, and people lost count). The first phase was 1337-1417, in which the English were victorious. The second was from 1417, when Henry V invaded Normandy, to 1453 when the English were defeated.
Sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, c.1500 / Wikimedia Commons
The Battle of Crècy was part of the first stage. The English were vastly outnumbered, with only 12,000 of them facing 36,000 French. But note that of the 12,000 English, 7,000 were archers. Crècy has always been used to demonstrate one crucial military event: the victory of the English longbow over the French crossbow. The crossbow could shoot a deadly metal arrow 200 yards, and 2-5 arrows per minute could be fired. It was easy to aim and anyone could use it. The longbow, on the other hand, required highly trained soldiers. But it could fire 10 arrows per minute at a range of 250-300 yards, outdistancing the crossbow. The English shot 500,000 arrows at Crècy, and only lost several hundred men to the over 5,000 men lost to the French.
An illustration of an “eruptor,” a proto-cannon. The cannon was capable of firing proto-shells, cast-iron bombs filled with gunpowder. / From the 14th-century Ming Dynasty book Huolongjing, from Science and Civilisation in China, by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji
The cannon was also a fairly new innovation for the war. Although it was not very accurate, the noise and smoke did a great job of scaring the horses. Occasionally a cannon ball would hit a besieged castle with fairly good impact, making it easier to take the castle. But this war was very difficult to fight, if for no other reason than the weather. Contemporary pictures, and several feature films, show the battles taking place in the sunshine. Truth is, most fighting occurred in the mud and rain of the late 14th century gloom. See Kenneth Branaugh’s feature film Henry V for a movie with a more accurate portrayal of conditions.
The Hundred Years’ War also gives us a bit of gesturatory legend. The story goes that during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French said they would cut off the draw finger of the English archers when they captured them. At the end of the battle, the victorious English archers stuck up their draw fingers (it’s the middle finger) and waved them at the French. It’s been a spectacular taunting gesture to this day.
Decline of Church Prestige
The Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes), Avignon, France / Photo by Jean-Marc Rosier, Wikimedia Commons
The center of the medieval Christian church was Rome. At least, it was supposed to be Rome. For centuries, Rome had the distinction of being the seat of the pope. The city had been the site of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. Its place had been defended by the papacy, which had long claimed that the site represented the rock upon which St. Peter had said he would build his church. But in 1307, Pope Clement V decided to move his entire court to Avignon in southern France because the violence in the city of Rome was getting too close to home.
This move was called, by critics, the “Babylonian Captivity” of the church. The name referred to the time under the Babylonian Empire when elite Jews were held captive in Babylon so they wouldn’t foment Jewish rebellion in Palestine. The implication was that the papacy was being held captive, of its own desire, to the king of France. Indeed, the pope had French cardinals elected for his new court, although he still left the Italian ones to see to things in Rome. Proponents called it the Avignon Papacy. This situation persisted until 1377, when a new pope decided to return the court to Rome. Unfortunately, having packed up everything, he then died.
The cardinals in Avignon elected a new pope and planned to stay there. The cardinals in Rome elected a new pope there. Each pope excommunicated the other (with much finger-pointing and denunciations of “the anti-Christ”) and there were two popes. In terms of orthodoxy, it’s impossible to have two popes. The pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, the ultimate authority for all issues in Christendom; there can only be one. A council of cardinals tried to solve the problem by electing a new pope and having the other two step down. The other two didn’t step down and for a while there were three popes. The Great Schism, as it was called, continued till 1414, when the new Council of Constance did get the (now different) popes to step down and elected a new one.
All this took place at a time of plague and war. Good Christians didn’t know where to turn, especially since half the clergy were dead of the plague. Lack of clergy meant no access to sacraments (such as baptism, marriage, confession, last rites). Sacraments instilled grace; without them, the medieval Christian soul was in danger of going to hell. You may recall that under King John, the pope putting England under interdict left people without such services for years, and ultimately forced John to make England a papal fief. The salvation of the soul was a very serious issue in medieval times, and people were highly dependent on the church.
In the Late Middle Ages, if the parish priest in a village died, there was no one to give last rites to the dying. According to orthodoxy, people who didn’t get this sacrament died with “their sins upon their head” and were damned. But what if the people were known to be truly good Christians? How could a good Christian person who died of plague be going to hell, just because no priest was present at her death? Many children were born, and died of the plague without being baptized. Were they going to hell too? What about when there wasno one to hear a confession? Was anyone who ever sinned going to hell because they couldn’t go to confession?
These questions made good Christians confused and anguished. They looked to the church for help, and found a corrupt institution with one, two or three popes in Avignon. The church needed to answer the big question: “why is God punishing us with plague and war?”, but it didn’t have an answer. The combination of the famine, war, plague, and a discredited papacy led to a change in religious feeling all over Europe.
