As guides of human principles in their opposition to the “divine”, carnal and material in opposition to the ideal, scientists of the Renaissance of arts and sciences (Rinascimento, Renaissance) or the restoration of classical Greco-Roman culture called themselves humanists (from the Latin words humanitas - “humanity”, humanus - “humane”, homo - “man”).
The humanistic movement originated in Italy, where ancient Roman traditions naturally acted most directly and at the same time, the proximity to the Byzantine-Greek cultural world forced them to come into frequent contact with it. The founders of humanism are usually called, and not without reason, Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375). The teachers of the Greek language in Italy, Varlaam and Leontius Pilate, belonged to their century. The true humanistic school was first founded by the Greek Manuel Chrysolor, a teacher of Greek in Florence from 1396 (d. 1415 at the Council of Constance). Since he at the same time zealously preached the reunification of the Western and Eastern churches in response to the danger threatening from Islam, the council in Ferrara and Florence rendered significant services to the development of humanism. His soul was Cardinal Vissarion (1403 - 72), who remained in Italy, on the side of the Roman party, after the cause of the reunification of the churches fell apart again. In his circle, George Gemist Pleton (or Plytho, d. 1455) enjoyed the reputation of an authoritative scientist. After conquest of Constantinople George of Trebizond, Theodore of Gaza and Constantine Lascaris moved to Italy as Turks along with many of their compatriots.
Dante Alighieri. Drawing by Giotto, 14th century
In Italy, humanism found patrons of the arts in the person of Cosimo de' Medici (1389 - 1464) in Florence, Pope Nicholas V (1447 - 1455), and later the famous Lorenzo the Magnificent de' Medici (1449 - 92) of Florence. Gifted researchers, orators and poets enjoyed their patronage: Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380 - 1459), Francesco Filelfo (1398 - 1481), Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1426 - 1503), Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405 - 1464, from 1458 Pope Pius II) , Poliziano, Pomponio Summer. Often in Naples, Florence, Rome, etc., these scientists formed societies - Academies, the name of which, borrowed from the Platonic school in Athens, later became common in Europe for learned societies.
Many of the humanists such as Aeneas Silvius, Filelfo, Pietro Paolo Vergerio (b. 1349, d. about 1430), Matteo Veggio (1406 - 1458), Vittorino Ramboldini da Feltre (1378 - 1446), Battisto Guarino (1370 - 1460) , devoted special attention to the science of education. Lorenzo Valla (1406 – 57), the author of the essay “Discourse on the Fraud of the Donation of Constantine” (“De donatione Constantini”), is especially famous as a bold critic of church history.
Humanism and the humanists of the Renaissance. Video tutorial
The 16th century saw another brilliant flowering of later humanism in Italy, especially under Pope Leo X (Giovanni Medici from 1475 - 1521, pope from 1513). The famous humanists cardinals Pietro Bembo (1470 - 1547) and Jacopo Sadoleto (1477 - 1547) belong to this time. Only gradually, in most cases after the advent of printing, did humanism spread beyond the Alps. First to France, where already in 1430 Greek and Hebrew were taught at the University of Paris and where in the 15th century. John Laskaris, George Hermonim and others worked, and in the 16th century. Particularly famous were Guillaume Buddeus (Buddeus 1467 - 1540), the learned typographers Robert Etienne (Stephanus, 1503 - 59) and his son Henri (1528 - 98) before moving to Geneva in 1551, Marc Antoine Muret (1526 - 85), Isaac Casaubon (1559 – 1614, from 1608 in England) and many others. In Spain, one must name Juan Luis Vives (1492 - 1540), in England, the executed chancellor Thomas More (1480 - 1535). As for England, it should be mentioned that the age of humanism dates back to the emergence of a significant number of famous schools (Eton from 1441 and many others).
In the German Netherlands, humanism found the ground well prepared, thanks to the activities of the “Brothers of Community Life”, whose society, founded by G. Grot (1340 – 84) from Deventer, was especially devoted to the education of youth. From here came the first significant teachers of the Greek language in Germany - Rudolf Agricola (Roelof Huysmann, 1443 - 85) and Alexander Hegius (Hegius, van der Heck, 1433 - 98), Johann Murmellius, rector in Münster (1480 - 1517), Ludwig Dringenberg in Schlettstadt (rector there from 1441 – 77, d. 1490), Jacob Wimpheling (1450 – 1528), Konrad Zeltes and others.
Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Painter Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523
The humanists included representatives of different professions: teachers - Filelfo, Poggio Bracciolini, Vittorino da Feltre, Leonardo Bruni; philosophers - Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola; writers - Petrarch, Boccaccio; artists - Alberti and others.
The work of Francesc Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) represents an early period in the development of Italian humanism, which laid the foundations for a more coherent and systematized worldview that was developed by later thinkers.
Petrarch with extraordinary force revived interest in antiquity, especially in Homer. Thus, he marked the beginning of that revival of ancient antiquity, which was so characteristic of the entire Renaissance. At the same time, Petrarch formulated a new attitude towards art, opposite to that which underlay medieval aesthetics. For Petrarch, art had ceased to be a simple craft and began to acquire a new, humanistic meaning. In this regard, Petrarch’s treatise “Invective against a certain physician” is extremely interesting, representing a polemic with Salutati, who argued that medicine should be recognized as a higher art than poetry. This thought arouses Petrarch's angry protest. “It’s an unheard of sacrilege,” he exclaims, “to subordinate a mistress to a maid, free art to a mechanical one.” Rejecting the approach to poetry as a craft activity, Petrarch interprets it as a free, creative art. Of no less interest is Petrarch’s treatise “Remedies for the Treatment of Happy and Unlucky Fate,” which depicts the struggle between reason and feeling in relation to the sphere of art and pleasure, and, ultimately, the feeling close to earthly interests wins.
Another outstanding Italian writer, Giovanni Boccaccio, played an equally important role in substantiating new aesthetic principles. The author of the Decameron devoted a quarter of a century to working on what he considered to be the main work of his life, the theoretical treatise The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods.
Of particular interest are the XIV and XV books of this extensive work, written in the “defense of poetry” against medieval attacks on it. These books, which gained enormous popularity during the Renaissance, laid the foundation for a special genre of “poetry apologia.”
Essentially, we are seeing here a polemic with medieval aesthetics. Boccaccio opposes the accusation of poetry and poets of immorality, excess, frivolity, deception, etc. In contrast to medieval authors who reproached Homer and other ancient writers for depicting frivolous scenes, Boccaccio proves the poet’s right to depict any subjects.
It is also unfair, according to Boccaccio, to accuse poets of lying. Poets do not lie, but only “weave fiction”, telling the truth under the cover of deception or, more precisely, fiction. In this regard, Boccaccio passionately argues for the right of poetry to fiction (inventi), the invention of the new. In the chapter “That poets are not deceitful,” Boccaccio says directly: poets “... are not bound by the obligation to adhere to the truth in the external form of fiction; on the contrary, if we take away from them the right to freely use any kind of invention, all the benefits of their work will turn to dust.”
Boccaccio calls poetry "divine science." Moreover, sharpening the conflict between poetry and theology, he declares theology itself to be a type of poetry, because it, like poetry, turns to fiction and allegories.
In his apology for poetry, Boccaccio argued that its most important qualities are passion (furor) and ingenuity (inventio). This attitude towards poetry had nothing in common with the artisanal approach to art; it justified the freedom of the artist, his right to creativity.
Thus, already in the 14th century, the early Italian humanists formed a new attitude towards art as a free activity, as an activity of imagination and fantasy. All these principles formed the basis of aesthetic theories of the 15th century.
Italian humanist teachers also made a significant contribution to the development of the aesthetic worldview of the Renaissance, creating a new system of upbringing and education focused on the ancient world and ancient philosophy.
In Italy, starting from the first decade of the 15th century, a whole series of treatises on education appeared one after another, written by humanist educators: “On noble morals and liberal sciences” by Paolo Vergerio, “On the education of children and their good morals” by Matteo Veggio, “ On free education" by Gianozzo Manetti, "On scientific and literary studies" by Leonardo Bruni, "On the order of teaching and learning" by Battisto Guarino, "Treatise on free education" by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and others. Eleven Italian treatises on pedagogy have come down to us. In addition, numerous letters from humanists are devoted to the topic of education. All this constitutes the vast heritage of humanistic thought.
During the Renaissance, a completely new type of Neoplatonism emerged, which opposed medieval scholasticism and “scholasticized” Aristotelianism.
The first stages in the development of Neoplatonic aesthetics were associated with the name of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).
It should be noted that aesthetics was not just one of the areas of knowledge that Nikolai Kuzansky addressed along with other disciplines. The originality of the aesthetic teachings of Nicholas of Cusa lies in the fact that it was an organic part of his ontology, epistemology, and ethics. This synthesis of aesthetics with epistemology and ontology does not allow us to consider the aesthetic views of Nicholas of Cusanus in isolation from his philosophy as a whole, and on the other hand, the aesthetics of Cusansky reveals some important aspects of his teaching about the world and knowledge.
