CHAPTER II. INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE.
We have glanced at the new life of Europe in its political manifestations. We have now to view this new life in other relations: we have to inquire how it acted as a stimulus to intellectual effort in different directions.
The term Renaissance is frequently applied at present not only to the "new birth" of art and letters, but to all the characteristics, taken together, of the period of transition from the Middle Ages to modern life. The transformation in the structure and policy of states, the passion for discovery, the dawn of a more scientific method of observing man and nature, the movement towards more freedom of intellect and of conscience, are part and parcel of one comprehensive change,—a change which even now has not reached its goal. It was not so much "the arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance," that created the new epoch: it was "the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them."
INVENTIONS: GUNPOWDER.—In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were brought into practical use several inventions most important in their results to civilization. Of these the principal were gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing by movable types. Gunpowder was not first made by Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the Chinese, among the Indians in the East as early as Alexander the Great, and among the Arabs. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can be spared.
THE COMPASS.—The properties of the magnetic needle were not first applied to navigation, as has been thought, by Flavio Gioja, but long before his time, as early as the twelfth century, the compass came into general use. Navigation was no longer confined to the Mediterranean and to maritime coasts. The sailor could push out into the ocean without losing himself on its boundless waste.
PRINTING.—Printing, which had been done to some extent by wooden blocks, was probably first done with movable types (about 1450) by John Gutenberg, who was born at Meniz, but who lived long at Strasburg. He was furnished with capital by an associate, Faust, and worked in company with a skillful copyist of manuscripts, Schöffer. Gutenberg brought the art to such perfection, that in 1456 a complete Latin Bible was printed. Within a short time, printing-presses were set up in all the principal cities of Germany and Italy. As an essential concomitant, linen and cotton paper came into vogue in the room of the costly parchment. Books were no longer confined to the rich. Despite the censorship of the press, thought traveled from city to city and from land to land. It was a sign of a new era, that Maximilian in Germany and Louis XI. in France founded a postal system.
NEW ROUTE TO INDIA.—The discovery by the Portuguese of the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira (1419-1420), of the Canary Islands and of the Azores, was followed by their discovery of the coast of Upper Guinea, with its gold-dust, ivory, and gums (1445). The Pope, to whom was accorded the right to dispose of the heathen and of newly discovered lands, granted to the Portuguese the possession of these regions, and of whatever discoveries they should make as far as India. From Lower Guinea (Congo), Bartholomew Diaz reached the southern point of Africa (1486), which King John II. named the Cape of Good Hope. Then, under Emanuel the Great (1495-1521), Vasco da Gama found the way to East India, round the Cape, by sailing over the Indian Ocean to the coast of Malabar, and into the harbor of Calicut (1498). The Portuguese encountered the resistance of the Mohammedans to their settlement; but by their valor and persistency, especially by the agency of their leaders Almeida and the brave Albuquerque, their trading-posts were established on the coast.
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.—The grand achievement in maritime exploration in this age was the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa. The conviction that India could be reached by sailing in a westerly direction took possession of his mind. Having sought in vain for the patronage of John II. of Portugal, and having sent his brother Bartholomew to apply for aid from Henry VII. of England, he was at length furnished with three ships by Queen Isabella of Castile, to whom Granada had just submitted (1492). Columbus was to have the station of grand admiral and viceroy over the lands to be discovered, with a tenth part of the incomes to be drawn from them, and the rank of a nobleman for himself and his posterity. The story of an open mutiny on his vessels does not rest on sufficient proof: that there were alarm and discontent among the sailors, may well be believed. On the 11th of October, Columbus thought that he discovered a light in the distance. At two o'clock in the morning of Oct. 12, a sailor on the Pinta espied the dim outline of the beach, and shouted, "Land, land!" It was an island called Guanahani, named by Columbus, in honor of Jesus, San Salvador. Its beauty and productiveness excited admiration; but neither here nor on the large islands of Cuba (or Juana) and Hayti (Hispaniola), which were discovered soon after, were there found the gold and precious stones which the navigators and their patrons at home so eagerly desired. Columbus built a fort on the island of Hispaniola, and founded a colony. The name of West Indies was applied to the new lands. Columbus lived and died in the belief that the region which he discovered belonged to India. Of an intermediate continent, and of an ocean beyond it, he did not dream. The Pope granted to Ferdinand and Isabella all the newly discovered regions of America, from a line stretching one hundred leagues west of the Azores. Afterwards Ferdinand allowed to the king of Portugal that the line should run three hundred and seventy, instead of one hundred, leagues west of these islands. In two subsequent voyages (1493-1496, 1498-1500), Columbus discovered Jamaica and the Little Antilles, the Caribbean Islands, and finally the mainland at the mouths of the Orinoco (1498). In 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian captain living in England, while in quest of a north-west passage to India, touched at Cape Breton, and followed the coast of North America southward for a distance of nine hundred miles. Shortly after, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, employed first by Spain and then by Portugal, explored in several voyages the coast of South America. The circumstance that his full descriptions were published (1504) caused the name of America, first at the suggestion of the printer, to be attached to the new world.