Popular Piety and Mysticism
There were two ways to retain faith in God in these times of crisis: mechanical piety and mysticism. Mechanical piety was what the church itself encouraged. Since priests could not explain the crisis, they assumed that God’s flock had become sinful and wasn’t praying enough. People were encouraged to count rosary and pray a lot, all day if necessary. This continual praying became mechanical; after a while the words themselves were thought of as magical, and any real feeling in them was gone.
Some people felt that the church just wasn’t there for them religiously anymore, and became mystical in their practices. Some famous mystics of the time (such as Joan of Arc in France) felt that God talked directly to them. As with most historical topics that seem to be about just one thing (in this case, religion), Joan’s case is also about other issues. Joan was a political threat because she led troops in favor of the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne, against the English in the Hundred Years War. She was also a gender threat, because the saints told her to wear men’s clothes.
Joan of Arc’s Trial (1431)
From the Interrogation
Jeanne had been questioned as follows, touching sundry points on which she did, as had been seen, ask delay for reply:
“Will you refer yourself to the judgment of the Church on earth for all you have said or done, be it good or bad? Especially will you refer to the Church the cases, crimes, and offenses which are imputed to you and everything which touches on this Trial?”
“On all that I am asked I will refer to the Church Militant, provided they do not command anything impossible. And I hold as a thing impossible to declare that my actions and my words and all that I have answered on the subject of my visions and revelations I have not done and said by the order of God: this, I will not declare for anything in the world. And that which God had made me do, had commanded or shall command, I will not fail to do for any man alive. It would be impossible for me to revoke it. And in case the Church should wish me to do anything contrary to the command which has been given me of God, I will not consent to it, whatever it may be.”
“If the Church Militant tells you that your revelations are illusions, or diabolical things, will you defer to the Church?”
“I will defer to God, Whose Commandment I always do. I know well that that which is contained in my Case has come to me by the Commandment of God; what I affirm in the Case is, that I have acted by the order of God: it is impossible for me to say otherwise. In case the Church should prescribe the contrary, I should not refer to any one in the world, but to God alone, Whose Commandment I always follow.”
“Do you not then believe you are subject to the Church of God which is on earth, that is to say to our Lord the Pope, to the Cardinals, the Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church?”
“Yes, I believe myself to be subject to them; but God must be served first.”
“Have you then command from your Voices not to submit yourself to the Church Militant, which is on earth, nor to its decision ?”
“I answer nothing from my own head; what I answer is by command of my Voices; they do not order me to disobey the Church, but God must be served
first.” . . .
From the Twelve Articles of Accusation
This woman did say and affirm that when she was of the age of thirteen years or thereabouts, she did, with her bodily eyes, see Saint Michael come to comfort her, and from time to time also Saint Gabriel ; that both the one and the other appeared to her in bodily form. Sometimes also she had seen a great multitude of Angels; since then, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret have shown themselves to her in bodily form ; every day she sees these two Saints and hears their voices ; she had often kissed and embraced them, and sometimes she had touched them, in a physical and corporeal manner. . . .
Further, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret have ordered this same woman, by the command of God, to take and to wear a man’s dress, which she had borne and did still bear, persisting in obeying this order, to the extent that she said she would rather die than give up this dress, adding that she will only abandon it by the express order of God. . . .
The said woman had gone so far, under the inspiration of these two Saints, that without the knowledge and against the will of her parents, at the age of seventeen, she did quit the paternal roof and joined herself to a great troop of soldiers, with whom she lived night and day, having never had, or at least very rarely, another woman with her. . . .
The said Saints have revealed to this woman that she will obtain the glory of the blessed and will gain the salvation of her soul if she did preserve the virginity which she vowed to these Saints the first time she saw and recognized them. As a result of this revelation, she did affirm that she is as assured of her salvation as if, now and in fact, she were already in the Kingdom of Heaven. . . .
The same woman did say and confess that if the Church wished that she should do anything contrary to the order she did pretend to have received from God, she would not consent, whatsoever it might be. She did affirm that she knows well, that all contained in her Trial has come to her by the order of God, and it would be impossible for her to do contrary to what she did. Thereupon she did not wish to refer to the decision of the Church Militant, nor to any one, whoever it be in the world, but to God alone, Our Lord, Whose commands she did always execute, above all in what did concern her revelations, and in what she did in consequence. This answer and all the others are not from her own head, she said, but she had made and given them by order of her Voices and revelations: she did persist [in this], although by the Judges and others of the Assessors, the Article of Faith, ‘The Church, One, Holy, Catholic,’ had often been recalled to her, and it had often been shown to her that all the faithful are bound to obey the Church Militant and to submit to it their words and actions above all in matters of faith and in all which concerns sacred Doctrine and Ecclesiastical sanction.
From the Second Adjudication, after Joan had recanted and relapsed
“Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret ?”
“Yes, I believe it, and that they come from God.”
“Tell us the truth on the subject of this crown which is mentioned in your Trial.”
“In everything, I told you the truth about it in my Trial, as well as I know.”