Nicholas of Cusa is the last thinker of the Middle Ages and the first philosopher of the Modern Age. Therefore, his aesthetics uniquely intertwine the ideas of the Middle Ages and the new, Renaissance consciousness. From the Middle Ages he borrows the “symbolism of numbers”, the medieval idea of the unity of the micro and macrocosmos, the medieval definition of beauty as “proportion” and “clarity” of color. However, he significantly rethinks and reinterprets the heritage of medieval aesthetic thought. The idea of the numerical nature of beauty was not a simple fantasy game for Nicholas of Cusa - he sought to find confirmation of this idea with the help of mathematics, logic and experimental knowledge. The idea of the unity of the micro- and macrocosmos was transformed in his interpretation into the idea of a high, almost divine purpose of the human personality. Finally, in his interpretation the traditional medieval formula about beauty as “proportion” and “clarity” receives a completely new meaning.
Nikolai Kuzansky develops his concept of beauty in his treatise “On Beauty.” Here he relies mainly on the Areopagitica and on Albertus Magnus's treatise On Goodness and Beauty, which is one of the commentaries on the Areopagitica. From the Areopagitik, Nicholas of Cusa borrows the idea of the emanation (origin) of beauty from the divine mind, of light as a prototype of beauty, etc. Nikolai Kuzansky expounds all these ideas of Neoplatonic aesthetics in detail, providing them with comments.
The aesthetics of Nicholas of Cusa unfolds in full accordance with his ontology. The basis of being is the following dialectical trinity: complicatio - folding, explicatio - unfolding and alternitas - otherness. This corresponds to the following elements - unity, difference and connection - which lie in the structure of everything in the world, including the basis of beauty.
In his treatise “On Beauty,” Nikolai Kuzansky considers beauty as the unity of three elements that correspond to the dialectical trinity of being. Beauty turns out to be, first of all, an infinite unity of form, which manifests itself in the form of proportion and harmony. Secondly, this unity unfolds and gives rise to the difference between goodness and beauty, and, finally, a connection arises between these two elements: realizing itself, beauty gives rise to something new - love as the final and highest point of beauty.
Nikolai Kuzansky interprets this love in the spirit of Neoplatonism, as an ascent from the beauty of sensual things to a higher, spiritual beauty. Love, says Nikolai Kuzansky, is the ultimate goal of beauty, “our concern should be to ascend from the beauty of sensual things to the beauty of our spirit...”.
Thus, the three elements of beauty correspond to the three stages of development of being: unity, difference and connection. Unity appears in the form of proportion, difference - in the transition of beauty into goodness, connection is carried out through love.
This is the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa about beauty. It is quite obvious that this teaching is closely related to the philosophy and aesthetics of Neoplatonism.
The aesthetics of Neoplatonism significantly influenced not only the theory, but also the practice of art. Studies of the philosophy and art of the Renaissance have shown a close connection between the aesthetics of Neoplatonism and the work of outstanding Italian artists (Raphael, Botticelli, Titian and others). Neoplatonism revealed to the art of the Renaissance the beauty of nature as a reflection of spiritual beauty, aroused interest in human psychology, and revealed dramatic collisions of spirit and body, the struggle between feelings and reason. Without revealing these contradictions and collisions, the art of the Renaissance could not have achieved that deepest sense of internal harmony, which is one of the most significant features of the art of this era.
The famous Italian humanist philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was affiliated with Plato's Academy. He touches on problems of aesthetics in his famous “Speech on the Dignity of Man,” written in 1486 as an introduction to his proposed debate with the participation of all European philosophers, and in “Commentary on the Canzone of Love by Girolamo Benivieni,” read at one of the meetings of Plato’s Academy .
In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, Pico develops a humanistic concept of the human person. Man has free will, he is at the center of the universe, and it depends on him whether he rises to the heights of a deity or sinks to the level of an animal. In the work of Pico della Mirandola, God addresses Adam with the following parting words: “We do not give you, O Adam, neither your place, nor a specific image, nor a special duty, so that you have the place, and the person, and the duty of your own free will, according to your will and your decision. The image of other creations is determined within the limits of the laws we have established. You, not constrained by any limits, will determine your image according to your decision, into the power of which I leave you. I place you at the center of the world, so that from there it will be more convenient for you to view everything that is in the world. I made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you yourself... could form yourself in the image that you prefer.”
Thus, Pico della Mirandola forms in this work a completely new concept of human personality. He says that man himself is the creator, the master of his own image. Humanistic thought places man at the center of the universe and speaks of the unlimited possibilities for the development of the human personality.
The idea of the dignity of the human person, deeply developed by Pico della Mirandola, firmly entered the philosophical and aesthetic consciousness of the Renaissance. Outstanding Renaissance artists drew their optimism and enthusiasm from it.
A more detailed system of aesthetic views of Pico della Mirandola is contained in the “Commentary on the Canzone of Love by Girolamo Benivieni.”
This treatise is closely related to the Neoplatonic tradition. Like most of the works of the Italian Neoplatonists, it is devoted to Plato’s teaching on the nature of love, and love is interpreted in a broad philosophical sense. Pico defines it as “the desire for beauty,” thereby connecting Platonic ethics and cosmology with aesthetics, with the doctrine of beauty and the harmonious structure of the world.
The doctrine of harmony thus occupies a central place in this philosophical treatise. Speaking about the concept of beauty, Pico della Mirandola states the following: “The concept of harmony is associated with the broad and general meaning of the term “beauty”. Thus, they say that God created the whole world in musical and harmonic composition, but just as the term “harmony” in a broad sense can be used to designate the composition of every creation, and in its proper sense it means only the fusion of several voices into a melody, so beauty can be called the proper composition of any thing, although its own meaning applies only to visible things, like harmony - to audible things.”
Pico della Mirandola was characterized by a pantheistic understanding of harmony, which he interpreted as the unity of the micro- and macrocosm. “...Man, in his various properties, has connections and similarities with all parts of the world and for this reason is usually called a microcosm - a small world.”
But, speaking in the spirit of the Neoplatonists about the meaning and role of harmony, about its connection with beauty, with the structure of nature and the cosmos, Mirandola to a certain extent departs from Ficino and other Neoplatonists in understanding the essence of harmony. For Ficino, the source of beauty is in God or in the world soul, which serve as the prototype for all nature and all things that exist in the world. Mirandola rejects this view. Moreover, he even enters into direct polemics with Ficino, refuting his opinion about the divine origin of the world soul. In his opinion, the role of the creator god is limited only to the creation of the mind - this “incorporeal and intelligent” nature. God no longer has any connection with everything else - the soul, love, beauty: “... according to the Platonists, says the philosopher, God did not directly produce any other creation other than the first mind.”
Thus, Pico della Mirandola's concept of God is closer to the Aristotelian concept of the prime mover than to Platonic idealism.
The center of the development of aesthetic thought of the Renaissance in the 15th century was the aesthetics of the greatest Italian artist and humanist thinker Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472).
In Alberti’s numerous works, including works on the theory of art, the pedagogical essay “On the Family,” and the moral and philosophical treatise “On the Peace of the Soul,” humanistic views occupy a significant place. Like most humanists, Alberti shared an optimistic thought about the limitless possibilities of human knowledge, about the divine destiny of man, about his omnipotence and exceptional position in the world. Alberti’s humanistic ideals were reflected in his treatise “On the Family”, in which he wrote that nature “made man partly heavenly and divine, partly the most beautiful among the entire mortal world... she gave him intelligence, understanding, memory and reason - properties that are divine and at the same time necessary in order to distinguish and understand what should be avoided and what should be strived for in order to better preserve ourselves.” This idea, in many ways anticipating the idea of Pico della Mirandola’s treatise “On the Dignity of Man,” permeates Alberti’s entire activity as an artist, scientist and thinker.
Being mainly engaged in artistic practice, especially architecture, Alberti, however, paid a lot of attention to issues of art theory. In his treatises - “On Painting”, “On Architecture”, “On Sculpture” - along with specific issues of the theory of painting, sculpture and architecture, general issues of aesthetics were widely reflected.
It should be noted right away that Alberti’s aesthetics does not represent some kind of complete and logically integral system. Individual aesthetic statements are scattered throughout Alberti's works, and quite a lot of work is required to somehow collect and systematize them. In addition, Alberti's aesthetics are not only philosophical discussions about the essence of beauty and art. In Alberti we find a broad and consistent development of the so-called “practical aesthetics,” that is, aesthetics arising from the application of general aesthetic principles to specific issues of art. All this allows us to consider Alberti as one of the largest representatives of aesthetic thought of the early Renaissance.
The theoretical source of Alberti's aesthetics was mainly the aesthetic thought of antiquity. The ideas on which Alberti relies in his theory of art and aesthetics are many and varied. This is the aesthetics of the Stoics with its demands for imitation of nature, with the ideals of expediency, the unity of beauty and benefit. From Cicero, in particular, Alberti borrows the distinction between beauty and decoration, developing this idea into a special theory of decoration. From Vitruvius, Alberti compares a work of art with the human body and the proportions of the human body. But the main theoretical source of Alberti's aesthetic theory is, undoubtedly, Aristotle's aesthetics with its principle of harmony and measure as the basis of beauty. From Aristotle, Alberti takes the idea of a work of art as a living organism; from him he borrows the idea of the unity of matter and form, purpose and means, harmony of part and whole. Alberti repeats and develops Aristotle’s thought about artistic perfection (“when nothing can be added, subtracted, or changed without making it worse”). This entire complex set of ideas, deeply meaningful and tested in the practice of modern art, lies at the basis of Alberti’s aesthetic theory .
