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THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

JACOB BURCKHARDT

Table of Contents

Part One: The State as a Work of Art

Part Two: The Development of the Individual

Part Three: The Revival of Antiquity

Part Four: The Discovery of the World and of Man

Part Five: Society and Festivals

Part Six: Morality and Religion

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

By Jacob Burckhardt

Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore 1878

Part I

THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART

INTRODUCTION

This work bears the title of an essay in the strictest sense of the
word. No one is more conscious than the writer with what limited means
and strength he has addressed himself to a task so arduous. And even if
he could look with greater confidence upon his own researches he would
hardly thereby feel more assured of the approval of competent judges.
To each eye perhaps the outlines of a given civilization present a
different picture; and in treating of a civilization which is the
mother of our own and whose influence is still at work among us it is
unavoidable that individual judgement and feeling should tell every
moment both on the writer and on the reader. In the wide ocean upon
which we venture the possible ways and directions are many; and the
same studies which have served for this work might easily in other
hands not only receive a wholly different treatment and application
but lead also to essentially different conclusions. Such indeed is the
importance of the subject that it still calls for fresh investigation
and may be studied with advantage from the most varied points of view.
Meanwhile we are content if a patient hearing is granted us and if
this book be taken and judged as a whole. It is the most serious
difficulty of the history of civilization that a great intellectual
process must be broken up into single and often into what seem
arbitrary categories in order to be in any way intelligible. It was
formerly our intention to fill up the gaps in this book by a special
work on the 'Art of the Renaissance'--an intention however which we
have been able to fulfill only in part.

The struggle between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen left Italy in a
political condition which differed essentially from that of other
countries of the West. While in France Spain and England the feudal
system was so organized that at the close of its existence it was
naturally transformed into a unified monarchy and while in Germany it
helped to maintain at least outwardly the unity of the empire Italy
had shaken it off almost entirely. The Emperors of the fourteenth
century even in the most favourable case were no longer received and
respected as feudal lords but as possible leaders and supporters of
powers already in existence; while the Papacy with its creatures and
allies was strong enough to hinder national unity in the future but
not strong enough itself to bring about that unity. Between the two lay
a multitude of political units--republics and despots--in part of long
standing in part of recent origin whose existence was founded simply
on their power to maintain it. In them for the first time we detect the
modern political spirit of Europe surrendered freely to its own
instincts. Often displaying the worst features of an unbridled egotism
outraging every right and killing every germ of a healthier culture.
But wherever this vicious tendency is overcome or in any way
compensated a new fact appears in history--the State as the outcome of
reflection and calculation the State as a work of art. This new life
displays itself in a hundred forms both in the republican and in the
despotic States and determines their inward constitution no less than
their foreign policy. We shall limit ourselves to the consideration of
the completer and more clearly defined type which is offered by the
despotic States.

The internal condition of the despotically governed States had a
memorable counterpart in the Norman Empire of Lower Italy and Sicily
after its transformation by the Emperor Frederick Il. Bred amid treason
and peril in the neighbourhood of the Saracens Frederick the first
ruler of the modern type who sat upon a throne had early accustomed
himself to a thoroughly objective treatment of affairs. His
acquaintance with the internal condition and administration of the
Saracenic States was close and intimate; and the mortal struggle in
which he was engaged with the Papacy compelled him no less than his
adversaries to bring into the field all the resources at his command.
Frederick's measures (especially after the year 1231) are aimed at the
complete destruction of the feudal State at the transformation of the
people into a multitude destitute of will and of the means of
resistance but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer. He
centralized in a manner hitherto unknown in the West the whole
judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to be
filled by popular election under penalty of the devastation of the
offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. The
taxes based on a comprehensive assessment and distributed in
accordance with Mohammedan usages were collected by those cruel and
vexatious methods without which it is true it is impossible to obtain
any money from Orientals. Here in short we find not a people but
simply a disciplined multitude of subjects; who were forbidden for
example to marry out of the country without special permission and
under no circumstances were allowed to study abroad. The University of
Naples was the first we know of to restrict the freedom of study while
the East in these respects at all events left its youth unfettered.
It was after the examples of Mohammedan rules that Frederick traded on
his own account in all parts of the Mediterranean reserving to himself
the monopoly of many commodities and restricting in various ways the
commerce of his subjects. The Fatimite Caliphs with all their esoteric
unbelief were at least in their earlier history tolerant of all the
differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick on the
other hand crowned his system of government by a religious
inquisition which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember
that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the
representatives of a free municipal life. Lastly the internal police
and the kernel of the army for foreign service was composed of
Saracens who had been brought over from Sicily to Nocera and Lucera--
men who were deaf to the cry of misery and careless of the ban of the
Church. At a later period the subjects by whom the use of weapons had
long been forgotten were passive witnesses of the fall of Manfred and
of the seizure of the government by Charles of Anjou; the latter
continued to use the system which he found already at work.

At the side of the centralizing Emperor appeared a usurper of the most
peculiar kind; his vicar and son-in-law Ezzelino da Romano. He stands
as the representative of no system of government or administration for
all his activity was wasted in struggles for supremacy in the eastern
part of Upper Italy; but as a political type he was a figure of no less
importance for the future than his imperial protector Frederick. The
conquests and usurpations which had hitherto taken place in the Middle
Ages rested on real or pretended inheritance and other such claims or
else were effected against unbelievers and excommunicated persons. Here
for the first time the attempt was openly made to found a throne by
wholesale murder and endless barbarities by the adoption in short of
any means with a view to nothing but the end pursued. None of his
successors not even Cesare Borgia rivalled the colossal guilt of
Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten and his fall led
to no return of justice among the nations and served as no warning to
future transgressors.

It was in vain at such a time that St. Thomas Aquinas born subject of
Frederick set up the theory of a constitutional monarchy in which the
prince was to be supported by an upper house named by himself and a
representative body elected by the people. Such theories found no echo
outside the lecture - room and Frederick and Ezzelino were and remain
for Italy the great political phenomena of the thirteenth century.
Their personality already half legendary forms the most important
subject of 'The Hundred Old Tales' whose original composition falls
certainly within this century. In them Ezzelino is spoken of with the
awe which all mighty impressions leave behind them. His person became
the centre of a whole literature from the chronicle of eye-witnesses to
the half-mythical tragedy of later poets.

Despots of the Fourteenth Century

The tyrannies great and small of the fourteenth century afford
constant proof that examples such as these were not thrown away. Their
misdeeds cried forth loudly and have been circumstantially told by
historians. As States depending for existence on themselves alone and
scientifically organized with a view to this object they present to us
...

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