“On the scaffold, at the moment of your abjuration, you did admit before us, your Judges, and before many others, in presence of all the people, that you
had untruthfully boasted your Voices to be Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.”
“I did not intend so to do or say. I did not intend to deny my apparitions that is to say, that they were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret; what I said was from fear of the fire: I revoked nothing that was not against the truth. I would rather do penance once for all – that is die – than endure any longer the suffering of a prison. I have done nothing against God or the Faith, in spite of all they have made me revoke. What was in the schedule of abjuration I did not understand. I did not intend to revoke anything except according to God’s good pleasure. If the Judges wish, I will resume a woman’s dress ; for the rest, I can do no more.”
The Sentence
At all times when the poisoned virus of heresy attaches itself with persistence to a member of the Church and transforms him into a member of Satan, extreme care should be taken to watch that the horrible contagion of this pernicious leprosy do not gain other parts of the mystic Body of Christ. The decisions of the holy Fathers have willed that hardened heretics should be separated from the midst of the Just, so that to the great peril of others this homicidal viper should not be warmed in the bosom of pious Mother Church. . . .
[Y]ou have been duly and sufficiently warned to amend, to correct thyself and to submit to the disposal, decision, and correction of Holy Mother Church, which you have not willed, and have always obstinately refused to do, having even expressly and many times refused to submit thyself to our Lord the Pope and to the General Council; for these causes, as hardened and obstinate in thy crimes, excesses and errors, WE DECLARE THEE OF RIGHT EXCOMMUNICATE AND HERETIC; and after your errors have been destroyed in a public preaching, We declare that you must be abandoned and that We do abandon thee to the secular authority, as a member of Satan, separate from the Church, infected with the leprosy of heresy, in order that you may not corrupt also the other members of Christ; praying this same power, that, as concerns death and the mutilation of the limbs, it may be pleased to moderate its judgment; and if true signs of penitence should appear in thee, that the Sacrament of Penance may be administered to thee.
Technically, many of these practices Joan represents (especially talking directly to God) were heretical. But outside of an obvious threat like leading troops, the clergy was in no position to fight it. As with earlier heresies, the Church was forced to adapt. Just as the Church had persecuted Abelard only to laud Aquinas as a saint, they looked on as Joan of Arc was killed but then elevated Catherine of Siena to not only saintly status, but Doctor of the Church status. Her explanation of mysticism in the service of orthodoxy is sampled here:
Catherine of Siena: Dialog (1370)
The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her. This she does because knowledge must precede love, and only when she has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth. But, in no way, does the creature receive such a taste of the truth, or so brilliant a light therefrom, as by means of humble and continuous prayer, founded on knowledge of herself and of God; because prayer, exercising her in the above way, unites with God the soul that follows the footprints of Christ Crucified, and thus, by desire and affection, and union of love, makes her another Himself. Christ would seem to have meant this, when He said: To him who will love Me and will observe My commandment, will I manifest Myself; and he shall be one thing with Me and I with him. In several places we find similar words, by which we can see that it is, indeed, through the effect of love, that the soul becomes another Himself. That this may be seen more clearly, I will mention what I remember having heard from a handmaid of God, namely, that, when she was lifted up in prayer, with great elevation of mind, God was not wont to conceal, from the eye of her intellect, the love which He had for His servants, but rather to manifest it; and, that among other things, He used to say: “Open the eye of your intellect, and gaze into Me, and you shall see the beauty of My rational creature. And look at those creatures who, among the beauties which I have given to the soul, creating her in My image and similitude, are clothed with the nuptial garment (that is, the garment of love), adorned with many virtues, by which they are united with Me through love. And yet I tell you, if you should ask Me, who these are, I should reply” (said the sweet and amorous Word of God) “they are another Myself, inasmuch as they have lost and denied their own will, and are clothed with Mine, are united to Mine, are conformed to Mine.” It is therefore true, indeed, that the soul unites herself with God by the affection of love.
So, that soul, wishing to know and follow the truth more manfully, and lifting her desires first for herself — for she considered that a soul could not be of use, whether in doctrine, example, or prayer, to her neighbor, if she did not first profit herself, that is, if she did not acquire virtue in herself — addressed four requests to the Supreme and Eternal Father. The first was for herself; the second for the reformation of the Holy Church; the third a general prayer for the whole world, and in particular for the peace of Christians who rebel, with much lewdness and persecution, against the Holy Church; in the fourth and last, she besought the Divine Providence to provide for things in general, and in particular, for a certain case with which she was concerned.
Eventually, the directness of mysticism would pave the way for the Reformation. Within a century, there would be no universal Christian church.