At the center of Alberti's aesthetics is the doctrine of beauty. Alberti speaks about the nature of beauty in two books of his treatise “On Architecture” - the sixth and ninth. These considerations, despite their laconic nature, contain a completely new interpretation of the nature of beauty.
It should be noted that in the aesthetics of the Middle Ages, the dominant definition of beauty was the formula about beauty as “consonantia et claritas,” that is, about the proportion and clarity of light. This formula, having emerged in early patristics, was dominant until the 14th century, especially in scholastic aesthetics. In accordance with this definition, beauty was understood as the formal unity of “proportion” and “brilliance”, mathematically interpreted harmony and clarity of color.
Alberti, although he attached great importance to the mathematical basis of art, does not, as medieval aesthetics does, reduce beauty to mathematical proportion. According to Alberti, the essence of beauty lies in harmony. To denote the concept of harmony, Alberti resorts to the old term “concinnitas,” which he borrowed from Cicero.
According to Alberti, there are three elements that make up the beauty of architecture. These are number (numerus), limitation (finitio) and placement (collocatio). But beauty represents more than these three formal elements. “There is something more,” says Alberti, “composed of the combination and connection of all these three things, something with which the whole face of beauty is miraculously illuminated. This we will call harmony (concinnitas), which, without a doubt, is the source of all charm and beauty. After all, the purpose and goal of harmony is to arrange parts, generally speaking, different in nature, by some perfect relationship so that they correspond to one another, creating beauty. And it is not so much in the whole body as a whole or in its parts that harmony lives, but in itself and in its nature, so that I would call it a participant in the soul and mind. And there is a vast field for it where it can manifest itself and flourish: it embraces the whole of human life, permeates the entire nature of things. For everything that nature produces is proportionate to the law of harmony. And nature has no greater concern than that what it produces is completely perfect. This cannot be achieved in any way without harmony, because without it the highest harmony of the parts disintegrates.”
In this argument, Alberti should highlight the following points.
First of all, it is obvious that Alberti abandons the medieval understanding of beauty as “proportion and clarity of color,” returning, in fact, to the ancient idea of beauty as a certain harmony. He replaces the two-term formula of beauty “consonantia et claritas” with a one-term one: beauty is the harmony of parts.
This harmony itself is not only the law of art, but also the law of life; it “permeates the entire nature of things” and “encompasses the entire life of a person.” Harmony in art is a reflection of the universal harmony of life.
Harmony is the source and condition of perfection; without harmony, no perfection is possible, either in life or in art.
Harmony consists in the correspondence of the parts, and in such a way that nothing can be added or subtracted. Here Alberti follows the ancient definitions of beauty as harmony and proportionality. “Beauty,” he says, “is a strict proportionate harmony of all parts, united by what they belong to, such that nothing can be added, subtracted, or changed without making it worse.”
Harmony in art consists of various elements. In music, the elements of harmony are rhythm, melody and composition, in sculpture - measure (dimensio) and boundary (definitio). Alberti connected his concept of “beauty” with the concept of “decoration” (ornamentum). According to him, the difference between beauty and decoration should be understood by feeling rather than expressed in words. But still, he makes the following distinction between these concepts: “... decoration is, as it were, a kind of secondary light of beauty or, so to speak, its addition. After all, from what has been said, I believe it is clear that beauty, as something inherent and innate in the body, is diffused throughout the entire body to the extent that it is beautiful; and the decoration is more likely to be of the nature of an added rather than an innate one.”
The internal logic of Alberti’s thought shows that “decoration” is not something external to beauty, but constitutes its organic part. After all, any building, according to Alberti, without decorations will be “erroneous.” As a matter of fact, for Alberti “beauty” and “decoration” are two independent types of beauty. Only “beauty” is the internal law of beauty, while “decoration” is added from the outside and in this sense it can be a relative or accidental form of beauty. With the concept of “decoration,” Alberti introduced the moment of relativity and subjective freedom into the understanding of beauty.
Along with the concepts of “beauty” and “decoration,” Alberti uses a whole series of aesthetic concepts, borrowed, as a rule, from ancient aesthetics. He associates the concept of beauty with dignity (dignitas) and grace (venustas), following directly from Cicero, for whom dignity and grace are two types of (male and female) beauty. Alberti connects the beauty of a building with “necessity and convenience,” developing the Stoic thought about the connection between beauty and utility. Alberti also uses the terms “charm” and “attractiveness.” All this testifies to the diversity, breadth and flexibility of his aesthetic thinking. The desire for differentiation of aesthetic concepts, for the creative application of the principles and concepts of ancient aesthetics to modern artistic practice is a distinctive feature of Alberti’s aesthetics.
The way Alberti interprets the concept of “ugly” is characteristic. For him, beauty is an absolute object of art. The ugly appears only as a certain kind of error. Hence the requirement that art should not correct, but hide ugly and ugly objects. “Ugly-looking parts of the body and others like them, not particularly graceful, let them cover themselves with clothing, some kind of branch or hand. The ancients painted a portrait of Antigonus only from one side of his face, on which the eye was not knocked out. They also say that Pericles had a long and ugly head, and therefore he, unlike others, was depicted by painters and sculptors wearing a helmet.”
Problems of aesthetics occupy a significant place in the writings of the famous Italian philosopher, one of the founders of utopian socialism, Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639).
Campanella entered the history of science, primarily as the author of the famous utopia “City of the Sun”. At the same time, he made a significant contribution to Italian natural philosophical thought. He owns important philosophical works: “Philosophy Proven by Sensations”, “Real Philosophy”, “Rational Philosophy”, “Metaphysics”. Issues of aesthetics also occupy a significant place in these works. Thus, “Metaphysics” contains a special chapter - “On the Beautiful.” In addition, Campanella owns a short work, “Poetics,” devoted to the analysis of poetic creativity.
Campanella's aesthetic views are distinguished by their originality. First of all, Campanella sharply opposes the scholastic tradition, both in the field of philosophy and aesthetics. He criticizes all kinds of authorities in the field of philosophy, rejecting equally both the “myths of Plato” and the “fictions” of Aristotle. In the field of aesthetics, this criticism characteristic of Campanella is manifested, first of all, in the refutation of the traditional doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, in the assertion that this harmony is not consistent with the data of sensory knowledge. “It is in vain that Plato and Pythagoras imagine the harmony of the world to be similar to our music - they are as crazy in this as someone who would attribute to the universe our sensations of taste and smell. If there is harmony in the sky and among the angels, then it has different foundations and consonances than the fifth, fourth or octave.”
The basis of Campanella's aesthetic teaching is hylozoism - the doctrine of the universal animation of nature. Sensations are inherent in matter itself, otherwise, according to Campanella, the world would immediately “turn into chaos.” That is why the main property of all existence is the desire for self-preservation. In humans, this desire is associated with pleasure. “Pleasure is a feeling of self-preservation, while suffering is a feeling of evil and destruction.” The feeling of beauty is also associated with a sense of self-preservation, a feeling of fullness of life and health. “When we see people who are healthy, full of life, free, smart, we rejoice because we experience a feeling of happiness and the preservation of our nature.”
Campanella also develops the original concept of beauty in the essay “On the Beautiful.” Here he does not follow any of the leading aesthetic trends of the Renaissance - Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism.
Rejecting the view of beauty as harmony or proportionality, Campanella revives Socrates' idea that beauty is a certain kind of expediency. The beautiful, according to Campanella, arises as the correspondence of an object to its purpose, its function. “Everything that is good for the use of a thing is called beautiful if it shows signs of such usefulness. A sword is called beautiful that bends and does not remain bent, and one that cuts and stabs and has a length sufficient to inflict wounds. But if it is so long and heavy that it cannot be moved, it is called ugly. A sickle suitable for cutting is called beautiful, so it is more beautiful when it is made of iron rather than gold. In the same way, a mirror is beautiful when it reflects the true appearance, and not when it is golden.”
Thus, Campanella's beauty is functional. It lies not in beautiful appearance, but in internal expediency. This is why beauty is relative. What is beautiful in one respect is ugly in another. “So the doctor calls the rhubarb that is suitable for cleansing beautiful, and the ugly that is not suitable. A melody that is beautiful at a feast is ugly at a funeral. Yellowness is beautiful in gold, because it testifies to its natural dignity and perfection, but it is ugly in our eyes, because it speaks of damage to the eye and illness.”
All these arguments largely repeat the provisions of ancient dialectics. Using the tradition coming from Socrates, Campanella develops a dialectical concept of beauty. This concept does not reject the ugliness in art, but includes it as a correlative moment of beauty.
Beautiful and ugly are relative concepts. Campanella expresses a typically Renaissance view, believing that the ugly is not contained in the essence of being itself, in nature itself. “Just as there is no essential evil, but every thing by its nature is good, although for others it is evil, for example, as heat is for cold, so there is no essential ugliness in the world, but only in relation to those to whom it indicates evil. Therefore, an enemy appears ugly to his enemy, but beautiful to a friend. In nature, however, there is evil as a defect and a kind of violation of purity, which attracts things emanating from the idea to non-existence; and, as has been said, ugliness in essences is a sign of this lack and violation of purity.”