LATER VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.—On his return from his first voyage, Columbus was received with distinguished honors by the Spanish sovereigns. But he suffered from plots caused by envy, both on the islands and at court. Once he was sent home in fetters by Bobadilla, a commissioner appointed by Ferdinand. He was exonerated from blame, but the promises which had been made to him were not fulfilled. A fourth voyage was not attended by the success in discovery which he had hoped for, and the last two years of his life were weary and sad. Isabella had died; and in 1506 the great explorer, who with all his other virtues combined a sincere piety, followed her to the tomb.
THE PACIFIC.—The spirit of adventure, the hunger for wealth and especially for the precious metals, and zeal for the conversion of the heathen, were the motives which combined in different proportions to set on foot exploring and conquering expeditions to the unknown regions of the West. The exploration of the North-American coast, begun by John Cabot (perhaps also by his son), and the Portuguese Cortereal (1501), continued from Labrador to Florida. In 1513 Balboa, a Spaniard at Darien, fought his way to a height on the Isthmus of Panama, whence he descried the Pacific Ocean. Descending to the shore, and riding into the water up to his thighs, in the name of the king he took possession of the sea. In 1520 Magellan, a Portuguese captain, sailed round the southern cape of America, and over the ocean to which he gave the name of Pacific. He made his way to the East Indies, but was killed on one of the Philippine Islands, leaving it to his companions to finish the voyage around the globe. A little later the Spaniards added first Mexico, and then Peru, to their dominions.
CONQUEST OF MEXICO.—The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, the land of the Aztecs, was Hernando Cortes (1485-1547). The principal king in that country was Montezuma, whose empire was extensive, with numerous cities, and with no inconsiderable advancement in arts and industry. From Santiago, in 1519, Cortes conducted an expedition composed of seven hundred Spaniards, founded Vera Cruz, where he left a small garrison, subdued the tribe of Tlascalans who joined him, and was received by Montezuma into the city of Mexico. Cortes made him a prisoner in his own palace, and seized his capital. The firearms and the horses of the Spaniards struck the natives with dismay. Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under Narvaez, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 Cortes gained over the Mexicans, at Otumba, a victory which was decisive in its consequences. The city of Mexico was recaptured (1521); for Montezuma had been slain by his own people, and the Spaniards driven out. Guatimozin, the new king, was taken prisoner and put to death, and the country was subdued. Cortes put an end to the horrid religious rites of the Mexicans, which included human sacrifices. Becoming an object of jealousy and dread at home, he was recalled (1528). Afterwards he visited the peninsula of California, and ruled for a time in Mexico, but with diminished authority.
CONQUEST OF PERU.—The conquest of Peru was effected by Francisco Pizarro, and Almagro, both illiterate adventurers, equally daring with Cortes, but more cruel and unscrupulous. The Peruvians were of a mild character, prosperous, and not uncivilized, and without the savage religious system of the Mexicans. They had their walled cities and their spacious temples. The empire of the Incas, as the rulers were called, was distracted by a civil war between two brothers, who shared the kingdom. Pizarro captured one of them, Atahualpa, and basely put him to death after he had provided the ransom agreed upon, amounting to more than $17,500,000 in gold (1533). Pizarro founded Lima, near the sea-coast (1535). Almagro and Pizarro fell out with each other, and the former was defeated and beheaded. The land and its inhabitants were allotted among the conquerors as the spoils of victory. The horrible oppression of the people excited insurrections. At length Charles V. sent out Pedro de la Gasca as viceroy (1541), at a time when Gonzalo Pizarro, the last of the family, held sway. Gonzalo perished on the gallows. Gasca reduced the government to an orderly system.