Philosophy and Artistic Trends
William of Ockham depicted on a stained glass window at a church in Surrey, England / Wikimedia Commons
To understand the changes in philosophy taking place in the Late Middle Ages, we should review the state of scholasticism up to this point. You may recall that medieval universities wanted to use logic and reason to analyze theology, and that this was controversial. At first, back in the 12th century, the church had considered combining faith (meaning all matters pertaining to God, including Scripture and the writings of the church fathers) and reason (meaning the logic of Aristotle and the use of the mind to create objectivity) to be unacceptable (poor Peter Abelard)
But the new universities had been able to push their curriculum in the 13th century, when the expansion of towns brought in new heretical ideas. The rational explaining of theological matters was accepted as both a teaching technique for masters of theology, and as a way to “reason” urban people into returning to church orthodoxy. This combination of faith and reason into a method is called several things: scholasticism, the Thomistic Synthesis (after St. Thomas Aquinas), the Gothic Synthesis. Beginning with the crisis of the early 14th century, however, such a synthesis of faith and reason fell into disfavor among religious philosophers.
Why separate faith and reason again? My interpretation is that the crisis of famine, and later plague, war, and the lack of moral authority in the church, led to this change. What was happening was not “reasonable”; the crisis could not be explained in terms of reason. The big question was “why is God punishing us?” and no one had a reasonable answer. That was a threat to the church and to Christianity in general. How does one rationally explain the ravages of the late 14th century, without coming up with something horrible like “God doesn’t care about us”? If faith in God and in Christianity was to be retained, some felt, it had to be separated from the necessity of explaining spiritual events (such as acts of God) in rational terms.
The only solution was to separate the areas of faith and reason again, to destroy the medieval scholastic synthesis by making faith supreme. William of Ockham, for example, made an attempt to save faith from the ravages of reason. Even before the plague hit England, Ockham separated the two, claiming that matters of faith are not subject to rational examination. Ironically, in trying to save faith, Ockham actually paved the way for modern science. If faith was in its own camp, then so was reason. It should therefore be possible to examine things which are not issues of faith using only ones reason. That’s science, and there are many hints of the upcoming Scientific Revolution.
The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel / British Library, London
Late medieval art, however, went into an area that did not rely on past designs. Artistic expression after the plague hit focused on death. It became morbid. The image of Jesus is a good example. Before the 14th century, Jesus was often portrayed either “in majesty” (as a middle-aged man on a throne) or as a happy baby. Beginning in the 14th century, the emphasis was on the crucifixion, with Jesus as an anorectic, tormented figure. Hans Holbein the Younger created a collection of popular woodcuts called The Dance of Death which portrayed the new style.
Literature was also affected by the despair and great changes of the age. You can see the cynicism in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a series of vignettes about individuals going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to the tomb of St. Thomas Becket. Characters you would expect to be virtuous are not, and others you would expect to be evil are good. The satirical poem Piers Plowman has a character who complains of the one thing many people hoped they would attain: old age.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was invented by Jacob Burckhardt in his book “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy” (1860). I know that seems like a funny thing to say, but in his book about the wonderfulness of the Renaissance, he came up with the idea of this as a separate era. I’ve mentioned that we are chronologically challenged here, because the Late Middle Ages have pretty much the same dates (1300-1500) as the Renaissance (1350-1500).
But the other thing that Burckhardt did, to which I take much offence, is to invent the Middle Ages. Burckhardt saw the classical past of Greece and Rome as the pinnacle of human existence, surpassed only by the era where those ideas were revived. Everything that came in between, from the “fall of Rome” (that is, the migration of the Germanic tribes into the West) to Petrarch’s letters, was just in the “middle”. He saw this huge era (about 500-1350) as being a morass of superstition, Church control, and groupthink. In this class, of course, we know different — the Middle Ages was a time of community, innovation, artistic advancement, economic expansion, and technological miracles (at least up until the Black Death). How could he diss the era of the cathedral, the fulling mill, and the translation of Aristotle?
What Burckhardt emphasized, and what we emphasize, is the culture that developed first in Italy and later spread northward. The Renaissance, up to a point, is where things become a little more modern.
Classicism and Humanism
After the plague swept through Europe, the southern regions experienced a little bit of warming and a more immediate recovery than the north. This may have been because of the well-draining soil and the exposure to the warmer Mediterranean, but it meant that normalcy returned to Italy sooner than elsewhere. Italy at this time was controlled by competing city-states, each run by a prominent merchant family.
Most historians use Petrarch to present the beginning of the Renaissance. Petrarch wrote letters to dead people, particularly Roman men of letters like Cicero and Virgil. He wrote about how awful his own era was, how marked by barbarism and superstition. He longed for the classical past, where men achieved great deeds as individuals (in fact, he may have been longing for virtus, which Machiavelli would change to virtú).
Classicism, as with Petrarch, was key to the origins of the Renaissance. Classicists focused on the recovery of works written in ancient Greek and Roman times. Petrarch collected Greek and Roman scrolls, and scholars like Poggio Brocciolini travelled around Europe visiting monasteries to find hidden works. This wasn’t easy, as you can see in the following video.
But there was more to the Renaissance thought than just recovering classical works. First, those works weren’t always in their original form – they had often been copied and recopied, usually in the centers of Islamic learning in Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. There the knowledge, particularly in the scientific works, had been added to. So much of the science that came “back” into Europe was significantly enhanced, not just translated.
