Essentials of Faith

Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Bio and Collection of Luther's Works

All Things Bach

All Things Bach

Rembrandt and His Paintings

Rembrandt and His Paintings
 

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Durer

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

The Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation

012 HSWTL The Renaissance

There is a lot to explore and appreciate about this time in history. It is indeed the beginning of modern  history. These are just some of the sites on the web that you can find - enjoy yourself!

Explore this website to get an overall feel for the Renaissance Period - The Renaissance.
This is another site about the Renaissance that might be of interest - La Renaissance.

This is a link to Renaissance Architecture - Architecture of the Renaissance.

It would be good to familiarize yourself with the Art of the Renaissance.

012 HSWTL The Renaissance

To truly understand the period in history that we call the Renaissance, we need to understand the attitudes of the people of that period toward nature and Man. It is often suggested that art and artists often show the way for the next step of culture. This may be more true during the Renaissance than at any other time of history.  By looking at some of the key artists and their significant works we will try to understand how this period so rich in its arts, inventions, architect, and writing gave rise to humanism, a world view that competes with Christianity for the hearts and minds of the people of this world.

The painter Giotto introduced a critical change into the way nature and Man came to be seen.  Giotto’s works “gave nature a more proper place and his people were real people.”  Giotto’s first great work was a painting of the Last Judgment. In this work he painted the face of the man who had commissioned the work and he brought the art of the period a giant step-forward by showing nature more like it really is. His people were larger than life in that they were oversized compared to the world around them but God’s creation was now being painted as it was, and the importance of this first step should not be minimized. Not only were Giotto’s paintings having an impact on his world but he was indeed an early representative of the “Renaissance Man,” and one of his last creative acts was to design the bell tower, the Campanile, in Florence (1334-1337).

One of the major contributors to advancing art in the Renaissance was the tragic young painter Masaccio. His work included many “portraits” among the faces of his people, and he gave them a “true-to-life quality.” And as Schaefer tells us: “Nature had thus now truly come to its proper place.” In addition to life like faces, Masaccio he brought central perspective to his works, was the first to bring light into his paintings from the right direction.  Schaeffer summarizes Masaccio’s contributions as “He painted so that his figures looked ‘in the round’ and in the midst of a realized space.  One can feel the atmosphere about Masaccio’s figures, this sense of true atmosphere being caused by the combination of perspective plus light.  In addition, his work had real composition; there was a balance to the total work in the relationship of the figures and the whole.”

We can recognize parallel developments taking place by Flemish painters in northern Europe especially in the works of Jan Van Eyck. In his works Van Eyck displays a mastery of light and air and he emphasizes nature. He also engaged in adding true portraits to his works yet he is likely best recognized for his landscape - he was the first master painter of the landscape.    Perhaps his work “Adoration of the Lamb” is the most representative of his incredible talent. “It is an altarpiece containing wonderful pictures of Eve, Adam, and singing angels.  But most impressive is the central theme: the rich, the poor - people of all classes and backgrounds - coming to Christ. And who is this Christ?  Van Eyck comprehended the biblical understanding of Christ as the Lamb of God who died on the cross to take away the moral guilt of those who accept Him as Savior.  But this Christ is not now dead.  He stands upright and alive on the altar, symbolizing that He died as the substitute, sacrificed, but He now lives!  As van Eyck painted this, almost certainly he had Jesus' own words in mind, as Christ speaks in the Apocalypse, the last book in the Bible: 'I am the living one that became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of death and hades.' The background of this painting is marvelous, a real landscape.” As his words reflect, certainly for Schaeffer, and many others Van Eyck was a major influence in Renaissance art.

Let’s turn for a moment from painting to literature. Even in literature we can see a positive drift toward the impact of nature.  Schaeffer uses the specific example of Dante and his work “The Divine Comedy.” Dante, a political exile, was one of the first writers to write in the “vernacular,” writing in the dialect or common language of the area. Dante’s works seemingly represent the influence of Aquinas. Dante continued the development of Humanism in the Renaissance by mixing the classical writings in with Christianity in his writings. Two examples of this are given by Schaeffer: “ from The Divine Comedy: first, Dante’s guide through hell is the Roman poet Virgil, who was to Dante what Aristotle was to Aquinas; second, the worst sinners in hell are Judas who betrayed Christ and Brutus and Cassius who betrayed Caesar.”       