Thus, the ugly appears in Campanella as just some shortcoming, some violation of the usual order of things. The purpose of art is, therefore, to correct the deficiency of nature. This is the art of imitation. “Art,” says Campanella, “is an imitation of nature. The hell described in Dante's poem is called more beautiful than the paradise described there, since, in imitation, he showed more skill in one case than in the other - although in reality paradise is beautiful, hell is terrible.
In general, Campanella’s aesthetics contains principles that sometimes go beyond the boundaries of Renaissance aesthetics; the connection of beauty with utility, with human social feelings, the affirmation of the relativity of beauty - all these provisions indicate the maturation of new aesthetic principles in the aesthetics of the Renaissance.
Each figure of Humanism embodied or tried to bring his theories to life. Humanists not only believed in a renewed, happy intellectual society, but also tried to build this society on their own, organizing schools and giving lectures, explaining their theories to ordinary people. Humanism covered almost all spheres of human life.
The culture of the Renaissance (Renaissance) was not a very long era. In Italy, where this culture first arose, it lasted three centuries - from the 14th to the 16th centuries. And in other European countries it is even less - XV-XVI centuries. As for other countries and continents, the presence of the Renaissance there seems problematic, to say the least. Nevertheless, some domestic scientists, in particular the famous orientalist N.I. Conrad, put forward the idea of a global Renaissance.
This idea also has support in the eastern countries themselves. So. Chinese scholars are developing a concept according to which China had not one, but four Renaissance eras. There are also supporters of the Indian Renaissance. However, the arguments and evidence put forward are not sufficiently substantiated and convincing. The same can be said about the Renaissance in Russia: some authors insist on its existence, but their arguments are questionable. The culture of the Renaissance did not have time to take shape even in Byzantium. This applies to an even greater extent to Russia.
In socio-economic and political terms, as well as chronologically, the Renaissance as a whole remains within the boundaries of the Middle Ages, within the framework of feudalism, although from this point of view it is in many ways transitional. As for culture, here the Renaissance really constitutes a completely special, transitional era from the Middle Ages to the New Age.
The word itself "Renaissance" means a rejection of medieval culture and a return, “revival” of the culture and art of Greco-Roman antiquity. And although the term “revival” became widely used later, at the beginning of the 19th century, the real processes themselves took place much earlier.
The Italian phenomenon of the emergence of a new culture was not an accident, but was determined by the characteristics of Italian feudalism. The mountainous terrain of Northern and Central Italy did not allow the creation of large land holdings. The country also did not have a permanent royal dynasty, was not united and centralized, but was fragmented into separate city-states.
All this contributed to the earlier (X-XI centuries) than in other countries, and more rapid growth of cities, and with them - the growth and strengthening of the role of refilled, i.e. trade and craft layers, which in the fight against feudal lords already in the 13th century. to their economic dominance they added political power in Florence, Bologna, Siena and other cities.
As a result, favorable conditions were created for the emergence and development of elements of capitalism. It was the nascent capitalism, which needed free labor, that accelerated the destruction of the system of feudal relations.
To what has been said, it should be added that it was in Italy that much of Roman antiquity was preserved, and above all the language of antiquity - Latin, as well as cities, money, etc. The memory of the greatness of the distant past has been preserved. All this ensured Italy's primacy in the creation of a new culture.
Many other events and phenomena contributed to the establishment and development of Renaissance culture. These primarily include great geographical discoveries - the discovery of America (1492), the discovery of a sea route from Europe to India (XV century), etc. - after which it was no longer possible to look at the world with the same eyes. It was of great importance the invention of printing(mid-15th century), which laid the foundation for a new written culture.
The formation of Renaissance culture was primarily a response to the deep crisis of medieval culture. That's why its main features are anti-feudal and anti-clerical orientation, a clear predominance of the secular and rational principle over the religious. At the same time, religion is not eliminated or disappears; it largely retains its leading position. But its crisis meant a crisis of the very foundation of medieval culture. The crisis of Catholicism was so serious that a powerful movement arose within it Reformation, which led to its split and the emergence of a new direction in Christianity - Protestantism.
However, the main and most essential thing in the culture of the Renaissance is humanism.
The founder of humanism and the entire Renaissance culture was the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). He was the first to talk about the turn of culture towards Antiquity, towards Homer and Virgil. Petrarch does not reject Christianity, but in him it appears rethought, humanized. The poet looks very critically at scholasticism, condemns it for its subordination to theology, for its neglect of human problems.
Petrarch strongly emphasizes the importance of the humanities and literary arts - poetry, rhetoric, literature, ethics, aesthetics, which help the moral and spiritual improvement of man, on the development of which the success of the new culture depends. Petrarch's concept was further developed by his followers - Coluccio Salutati, Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandoll and others.
A prominent representative of humanism was the French philosopher Michel Montaigne (1533-1592). IN In his work “Experiments,” he gives an ironic and caustic criticism of scholasticism, demonstrates brilliant examples of secular freethinking, and proclaims man as the highest value.
English writer and politician Thomas More (1519-1577) and Italian philosopher and poet Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639) the ideas of humanism form their core concept of utopian socialism. The first sets them out in his famous “Utopia”, and the second in the no less famous “City of the Sun”. Both believe that a life worthy of a person should be built on the principles of reason, freedom, equality, fraternity and justice.
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536)- theologian, philologist, writer - became the head of Christian humanism. He came up with the idea of reviving the ideals and values of early Christianity, a “return to origins” in all areas of life. In his satire “In Praise of Stupidity” and other works, he exposes the vices of his contemporary society, ridiculing the hypocrisy, ignorance, vulgarity and vanity of the world of the clergy.
Erasmus of Rotterdam sought to restore the “evangelical purity” of Christianity, make it truly human, fertilize it with ancient wisdom and connect it with a new humanistic secular culture. The most significant values for him are freedom and reason, moderation and peacefulness, simplicity and common sense, education and clarity of thought, tolerance and harmony. He views war as the most terrible curse of humanity.
Despite all the uniqueness of the emerging movements and concepts of humanism, there is much in common between them. They all rest on anthropocentrism, according to which man is the center and highest goal of the universe. We can say that humanists revived the concept of Socrates, as well as the famous formula of another Greek philosopher, Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things. Existing - in the fact that they exist. Non-existent - in the fact that they do not exist."
If for the religious Middle Ages man is a “trembling creature,” then the humanists of the Renaissance know no limit to the elevation of man, bringing him closer and equal to God. Nicholas of Kuzansky calls man “the second god.” If the first God rules in heaven, then the second rules on earth.
Instead of faith in God, humanism proclaims faith in man and his development. Human is defined as a perfect being, endowed with limitless abilities and inexhaustible possibilities. He has everything necessary and sufficient to be the creator of his own destiny, without turning to anyone for help, completely relying on himself.
Humanists also proclaimed belief in intelligence man, in his ability to cognize and explain the world around him without resorting to God's providence. They rejected theology's claims to monopolistic possession of truth and criticized the previous role of religious dogmas and authorities in the matter of knowledge.
In contrast to medieval morality, which promised man a better life in the other world, humanism declared man’s earthly life to be the highest value, exalted man’s earthly destiny, and affirmed his right to happiness in the real world.
Humanists rejected the religious concept of man as a “servant of God”, deprived of free will, whose norms of behavior are uncomplaining humility, submission to fate, unconditional submission to Divine will and grace. They revived the ancient ideal of a free, creative, active, comprehensively and harmoniously developed personality. It is not the Fall and redemption that constitute the meaning of human existence. And an active, active, working life, which is an unconditional value. Any work - be it agriculture, craft or trade, any increase in wealth - receives the highest praise from humanists.
Humanists revived the Aristotelian understanding of man as a “political animal” and went much further in this direction. They fully realized social character of a person and his being. They supplemented Christian equality before God with equality before the law. Humanists actively opposed the existing cruel social class hierarchy and class privileges. Starting with Petrarch, they began to increasingly criticize the idle “lifestyle of the nobles,” contrasting it with the working lifestyle of the third estate.
Humanism - especially Italian - came forward against religious asceticism, which requires a person to self-restraint in everything, to suppress sensual desires. He revived ancient hedonism with its glorification of pleasure and enjoyment. Life should not give a person torment and suffering, but the joy of being, satisfaction, pleasure, fun and enjoyment. Life itself is happiness and bliss. Sensual, physical love ceases to be sinful and base. It is included among the highest values. The great Dante in his “Divine Comedy” sings and glorifies all love, including sinful love.
Humanistic culture has created not only a new understanding of man, but also a new look at nature. In the Middle Ages, they looked at it with religious eyes; it was perceived very skeptically, as a source of defilement and temptation, as something that separates man from God. Renaissance humanism returns to ancient ideals in the interpretation of nature, defining it as the basis and source of everything that exists, as the embodiment of harmony and perfection.
Petrarch sees nature as a living and intelligent being. For him, she is a loving mother and teacher, a “natural norm” for a “natural person.” Everything in a person is from nature, not only the body, but also the mind, and virtue, and even eloquence. Nature is seen as a source of beauty or as beauty itself. L. Alberti - Italian architect and art theorist, representative of the Early Renaissance - speaks of the closeness of the language of art and the language of nature, defines the artist as a great imitator of nature, calls on him to follow nature “with his eye and mind.”
