Appendices

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Feudal Europe

Renaissance
1400 - 1700 A.D.

POLITICAL POWER

Much of the political power was held by feudal lords, men who had inherited large areas of land. On the land lived serfs, who did not own the land and who owed labor and produce to the lord of the manor, who in turn protected them. While the serfs did not own the land and were subject to the judicial authority of the feudal lords, they generally could not be turned off the land without cause.

The Catholic Church wielded great influence and power throughout much of Europe, occasionally ruling in Italy, and sometimes acting to install or remove political rulers.

Power was being consolidated into larger and larger areas. The monarchs gained increasing power, which many claimed they held by the divine right of kings. “Saint Augustine in The City of God set out the theoretical framework for the institution of Christian monarchy in his concept of the Two Cities, the City of God, that is, the body of believers, and the City of Man, that is, the secular world. Although these two cities are in spiritual conflict, the City of Man was instituted by God, according to Augustine, in order to secure the safety and security of the members of the City of God. Therefore, monarchs are placed on their thrones by God for a specific purpose. Although they may be ungodly, to question their authority is in essence to question God's purpose for both the City of Man and the City of God. This, or some form of this, made up the foundation of medieval and Renaissance theories of monarchy. . . . Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) reinforced medieval notions of kingship in his theory of the Divine Right of Kings.” (Richard Hooker, 1996 <http://www.wsu.edu/ ~dee/GLOSSARY/DIVRIGHT.HTM>.
“We have already seen that all power is of God. The ruler, adds St. Paul, "is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." Rulers then act as the ministers of God and as his lieutenants on earth. it is through them that God exercises his empire.” (Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) )
During the Renaissance, there were also a number of things that began to threaten or weaken the absolute authority of some monarchs. First, people from lower classes began to accumulate wealth, which gave them more political influence. Second, religious reformations led to a growing diversity in religious institutions. Different religious groups occasionally supported different people's claims to the monarchy, which led to questions about who genuinely had a divine right to rule, if anyone. Some monarchs even split with all the churches and had a secular reign.

CLASS SYSTEM

During the middle ages, a very rigid class system had evolved. The privileged classes were the aristocracy and the clergy. They were the owners of the land, which was the source of all wealth. The aristocracy and clergy also held political power, which enabled them to tax the peasants or serfs, who lived on the lands of the aristocracy. People even bought positions of Bishop and Priest, in order to be able to tax the peasants. The peasants, who produced goods from farms and flocks, or produced goods in household shops, supported the superstructure of nobility and priests. But they held no political power.

Very slowly, the class system began to erode, more quickly in England, more slowly in France and southern Europe. As other sects arose and as governments became secularized, the clergy could not take from the peasants so freely, and they began to lose their political might.

Also, people from lower classes, through the new shipping trades and increased production methods, created a new mercantile class. This new class of minor capitalists began to accumulate wealth, sometimes gathering more wealth than the landed aristocracy who had traditionally held the political power. With the increased wealth, those with money began to have more political influence, weakening the monarch's claim to be absolute and weakening the power of the aristocracy..

Slowly, people began to evaluate others based on merit, talent or wealth, not merely upon birth and bloodlines. The new mercantile class slowly become supporters of the arts also, so art became increasingly popular and secular (nonreligious). Also as renaissance scholars turned their attention back to the Greeks and Romans, they searched their works for writings about governmental policies (which were more democratic) and for moral values (which were more humanistic).

COSMOS

The view of the cosmos was the traditional one proposed by the Greeks which had slowly become intertwined with church theology: The earth was deemed to be the center of the universe; the sun, moon and planets were believed to move in perfect circles around the earth. The stars were thought to be fixed on an outer crystalline sphere. This was known as the Ptolemaic or geocentric model.

