Mark Naydorf. TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE CRISIS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The logic of history is the logic of progress. Each moment of life can be perceived as a moment of the reproduction of its accepted forms: language is reproduced in the practice of speech; a system of economics is reproduced in the process of production; traditions are reproduced in the practice of relations; and so on. The formal description of the principal organizing structures of life (the forms of life) permits the construction of history as the logic of their change and legacy. This is culturology – the science of forms and dynamic of life-organizing and meaning-formulating structures, about their historical life.
It is natural that in the study of the forms of organization of human activity the culturologist’s foremost attention is attracted by the forms themselves, fixed in images, let us say, of classical, medieval, and modern “world pictures,” in schemes and formulae of conceptions of the world, expressed by structures of corresponding cultural “chronotopes,” “cultural heroes,” and languages responsible for the integration of one or another cultural system. Precisely such purposes are announced by the titles of books and articles dedicated to a description of the principal historical periods as entities (“epochs”) or their discrete aspects. For example, “The Classic as a Type of Culture,” “Civilization of the Medieval West,” “Categories of Medieval Culture,” “The Renaissance and ‘renaissances’ in Western Art,” and “A Portrait of the Classical Era.”
However, the clearer the originality of known cultural types (“epochs”) is delineated in the consciousness of the theoretician and historian of culture, the more natural the question of their interactions, changes, and legacy becomes to him. It is fitting to recognize as justified Oswald Spengler’s objection to the systematization of history into the concepts of “Ancient World,” “Middle Ages,” and “Modern Times” on the basis that, in the first place, these systematizations in no way can encompass or comprehend the genuine diversity – and originality –which actually exist in the world of cultures, and, in the second place, they create a false conception of the teleological natures of “progress.” But within the framework of European history, the legacy of these completely original cultural systems, like its mutual rejection, cannot be argued except on the basis of complete ignorance of historical facts. If that is the case, then the question of what transpired at the juncture of cultural systems when there was occurring (perhaps is occurring now) the replacement of one cultural system by another, becomes important for filling in “obscure places” in the picture and the logic of the cultural-historical progress.
In order to designate such a transitional historical moment, it is convenient to use the concept of “a crisis of culture,” keeping in mind that “crisis” is a repeating phase of progress in which its substructure approaches the boundary of self-identification, yet – in an unpredictable manner! – is nevertheless not destroyed, but continues to exist, albeit in renewed form. At such a critical leap, of course, a duality is present, as much as it supposes the completion (destruction, death) of the past, but in the appearance of the new (renovated, born), its legacy can be glimpsed. It is precisely this duality – this break with legacy – that is the most important characteristic of the “crisis,” including the “crisis of culture.”
In the generally accepted schema mentioned above of the history of European peoples who experienced cultural phases of “The Archaic (or ‘Period of Barbarism’) – Antiquity – Middle Ages – Modern Times,” three critical junctures appear logically. Their study, however, has been far from finalized by historiography. And only the last of these crises has already been formulated as an original period in the history of culture – under the name of “The Epoch of Rebirth” (“Renaissance”).
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Literature about the Renaissance is enormous both in volume and variety. The majority of works are devoted to distinct aspects, historical figures, or to private moments in the epoch. Generalizing works, following the tradition of the classical contribution of Jakob Burckhardt, The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), were inspired by the emergence of the originality of the epoch on the basis of positive knowledge of the historical reality of this time. But only in the 20th century did it become clear that the genuine originality of the Renaissance is contained in the fact that was a transition, and perhaps can be understood only in connection with the epoch of the Middle Ages, appearing historically as both the product and the boundary, as well as in the perspective of the following Modern Times. J. Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919) became the classic work reflecting the new scholarly position in relation to the Renaissance as the final stage of the Middle Ages. The opposing approach to the Renaissance – as the beginning of Modern Times – also has a large number of adherents. For example, we read The Culture of New Europe – this is the culture of the Renaissance,” in the excellent work by P. M. Bitsilli of 1927, “Saint Francis of Assisi and the Problem of the Renaissance”// Bitsilli, P.M., The Place of the Renaissance in the History of Culture, St Petersburg, 1996, p. 192).
In sum, we have three clearly or not clearly formulated views of the Renaissance: as the late Middle Ages, as the Early Modern Period, and as an independent epoch. Given that each of these three approaches has some indubitable veracity and historical foundation, the question of the transitional nature of the Renaissance escapes them. The core of the problem in this case consists of reflecting in an understanding of the Renaissance its organically original position connecting the boundaries between two varying cultural systems, to uncover its significance as a “crisis of culture,” as a leap with a continuation, as a “break with legacy,” inasmuch as the change in cultural forms occurred on one and the same substratum – the European population during an interval of some two or three centuries.