Reformation and the birth of Protestantism
The Renaissance caused profound changes in all areas of culture, and above all in. As noted above, the crisis of Catholicism led to the emergence at the beginning of the 16th century. the broad movement of the Reformation, the result of which was Protestantism - the third direction in Christianity. However, signs of serious trouble in Catholicism were clearly evident long before the Reformation. The main reason for this was that the Catholic clergy and the papacy could not resist the temptation of material wealth.
The Church literally drowned in luxury and wealth; it lost all measure in its desire for power, enrichment and expansion of land holdings. To enrich themselves, all kinds of exactions were used, which turned out to be especially ruinous and unbearable for the northern countries. The trade in indulgences has acquired a completely obscene aspect, i.e. remission of sins for money.
All this caused growing discontent and criticism towards the clergy and the papacy. It is noteworthy that Dante, in his “Divine Comedy” - at the dawn of the Renaissance - placed two popes, Nicholas III and Boniface VIII, in hell, in a fire-breathing pit, believing that they deserve nothing better. The creative work of Erasmus of Rotterdam contributed to the awareness of the crisis state of Catholicism. The French philosopher P. Bayle rightly called him the “John the Baptist” of the Reformation. He really prepared the Reformation ideologically, but did not accept it because he... in his opinion, she used medieval methods to overcome the Middle Ages.
The clergy themselves understood the need to reform Christianity and the Church, but all their attempts in this direction were unsuccessful. As a result, they received a powerful Reformation movement and a split in Catholicism.
One of the first forerunners of the Reformation was an English priest John Wycliffe (1330-1384), opposed the Church's right to own land, for the abolition of the papacy and the rejection of a number of sacraments and rituals. The Czech thinker also came up with similar ideas Jan Hus (1371-1415), who demanded to abolish the trade in indulgences, return to the ideals of early Christianity, and equalize the rights of the laity and the clergy. Hus was condemned by the Church and burned.
In Italy, the pioneer of reform aspirations was J. Savonarola (1452-1498). subjected the papacy to severe criticism, exposing the Church in its desire for wealth and luxury. He was also excommunicated and burned. In Italy, the Reformation movement did not become widespread, since here the oppression and abuses of the papacy were less acutely felt.
The main figures of the Reformation are the German priest Martin Luther (1483-1546) and a French priest John Calvin (1509-1564), who headed the burgher-bourgeois direction, as well as Thomas Munzer (1490-1525), who led the popular wing of the Reformation, which in Germany developed into a peasant war (1524-1526). In the Netherlands and England, the Reformation movement led to bourgeois revolutions.
The exact date of the beginning of the Reformation is considered to be October 31, 1517, when Luther nailed a piece of paper containing 95 theses against the trade in indulgences on the door of his church in Wittenberg.
It affected not only the trade in indulgences, but also more fundamental things in Catholicism. She spoke with a slogan about a return to the very origins of Christianity. For this purpose, she compared the Catholic Sacred Tradition with the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, concluding that the Sacred Tradition is a gross distortion of original Christianity. The Church not only does not have the right to sell indulgences, but also to forgive a person’s sins in general.
The Bible does not require any atoning sacrifice from the sinner. To save him, what is needed is not donations to the Church or monasteries, not “good deeds,” but sincere repentance for what he has done and deep faith. Forgiveness of personal sin, personal guilt is achieved through a direct, personal appeal to God. No intermediaries are required.
Considering other functions of the Church, supporters of the Reformation come to the conclusion that all of them, like the very existence of the Church, contradict the Holy Scriptures. The existence of the Church as a religious institution rests on the position of Catholicism on the division of believers into priests and laity. However, the need for such an institution and division is not in the Bible; on the contrary, the principle of “universal priesthood” is proclaimed there. universal equality of people before God.
It is this principle of equality that the Reformation restores. Servants of the Church should not have any privileges in their relationship with God. Claiming to be a mediator between a simple believer and God, they encroach on the right of everyone to directly communicate with God, for. as Luther states, “everyone is his own priest.” Any member of the community can be elected to the position of pastor.
Equally, every believer should be able to read and interpret the Holy Scriptures. Luther rejected the pope's exclusive right to the only correct interpretation of the Bible. On this occasion he declares: “It is fitting for each and every Christian to know and discuss the doctrine, it is fitting, and let him be cursed. who narrows this right one iota.” To do this, he translated the Bible from Latin into German, and following his example, it was translated into the languages of other European countries.
The denial of the Catholic Church was also justified a new understanding of God. In Catholicism, He is perceived as something external to man, a kind of celestial being, man’s external support. The spatial gap between God and man, to a certain extent, allowed for the presence of an intermediary between them, which the Church became.
In Protestantism, the understanding of God changes significantly: from an external support He turns into an internal one, located in man himself. Now all external religiosity becomes internal, and at the same time all elements of external religiosity, including the Church, lose their former meaning. Since the divine principle is transferred inside a person, it depends on him how and to what extent he can take advantage of the divine gift within him.
Faith in God essentially acts as a person’s faith in himself, for the presence of God is transferred into himself. Such faith truly becomes an internal matter of a person, a matter of his conscience, the work of his soul. This “inner faith” is the only condition and way of man’s salvation.
The revision of the place and role of the Church in religious life entailed the abandonment of many rituals, sacraments and shrines. Only those were saved. which are strictly in accordance with Scripture. In particular, of the seven sacraments, only two remain: baptism and communion.
The Reformation has many sides echoes with Renaissance humanism. She also follows the path of human upliftment, doing this, in a certain sense, more soberly and carefully. Humanism too generously brings man closer to God, declares him a “second god,” a man-god, etc. The Reformation proceeds more cautiously. It preserves the Christian thesis about the original sinfulness of man. At the same time, she endows him with the Divine principle, the Divine gift and grace, which open before him a real path to salvation.
Hence, she strongly emphasizes the importance of the efforts of the person himself, his personal faith, personal choice, personal responsibility. She declares salvation itself to be a person’s personal matter. So is humanism. The Reformation contributed to the strengthening of the role of the secular principle, worldly life. Luther, in particular, rejected monasticism as the highest form of service to God.
At the same time, between the Reformation and humanism there are significant differences. The main one concerns relationship to the mind. Exalting man, humanism relied primarily on the endless possibilities of the human mind. His faith in man rested on faith in his mind. The Reformation looked at reason very critically. Luther called her "the devil's harlot." He declared Peru in God inaccessible and incomprehensible to reason.
Questions about the relationship between the human and the divine were resolved differently, which was manifested in the ideological dispute between Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam. The first reproached the second for the fact that “the human means more to him than the divine.” Luther took the opposite position.
Emerging from the Reformation Protestantism includes several movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Baptistism, etc. However, they are all religions. which is surprisingly simple, cheap and convenient. This is exactly the kind of religion that the nascent bourgeoisie needed. It does not require a lot of money to build expensive churches and maintain a magnificent cult, which is the case in Catholicism. It does not take much time for prayers, pilgrimages to holy places and other rites and rituals.
It does not constrain a person’s life and behavior by observing fasts, choosing food, etc. She does not require any outward manifestation of her faith. To be righteous in it, it is enough to have faith in your soul. Such a religion suits the modern business person quite well. It is no coincidence that J. Calvin noted that success in professional activity is a sign of God’s chosenness.
The establishment of the new religion came with great difficulties. Catholicism, led by the papacy, could not come to terms with the fact that it was losing control over large parts of Germany, France, Switzerland and all of England. Confrontation between the old and new religions led in the second half of the 16th century. to an open religious war with Protestantism, called the Counter-Reformation, in which the Jesuit Order, created by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), played a special role.
It was this order that became famous for such a notorious event as St. Bartholomew's Night, when more than 2 thousand Protestant Huguenots were killed in Paris alone on the night of August 24, 1572, and throughout the country over the next two weeks - about 30 thousand Protestants .
Not only Protestants were persecuted, but also humanists, whose works were declared prohibited. For this purpose, the “Index of Forbidden Books” was created, which included Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Boccaccio’s “Decameron”. “On the revolutions of the celestial spheres” by Copernicus and many others.
Thanks to the revolution, which ended in the 17th century, the Catholic Church managed to maintain influence in Italy, Spain, France, the southern regions of Germany and a number of Eastern European states. However, European culture was split into Catholic and Protestant.
§ 2. Humanism of the Renaissance
The realization of humanity presupposes the development of the achievements of the cultural wealth of the past. The humanism of the Renaissance was manifested in revolutionary ideas addressed to the inner, earthly “divinity” of man, in the rejection of the dogmatism of church truths.
Humanism (Latin humanus - human) represents the first period of philosophical thought of the Renaissance, the ideology of humanism was a revolution in all philosophy: the nature of philosophizing, the sources of philosophy, the style of thinking, the very appearance of philosophers, their place in society became different.
Humanism does not originate in the departments of European universities, nor in monasteries and monastic orders. New philosophers - politicians, poets, philologists, rhetoricians, diplomats, teachers. Circles of learned interlocutors in commune cities, in the villas of rich patricians, at the courts of patrons of the arts, become the focus of spiritual life, centers of a new culture. Their tireless search for forgotten ancient texts, translation and philological activities gave European culture new ideals, a new look at human nature, a new worldview. A secular culture was created, with which all subsequent European culture is inextricably linked.