Because of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and others, a new model of the earth, other planets, sun, moon and stars arose, the one we are familiar with today. This theory placed the sun at the center of the universe. It became known as the Copernican or heliocentric model. The adoption of the heliocentric view of the universe was a tremendous revolution in many ways. First, it brought into question the theological view that this earth was the center of God's heavens. Second, the heliocentric view was supported by secular empirical and rational evidences, in rejection of the traditional and authoritative positions of Catholicism and the church scholastics. Galileo traveled to Rome in 1616 to try to convince the Church that the Copernican view was correct. The result was that Copernicus’s book was banned from 1616-1822.

THE CHURCH

The Church owned much land, the priests were supported with mandatory taxes (tithes), and they had the monopoly on education, books, and records. Most peasants were illiterate and uneducated; the church was the depository of the written records, and was the source of learning.

Most schools were church schools or schools within monasteries; most teachers were monks and priests. With these powers of censorship and control over knowledge, the church kept rigid control of the information people received about religion, history, science, and philosophy. If one learned, s/he learned from the church's point of view, which had reigned supreme for years. There were few who would even think to challenge accepted, traditional views.

Reformers began to challenge the infallibility of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther, an ordained Catholic priest, began to question the Catholic sale of indulgences and other practices; he also became convinced that the Church was deserting the earlier view of salvation by grace. In 1517, he attached to a church door in Wittenberg a set of 95 theses challenging existing Catholic thought. His influence was significant in eroding the absolute power of Catholicism.
In 1541, in Geneva Switzerland, John Calvin also began a system of reforms that is sometimes called the "second reformation."
In England, in 1534, Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and declared himself the head of the Church in England.
In Germany, Switzerland, and in France, civil leaders also broke free from the papal authority, sometimes supporting new protestant movements. With new Christian religions emerging, no one faith had the great power it had previously held. (This was to be a reformation, however, not a new direction. Both in religion and in art, people were looking to go backward to a purer time, a golden age which had been lost.)

Also, scientific studies by secular scholars such as Galileo became better known and were convincing. The findings of science did damage to religions in general, but especially to Catholicism. The Church seemed unable to keep up with scientific advances; for many people, the church remained too other-worldly, too out of touch with reality, too slow to change. For example, Galileo’s writings were banned into the 19th century, and it was only in 1992 the Pope concluded the Church was wrong in condemning Galileo.

NATURE

The dominant view of nature was that it was controlled by supernatural forces in a direct and personalized way. Illnesses, retardation, deformities, as well as natural disasters, were seen to be guided by good and evil supernatural forces and directed at humans. This view of external spiritual forces controlling nature is called dynamism.

Because of early scientific efforts, the view of nature began to become more mechanical; that is, people began to think of nature as more a part of an ordered process of cause-effect relationships. Galileo, for example, argued that mathematics was a divine language from God that could be used to describe most natural processes. The book of nature, he said, written in the divine language of mathematics, should be used with the Holy Bible to understand God’s ways.
They still were far removed from the scientific view of nature that we see during later generations, however.

ART AND LITERATURE

Art, during the dark ages, was almost entirely church related. Artists were hired almost entirely to decorate churches and some civic buildings. Artists were not considered as more than craftsmen. A sculptor or artist held no more distinction than a carpenter or stone mason. The art produced aimed at the glorification of God, and usually represented humans as little better than stick figures. There was no sense of depth or perspective in the paintings, and no sense of human worth or dignity. The human figures are flat and unreal; they seem barely living creatures. Buildings are symbolic objects, not places to live in. Landscape is decorative, but it does not invite the viewer to think of it as really a place that could be walked in.

With widespread illiteracy, literary experiences were limited to a few morality plays presented by the guilds or public singing by minstrels.