THE AMAZON.—Orellena, an officer of Pizarro, in 1541 first descended the river Amazon to the Atlantic. His fabulous descriptions of an imaginary El Dorado, whose capital with its dazzling treasures he pretended to have seen, inflamed other explorers, and prompted to new enterprises. The cupidity of the Spaniards, and their eagerness for knightly warfare, made the New World, with its floral beauty and mineral riches, a most enticing field for adventure. To devout missionaries, to the monastic orders especially, the new regions were not less inviting. They followed in the wake of the Spanish conquerors and viceroys.
REVIVAL OF LEARNING.—The stirring period of invention and of maritime discovery was also the period of "the revival of learning." Italy was the main center and source of this intellectual movement, which gradually spread over the other countries of Western Europe. There was a thirst for a wider range of study and of culture than the predominantly theological writings and training of the Middle Ages afforded. The minds of men turned for stimulus and nutriment to the ancient classical authors. Petrarch, the Italian poet (1304-1374), did much to foster this new spirit. In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like Chrysoloras and Bessarion, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of Constantinople increased this influx of Greek learning. The new studies were fostered by the Italian princes, who vied with one another in their zeal for collecting the precious literary treasures of antiquity, and in the liberal patronage of the students of classical literature. The manuscripts of the Latin writers, preserved in the monasteries of the West, were likewise eagerly sought for. The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the Medici of Florence. Cosmo founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of Plato were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, Marsilius Ficinus. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied. These, with the ancient poets, philosophers, and orators themselves, were diffused far and wide by means of the new art of printing, and from presses, of which the Aldine—that of Aldus Minutius—at Venice was the most famous. "By the side of the Church, which had hitherto held the countries of the West together (though it was unable to do so much longer) there arose a new spiritual influence, which, spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life for all the more instructed minds in Europe."
CONTEST OF THE NEW AND THE OLD CULTURE.—In Germany, the new learning gained a firm foothold. But there, as elsewhere, the Humanists, as its devotees were called, had a battle to fight with the votaries of the mediæval type of culture, who, largely on theological grounds, objected to the new culture, and were stigmatized as "obscurantists." In Italy, the study of the ancient heathen writers had engendered, or at least been accompanied by, much religious skepticism and indifference. This, however, was not the case in Germany. But the champions of the scholastic method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of Aristotle and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in Paris, Cologne, and other universities. But certain universities, like Tübingen and Heidelberg, let in the humanistic studies. In 1502 Frederick, the elector of Saxony, founded a university at Wittenberg, in which from the outset they were prominent. In England, the cause of learning found ardent encouragement, and had able representatives in such men as Colet, dean of St. Paul's, who founded St. Paul's School at his own expense; and in Thomas More, the author of Utopia, afterwards lord chancelor under Henry VIII.
REUCHLIN: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.—A leader of humanism in Germany was John Reuchlin (1455-1522), an erudite scholar, who studied Greek at Paris and Basel, mingled with Politian, Pica de Mirandola, and other famous scholars at Florence, and wrote a Hebrew as well as a Greek grammar. This distinguished humanist became involved in a controversy with the Dominicans of Cologne, who wished to burn all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament. The Humanists all rallied in support of their chief, to whom heresy was imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule.
ERASMUS.—The prince of the Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of Erasmus were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in Paris; lived for a number of years in England, where, in company with More and Colet, he fostered the new studies; and finally took up his abode at Basel. In early youth, against his will, he had been for a while an inmate of a cloister. The idleness, ignorance, self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his Praise of Folly, and in his Colloquies, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful influence in behalf of culture. If he incurred the hostility of the conservative Churchmen, he still adhered to the Roman communion, and won unbounded applause from the advocates of liberal studies and of practical religious reforms.
