What Did the Renaissance Accomplish?
The class is now ready for the final question, “What did the Renaissance really accomplish?” The following headings are suggested for developing this phase of the subject; (1) the revival of learning; (2) the new art; (3) commerce or discovery; (4) science and invention; (5) religion. This order offers an easy and at the same time a natural transition to the Reformation.
Several methods are open to the teacher for expanding these sub-topics. One is to select a single individual, or a small group of individuals and to present their lives and work in sufficient detail to illustrate the various activities of the age and its leading characteristics; or to present a series of contrasts, placing the achievements of these men over against the attainments of the great thinkers and doers of the Middle Ages. Either method does not require an elaborate library equipment for its success.
If the former plan is adopted, Petrarch becomes the embodiment of that passionate love for antiquity, that zeal for the collection of ancient manuscripts, and that bitter opposition to those masters of the Aristotelian logic, the ancient schoolmen, which marked especially the revival of learning. A Raphael, a da Vinci, a Titian, and a Michelangelo mark the highest pinnacle of achievement in painting; Michelangelo, many-sided and versatile, like so many of his brother artists, is the type of the great sculptor; and Bramante of the great architect. The extension of geographical knowledge is so intimately associated with the life and work of Prince Henry the Navigator, that it has led one writer to declare that “the change which has revolutionized European trade and has drawn the whole world within the influence of Western civilization was indirectly the doing of this Portuguese prince.”[5] Science needs no better exponent than a Copernicus; the name of Gutenberg has always been associated with the printing press and finally, religion is ably represented in the person of a Valla and an Erasmus. The consideration of the life and work of the two last-named writers brings us face to face with the reform movement of the sixteenth century.
If the second method commends itself to the teacher, the schoolmen, limited both as to material and method, with their appeal to authority, can be presented in sharp contrast to the critics and scoffers of the Renaissance with their final appeal to the reason. There is some danger of over-emphasizing the follies of the former and of failing to estimate their work at its true value. (On this point see Adams, p. 368, and footnote.) If it is true that St. Peter’s suffers by contrast with the great achievements in the Romanesque and the Gothic, not so a Raphael, a da Vinci, and a Titian when placed side by side with a Cimabue, a Giotto and a Fra Angelico; or the rude reliefs on the doors of Notre Dame and the Strasburg Cathedral, when placed beside the bronze doors of a Ghiberti, “worthy to stand as the gates of Paradise.” The discoveries of a Columbus, a Magellan and a Vasco da Gama, when contrasted with the medieval conception of the world as depicted by their greatest cartographers, emphasize the remarkable progress of this later age in “discovering the world,” as well as man. Finally the misconceptions and pseudo-scientific treatises of the medieval schoolmen sink into insignificance beside the work of a Galileo and a Copernicus and the far-reaching results of the printing press.