Another writer, Petrarch, who is recognized as the father of “new” humanism, following in Dante’s footsteps popularized his love for the classical Roman writers and a love for ancient Rome. Petrarch’s translation of Homer has become known as a foundation stone of the Renaissance. “His translation of Homer was one of the foundation stones of the Renaissance, reviving Greek literature after 700 years of neglect.”

It is from Petrarch that Schaeffer traces what has come to be called “professional humanists.”  “These paid men of letters translated Latin, wrote speeches, and acted as secretaries.  They were largely laymen, like the Florentine chancellors Salutati (1331-1406) and Bruni (1370-1444).  Their humanism meant, first of all, a veneration for everything ancient and especially the writings of the Greek and Roman age.  Although this past age did include the early Christian church, it became increasingly clear that the sort of human autonomy that many of the Renaissance humanists had in mind referred exclusively to the non-Christian Greco-Roman world.  Thus Renaissance humanism steadily evolved toward modern humanism - a value system rooted in the belief that man is his own measure, that man is autonomous, totally independent.”

Even in architecture one can see a definite shift from gothic of the Medieval period to a return to classical influence. An example of this is found in the works of Brunelleschi.  In 1421 he began the building the Foundling Hospital which is now known as the first Renaissance building. Brunelleschi’s greatest work of architecture maybe his dome of the cathedral in Florence (1434) which combines a “great artistic triumph with an overwhelming feat of engineering.”

Whatever artistic medium one chooses to look at in the Renaissance one sees that man is beginning to put himself at the center of everything. It is no accident that it was in this period that we first recognize self-portraiture, portraits, and with that autobiographies and biographies as man seeks to recognize man. It seems that after the death of Masaccio the Renaissance Period which had been sitting on the fence between emphasizing the importance of God or emphasizing the importance of man, leapt to land on the side of man. “Man made himself increasingly independent and autonomous, and with this came the loss of anything which gave meaning, either to the individual things in the world or to man.  With this we begin to see the dilemma of humanism which is still with us today.” It even infected the way the Renaissance Man came to see the Medieval period.  “The humanists of that time, under the enthusiasm for the classics, spoke of what had immediately preceded them as a ‘Dark Age’ and talked of a ‘rebirth’ in their own era.  Harkening back to the pre-Christian era, they visualized man as taking a great forward leap.  The concept of autonomous man was growing.  In other words, humanism in the form it took in the Renaissance (and after the Renaissance) was being born.” 

Two men of the Renaissance stand above all others - Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and it is in them that one can perhaps grasp a view of the ultimate conclusion of humanism for man.

Michelangelo was unequaled as a sculptor in the Renaissance and arguably no one has ever matched his talents. Two of his best-known works are in fact signature works for the Renaissance. The first work known simply as “Prisoners” is a work where men are depicted as tearing themselves out of rock.  This is what Francis Schaefer has to say about this remarkable work: “They make a real humanistic statement: Man will make himself great.  Man as Man is tearing himself out of the rock.  Man by himself will tear himself out of nature and free himself from it.  Man will be victorious.”

The best-known work of Michelangelo and one of the five most significant works of art in the world is his statue called “David.”  The great irony of this magnificent sculpture is that it is created from a piece of marble that was considered to be so flawed that it was useless.  Many have assumed from the name of the work that Michelangelo was referring to the Jewish King David the slayer of Goliath and as we are told by Schaeffer that wasn’t it at all. “Michelangelo knew his Judaism, and in the statue the figure is not circumcised. We are not to think of this as the biblical David but as the humanistic ideal.  Man is great!”  It was indeed a bold statement of man - one that might even lead one to be reminded of the Tower of Babel. “The David was the statement of what humanistic man saw himself being tomorrow!  In this statue we have man waiting with confidence in his own strength for the future.  Even the disproportionate size of the hands says that man is powerful. This statue is idealistic and romantic . . .  There was and is no man like the David.  Humanism was standing in its proud self and the David stood as a representation of that.”