The difference between the views of humanists on human nature and the scholastic ones was expressed quite clearly by the humanist Pico della Mirandola in his famous “Speech on the Dignity of Man.” Having created man and placed him at the center of the world, God, according to this philosopher, addressed him with the following words: “We do not give you, O Adam, neither a specific place, nor your own image, nor a special duty, so that both a place and a person, and you had the duty of your own free will, according to your will and your decision. The image of other creations is determined within the limits of the laws we have established. You, not constrained by any limits, will determine your image according to your decision, into whose power I leave you” (History of Aesthetics. Monuments of World Aesthetic Thought. M., 1982. Vol. 1. P. 507.).
A person to whom God gave free will must determine his place in the world himself; he is not just a natural being, but the creator of himself and his destiny. Majestic figures stand at the origins of Renaissance humanism Dante Alighieri(1255-1321) And Francesco Petrarch(1304-1374).
F. Engels defined Dante as “the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times.” His “Divine Comedy” - a poem in 3 parts (“Hell”, “Purgatory”, “Paradise”) and 100 songs - a kind of encyclopedia of the Middle Ages - a monumental synthesis of poetry, philosophy, theology, science - had a great influence on the development of European culture .
Dante accepts Christian dogmatics as truth, but gives a new interpretation of the relationship between the divine and the human. He does not oppose these principles, but sees them in mutual unity. God cannot be opposed to the creative powers of man. The dual – mortal and immortal – nature of man also determines his dual purpose: the manifestation of his own virtue in earthly life and the “bliss of eternal life” – after death and with the assistance of the divine will. Man's earthly destiny is fulfilled in civil society according to the instructions of philosophers and under the leadership of a secular sovereign; The church leads to eternal life. (Dante Alighieri. Small works. M., 1968. P. 361.) Dante’s humanism is full of faith in the strength of man, his personal qualities are responsible for his good, and not wealth or inheritance, position in the social hierarchy. At the heart of Dante's political idea is the demand that the church renounce its claims to secular power. The Church must deal with issues of “eternity”; earthly affairs are the lot of people striving to create a social order based on happiness, bliss and eternal peace. Dante belonged to those ideologists who combined humanism with the theory of “dual truth.”
Dante opened the way to humanistic anthropology, within the framework of which creativity took place Francesco Petrarch(1304-1374) , who was considered the “first humanist”, “father of humanism”. Unlike Dante, who still accepted “eternity” in the understanding of the scholastics, Petrarch completely rejects it. In his treatise “On His Own Ignorance and the Ignorance of the Ancients,” he criticizes scholasticism, its methods, the cult of authority, and advocates the independence of his own thinking from church scholarship. The primary interest of Petrarch and his followers is directed to ethical issues. In the philosophical dialogue “My Secret,” he reveals the deepest internal conflicts of a person and ways to overcome them. The inner world of a person, moreover a “new” person, breaking ties with medieval traditions, constitutes the main content of his poems, letters, and philosophical treatises. A great propagandist of ancient culture, he had a unique library of Latin texts, and through his activities had a great influence on his followers.
These include Giovanni Boccaccio(1313-1375), Lorenzo Valla(1407-1457) and others.
In the XV-XVI centuries. Humanistic thinking is also spreading in other countries - in the Netherlands, England, Germany, Switzerland, and unlike Italian, which was more of a literary nature, the “northern” type of humanism was distinguished by a more rigorous construction using methodology, logic, theory of state and law.
The main representative of this type of humanism is Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536)- Dutch thinker, philologist, philosopher, theologian. He is best known for his work entitled “The Praise of Folly” (1509). This is a kind of “sum”, a set of the author’s views on all the problems of man and his existence in the world. In a sarcastic and humorous manner, he criticizes all the vices of the Catholic Church and scholastic dogma. The main pathos of the work is expressed in two theses: the paradoxical duality of all phenomena of existence and the destructiveness of dogmatism, obsession, and intellectual blindness. In his criticism of the church, he was the forerunner of the religious revolution (Reformation), but he himself did not go over to its side.
In his treatises, he demanded a return to genuine Christian morality. Asceticism, the renunciation of earthly life, is, in his opinion, immoral; the meaning of life is to use the benefits of life; in this, Christianity should learn from classical antiquity, and the business of philosophy is to deal with questions of the natural life of man.
The impact of the Christian humanism of Erasmus of Rotterdam was extremely great: his like-minded people and followers are found throughout Catholic and Protestant Europe from England to Italy, from Spain to Poland.
The decline of the powerful current of humanism found its expression in France, a prominent representative of which was Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). The radical optimism of the emerging culture brought with it a series of superficial ideas; the overthrow and denial of church authorities was often accompanied by the promotion of new ones, which was the subject of Montaigne’s criticism. All his work is dedicated to man and his dignity. A characteristic feature of his works is skepticism, with the help of which he sought to avoid fanaticism, blind submission to any authority.
Montaigne's main work, Essays, was written in French, which in itself challenged the church, according to the established canon of which all works were written in Latin. In the “Essays,” Montaigne, in an aphoristic form, through introspection and by turning to ancient wisdom, builds a practical-philosophical view of man in general. Experience serves as a teacher for him; he demands that reason be placed above authority, custom and “immutable” truths. In his opinion, the main ability that should be developed in a person is the ability to judge, which arises in the experience of comparing reason with reality.
His views had a significant influence on the formation of the experimental methodology of the New Age; on creativity - F. Bacon, B. Pascal, J.-J. Russo and others.
§ 3. Philosophy of the Reformation
The new system of values could not but influence the foundation of medieval culture: Christian (religious) dogma. The gap between the excessive demands of asceticism, purity, and morality in Christian ideology and the existing church shortcomings, hypocrisy, excessive enrichment and the general decline in the morals of priests became too obvious. The Holy Scriptures began to contradict the system of dogma created by the Catholic Church.
In the XVI-XVII centuries. there is an attempt to revise church ideology and the relationship between man and the church. The Reformation movement arises, which is associated with the names of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Münzer, Zwingli, etc. Within the framework of religion, the rationalistic tendency with elements of the ancient perception of the world and the role of man in it is intensifying. And although religion is separated from science, politics, and morality, in religion itself its basic tenets are being revised.
The Reformation, which began in Germany, covered a number of European countries and led to the falling away from the Catholic system in England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and other countries, marking the beginning Protestantism. As a result, the church enjoyed less power in these countries, which facilitated the development of science and secular culture in them.
The ideologist of the Reformation in Germany was Martin Luther (1483-1546). He publicly defended his teachings, protesting against the sale of papal indulgences. In 1517, he posted 95 theses on the doors of the church in Wittenberg against the abuses of the church and the Catholic clergy, which had an effect similar to “a lightning strike in a powder keg” (F. Engels). These theses were perceived as a signal of action by all opposition forces against the church for the national and religious independence of Germany. The main thesis of his teaching was to remove intermediaries between man and God - intermediaries in the form of the church and the clergy.
Luther's teachings grew out of his interpretation of sacred texts, dogmas, and the teachings of Christian mystics. From this interpretation it followed that a person’s salvation does not depend on the fulfillment of external rituals (as the church demanded), but on the sincerity of faith, which is given to him directly by God. Therefore, every person possesses the fullness of divine grace, there is no fundamental difference between the laity and the clergy and, therefore, the church is not a necessary link between man and God, everyone can independently exercise piety without restrictions or regulations. Luther sought to replace the authority of the church with the authority of the Bible. To do this, he translated the Bible into German so that it would become accessible to everyone (in the Middle Ages, all sacred texts were written in Latin and were accessible only to clergy). Luther rejected the exclusive right of the Pope to interpret the Holy Scriptures, and rejected monasticism as an ideal form of religious service. Socially, these ideas were associated with the demand for the elimination of monasticism and church land ownership, the simplification of worship, and the democratization of worship.
The Reformation movement was heterogeneous in its social aspirations. Calvinism, Zwinglianism and other branches of Protestantism were more radical, but what they had in common was the affirmation of a person’s internal religious freedom, the value of personal effort, and a change in the role of man in the general system of the universe.
§ 4. Neoplatonism and natural philosophy
The new worldview of the Renaissance also manifests itself in man's relationship to nature. Although the philosophy of nature is still associated with medieval philosophy, and the interpretation of the question of the relationship between God and the world remains central, a characteristic feature of this period is its anti-scholastic orientation. Since medieval philosophy was based on the philosophy of Aristotle, the natural philosophy of the Renaissance turns to the ideas of Platonism and Neoplatonism. However, in the understanding of nature, as well as in the interpretation of man, the philosophy of the Renaissance has its own specifics. “The birth of a new science coincides with a change in philosophical attitude, with a reversal of the value attached to theoretical knowledge in comparison with sensory experience, coincides with the discovery positive nature of the concept of infinity"(Koyre A. Essays on the history of philosophical thought. M., 1985. P. 19.) It is known that the Greeks had an aversion to infinity. According to their ideas, the cosmos is harmoniously closed, it, like everything perfect, is spherical, a kind of work of art, universal harmony, the general order of things, unshakable order, justice. “Lies and envy are inherent in the nature of the infinite,” said Pythagoras (Quoted from: Cassidy F.H. From myth to logos. P. 162.). It is clear what kind of “revolution” had to occur in the worldview of the era in order to establish a new attitude towards the finite and infinite, possibility and reality, material and ideal, absolute and relative. This "revolution" began during the Renaissance. Associated with this is pantheism (“pan” - everything, “theos” - God) of Renaissance philosophy - a teaching that identifies God with the world whole (“God is in everything”). The Christian God loses his transcendental supernatural character; he, as it were, merges with nature, and nature, in turn, becomes deified.