And it wasn’t just a matter of recovering esoteric ideas about philosophy, either. Classicism was the beginning, but it evolved into humanism. The information being recovered had at its heart a pre-Christian method about what people could understand, and what people could accomplish, here and now on earth. The old works predated the dominance of the Roman Church and the communitarianism of feudal life. In classical works, men did great deeds: Pericles of Athens, Julius Caesar of Rome. Medieval Europeans read about accomplished leaders and powerful elites who propounded great ideas and had historical influence.
This reading and discussing of pre-Christian works influenced the worldview of literate people. This was especially true in the Italian city-states, where merchant families began to see their governing and competition within a framework of human endeavor. The leaders of Genoa and Venice saw themselves as the leaders of states and empires.
And it’s hard to determine cause and effect here. Did the Medicis rise to power because they were exposed to the classics? Or did they become commercially powerful and use the humanism that developed from classicism to justify and expand that power?
Certainly what developed was something different, that had nothing to do with just humanism, the belief that man could achieve great things. For the commercial cities of Italy, historians begin referring to “civic humanism”. Civic humanism combines the belief in human endeavor with loyalty to your city-state. Venetians adopted St Mark as their patron and saw Venice as the finest place in the world. Florentine families patronized great artists and architects to show their wealth and make their city beautiful. Without all this money, there would not have been a Renaissance in art at all.
Secularism
The big question for historians is: how deep did this humanism go? We tend to see the Renaissance as the origin of two elements we value today: individualism and secularism. Individualism is easy to find in art and in high politics – we know the names of Michaelangelo and Cesare Borgia because they wanted them to be known. But we don’t know the names of humble craftspeople, and the humanism in the great cities was based on your role in the state, not on who you were as a person. Secularism (life apart from religion) also seems obvious in a time of humanism, but is actually hard to find. Most of the great works of art of still of religious subjects. So why do we believe this was a great time for the individual and secular life?
Partly because of Renaissance philosophy, which reached a zenith in Pico della Mirandola. Pico explained that there was a ladder of all creation, with angels at the top and earthly things (rocks, maybe) at the bottom. Man is in between, and he can choose to go up the ladder toward the angels, or down toward the beasts. The choice is not made by God, but by the person. God made the ladder, God put man in the middle, God gave man the choice.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
I once read that Abdala the Muslim, when asked what was most worthy of awe and wonder in this theater of the world, answered, “There is nothing to see more wonderful than man!” Hermes Trismegistus concurs with this opinion: “A great miracle, Asclepius, is man!” However, when I began to consider the reasons for these opinions, all these reasons given for the magnificence of human nature failed to convince me: that man is the intermediary between creatures, close to the gods, master of all the lower creatures, with the sharpness of his senses, the acuity of his reason, and the brilliance of his intelligence the interpreter of nature, the nodal point between eternity and time, and, as the Persians say, the intimate bond or marriage song of the world, just a little lower than angels as David tells us. I concede these are magnificent reasons, but they do not seem to go to the heart of the matter, that is, those reasons which truly claim admiration. For, if these are all the reasons we can come up with, why should we not admire angels more than we do ourselves? After thinking a long time, I have figured out why man is the most fortunate of all creatures and as a result worthy of the highest admiration and earning his rank on the chain of being, a rank to be envied not merely by the beasts but by the stars themselves and by the spiritual natures beyond and above this world. This miracle goes past faith and wonder. And why not? It is for this reason that man is rightfully named a magnificent miracle and a wondrous creation.
What is this rank on the chain of being? God the Father, Supreme Architect of the Universe, built this home, this universe we see all around us, a venerable temple of his godhead, through the sublime laws of his ineffable Mind. The expanse above the heavens he decorated with Intelligences, the spheres of heaven with living, eternal souls. The scabrous and dirty lower worlds he filled with animals of every kind. However, when the work was finished, the Great Artisan desired that there be some creature to think on the plan of his great work, and love its infinite beauty, and stand in awe at its immenseness. Therefore, when all was finished, as Moses and Timaeus tell us, He began to think about the creation of man. But he had no Archetype from which to fashion some new child, nor could he find in his vast treasure-houses anything which He might give to His new son, nor did the universe contain a single place from which the whole of creation might be surveyed. All was perfected, all created things stood in their proper place, the highest things in the highest places, the midmost things in the midmost places, and the lowest things in the lowest places. But God the Father would not fail, exhausted and defeated, in this last creative act. God’s wisdom would not falter for lack of counsel in this need. God’s love would not permit that he whose duty it was to praise God’s creation should be forced to condemn himself as a creation of God.