The other giant of the Renaissance period was Leonardo da Vinci - the perfect Renaissance Man, the man who could do almost anything and does it better than most anyone else. As an inventor, an engineer, an anatomist, an architect, an artist, a chemist, a mathematician, he was almost without equal.  It was perhaps his mathematics that lead da Vinci to come to his understanding of the ultimate meaning of Humanism. Leonardo is generally accepted as the first modern mathematician.  He not only knew mathematics abstractly but applied it in his Notebooks to all manner of engineering problems.  He was one of the unique geniuses of history, and in his brilliance he perceived that beginning humanistically with mathematics one only had particulars.  He understood that man beginning from himself would never be able to come to meaning on the basis of mathematics.  And he knew that having only individual things, particulars, one never could come to universals or meaning and thus one only ends with mechanics.  In this he saw ahead to where our generation has come: everything, including man, is the machine.”

Late in their lives both of these great figures of the Renaissance seemingly came to similar conclusions - that man starting with man could never get beyond man, man could never get from the particulars to the universal. Michelangelo and da Vinci, like all humanists “ . . . had been sure that man starting from himself could solve every problem.  There was a complete faith in man.  Man starting from himself, tearing himself out of the rock, out of nature, could solve all.  The humanistic cry was, ‘I can do what I will; just give me until tomorrow.’” As life drew to an end for these two great figures of the Renaissance they seemed to have reach the conclusion that the natural conclusion of humanism was not joy and victory in man accomplishments over nature but rather that  “As a man thinketh so is he - and humanism had already begun to show that pessimism was its natural conclusion.  Actually, we could say that we went to Renaissance Florence and found modern man!” - despondency, hopelessness, emptiness, valueless, without absolutes - Humanism and modern man have indeed been found - now what?

   

011 HSWTL The Middle Ages

Read the biographies of four important figures of the Middle Ages provided in the Research Links:
Charlemagne
Thomas Aquina
Jonh Wycliffe
John Huss

You may also want to search out sites that will give you a feel for the art and architecture of the MIddle Ages - it is a period that is indeed a fascinating one and one we today no way too little about - enjoy!

011 HSWTL The Middle Ages

The end of the Roman Empire was a time of political, social, and intellectual uncertainty. The world in the west changed as it entered into “The Post-Roman World.”
There was a visible decline in “vital” Christianity, which was paralleled by a decline in the arts, in learning, and we see the early traces of Humanism invading the church. All of this “change” set the stage for the times we have come to call the “middle ages” or the “Medieval” Period.

Francis Schaeffer believes there is a strong parallel between the “living” quality of  . . . early Christian art and the living Christianity of the early church. This idea that art reflects belief can be traced in the decline of vital Christianity. With the drift away from biblical teaching, there was a corresponding change in art. Early Christian art, like the early church was about real people in a real world.  However in the post-Roman world, with an “increasing distortion” away from the teaching of the Bible, one finds the introduction of Byzantine art. Byzantine art “became characterized by formalized, stylized, symbolic mosaics and icons.  In one way there was something good here - in that the artists made their mosaics and icons as a witness to the observer.  Many of those who made these did so with devotion, and they were looking for more spiritual values.  These were pluses.  The minuses were that in the portrayal of their concept of spirituality they set aside nature and the importance of the humanity of people.”  Art, like the church, began to take religion out of life. Art no longer reflected the idea of real people living in a real world that God had made. 

During this time the authority of the church began to eclipse the teaching of the Bible.  With the rise of the church’s authority came a growing emphasis on the idea that man’s salvation was based on man earning the salvation of Christ instead of man’s salvation being based on Christ’s work alone.  Man taking for himself that which rightly belongs to God is the essence of humanism and much of the history of the church from this time forward is in either support of or a reaction against the original, early teachings of the church. These changes to the culture shaped the pre-Medieval period and set the stage for the developing complex culture of the Middle Ages.   

