|
In this extraordinarily rich and engaging
book, John Hale has painted, on a grand canvas, what he
calls "an investigative impression" of one of
the highest points of European civilization: the flourishing,
between 1450 and 1620, of the period we have come to call
the Renaissance.
It was an age that, wrote Marsilio Ficino
in 1492, "has like a golden age restored to light the
arts which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, painting,
sculpture, architecture, music." The book contains
memorable descriptions of all of these. But Hale is not
concerned simply with the arts: his interest is much wider.
"[This] was the first age in which the words 'Europe'
and 'European' acquired a widely understood significance.
It saw the emergence of a new and pervasive attitude to
what were considered the most valued aspects of civilized
life. It witnessed the most concentrated wave of intellectual
and cultural energy that had yet passed over the continent.
... It was also a period in which there were such dramatic
changes of fortune for better or worse -- religious, political,
economic and, through overseas discoveries, global -- that
more people than ever before saw their time as unique, referring
to 'this new age,' 'the present age,' 'our age'; to one
observer it was a 'blessed age,' to another, 'the worst
age in history.' "
Hale paints his picture with an astonishing
multiplicity of themes, people and ideas. How did Europeans
see themselves and others? What united them and separated
them, both geographically and within their communities?
What languages did they speak and write, and how widely?
How did they fix themselves in time and space? What did
they call civilized? What did they buy and sell? How did
they dress and eat? What did they think about and how did
they communicate their thoughts?
One of the strengths of this book, which
moves far beyond conventional or social history, is that
it resists the temptation to answer any of these questions
simply or glibly, or to impose unifying characteristics
on the period or the continent. Instead, Hale allows people
to speak for themselves, bringing the age to life with wonderful
freshness, immediacy, and diversity. His canvas is not covered
with broad brushstrokes, but with pointillist details and
individual voices; there is something pleasing and unexpected
in every corner.
The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance
is the most ambitious achievement of one of the world's
leading Renaissance historians and is itself a landmark
in the humanist tradition whose origins it describes. And
at a time when the meanings of "Europe" and "European"
culture are being questioned and debated, it is also a book
that shows us where we can find the roots of both of them,
and how much the present and future can be illuminated by
the past.
Sir John Hale is a Fellow of the British
Academy and Emeritus Professor of Italian History at University
College, London, where he was head of the Italian Department
from 1970 until his retirement in 1988. He started his career
as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College,
Oxford, from 1949 until 1964, and has taught at a number
of American universities, including Cornell and the University
of California. He has been Chairman of the Trustees of the
National Gallery and of the British Society for Renaissance
Studies, and has also served as a trustee of the Victoria
and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Museums and
Galleries Commission. He is the author of many books, including
England and the Italian Renaissance, Italian
Renaissance Painting, Renaissance Europe 1480-1520,
Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control,
and A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance.
|