One of the most profound thinkers and representative of Neoplatonism of the Renaissance was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). His most significant work is “On Learned Ignorance.” Cusansky brings God closer to nature, ascribes divine attributes to nature, and above all, infinity in space. As you know, the central concept of Neoplatonism is the concept of “One”. In Plato and the Neoplatonists, the One is characterized through the opposition to the “other,” the many, the non-united. Cusansky rejects ancient dualism and concludes that nothing is opposite to the One, the One is everything. This philosophical position is also unacceptable for Christian theism, which fundamentally distinguishes the Creator (the One) from creation (the whole), and is different from the concept of Neoplatonism, which never identified the One with “everything.”
From the statement that the One has no opposite, Cusansky concludes that the One is identical to the boundless, infinite. The Infinite is that than which nothing can be greater, it is the “maximum”, while the One is the “minimum”. Nikolai Kuzansky thus discovered the principle of the coincidence of opposites. To make this principle more clear, he turns to mathematics: when the radius of a circle increases to infinity, the circle turns into an infinite straight line. For such a maximal circle, the diameter becomes identical to the circle, moreover, not only the diameter, but also the center coincides with the circle, and thus the point (minimum) and the infinite straight line (maximum) are one and the same. The idea of the absence of a center of the world prepares the Copernican revolution in astronomy, and the methodological principle of the coincidence of opposites makes Cusanus one of the founders of modern European dialectics.
The identification of the One with the infinite carried out by N. Kuzansky subsequently entailed a restructuring of the principles of not only ancient philosophy and medieval theology, but also ancient and medieval science - astronomy and mathematics. He is undoubtedly the predecessor of the doctrine of the infinitesimal and the limit of mathematical analysis in the 17th century. His teaching is imbued with faith in the limitless possibilities of human knowledge and in his creative abilities.
The idea of an infinite world developed Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), who made a revolutionary revolution in astronomy and laid the foundation for the heliocentric system. His main idea is the rejection of the idea of the Earth as the center of the Universe, reducing it to the category of other planets. At the same time, in astronomy, anthropocentrism in views on the essence of the world, which has now opened up to us in all its rich diversity, began to gradually disappear, a world governed by objective laws, independent of human consciousness and not subordinate to human goals. It should be noted that Copernicus’s theory preceded the new natural science, destroying the medieval idea of the world, based on Aristotle’s cosmology. Aristotle bases his views, first of all, on the opposition of Earth and Heaven. The laws governing the celestial bodies were supposed to be different from the laws ruling on Earth, and the motionless Earth was the center of the Universe. Therefore, Copernicus’s revolutionary ideas greatly undermined the authority of the church; it was not without reason that his main work, “On the Circulation of the Heavenly Circles,” was included in the “Index of Prohibited Books” of the church.
Pantheistic philosophy Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was the apogee of the development of philosophical thought of the Renaissance. It embodies humanism, spontaneous dialectics and the greatness of nature. For J. Bruno, “God is the infinite in the finite, he is in everything and everywhere, not outside us, but as the most present.” The One, the central category of his philosophy, is both the cause of being and the very existence of things; essence and existence are identified in it. The One is infinite and limitless, in it matter coincides with form, the spiritual with the physical, reality with possibility. By removing the boundary between creator and creation, Bruno destroys the traditional opposition between form (the creative principle) and matter (the passive principle) and thus transfers to nature itself what was attributed to God in the Middle Ages, namely, the active, creative impulse. Bruno's pantheism paves the way for a materialistic understanding of nature. Since movement as self-motion is identical to life, Bruno expresses the idea of the existence of life on other planets, of the existence of many worlds. For Bruno, man is part of nature. His love of knowledge and the power of his mind elevate him above the world. Bruno's work represented the most radical and consistent anti-scholastic philosophy. The irreconcilable conflict with the church ended tragically for him: in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome by the Inquisition. He did not renounce his views, and in the history of culture his feat serves as an example of the dignity and greatness of the human Spirit.
The ideas of Renaissance philosophers laid the foundations for the development of philosophy and natural science in modern times.
The Renaissance, as noted, appeared in the history of Western culture as an era of exaltation of the human personality, as a period of faith in man, in his endless possibilities and in his mastery of nature. But Copernicus and Bruno turned the Earth into an insignificant grain of sand of the universe, and at the same time man turned out to be incommensurate with the infinite space, dark and cold, feeling his powerlessness and insignificance, horror of the emptiness of the Universe. It was the natural philosophy of the 16th century, which, having destroyed the Renaissance picture of existence, laid the foundation for a different picture of the world, a different culture and a different philosophy.
§ 5. Philosophy of state and law. Social utopianism
The dream of the Renaissance humanists about a radical reform of the church, about the universal unity of peoples, cleansed of the abuses of Christianity, also manifested itself in the social sphere, in socio-political philosophy.
At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. Italy was shaken by constant wars, it was fragmented into separate republics, princes competed with each other for power. The need for a strong state that would fulfill this task was best expressed in his theory by the Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli(sometimes Italian Machiavelli is transcribed and written as Machiavelli ) (1469-1527) - friend of Michelangelo, statesman, historian, poet, military writer.
In the field of government, according to medieval theology, events were presented as the product of divine will. Machiavelli's position is consonant with his time: to derive the necessary state structure without resorting to a theological idea. For him, a social fact became a fact amenable to social explanation. He derived the necessity of the state from the egoistic nature of man, from his desire for personal interest and self-preservation. This requires the power to curb selfishness and establish order. This task is performed by the state. His views are characterized by a conviction in the limitless capabilities of sovereigns and commanders: he attributed to the statesman an exclusive role in governing the state, the well-being of which depends on his will, wisdom, institutions and laws, which he can establish if he has the necessary talent and energy for this.
During a meeting with Caesar Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, Machiavelli first had the idea of creating a state science, completely independent of any morality. In such dissociation, he saw a means to clearly understand the true art of government and build it on a new (objective) foundation: politics is determined not by God or morality, but by practice itself, the natural laws of life and human psychology. Machiavelli, in his work “The Prince,” made a detailed analysis of the successes and failures of various politicians and commanders of Rome, Turkey, France, and Persia, paying attention not only to military actions, but also to the morals of a particular people, to the psychology of the individual. In his opinion, the ideal ruler should not be bound by any preconceived schemes, religion or his word, but should be guided by real facts. In this case, morality is not important; he can be cunning, cruel, sinful, merciless (as exemplified by Caesar Borgia), only in this way will he master the spontaneous movement of human behavior arising from the thirst for wealth and instincts. As a result, Machiavelli’s socio-philosophical views are often defined as an example of cynicism and immorality in politics, and the term “Machiavellianism” over time has become synonymous with politics, which is guided by the principle “the end justifies the means”, when power is not subject to higher moral criteria and its goal is to achieve success at any cost.
However, the work of this thinker must be understood in the context of the historical conditions of that time. His initial guidelines, which could have been nothing more than speculation, are not so important, since there was no science about man and, especially, about society at that time. But Machiavelli’s merit is that he pursued the idea of the existence of an objective pattern, which he called “fortune,” which must be known, and having learned it, directed for the benefit of humanity. The controversial philosophy of the Florentine has its source in the exorbitant expansion of the capabilities of the human mind, which is characteristic of thinkers of this time, but its significance is great as the first attempt to free oneself from religious dogmas in the field of political life.
The most radical form of opposition to both the feudal order and the deepening social differentiation of society was the emergence of the utopian theories of Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella, which were the predecessors of the subsequent utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen.
Thomas More (1478-1535)- English thinker and politician. He combines his scientific studies with legal activities, holds a number of government posts, and in 1529 becomes Chancellor of England. He had a negative attitude towards the Lutheran Reformation. More's refusal to recognize the "Act of the King's Supremacy" over the reformed church and his courageous behavior aroused the anger of Henry VIII, and More was executed in 1535. T. More's heroic behavior was the embodiment of the humanistic moral ideal of human dignity and freedom.
More's worldwide fame was brought to him by his treatise “A truly golden little book, both useful and amusing, on the best structure of the state on the island of Utopia” (1516), containing a description of the ideal, fair, classless structure of the fantastic island of Utopia (from Greek, utopia is a place , which does not exist). This word he invented later became a household word. More sees the cause of the suffering of the people in the existence of private property and the dominance of private interest. The ideal state is based on community of property. Labor in it is the responsibility of all citizens, distribution occurs according to need, the working day is reduced to 6 hours, the most difficult work is performed by criminals. The goal of the communist society of the Utopians is not only material wealth, but above all, the free development of the human personality. Free time after work is provided at the personal discretion of each person for spiritual development, pursuit of science or other activities useful to society. More did not see a way to realize this ideal, since he was an opponent of popular movements, seeing in them a destructive principle and anarchy.