The culture of the Medieval period was formed by the peoples’ positive and negative responses to the God they claimed to worship. The moral and intellectual response of the people was often a mixture of Greek and Roman origin mixed in with a local blend of paganism and Christianity. Syncretism was certainly alive and well in the middle ages and yet this struggle was not unique to the Medieval Church.  Even in the early church people had a hard time trying to find the proper response to Christ’s admonition to be in the world but not of it as Christians were challenged about their attitude toward material possessions and their style of living.

Christ’s admonition also raised the issue of God’s will versus the will of the state. When the state’s will conflicted with God’s, Christians were forced to make a choice and often the choice they made cost them their lives. Schaeffer shares this example: “During the persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors, the action of the Roman military commander Maurice is a good example of a possible response.  When he received an order to direct a persecution of Christians, he handed his insignia to his assistant in order to join the Christians and be killed as a fellow believer.  This action took place in the Rhone valley in Switzerland about A.D. 286, against a giant cliff just under the peaks of the Dents du Midi.  It is for him that the little town of St. Maurice is now named.”

On an intellectual level this admonition raised the problem of whether or not it was proper to read the works or even quote the writings of a nonbeliever. Eventually it was resolved that it was acceptable to read the works of non-Christian authors and that brought with it a host of different issues.       

These issues along with others can be easily traced throughout the period of the Middle Ages. In regard to material possessions we find the pendulum swinging to both extremes: luxury or asceticism. At times we see the emphasis on caring for the poor, widows, and orphans and then we find a period of utter disregard for these classes. We see St. Francis making the rule to have no money and yet the opulence of the Pope at times rivaled even that of the most pagan king. The papal court at one point became so outrageous in their spending that the “twelfth-century Gospel According to the Mark of Silver pictured the pope egging on his cardinals to fleece litigants at the papal court, using phrases deliberately mimicking Christ’s teachings: ‘For I have given you an example, that ye also should take gifts, as I have taken them,’ and ‘Blessed are the rich, for they shall be filled; blessed are they that have, for they shall not go away empty; blessed are the wealthy, for theirs is the Court of Rome.’”

Yet in spite of the opulence of the “upper church,” the church did step in an attempt to control the effects of exorbitant interest rates being charged on borrowed money. First the church prohibited it but after that failed the church tried to simply limit the amount of interest charged to an acceptable amount.  The church was also involved in trying to ensure that just prices were set and that inflated prices were not being manipulated because of selfishness or hoarding of goods.  This period also exalted the ideal of one working to the best of one’s ability. With this emphasis on good work,  there was also a concern about social needs of those who were unable to work. The church established hospitals, clinics, and other charities for the poor, sick or infirm.

Europe became known as Christ’s kingdom -, i.e., Christendom. To be a member of this community one needed a Christian baptism. Thus baptism was no longer just a spiritual act but rather it became necessary from a social and political point of view as well. To be a fully recognized member of European society one need to be baptized into the church.  It was for this reason that the Jew was excluded as nonperson and why the Jew was allowed to engage in occupations (money-lending) that were deemed inappropriate for Christians.

One of the critical issues of the Medieval Period was the rise of the church and its influence on and involvement in government.  The church often provided examples of effective economic and political management. The church became the leading example of a centralized monarchy and at the zenith of papal power the pope was indeed the most effective medieval monarch. At one point, late in the medieval period in church,  there was even an attempt to decentralize the church from the pope’s power. The “Conciliar Movement” was an attempt to see the church’s authority vested in all the bishops not just one.  While this movement helped to put an end to perhaps the most scandalous period of the church’s history the movement soon died. The result was that monarchial government rules the Roman church even today rather than a representative government. 

Not withstanding the church’s own issues about power, it did promote the evolution of a political theory based on governmental limitation and responsibility. Kingship and worldly power were to be balanced by the priesthood and the church. It was with this outlook that the church challenged uncontrolled secular power.

It was in the Middle Ages that the church came to appreciate and utilize classical learning.  Perhaps a strong faith, based on the Bible, could have resisted the influence of classical non biblical thought, but a faith that was less founded on the Bible and more founded on the authority of the church was susceptible to allowing the Bible to be placed on equal footing with man’s reasoning. We will witness the havoc that this wreaks within the church shortly.