Postulating this transitional nature of the Renaissance, we can assume that it does not possess an independent cultural system, a necessary autonomy of its own integral life-organizing and meaning-formulating structures, and that it and something else can be read into it only within the perspective of its historical past and its future. Fixating on the outburst, if not an explosion in the Renaissance of variously directed manifestations of feelings, will, and convictions, we risk remaining with only the facts in our hands – without understanding them. Why did such an outburst of religious fanaticism occur in that epoch and, at the same time, immoral magic, astrology, “witch hunts,” the flowering of certain arts and the most unbridled adventurism, the sharpening of a sense of the renewal of life, and, precisely at the same time, the sharpening of the religious sense of guilt and expectation of the end of the world? The number of contradictory observations made by historians of the Renaissance is great; they do not surrender to amalgamation into any one system. It is possible, that precisely in this way, taken together, these observations are more convincing than each one considered separately, and that they testify to the particular liminal, intersecting, “crisis” nature of the Renaissance in the history of European culture.
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The paradox of the Middle Ages is that its central culture-forming system, Christianity, assumed its initial form as a Hellenistic religion of the end of the world that was only gradually transformed into a culture capable of perceiving of itself in time. At the basis of the medieval worldview, however, the idea of the temporality of human history had long been strengthened, bounded by two events, from the expulsion of Adam and Eve and their successors to the Last Judgment. In this manner, eternity was fragmented, allowing the establishment of a belief in Christian providence in place of classical fatalism, providing, in turn, a completely new meaning to human life: repentance and return through spiritual progression to the lost state of divine grace. Thus, the “double world” of the Middle Ages, in the face of absolute hegemony of the divine plan of being, was scrutinized in historical perspective as a temporary phenomenon, caused by the original sin of the forbears of humanity, and not destroying in principle the unity of the world in one God and in the unity of all humanity with Him.
From this point of view the correctly articulated problem of medieval culture was the building of a civilization that would guarantee: a) the Christianization of all humanity within the framework of a unified Christian church or a universal Christian empire (the idea of the respublica christiana); and b) the organization of a way of life that would lead this universal brotherhood of Christians to the return on the day of the completion of history to the heavenly kingdom. A contemporary reading of the meaning of its most diverse manifestations is built into the key of such an understanding of the internal motivation of the epoch, manifestations such as the feudal system of “two worlds” and the crusades, the lack of sensitivity to ethical distinctions, medieval anti-Semitism, the struggle between papist and monarchical power for hegemony, the peacemaking of the Church, ecclesiastical Panlatinism, and much more.
The Middle Ages as a process of the unfolding of Christian culture in the material and forms of Christian civilization led, however, to results which, the further they went. the less they coincided with the announced goals of the epoch. Towards the 13th-14th centuries, the crusades were left in the past – if one doesn’t include the chivalrous legends – as an instructive lesson of grandiose failures and mistakes, instead of a universal Christian republic, national kingdoms began to form; the authority of the Church was in need of more energetic defense; the classical feudal system began to fall apart. We notice in particular the rapid growth of medieval towns and the formation of an urban milieu, alien to the “classical” Middle Ages, as well as a system of general European mercantile trade (vehemently condemned by the Church).
Speaking in the most general sense, one can affirm that at this time in Western Europe there was being formed a world completely unlike that toward which the ideals of medieval social consciousness were leading and infinitely far from the world of the early Middle Ages, which had provided the primary impulse for the development of the system of medieval worldviews. The centuries of the Middle Ages created their own history and gave birth to their own experience in the context of which the earthly existence of humanity acquired greater and greater value and independence of meaning-formation. In sum, the development of the Middle Ages reached an impasse taking the form, according to the conditions of the Middle Ages, of an impasse of faith.
From the Christian point of view the over-all meaning for the Middle Ages of the cultural-historical situation is contained in the independence and, by now, the obvious rupture of the planes of existence (earthly and heavenly) with the loss of perspective regarding their future merger and with all the unavoidable consequences of this circumstance. Medieval civilization, having declared as its main goal the leading of mankind to Christianity and, through it, to salvation, turned out to be incapable of achieving that goal. Now, people of the Renaissance, remaining Christians, but without hope of ultimate salvation, lost the most important conceptual reference point of their moral and life strategy: inasmuch as the earthly world, giving itself over to the power of Satan, was subject to decisive, inescapable damnation. This conceptual impasse must be acknowledged as the first phase of the epoch of the Renaissance.
Historically awareness of the situation did not occur simultaneously in all countries and among all levels of the population. Therefore the epoch of the Renaissance spread throughout Europe over a broad span of time, beginning in Italy in the 14th century up to the 16th century in the northwestern part of Europe. The fact that in separate countries and regions various levels of the population entered upon the Renaissance at different times complicates even further the chronological value of boundaries in the epoch of the Renaissance. For example, in the 17th century peasants of Germany, France, and Russia perceived the world and themselves as they had in the Middle Ages, while in enlightened and educated circles in these same countries, the old epoch had been left far behind.