The Renaissance, or rebirth, was primarily the rebirth on interest in learning and arts of the classical Greek and Roman periods. Art, sculpture, and literature in that classical period had been very "human" centered, with a great emphasis on the beauty and dignity of individuals. Therefore, the renaissance is also called a "humanistic" period. New paintings, although they were still often commissioned by the church, showed figures of David, Moses, and Mary which were modeled after Greek statues of gods and emperors. The human form had a beauty and dignity as it had in Greek and Roman art. Artists such as da Vinci and Michelangelo studied anatomy carefully in order to accurately portray the human body. The settings and themes were often from Christianity; the form and style were from the Greeks and Romans. Also, the growing mercantile class, with its new wealth, occasionally commissioned art works for secular buildings or for private use. Art, literature, and learning all flourished.
About 1450, Gutenberg developed the printing press, which made knowledge available in larger quantities to the masses. More people learned to read; secular schools arose, and the vernacular languages were used for science and literature, rather than just the church Latin. Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Mallory and other authors began to write in the vernacular language of the people. As their manuscripts began to appear in printed form, there was an explosion of learning and reading. Suddenly it became worthwhile for people to learn to read and write, and so they did. Learning became available to all classes, not just the aristocracy. Just as important, the reading material was no longer just that provided by the church; secular poems, tales, and epics made the rounds as well. Secular universities in the cities slowly replaced monasteries and church centered schools as the centers of learning.

HUMAN DEPRAVITY
V. HUMANISM

During the age of feudalism, emphasis was largely upon religious values; the hereafter was considered the ultimate reality, this life but a shadow of things to come. Much emphasis was put upon the doctrine of original sin, the belief that all descendants of Adam were born fundamentally depraved and with a stronger inclination for sin than for good.

In this period, there was a revolt against religious restriction on learning. The idea developed that humans should become learned and that this life was to be enjoyed. In contrast to the emphasis upon our evil inclinations, people adopted the classical view that humans had a dignity and beauty that made them admirable, praiseworthy, and capable of using their own free will to move toward a divine nature. This was influenced by the turning to the art and writings of the ancients, and it is evident in the new art forms of the Renaissance.

Period -->
World View or Concept

RENAISSANCE (AND PRE-RENAISSANCE)

ENLIGHTENMENT (AGE OF REASON)

GOD

God is the moving force in every living (and inanimate) thing; His spirit moves all things, not mechanical forces like gravity and electromagnetism. He is everywhere present and plays an important role in the daily governance of the physical world, the health and mental states of human beings. The world is an active battleground for good and bad spirits.

God's role has changed. Instead of being the direct cause of every earthquake, he is now the Creator of the laws and forces by which the world and the universe move. Spirit has divided from matter in Cartesian dualism. Descartes had identified his knowing self as his soul; matter, including even his own body, was viewed as separate. Gradually all matter was viewed as mechanical and subject to mathematical studies. God is now the "Clock Maker," “Architect,” or absent “Landlord,”—still the Creator in the eyes of many, but involved more remotely than before. For others, since God could not be established empirically, He did not exist.

BIBLE AND CHRIST STORY

The Bible was considered to be infallible, the literal and precise word of God. The greatest source of knowledge, the traditions of the golden ages of the past, should not be questioned; we should trust the authority of past prophets, popes, and scholars who had been approved by the church.

Standard, literal readings of the Bible were increasingly challenged. Partly as an outgrowth of the increased optimism of the renaissance, partly because of religious reformism, and partly because of the new science, the notion of human depravity, of humans being naturally evil as a result of original sin, was also challenged. Religious people were sometimes Deists, believers in the existence of some sort of supreme being, but unconvinced that Jesus was literally the son of God. Others were agnostic.

MAN

Humans were considered naturally evil as a result of original sin, and intellectually like children, in need of strong religious and civil rulers to guide them. Slowly, during the Renaissance, humanistic thinking began a slow elevation of respect for humanity.

Humans were considered good. Reason was God's special gift to humanity. It is God’s most divine quality, and it is the quality he gave to His special creation, humankind. With a reasoned, disciplined life, people could acquire great knowledge of the natural forces in the universe and bring about powerful changes. Not only priests could be instruments in the hand of God, but also scientists and philosophers. Knowledge, primarily gained through science and philosophy, would lead humanity to a better existence. Since nature had been de-mythologized, all parts of the material universe could be studied and comprehended by human reason.

