Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/407

Rh RENAISSANCE 389 Latin Christianity. The Reformation, inspired by the same energy of resuscitated life as the Renaissance, assisted by the same engines of the printing-press and paper, using the same apparatus of scholarship, criticism, literary skill, being in truth another manifestation of the same world-movement under a diverse form, now posed itself as an irreconcilable antagonist to Renaissance Italy. It would be difficult to draw any comparison between German and Italian humanists to the disparagement of the former. Reuchlin was no less learned than Pico ; Melanchthon no less humane than Ficino ; Erasmus no less witty, and far more trenchant, than Petrarch ; Ulrich von Hutten no less humorous than Folengo ; Paracelsus no less fantastically learned than Cardano. But the cause in which German intellect and will were enlisted was so different that it is difficult not to make a formal separation between that movement which evolved culture in Italy and that which restored religion in Germany, establishing the freedom of intelligence in the one sphere and the freedom of the conscience in the other. The truth is that the Reformation was the Teutonic Renaissance. It was the emancipation of the reason on a line neglected by the Italians, more important indeed in its political consequences, more weighty in its bearing on rationalistic developments than the Italian Renaissance, but none the less an outcome of the same ground-influences. We have already in this century reached a point at which, in spite of stubborn Protestant dogmatism and bitter Catholic reaction, we can perceive how the ultimate affranchisement of man will be the work of both. hi The German Reformation was incapable of propagating ii'lic itself in Italy, chiefly for the reason that the intellectual j. forces which it represented and employed had already found specific outlet in that country. It was not in the nature of the Italians, sceptical and paganized by the Revival, to be keenly interested about questions which seemed to revive the scholastic disputes of the Middle Ages. It was not in their external conditions, suffering as they were from invasions, enthralled by despots, to use the Reformation as a lever for political revolution. Yet when a tumultuary army of so-called Lutherans sacked Rome in 1527 no sober thinker doubted that a new agent had appeared in Europe which would alter the destinies of the peninsula. The Renaissance was virtually closed, so far as it concerned Italy, when Clement VII. and Charles V. struck their compact at Bologna in 1530. This compact proclaimed the principle of monarchical absolutism, sup- ported by papal authority, itself monarchically absolute, which influenced Europe until the outbreak of the Revolu- tion. A reaction immediately set in both against the Renaissance and the Reformation. The council of Trent, opened in 1545 and closed in 1563, decreed a formal pur- gation of the church, affirmed the fundamental doctrines of Catholicism, strengthened the papal supremacy, and inaugurated that movement of resistance which is known as the Counter-Reformation. The complex onward effort of the modern nations, expressing itself in Italy as Renais- sance, in Germany as Reformation, had aroused the forces of conservatism. The four main instruments of the reac- tion were the papacy, which had done so much by its sym- pathy with the revival to promote the humanistic spirit it now dreaded, the strength of Spain, and two Spanish institutions planted on Roman soil the Inquisition and the Order of Jesus. The principle contended for and estab- lished by this reaction was absolutism as opposed to freedom monarchical absolutism, papal absolutism, the suppression of energies liberated by the Renaissance and Reformation. The partial triumph of this principle was secure, inasmuch as the majority of established powers in church and state felt threatened bv the revolutionary opinions afloat in Europe. Renaissance and Reformation were, moreover, already at strife. Both too were spiritual and elastic tendencies toward progress, ideals rather than solid organisms. The part played by Spain in this period of history was Spain in determined in large measure by external circumstance. tlie Re ~ mi <-^ i i j i ^1 e naissance The Spaniards became one nation by the conquest or per j 0( i_ Granada and the union of the" crowns of Castile and ar t s and Aragon. The war of national aggrandizement, being in letters, its nature a crusade, inflamed the religious enthusiasm of the people. It was followed by the expulsion of Jews and Moors, and by the establishment of the Inquisition on a solid basis, with powers formidable to the freedom of all Spaniards from the peasant to the throne. These facts explain the decisive action of the Spanish nation on the side of Catholic conservatism, and help us to understand why their brilliant achievements in the field of culture during the 16th century were speedily followed by stag- nation. It will be well, in dealing with the Renaissance in Spain, to touch first upon the arts and literature, and then to consider those qualities of character in action whereby the nation most distinguished itself from the rest of Europe. Architecture in Spain, emerging from the Gothic stage, developed an Early Renaissance style of bewildering richness by adopting elements of Arabic and Moorish decoration. Sculpture exhibited realistic vigour of indubitably native stamp ; and the minor plastic crafts were cultivated with success on lines of striking originality. Painting grew from a homely stock, until the work of Velazquez showed that Spanish masters in this branch were fully abreast of their Italian compeers and contemporaries. To dwell here upon the Italianizing versifiers, moralists, and pastoral romancers who attempted to refine the vernacular of the Romancero would be superfluous. They are mainly noticeable as proving that certain coteries in Spain were willing to accept the Italian Renaissance. But the real force of the people was not in this courtly literary style. It expressed itself at last in the monumental work of Don Quixote, which places Cervantes beside Rabelais, Ariosto, and Shakespeare as one of the four supreme exponents of the Renaissance. The affectations of decadent chivalry disappeared before its humour ; the lineaments of a noble nation, animated by the youth of modern Europe emerging from the Middle Ages, were portrayed in its enduring pic- tures of human experience. The Spanish drama, mean- while, untrammelled by those false canons of pseudo- classic taste which fettered the theatre in Italy and afterwards in France, rose to an eminence in the hands of Lope de Vega and Calderon which only the English, and the English only in the masterpieces of three or four play- wrights, can rival. Camoens, in the Lusiad, if we may here group Portugal with Spain, was the first modern poet to compose an epic on a purely modern theme, vying with Virgil, but not bending to pedantic rules, and breathing the spirit of the age of heroic adventures and- almost fabu- lous discoveries into his melodious numbers. What has chiefly to be noted regarding the achievements of the Spanish race in arts and letters at this epoch is their potent national originality. The revival of learning pro- duced in Spain no slavish imitation as it did in Italy, no formal humanism, and, it may be added, very little of fruitful scholarship. The Renaissance here, as in England, displayed essential qualities of intellectual freedom, delight in life, exultation over rediscovered earth and man. The note of Renaissance work in Germany was still Gothic. This we feel in the penetrative earnestness of Diirer, in the homeliness of Hans Sachs, in the grotesque humour of Eulenspiegd and the Narrenschiff, the sombre pregnancy of the Faust legend, the almost stolid mastery of Holbein. It lay not in the German genius to escape from the pre-