LITERATURE IN ITALY.—The first effect of the revival of letters in Italy was to check original production in literature. The charm of the ancient authors who were brought out of their tombs, the belles-lettres studies, and the criticism awakened by them, naturally had this effect for a time. Italy had two great authors in the vernacular, the poet Ariosto (1474-1533), and Machiavelli: it had, besides, one famous historian, Guicciardini (1482-1540).
RENAISSANCE OF ART.—This period was not simply an era of grand exploration and discovery, and of the new birth of letters: it was the brilliant dawn of a new era in art. Sculpture and painting broke loose from their subordination to Church architecture. Painting, especially, attained to a far richer development.
ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.—In architecture and sculpture, the influence of the antique styles was potent. Under the auspices of Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the Pitti Palace and other edifices of a like kind had been erected at Florence. At Rome, Bramante (who died in 1515), and, in particular, Michael Angelo (1475-1564), who was a master in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and a poet as well, were most influential. The great Florentine artist Ghiberti (1378-1455), in the bronze gates of the Baptistery, exhibited the perfection of bas-relief. The highest power of Michael Angelo, as a sculptor, is seen in his statue of Moses at Rome, and in the sepulchers of Julian and Lorenzo de Medici at Florence. A student of his works, Cellini (1500-1571) is one of the men of genius of that day, who, like his master, was eminently successful in different branches of art. In the same period, there were sculptors of high talent in Germany, especially at Nuremberg, where Adam Kraft (1429-1507), and Peter Vischer (1435-1529), whose skill is seen in the bronze tomb of Sebaldus, in the church of that saint, are the most eminent. After the death of Michael Angelo, in Italy there was a decline in the style of sculpture, which became less noble and more affected.
PAINTING IN ITALY.—The ancients had less influence on the schools of painting than on sculpture. In painting, as we have seen, Giotto (1266-1337), a contemporary of the poet Dante, and Cimabue (who died about 1302), had led the way. The art of perspective was mastered; and real life, more or less idealized, was the subject of delineation. In Italy, there arose various distinct styles or schools. The Florentine school reached its height of attainment in the majestic works of Michael Angelo, the frescos of the Sistine Chapel at Rome. The Roman school is best seen in the stanzas of the Vatican, by Raphael (1483-1520), and in the ideal harmony and beauty of his Madonnas. Prior to Michael Angelo and Raphael, there was the symbolic religious art of the Umbrian painters. Of these, the chief was Fra Angelico (1387-1455), the devout monk who transferred to the canvas the tenderness and fervor of his own gentle spirit. The Venetian school, with its richness of color, has left splendid examples of its power in the portraits of Titian (1477-1576), the works of Paul Veronese (who died in 1588), and the more passionate products of the pencil of Tintoretto (who died in 1594). The Lombard school has for its representatives the older contemporary of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who combines perfection of outward form with deep spirituality, and by whom The Last Supper was painted on the wall of the cloister at Milan; and Correggio (1494-1534), whose play of tender sensibility, and skill in the contrasts of light and shade in color, are exhibited in The Night, or Worship of the Magi (at Dresden), and in his frescos at Parma. The school of Bologna, founded by the three Caracci, numbers in its ranks Guido Rent (1575-1642), gifted with imagination and sensibility, and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), who depicted the more wild and somber aspects of nature and of life.
MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.—The two foremost names in the history of Italian art are Michael Angelo and Raphael. "If there is one man who is a more striking representative of the Renaissance than any of his contemporaries, it is Michael Angelo. In him character is on a par with genius. His life of almost a century, and marvelously active, is spotless. As an artist, we can not believe that he can be surpassed. He unites in his wondrous individuality the two master faculties, which are, so to speak, the poles of human nature, whose combination in the same individual creates the sovereign greatness of the Tuscan school,—invention and judgment,—a vast and fiery imagination, directed by a method precise, firm, and safe." Raphael lacks the grandeur and the many-sided capacity of the great master by whom he was much influenced. Raphael "had a nature which converted every thing to beauty." He produced in a short life an astonishing number of works of unequal merit; but to all of them he imparted a peculiar charm, derived from "an instinct for beauty, which was his true genius."
