This is another comment that I simply insert — or steal — for Bob’s Blog:
Scurvy was another Great Leap Forward from the Renaissance.”
LOL! Well, there go your Maoist admirers. The liberals are still here, though.
I think the Renaissance was more like the Cultural Revolution, myself.
I’ve seen interesting analyses that see the Renaissance as the culmination of the increasing
influence of Islam on the West. It began with the cult of chivalry and the troubadour,
imported from Islam by the Crusaders. The technological revolution that emerged from the
Renaissance was the result of the rediscovery of algebra, the source of which is indicated
by the fact that “algebra” is an Arabic word. Finally, the political event that marked the
beginning of the Renaissance was the Ottoman conquest Constantinople in 1453.
I don’t hold with this theory myself, but it is popular with many who don’t like the modern world very much and who would therefore like to prove that it’s all due to Asiatic, anti-Western
influence. The most prominent supporters of this theory today are, of course, the neoconservatives.
COMMENT:
You see, I can not only write, I can COMMENT, too!
I would call myself a Renaissance Man, but in this case I will desist.
It is interesting how the Renaissance was popular with the conservative professors of Europe
and nineteenth century America. They used it, in fact, Walter Pater INVENTED it — to show
how the masses were in a thousand years of stagnation and misery throught the Dark Ages– in
which they included the Middle Ages –until the Scholars discovered Civilization again in the
Renaissance.
There was no civilization when the Scholars were lost inthe Fall of Rome (a term that always
confused Constantinople). So for exactlya thousand years all was darkness and dirty until
the Scholars of the Renaissance rediscovered the Scholars of Classic Times.
This unmitigated crap was Official Doctrine when I was in shcool in the 1950s. Nobody put
it into the bald and perffectly correct English I stated it in above.
We are, in fact, being destroyed by overcomplicating things that are, stated in English,
plainly absurd.
What is interesting is that the academic bureaucracy that calls itself The Intellectuals
today have taken on the old Tory view of the Renaissance without any interruption. Once
they, the Scholars, take over, all will be well.
Walter Pater and Mao Tse Tung would have agreed perfectly that it is not the PEOPLE who make
a society. They would agree that it is a set of BOOKS that will make all peoples what they
should be.
I will end by repeating LibAnon on this aspect of the Renaissance:
“I don’t hold with this hteory myself, but it is popular with many who don’t like the modern world very much and who would therefore like to prove that it’s all due to Asiatic, anti-Western influence. The most prominent supporters of this theory today are, of course, the neoconservatives.”
#1 by LibAnon on 03/18/2006 - 12:09 am
“Walter Pater INVENTED it”
For the record, Walter Pater did NOT invent the Renaissance. The French did, and the word was already established in the English language when little Walter was still in swaddling clothes.
More importantly, Walter Pater is our FRIEND in the fight against scholars and priesthoods. He championed individual knowledge and experience instead of the “great books”, formulae, abstract definitions, and absolute codes of “virtue”. In other words, he was the precise opposite of a neoconservative.
Besides, what was so great about the Middle Ages? They were the Golden Age for scholars and priesthoods. The official philosophy of the Middle Ages wasn’t called “scholasticism” for nothing. Overthrowing the dominance of these “schoolmen” was precisely what the Renaissance was all about.
“To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” — Walter Pater, “The Renaissance” (1873)
#2 by Elizabeth on 03/18/2006 - 12:19 pm
There was a lot going on in the “Middle Ages” that made it great. And scholasticism
was by no means the official philosophy of the Middle Ages: not only was it not formulated
until the 1200s (a hundred years before one of the _official_ beginnings of the
“Renaissance”), the guy who formulated it was routinely attacked as a presumed heretic
during his lifetime.
The “Renaissance” was full of effeminate men in tights, copiers of Greece and Rome,
and the First Wave of Wordists. In most of Europe, it was over by 1500.
The beginning of the Little Ice Age in the 1200s spelled the end of the glory days
of the Middle Ages. Women who had had real power, such as the Episcopal Abbesses of
western and central Europe, who had had enormous secular power, even going to their
kingdom’s parliaments, were shut up in their convents; women who had inherited their
fathers’ and husbands’ places in the trade guilds were kicked out; women who had had
opportunities for real education were lucky to be able to learn to read and write,
and men and women Wordists responded to challenges with quotes from ancient texts
instead of cogent arguments.
#3 by LibAnon on 03/19/2006 - 1:50 am
“men and women Wordists responded to challenges with quotes”
And you’re quoting Regine Pernoud, as far as I can tell.
But the difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is, like anything else, best judged not by reading and quoting books but by individual experience. Listen to Gregorian chant, and then listen to Palestrina. Look at Merovingian art, and then look at a painting by Raphael.
#4 by Shari on 03/19/2006 - 9:13 am
I wish that Elizabeth had more time to comment on what she knows. A REAl education for women, sounds great. My daughter got a degree in history from a Catholic women’s college in St.Paul. Alas. with a big dose of feminist poison. She’s chucked that though. I think that most women aren’t meant for “real power” but of course some are, and those, along with many more, should enjoy a true education