Finally, the Great Artisan mandated that this creature who would receive nothing proper to himself shall have joint possession of whatever nature had been given to any other creature. He made man a creature of indeterminate and indifferent nature, and, placing him in the middle of the world, said to him “Adam, we give you no fixed place to live, no form that is peculiar to you, nor any function that is yours alone. According to your desires and judgement, you will have and possess whatever place to live, whatever form, and whatever functions you yourself choose. All other things have a limited and fixed nature prescribed and bounded by Our laws. You, with no limit or no bound, may choose for yourself the limits and bounds of your nature. We have placed you at the world’s center so that you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you neither of heavenly nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgement, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine.”
Imagine! The great generosity of God! The happiness of man! To man it is allowed to be whatever he chooses to be! As soon as an animal is born, it brings out of its mother’s womb all that it will ever possess. Spiritual beings from the beginning become what they are to be for all eternity. Man, when he entered life, the Father gave the seeds of every kind and every way of life possible. Whatever seeds each man sows and cultivates will grow and bear him their proper fruit. If these seeds are vegetative, he will be like a plant. If these seeds are sensitive, he will be like an animal. If these seeds are intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, satisfied with no created thing, he removes himself to the center of his own unity, his spiritual soul, united with God, alone in the darkness of God, who is above all things, he will surpass every created thing. Who could not help but admire this great shape-shifter? In fact, how could one admire anything else? . . .
Machiavelli went beyond this, writing a book about the skills necessary to be a powerful prince in Italy. The work is famous for its lack of referral to ethics, morality, God or religion (except to say that a prince should be seen going to church). Even more than Pico, Machiavelli leads us to believe that the Renaissance was a secular time.
Machiavelli: The Prince (1513)
But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain.
It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby their country was ennobled and made famous.
Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.
It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.
If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long–as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy.
To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan [died 3rd c. BC]. This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping.
Holy Trinity, by Masaccio, c.1426-1428 / Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence
To Castiglione, who wrote a gentler guidebook for how to be a good courtier at the court of a prince, what was needed was talent in a wide variety of areas, such as dancing, manners, fencing, writing, scholarship — what it took to be a “Renaissance man”. Again, the focus is clearly on this life, this world, and what an individual needs to achieve success.
And if we combine this with the new painting styles, which set their religious subjects on contemporary streets and with the faces of the people at the time, and which used the new science to obtain perspective, things begin to look more modern.
James Burke on how they did it (explained in a way non-scientists can understand):
And there was even emerging an expectation regarding the education of women, who were often neglected intellectually unless they were in a monastery or convent. In fact, the role of abbess, the head of an abbey of nuns, had been one of the highest vocations for women in the Middle Ages. But as early as the 15th century, arguments were forming for educating women better, at least those of elite status. Here’s Christine de Pisan from her book of 1405:
Christine de Pisan: Book of the City of Ladies (1405)
This book is structured as a dialog between the author and the embodiments of the virtures Reason, Rectitude, and Justice.
“My lady, I see the endless benefits which have accrued to the world through women and nevertheless these men claim that there is no evil which has not come into the world because of them.” “Fair friend,” she answered, “you can see from what I have already said to you that the contrary of what they say is true. For there is no man who could sum up the enormous benefits which have come about through women and which come about every day, and I proved this for you with the examples of the noble ladieswho gave the sciences and arts to the world. But, if what I have salid about the earthly benefits accruing thanks to women is not enough for you, I will tell you about the spiritual ones. Oh, how could any man be so heartless to forget that the door of Paradise was opened to him by a woman? As I told you before, it was opened by the Virgin Mary, and is there anything greater one could ask for than that God was made man? And who can forget the great benefits which mothers bring to their sons and which wives bring to their husbands? I implore them at the very least not to forget theadvantages which touch upon spiritual good. Let us consider the Law of the Jews. If you recall the story of Moses, to whom God gave the written Law of the Jews, you will find that this holy prophet, through whom so much good has come about, was saved from death by a woman, just as I will tell you. . . .”
Following these remarks, I, Christine, spoke, “My lady, I realize that women have accomplished many good things and that even if evil women have done evil, it seems to me, nevertheless, that the benefits accrued and still accruing because of good women — particularly the wise and literary ones and those educated in the natural sciences whom I mentioned above — outweigh the evil. Therefore, I am amazed by the opinion of some men who claim that they do not want their daughters, wives, or kinswomen to be educated because their mores would be ruined as a result.” She responded, “Here you can clearly see that not all opinions of men are based on reason and that these men are wrong. For it must not be presumed that mores necessarily grow worse from knowing the moral sciences, which teach the virtues, indeed, there is not the slightest doubt that moral education amends and ennobles them. How could anyone think or believe that whoever follows good teaching or doctrine is the worse for it? Such an opinion cannot be expressed or maintained. I do not mean that it would be good for a man or a woman to study the art of divination or those fields of learning which are forbidden — for the holy Church did not remove them from common use without good reason — but it should not be believed that women are the worse for knowing what is good.