PAINTING IN THE NETHERLANDS.—In the Netherlands, a school of painting arose under the brothers Van Eyck (1366-1426, 1386-1440). One of them, John, was the first artist to paint in oil. At a later day, a class of painters, of whom Rubens (1577-1640) is the most distinguished, followed more the track of the ancients and of the Italian school. These belonged to Flanders and Brabant; while in Holland a school sprang up of a more original and independent cast, in which genius of the highest order was manifested in the person of Rembrandt (1607-1669), its most eminent master.
PAINTING IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.—In Germany, a school marked by peculiarities of its own was represented by Hans Holbein (who died in 1543), and by Albert Dürer the Nuremberg artist (1471-1528). In Spain, Murillo (1617-1682) combined inspiration with technical skill, and stands on a level with the renowned Italians. Velasquez (1599-1660), an artist of extraordinary power, is most distinguished for his portraits. The French artists mostly followed the Italian styles. Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) was the painter of landscapes that are luminous in sunlight and atmosphere. In England, the humorous Hogarth (1697-1764) was much later.
MUSIC.—Music shared in the prosperity of the sister arts. The interest awakened in its improvement paved the way in Italy for Palestrina (1514-1594), whose genius and labors constitute an epoch. In Germany, Luther became one of the most efficient promoters of musical culture in connection with public worship. The great German composers, Bach (1685-1750) and Händel (1685-1759), belong to a subsequent period: they are, however, in some degree the fruit of seed sown earlier.
LITERATURE.—For works on general history, see p. 16. For general histories of particular countries, see p. 359.
On Modern Times. Dyer's History of Modern Europe; Duruy's History of Modern Times [1453-1789]; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, Vol. IV.; The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I.: The Renaissance; Heeren, Political System of Europe; Historical Treatises (1 vol.); Heeren u. Ukert, Geschichte der europäisch. Staaten (76 vols. 1829 75); T. ARNOLD'S Lectures on Modern History; Michelet's Modern History (1 vol.), Yonge's Three Centuries of Modern History.
On the Age of the Renaissance. Symonds's Renaissance in Italy (5 vols.); BURCKHARDT'S The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy (2 vols.); REUMONT'S Lorenzo de' Medici (2 vols); Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; VILLARI'S Machiavelli and his Times; Machiavelli, History of Florence; Oliphant, Makers of Florence: Dante', Giotto, Savonarola, and their city (1 vol.); Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen alterthums (1859); Lanzi, History of Painting (3 vols.); Vasari, Lives of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; Crowe and Cavalcasselle, History of Painting in North Italy [1300-1500] (2 vols., 1871); Crowe, Handbook of Painting: the German, Flemish and Dutch Schools (2 parts, 1874); Eastlake, Handbook of Painting, the Italian Schools (based on Kugler, 2 parts, 1874); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, Life of Titian (2 vols.); Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists (14 vols.); Mrs. Jameson, Lives of Italian Painters; Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo (2 vols.); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, Life and Works of Raphael; Fergusson, History of Modern Styles of Architecture; RUGE'S Geschichte d. Zeitalters d. Entdeckungen (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); GEIGER'S Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); Lives of Erasmus, by Le Clerc, Jortin, Knight, Burigny (2 vols.), Froude, Emerton, Drummond (2 vols.); Lives of Columbus, by Irving, Major (1847), Harrisse (1884), Markham (1892), Winsor; PRESCOTT'S History of Ferdinand and Isabella, History of the Conquest of Mexico, and History of the Conquest of Peru; Robertson, History of America; Beazly, Dawn of Modern Geography (2 vols.); Fiske, Discovery of America (2 vols.); Payne, America (2 vols.); Scebohm's Oxford Reformers; Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch; Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Reformation (Vols. I.-IV.); Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (3 vols.); Janssen, History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages (8 vols.); Whitcomb, Source Books of the Italian and German Renaissance; Grant, The French Monarchy (2 vols.); Johnson, European History in the Sixteenth Century.