Another representative of Renaissance utopianism - Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639). In his treatise “The City of the Sun” (1602), he puts forward the ideal and program of general social transformation based on the abolition of private property and exploitation, on the realization of the kingdom of God on earth. Unlike More, he is completely convinced of the possibility of implementing this coup through the force of a mass uprising. In 1598, Campanella became the head of a conspiracy in Calabria against the Spaniards. After the defeat of the plot, he was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. During his almost 27-year stay in prison, he created dozens of works, including his utopia. In the ideal communist community, which the City of the Sun represents, governance is entrusted to a spiritual person - the priest. He is a metaphysician, marked with the solar symbol. His assistants - Power, Wisdom and Love - deal with issues of war and peace, martial arts, liberal arts, sciences, education, and birth control issues. Medicine, agriculture and cattle breeding. Thus, as in Plato’s “Republic,” in the ideal state of the Sun, philosophers and sages are at the head, regulating all aspects of the life of solariums. Political, secular power is intertwined with church, spiritual power. Religion merges with the philosophy of nature, the task is to unite them. An essential point of his program is the global unification of people, in which he sees the guarantee of delivering humanity from wars, famines, and epidemics.
Despite all the historical limitations of the communist (“barracks” type) ideal of the utopians of the Renaissance, the heritage of subsequent centuries was the thought of humanists about a fair social order, the abolition of private property as a source of oppression of the people, about the important role of science and education in the life of the people, about ending wars and establishing peace.
The Renaissance occupies a significant place in the history of philosophical thought. There has been no other era in the history of philosophy that would have affirmed the human personality in its beauty and power with such force. The Renaissance is a period of self-affirmation of the individual – the creator, the artist. However, the individual isolated personality on which revivalist thinking relied was not a solid foundation for a comprehensive worldview. This was the dawn of a new bourgeois-capitalist formation, based on the hypertrophy of entrepreneurship, and in the field of spirit - on the hypertrophy of subjectivism and naturalism, rationalism. In all areas of Renaissance culture, old ideas, traditions, and concepts collided with new ones. The main feature of Renaissance philosophy is its secular, earthly orientation. If the subject of medieval philosophy was God, now nature comes first. The mutual influence of developing experimental science and philosophy is extremely important for the further development of philosophy.
In general, the philosophy of the Renaissance created the basis of modern philosophy and represents a natural transition from medieval philosophical traditions to modern philosophy.
Control questions
Why did the philosophy of the 14th - 16th centuries receive the name Renaissance?
Formulate the main ideas of Renaissance philosophy.
Identify the main directions of Renaissance philosophy.
How was the humanism of Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and others expressed?
What explains and how is the apotheosis of art and the cult of the artist-creator expressed at this time?
What new did natural science of the Renaissance bring to the development of philosophical thought?
How is the problem of the relationship between the finite and the infinite solved in the philosophy of N. Cusansky and G. Bruno?
What is the “Copernican revolution” in views on the structure of the Universe after the discoveries of N. Copernicus?
What is the essence of M. Montaigne's ethics?
Is there any basis in the thesis that Machiavellianism is identical to immoralism?
Give an analysis of the religious revolution started by Martin Luther and called the Reformation.
What is common and what is the difference between the views of the Renaissance utopians Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella on the ideal structure of the state from the similar views of Plato?
What is common and what is different in the understanding of human nature in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?
What explains the fact that the social utopias of More, Campanella, and the works of Machiavelli attract the interest of contemporaries?
The philosophy of the Renaissance is considered as a transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. Does it have its own content and specificity?
additional literature
Introduction to Philosophy. In 2 parts. Part 1. M., 1989.
History of philosophy in brief. M., 1991.
Gorfunkel A. Kh. Philosophy of the Renaissance. M., 1980.
Losev A. F. Aesthetics of the Renaissance. M., 1978.
Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. M., 1992.
Machiavelli N. Sovereign. SPb., 1869 and any other publications.
Montaigne M. Experiments. M., 1992.
More T. Utopia. M., 1978.
Pascal B. Thoughts. St. Petersburg, 1994.
Campanella T. City of the Sun. M., 1954.
Erasmus of Rotterdam. Praise for stupidity. M., 1983.
Luther M. The time of silence has passed. Kharkov, 1992.
Porshnev B.F. Calvin and Calvinism // Questions of the history of religion and atheism. 1958. No. 6.
Kuzansky N. Op. in 2 volumes. M., 1978.
Ortega y Gasset H. Gioconda // Philosophical Sciences. 1990. No. 5.
Fish E. Nicolaus Copernicus. Warsaw, 1967.
Vernadsky V.I. Selected works on the history of science. M., 1981.
directions philosophy science of the twentieth century - neopositivism and postpositivism - in philosophical categories historical and logical, material and formal. Historical ...
A significant difference between the culture of the Renaissance is humanism in its new European understanding. In ancient times, humanism was assessed as the quality of a well-mannered and educated person, elevating him above the uneducated. In the medieval era, humanism was understood as the qualities of the sinful, vicious nature of man, which placed him much lower than the angels and God. During the Renaissance, human nature began to be assessed optimistically; man is endowed with divine reason, capable of acting autonomously, without the tutelage of the church; sins and vices began to be perceived positively, as an inevitable consequence of life experimentation.
The task of educating a “new man” in the Renaissance is recognized as the main task of the era. The Greek word (“education”) is the clearest analogue of the Latin humanitas (where “humanism” comes from). Humanitas in the Renaissance concept implies not only the mastery of ancient wisdom, to which great importance was attached, but also self-knowledge and self-improvement. Humanitarian-scientific and human, learning and everyday experience must be united in a state of ideal virtu (in Italian, both “virtue” and “valor” - thanks to which the word carries a medieval-knightly connotation). Reflecting these ideals in a natural way, the art of the Renaissance gives the educational aspirations of the era convincing and sensual clarity. Antiquity (that is, the ancient heritage), the Middle Ages (with their religiosity, as well as their secular code of honor) and Modern times (which placed the human mind and its creative energy at the center of its interests) are here in a state of sensitive and continuous dialogue.
Certain standards of good manners and education became the norm during the Renaissance; knowledge of classical languages, awareness of the history and literature of Hellas and Rome, the ability to write poetry and play music became a condition for occupying a worthy position in society. It was then that leading importance began to be given to reason and its ennoblement through upbringing and education. There was a belief in the possibility of improving the entire society through studia humanitas (humanities). It was then that Thomas More (1478–1535) and Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) came up with projects to build an ideal society.
Some researchers talk about a new type of human dignity that was established during the Renaissance. It was conveyed by the concept of virtu and was determined by a person’s personal qualities, his talents, and intellectual abilities. In previous eras, a person’s dignity depended not on himself, but on belonging to an estate-corporate organization, a clan or a civil community. The rethinking of the idea of virtu gave rise to a new desire of man to demonstrate his talents and abilities, the desire for fame and material success as public recognition of his talents. It was then that competitions for sculptors, artists, musicians, public debates among intellectuals, and the crowning of the first poets with laurel wreaths began to be held. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1381–1455), the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), the artists Giotto (1266–1337) and Masaccio (1401–1428), the poets Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Francesco Petrarca were recognized as the first in their fields of creativity. (1304–1374). Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) managed to excel in music, painting, invention, and engineering. Michelangelo (1475–1564) was recognized as the best in sculpture, but also in painting, architecture and poetry.
The ideal of life has changed. If previously the ideal of a contemplative life (vita contemplativa) dominated, then during the Renaissance the ideal of an active life (vita activa) was established. If previously innovation and experiment were condemned as sin and heresy, changing the natural world seemed unacceptable, now they have begun to be encouraged; passivity and monastic contemplation began to seem like a crime; The idea was established that God created nature to serve man and discover his talents. Hence the intolerant attitude towards inactivity and idleness. It was during the Renaissance that the principle was formulated: “time is money,” the author of which is called Alberti (1404–1472), but which every figure of the 15th–16th centuries could subscribe to. Then a decisive transformation of nature began, artificial landscapes began to be created, to which Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were involved. Interest in earthly life, its joys, and the thirst for pleasure became the leading motives in the artistic creativity of Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), Ariosto (1474–1533), Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) and other Renaissance writers. The same pathos distinguished the work of Renaissance artists - Raphael (1483–1520), Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian (1490–1576), Veronese (1528–1588), Tintoretto (1518–1594), Bruegel (1525–1569), Rubens (1577–1640), Durer (1471–1528) and other painters.
The establishment of intellectual autonomy was greatly facilitated by criticism of the medieval type of thinking, its dogmatism, and suppression by authorities. The main argument against scholasticism and dogmatics was drawn from the ancient ideological heritage. A special role in this was played by Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467–1536), Michel Montaigne (1533–1592) and others.
During the Renaissance, the leading role of the urban population was determined: not only the intellectual elite, but also merchants and artisans, who were the most dynamic groups of Renaissance society. By the end of the 15th century, the level of urbanization in Northern Italy and Northern France reached fifty percent. The cities of these regions of Europe had the greatest monetary savings, which were invested in the development of the arts and education.