“Quintus Hortensius, a great rhetorician and consummately skilled orator in Rome, did not share this opinion. He had a daughter, named Hortensia, whom he greatly loved for the subtlety of her wit. He had her learn letters and study the science of rhetoric, which she mastered so thoroughly that she resembled her father Hortensius not only in wit and lively memory but also in her excellent delivery and order of speech — in fact, he surpassed her in nothing. As for the subject discussed above, concerning the good which comes about through women, the benefits realized by this woman and her teaming were, among others, exceptionally remarkable. That is, during the time when Rome was governed by three men, this Hortensia began to support the cause of women and to undertake what no man dared to undertake. There was a question whether certain taxes should be levied on women and on their jewelry during a needy period in Rome. This woman’s eloquence was so compelling that she was listened to, no less readily than her father would have been, and she won her case.
“Similarly, to speak of more recent times, without searching for examples in ancient history, Giovanni Andrea, a solemn law professor in Bologna not quite sixty years ago, was not of the opinion that it was bad for women to be educated. He had a fair and good daughter, named Novella, who was educated in the law to such an advanced degree that when he was occupied by some task and not at leisure to present his lectures to his students, he would send Novella, his daughter, in his place to lecture to the students from his chair. And to prevent her beauty from distracting the concentration of her audience, she had a little curtain drawn in front of her. In this manner she could on occasion supplement and lighten her father’s occupation. He loved her so much that, to commemorate her name, he wrote a book of remarkable lectures on the law which he entitled Novella super Decretalium, after his daughter’s name.
“Thus, not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did. Your father, who was a great scientist and philosopher, did not believe that women were worth less by knowing science; rather, as you know, he took great pleasure from seeing your inclination to learning. The feminine opinion of your mother, however, who wished to keep you busy with spinning and silly girlishness, following the common custom of women, was the major obstacle to your being more involved in the sciences. But just as the proverb already mentioned above says, No one can take away what Nature has given,’your mother could not hinder in you the feeling for the sciences which you, through natural inclination, had nevertheless gathered together in little droplets. I am sure that, on account of these things, you do not think you are worth less but rather that you consider it a great treasure for yourself; and you doubtless have reason to. ” And I, Christine, replied to all of this, “Indeed, my lady, what you say is as true as the Lord’s Prayer.” . . .
“I know another small book in Latin, my lady, called the Secreta mulierum, The Secrets of Women, which discusses the constitution of their natural bodies and especially their great defects.” She replied, “You can see for yourself without further proof, this book was written carelessly and colored by hypocrisy, for if you, have looked at it, you know that it is obviously a treatise composed of lies. Although some say that it was written by Aristotle, it is not believable that such a philosopher could be charged with such contrived lies. For since women can clearly know with proof that certain things which he treats are not at all true, but pure fabrications, they can also conclude that the other details which he handles are outright lies. But don’t you remember that he says in the beginning that some pope — I don’t know which one — excommunicated every man who read the work to a woman or gave it to a woman to read?” “My lady, I remember it well.” “Do you know the malicious reason why this lie was presented as credible to bestial and ignorant men at the beginning of the book?” “No, my lady, not unless you tell me.” “It was done so that women would not know about the book and its contents, because the man who wrote it knew that if women read it or heard it read aloud, they would know it was lies, would contradict it, and make fun of it. With this pretense the author wanted to trick and deceive the men who read it. ” “My lady, I recall that among other things, after he has discussed the impotence and weakness which cause the formation of a feminine body in the womb of the mother, he says that Nature is completely ashamed when she sees that she has formed such a body, as though it were something imperfect.” “But, sweet friend, don’t you see the overweening madness, the irrational blindness which prompt such observations? Is Nature, the chambermaid of God, a greater mistress than her master, almighty God — from whom comes such authority, who, when He willed, took the form of man and women from His thought when it came to His holy will to form Adam from the mud of the ground in the field of Damascus and, once created, brought him into the Terrestrial Paradise which was and is the most worthy place in this world here below? There Adam slept, and God formed the body of woman from one of his ribs, signifying that she should stand at his side as a companion and never lie at his feet like a slave, and also that he should love her as his own flesh. If the Supreme Craftsman was not ashamed to create and form the feminine body, would Nature then have been ashamed? It is the height of folly to say this! Indeed, how was she formed? I don’t know if you have already noted this: she was created in the image of God. How can any mouth dare to slander the vessel which bears such a noble imprint? But some men are foolish enough to think, when they hear that God made man in His image, that this refers to the material body. This was not the case, for God had not yet taken a human body. The soul is meant, the intellectual spirit which lasts eternally Just like the Deity. God created the soul and placed wholly similar souls, equally good and noble in the feminine and in the masculine bodies. . . .”
