Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/36

* RENAISSANCE. 22 RENAISSANCE ART. came to be associated with the cleverness of the fifteenth-century schohirs. The lightness of Boc- caccio had seemed the nalural expression of exuberant joy in the natural things of human life. A century later this sincerity had largely ^ivcn way to an over-refinement that knew no limits. Everything was permissible in the name of .•esthetic experiment. Without in any formal way renouncing their allegiance to Cliristianily, many became inure really interested in i)hilospliy than in doctrine, and became increasingly lax in following the ordinary forms of devotion. It is here that we may best notice a distinction insisted upon by recent Roman Catholic scholars — notably by Ludwig Pastor in his Bistorii of the Popes — between a "true' and a "false' Renais- sance. By the former is meant the enlargement of scope and the clearing of the mental vision possible to men without dc]iarlure from the traditions or the institutions of the Church. By a "false' Renaissance is meant the exaggeration of the .esthetic and critical side of learning to a point where it must lead to indifference or even hostility to the clerical traditions. A great change came over the spirit of the Kew Learning wlien it passed to the more serious, less artistic, and more deeply religious peoples of the Xortli. The impulse which led young f.'ermans and especially young Englishmen to cross the Alps and study the ancient classics under Italian teachers was largely the desire to find the verv best means to acquire .such training as would help them in the regular professions. There is in the North but little of the affected ipstheticism of the later Italians. Such men as those whom Erasnms found in England at the end of the fifteenth century, .John Colet, later De.an of Saint Paul's, founder of the most important boys' .school in England and interpreter of Chris- tianity by the method of a rational criticism; Grocyn, the most important agent in introducing the teaching of Greek into England; Thomas Linacre, founder of the London College of Physi- cians ; and Thomas More, a busy lawyer. King's coimselor. and social reformer, suggest a type of man totally different from the members of the Florentine 'Academy.' Yet all these men drew their intellectual inspiration from Italy, and wi're free to acknowledge their debt. Eras- nms him.self, with all his biting satire and his ready criticism of many serious things, was primarily the preacher of a sane rationalism based upon sound learning, and b.y this he always meant the learning of the New Method. 'Art for art's sake' never held the same place in the intellectmil code of the North as in that of Italy, but the appreciation of learning was there none tile less keen, and proved to be more lasting in its effect upon national character. One of the great services of the northern Humanism was the revival of the study of Hebrew on a scientific basis. What we have said of the medieval study of Latin applies equally to that of Hebrew. It had been pursued by .Jewish scholars with a view to the perpetuation of their racial institu- tions, but it had not been in any sense an instru- ment of culture. .Johann Reuclilin, an elder con- temporary of I^uther and Erasnuis, was the first to call attention to the importance of Hebrew in a complete scheme of Christian scholarship. He aroused a storm of opposition from the same obscurantist elements that had always been ready to persecute .Jews as inevitably hostile to all that bore the Christian name. He found his support wholly in the circle of enlightenment that had spread itself outward from the stud,v of the Creek and Latin classics as a means of civilization. The party of the 'Reuchlinists' in- cluded all the forward-looking elements of Ger- man society and attracted the sympathy of the men of enlightenment everywhere. Its most char- acteristic expression is found in the Epistolw Olim-iironim Virortim (Letters of the Men of Darkness), the most galling satire of the Ref- ormation period, in which the old scholastic method was held up to the derision of people who were quite read.v to join in the laugh and to carry out the suggestion of rcfoini. The first quarter of the sixteenth century saw the capture of most of the great universities of the North by the new spirit. Even at Paris, the theological school, the Sorbonne, still de- fended the ancient faith, and largely by the ancient methods, while the CoU&ge de France, founded by Francis I., became a seat of enlight- ened instruction. So at Louvain, one of the most solid bulwarks of the scholastic theology, a new school, established with the help of Erasmus, kept up the balance with success. The great importance of the New Learning in its efTect upon the Protestant Reformation is sufficiently shown by the studies of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other leaders of the move- ment. No doubt the immediate efl'ect of the Reformation was once more to turn men's minds away from purely aesthetic considerations, but the work of the New Learning had been done and could not be undone. BiDLiooRAPHY. The most important work on the general history of the Renaissance is Voigt, Die WiederbelehiOK/ des Idassisclwn AUertunis (.3d ed., Berlin, 1893). Consult also: Miintz, Preciirsori e propugnatori del rinascimeiito (Florence, 1902) ; Burckhardt, Geschiehte der Renaissance in rtalien (Stuttgart, 1890-91); id., Kuliur der Renaissance in Italien (8th ed., Leip- zig, 1901) : Symonds. The Renaissance in Italy (London, 1877) ; Pater, fitndies in the History of the Renaissance (ib., 1873) ; Biese, Die Enticicke- lung des yaturgefUhls iiii Mittelalter uiul der yeuzeit (Leipzig, 1887); Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch (New York, 189-2) ; Seebohm, Three Oxford Reformers (3d ed., London, 1887) ; and the lives of Erasmvis by Fronde (ib., 1894), Drummond (ib., 1873), and Emerton (New York, 1809). RENAISSANCE ART (OF., Fr. renaissante, from Lat. rniascens, pres. part, of renasci, to be born again, from re-, back again, anew + nasci, to be born ), During the last decades of the four- teenth centur.y and the first decades of the fifteenth a new spirit invaded the domain of art, asserting itself in a new enthusiasm for the study of man and the stud,y of the antique. To the humanists in literature corresponded the realists, natural- ists, and classicists in art. Antique art was re- discovered, but while the classical element pre- ponderated in architecture and decoration, it was the element of realism that took possession of the arts of sculpture and painting. The flowering of the Renaissance into these new impulses was chiefl.v due to a few leading artists of Tus- cany between 1390 and 1430; to the architect Brunelleschi, the sculptors Donatello, Querela, and Ohiberti. and the painters Masolino, Masac- cio, and others. Northern critics, however, have