PAST AND PRESENT AND HUMAN DESTINY

The best of times, the golden ages, were recorded in history. During the dark ages, the golden ages were held to be the time in Eden and the time of the early prophets, times when people lived for centuries and walked and talked with God. Since that time, humans were in a continual decline and would continue so until the rejuvenation of Christ's second coming.
During the renaissance, the golden ages were held to be the classical periods in which Greece and Rome had risen to great achievements. History was cyclical, with periods in which people rose by imitating the classical models of the Greeks and Romans, and then periods of decline.

There was unbounded optimism about the future. There developed the idea of human Progress, the conviction that with humans living by reason, life would be better: human health, the arts, and science would continually improve and become better throughout time as humans learned to live guided by reason. In a real sense, Science had become the savior of humanity. Even religious believers were inclined to say that God had given us reason and knowledge to eliminate evil; as humans grew in knowledge, they would stop wars, get rid of sickness and pestilence, cease from sin, and eventually eliminate death. Thus, human knowledge would help bring about the joyous millennium.

ART

During the middle ages, art had the primary purpose of showing the depravity of humans and the powerful glory and grace of God. Art was primarily devoted to religious worship and praise.
During the renaissance, art emulated the ideals of the Greeks and Romans, and it became much more human-centered. Classical forms and Christian subjects were woven together in ways that praised God, but emphasized the beauty and intelligence of God's special creation, humanity.

Art, influenced by the passionate mysticism of the Catholic Reformation, turned first to a style known as Baroque. The Baroque stressed emotional and sensual responses, used figural distortions, irrational space, dynamic contrasts of light and dark and bizarre colors. It was characterized by a love of grandeur, opulence, and vast, expanding horizons.

Later, Neoclassical Art reflected the new confidence about human reason, science, and the expectation of an orderly progress to greater and greater heights of civilization. Art, architecture, music, poetry, and even gardens followed patterns of precise, mathematical, and orderly harmonies. In poetry, imagination was subordinated to goals of precision, precise meter and rhyme, and rational perceptions. Good poetry is not marked by great imagination, but by discipline; poetry is "what oft was thought, though ne'er so well expressed." Art forms were all modeled after patterns that were well established. Human should work for perfection within their limitations and proper boundaries—flights of fancy showed excess and unbalance.

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR AUTHORITY

It was held that Civil and Religious authority both received empowerment from God. The authority of the Church and the State were to be honored and regarded as absolute and holy. There was a divine right of kings, although that idea had weakened in some countries during the late Renaissance. In France, even much later, Louis XIV could say with conviction: "L'état, c'est moi." (I am the state.)

The spread of religious diversity owing to the Protestant reformation weakened the allegiance of many people to all religious authority. In addition, the progress of discoveries and inventions among secular scientists led to a new reverence for human scholarship and secular authority.

Further, philosophers proposed the idea that humans had natural rights to freedom and property (Locke) and that governments received their just powers directly from the populace. Or in the case of Hobbes and Rousseau, governments were developed by "social contract," a decision among individuals as to which rights and freedoms the people wished the government to guarantee to its citizens.

SCHOLARSHIP

Schooling was primarily for and by Church scholars. The Bible, Church histories, Plato, the Romans, and, after St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian philosophy were the most studied subjects. Grammar, rhetoric, and biblical studies were standard fare.

There was a general explosive spread of literacy and secular knowledge. The development of the printing press in 1450 had aided the availability of a variety of reading matter. (William Caxton had brought the press to England in 1476.) More things to read meant more people wished to learn to read. Encyclopedias, written by secular authorities, become popular throughout Europe.

Learning moved away from strict religious instruction to becoming more and more secular and even self-guided learning. The Encyclopédie, published by Denis Diderot in 1772, was an example. The expansion of learning led people to question traditions and authority. In fact, both the Church and the French monarch opposed the publication of the Encyclopédie.