“My lady, according to what I understand from you, woman is a most noble creature. But even so, Cicero says that a man should never serve any woman and that he who does so debases himself, for no man should ever serve anyone lower than him.” She replied, “The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. And surely he is happy who serves the Virgin, who is above all the angels.” “My lady, one of the Catos — who was such a great orator — said, nevertheless, that if this world were without women, we would converse with the gods.” She replied, “You can now see the foolishness of the man who is considered wise, because, thanks to a woman, man reigns with God. And if anyone would say that man was banished because of Lady Eve, I tell you that he gained more through Mary than he lost through Eve when humanity was conjoined to the Godhead, which would never have taken place if Eve’s misdeed had not occurred. Thus man and woman should be glad for this sin, through which such an honor has come about. For as low as human nature fell through this creature woman, was human nature lifted higher by this same creature. And as for conversing with the gods, as this Cato has said, if there had been no woman, he spoke truer than he knew, for he was a pagan, and among those of this belief, gods were thought to reside in Hell as well as in Heaven, that is, the devils whom they called the gods of Hell — so that it is no lie that these gods would have conversed with men, if Mary had not lived.”
Religious Feeling and Response
I’m afraid I cannot completely buy into secularism as a primary force during the Renaissance, and it’s not just because some of the best artworks feature the Virgin Mary. According to Bill Moyers in his documentary on Florence, the humanist focus caused people to lose their moorings. If God was not a primary force, then what was? Were people really on their own in a world that featured such appealing aspects as plague, war and political power struggles? If man was alone, did that not make him responsible for everything? Moyers talked to author Sidney Alexander:
Not everyone went along with the free-for-all secular ideas either. Girolamo Savonarola was a monk in Florence who was very upset about the total lack of morality he saw everywhere. The wealthy families were engaged in an orgy of consumerism that pulled everyone away from God. He staged Bonfires of the Vanities, where people would bring out their expansive paintings, mirrors, and fabrics and throw them on the fire, vowing to return to a simpler Christianity. In 1494, when the French king overthrew the Medici family, he became the main power in Florence, creating a republic and trying to reform the Church. Eventually the papacy came after him and he was executed as a heretic.
Girolamo Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo, c.1498 / Museo di San Marco, Florence
But his extraordinary popularity during his time attests to the fact that many were uncomfortable with the immorality that seemed inherent in humanism.
Sexuality
Portrait of Veronica Franco, by Domenico Tintoretto, c.1575 / Museum of Fine Art, Venice
How socieities view sex is not only part of how they define morality, but it helps us understand the concerns of society. You may recall how in the Middle Ages the Church had huge penitentials for sexual sins, speaking to the wide variety of activity. As Savanarola saw, the wealth and secularism of the time led to a loosening of sexual mores.
The Renaissance has been called “The Age of Bastards”, because the usual method of birth control was withdrawl and because children were highly valued in the century after the Black Death. The popes of this time, who were certainly supposed to be celibate, had mistresses and children in the papal palace. There were even Church-run brothels for priests and bishops in Rome.
Prostitution was extremely popular. Veronica Franco, a Venetian courtesan, charged an average of a week in a worker’s wages for just a kiss. She’s pictured here, in a painting by Tintoretto from 1575. Like the courtesans of ancient Greece, Franco was not just a sexual entertainer, but also accomplished in the arts and hospitality. She was also a poet.
Homosexual activity increased, often celebrated as a revival of Greek and Roman culture among the elite.
In 1495, a new disease appeared in Europe — syphilis. Although some blamed the crew of Christopher Columbus for bringing it from the New World, I find it unlikely that it could have spread that widely from a batch of crew members in only three years. It was a very virulent sexually-transmitted disease, which could cause sterility and insanity. Condoms, made of animal intensines or skin, became popular as a result.
Renaissance Sculpture
Left: Bronze David, by Donatello, 1440s / Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
Right: Marble David, by Michelangelo, 1501-1504 / Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence
Reviving the Greco-Roman ideals also happened in sculpture. Here my favorite example is the David. In the Bible, David was an underdog who fought the giant Goliath and won. Venice has St. Mark as its patron, but Florence had David. Florence saw itself as an underdog beset by more powerful enemies.
The David of Donatello can be compared to the David of Michaelangelo to show not only this character as an image of Florence, but also two different styles of art and patronage during the Renaissance.
Donatello’s David was made for a private client for his personal collection. It gracefully captures that time of life that was considered ideal in both ancient Greece and the Renaissance — the time when a boy becomes a man.
It was created for the Medici for their palace, and is thought to be the first free-standing nude of a male since classical times.
David stands with his foot on the head of Goliath, whom he has just defeated.
Michaelangelo’s David was meant to be displayed in the public square, as a community symbol.
Both works are free-standing statues, and have Renaissance detail and knowledge of the human body (medical schools were dissecting corpses, providing a lot of information about skeletal and muscular structure).
But they have very different styles. Donatello’s is graceful and beautiful, his posture almost lazy since he has already achieved victory. Michaelangelo’s is strong and focused, ready to face the giant.
In addition to the difference between lovely and strong, and between private and public art, the two statues also show us the way that biblical subjects can be used to represent very earthly things.
That’s why it’s best to see the Renaissance not as a time of only worldliness, but a time when medieval Christianity and the classical past encountered each other and were moved forward to reflect the new economy and politics of the era.