One of the most successful examples of the benefit of the marriage between state and church in the Middle Ages can be found in the reign of Charlemagne (742-814.) Recognized as a founding figure of Europe, Charlemagne gained control over much of the western portion of the Roman Empire. In return for his coronation as emperor by Pope Leo III in 800, on Christmas Day, Charlemagne supported missionaries in the areas of his conquests, made tithing to the church compulsory, and built some of the most impressive churches in Europe. Church power and state power fed off of each other. Charlemagne, supporting scholars from all over Europe, used these men to spread a foundation for the unity of ideas across Europe. However as Schaeffer points out these scholars were church figures and learning still wasn’t something that average folks had.  In response to this blending of the best of both church and state we see the growth of some of the greatest achievements of architecture in the history of man. Romanesque architecture swept across Europe and soon gave birth to what has become known as Gothic architecture.

There were substantial cultural, social, economic, and intellectual achievements and change in the Medieval Period.  Yet in the midst of this dramatic change, an even more dramatic change was taking place as the church continued to move away from it early roots of being of biblically based to the church having equal authority with the Bible. It is here that we find the seeds that would create two powerful movements that impact us still today, the humanistic elements of the Renaissance and the Bible-based teaching of the Reformation.

The Renaissance has been understood to be all about the rebirth of man when in fact it was more about “the rebirth of an idea about man.” Much of this idea about man can be traced to the leading philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages - Thomas Aquinas. Schaeffer says about Aquinas: “Aquinas held that man had revolted against God and thus was fallen, but Aquinas had an incomplete view of the Fall.  He thought that the Fall did not affect man as a whole but only in part.  In his view the will was fallen or corrupted but the intellect was not affected. Thus people could rely on their own human wisdom, and this meant that people were free to mix the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of the non-Christian philosophers.”  Now that is indeed a leap of faith - and not a positive one. “As a result of this emphasis, philosophy was gradually separated from revelation ‘from the  Bible’ and philosophers began to act in an independent, autonomous manner. Aquinas’ favorite classical philosopher was Aristotle and so the once again the non-Christian philosophy of the Greeks and Romans were brought into the church with it the problem of “nature versus grace.“

If man (the particular) begins and ends with man there is no room for God (the absolute). Schaeffer suggests “. . . the problem is how to find any ultimate and adequate meaning for the individual things.  The most important individual thing for man is man himself.  Without some ultimate meaning for a person (for me, an individual), what is the use of living and what will be the basis for morals, values, and law?  If one starts from individual acts rather than with an absolute, what gives any real certainty concerning what is right and what is wrong about an individual action?”  It is “grace,” God the creator, and His laws, the “absolutes” that give meaning to life. Nature, which is created (the particulars), on the other hand is simply life, and without absolutes, it is life without meaning - welcome to humanism and the ultimate conclusion of today’s postmodern world - welcome to life without meaning, life without absolutes. Man became the center of all things.

In reaction to this type of thinking two men stood in the gap that would lead us in another direction - John Wycliffe and John Huss.  Wycliffe was an Oxford professor who resurrected and reaffirmed the teaching that the Bible was the supreme authority.  Wycliffe, with his English translation of the Bible, became a person of influence throughout Europe.  Huss, influenced by Wycliffe, became Europe’s voice crying in the wilderness that the Bible was the “only final authority.”  Schaeffer says Huss emphasized “a return to the teaching of Scripture and the early church, and insisting that man must return to God through the work of Christ only."  It was the influence of Wycliffe and Huss that began the movement in the church away from the humanistic element that pervaded much of the Medieval church.

At the close of the Middle Ages the forces of the two great movements which were about to gain centered stage had been set in motion.  These forces are still apparent today and we are surrounded by their influences.  Still engaged in battle, the humanistic elements of the Renaissance and the Biblical Christianity of the Reformation, cast a large shadow on our lives whether we realize it or not.  It may only be with the second coming of Christ that the world will recognize the winner.

Please note all quotes are from Francis Schaeffer’s book “How Should We Then Live?”