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The crisis of mentality in the Renaissance, a crisis of faith – was a period of despair as well as moral and political anarchy. At the same time, it was a period of intensive searching. Three trends were the most substantive in this quest in the epoch of the Renaissance: the intensification of popular religiosity, the reforming of life within the church, and humanism.
The popular religious consciousness perceived the crisis of the Renaissance as an anomaly – a dangerous one, but reversible. This passionate conservatism of acute popular religiosity sometimes results in our age of erroneously perceiving the events of the Renaissance as typical medieval phenomena. Penitential pilgrimages, public speeches by wandering preachers lasting hours, the ceremony of “the bonfire of the vanities,” “witch hunts,” and lengthy trials of the Inquisition – all of these things have commonly been taken as scenes of the “dark Middle Ages,” but historically they are principally manifestations of the Renaissance. Despair overwhelmed their participants and hope inspired them to restore the situation as it had been before the crisis.
The meaning of the internal struggle within the church during the epoch of the Renaissance is difficult to isolate in the general field of Renaissance ideas, inasmuch as Christianity remained the common language in Europe of the time and the majority of ideas were formed at that time as confessional ideas. John Wycliffe in England, Jan Hus in Bohemia, Savanarola in Italy, participants of the councils in Pisa (1409), in Konstanz (1414), and in Basel (1431) formed their views as demands concerning church politics and the structure of the church hierarchy. One can assert, however, that the main problem of the internal life of the church was to preserve the religion of Christianity in a situation of the developing general civilizational crisis of the Middle Ages and the crisis of faith. In sum, two principal paths for resolving this problem were realized towards the end of the epoch of the Renaissance. The Reformation, recognizing the organic connection of the Church and the Middle Ages as irremovable, rejected Catholicism together with the latter, and took a step towards Modern Times by means of renewing Christianity. Another part of the Catholic world, as the Council of Trent demonstrated, came to the factual recognition of the beginning secularization of culture inasmuch as it limited the responsibility of the Church to the sphere of religion. But that was also a step in the direction of Modern Times.
Humanism was a structure of Renaissance thought that allowed one to see the collapse of the Middle Ages not as a catastrophe, but, on the other hand, as a long anticipated emancipation of intellectual and historical horizons, restoring its human meaning to the entire expanse of history. Humanism begins with acknowledging as a starting point the fact of the autonomy of the earthly plan of existence. This premise, in principle, was not new; it merely takes to the limit the Christian idea of history as a fragment of eternity. Humanism does not consider that it was breaking with Christianity. Supposing that in reality it was taking only one step, it now absolutizes history and, seems to remove (postpone) temporarily the question of its beginning and ending, and in so doing, also the principal question of the crisis of the Renaissance – the impossibility of salvation. This double negation provides an implicit affirmation: for an unspecified time earthly existence acquires self-sufficient meaning, while human life is temporarily freed from eschatological terror. Belief in God remains, and accordingly, the divine plan of existence, but now it no longer serves the universal contexts of the formation of meaning. That is the reality of the crisis of the Renaissance that humanists acknowledged immediately and without objection.
Now, manifesting itself in this world divided into two planes of existence, and faced with a dilemma, whether to await the end of the world without hope of salvation or to concentrate (in the meantime!) on purely earthly meanings, humanists definitively preferred the latter. As a result of this, humanism appeared as a philosophy of optimism and adorned a significant part of the visible Renaissance horizon in optimistic shades. In the development of its vision of the situation of the crisis in the Renaissance, humanists progressed to an intensive reworking of the secular motivation of behavior and they engaged (gave birth to) a complex of civic motives of Classical Antiquity together with a corpus of texts in which these motives were preserved. Precisely these circumstances – the rebirth of a “faithful” view of all of history, including pre-Christian history, and the rebirth of classical philosophy of civic behavior – allowed them to designate their epoch as one of one of “rebirth.”
The result of the Renaissance transition was the formation of the cultural system of Modern Times. Its fundamental characteristic was the creation of a new, integrated view of the world, the unity of which was contained not in the existence of a transcendent God, but in the existence of immanent laws for the world, governed from the beginning by a universum. The Renaissance didn’t know this, but an important step on this path was taken at the time by the development of three-dimensional perspective in painting. This was the first experiment in presenting infinite, uniform space by any arbitrarily chosen fragment.
The legacy of the Renaissance was preserved and multiplied. The historical ideas of the Renaissance lay the foundation of the European historicism of Modern Times and most modern times. The myth of the Renaissance about Classical Antiquity and a humanistic philosophy of man were similarly preserved and developed.
The epoch of the Renaissance remained in history as a liminal epoch, as an epoch of a “crisis of culture,” in which we have to distinguish three moments: a) a moment of total impasse (in the system of traditional concepts); b) diverse quests of interpretation; and c) the discovery of such perspectives from which the impasse looks like a foundational beginning. The meaning of a transitional epoch is contained in this rethinking of a crisis situation.
(2002)
Translated by Michael Katz