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A Darker View of the Renaissance

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Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#21

Post by alentist »

api wrote: post #4
throwaway894345 wrote: post #2

> Fletcher’s more substantive aim of exhibiting the “terror” lying behind the “beauty” of the Italian Renaissance is in my view less successful. First of all, although awestruck tourists might marvel at the beauty of Italy’s art and architecture without much sense of the blood and suffering that accompanied it (unless, of course, they watched Showtime’s series The Borgias, in which case they would have a sensationali…

I think that is the point even if it's overdone. Many people do think the renaissance and enlightenment were smooth upward transitions when in reality they were periods of profound political and social turmoil. While I do think the enlightenment was mostly a step forward, it wasn't all light any more than the dark ages were all dark. This is something we should keep in mind as we enter the real information age whose…

The “Dark Ages” does not mean what most laypeople think it means. Most historians don’t use the term anymore, because it’s too difficult to shake off the misleading connotations it has to the public.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#22

Post by bryanrasmussen »

throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

A line of great rhetorical effect but not necessarily great logical worth.

First of all if he is correct that the Swiss had 500 years of democracy and peace then it follows that they produced a working democratic model which at the time was pretty remarkable. However being Harry Lime it is no surprise that he is not correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Switzerland

Second of all I don't know what population size of Switzerland and Italy was during the Renaissance but nowadays Italy is about 7 times bigger, so let's assume they had approximately the same difference. Italy of course also has more land area etc. etc. Given these differences I might expect some more impressive people to be drawn from the larger, richer population. And there is of course another differentiator of wealth which is that Italy at the time was the center of European religion, meaning that a lot of wealth was naturally drawn there.

Finally Switzerland, although small, has like every nation had notable personalities as well https://www.houseofswitzerland.org/swissstories/history/7-sw...

on edit: when I say Harry Lime is not correct I mean that Switzerland did not have 500 years of peace and democracy.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#23

Post by hodgesrm »

throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

The quote is nice but anachronistic. The Swiss were feared mercenaries during the Renaissance and worked for the papal forces. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a legacy of this history that is visible today. It seems they were first hired by Julius II, who was successor to Alexander VI aka the Borgia Pope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#24

Post by jweir »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #22
throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

A line of great rhetorical effect but not necessarily great logical worth. First of all if he is correct that the Swiss had 500 years of democracy and peace then it follows that they produced a working democratic model which at the time was pretty remarkable. However being Harry Lime it is no surprise that he is not correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Switzerland Second of all I don't know what populatio…

Nor did the Swiss invent the cuckoo clock - more likely Bavarian.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#25

Post by hodgesrm »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death. There's no way climate change is bad enough to make a world where shirts are luxury items preferable.

Or plagues and/or wars that killed a third or more of the population. The Black Death and the 30 Years War are both in this category.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#26

Post by sqrt »

I found Ada Palmer's post on the Renaissance a couple months ago to be a good read, though it's a bit long for one sitting and there are a few tangents: https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...

A taste of what you might get out of it, from the preface:

> This post is for you if you’ve been wondering whether Black Death => Renaissance means COVID => Golden Age, and you want a more robust answer than, “No no no no no!”

> This post is for you if you’re tired of screaming The Middle Ages weren’t dark and bad! and want somewhere to link people to, to show them how the myth began.

> This post is for you if you want to understand how an age whose relics make it look golden in retrospect can also be a terrible age to live in.

> And this post is for you if want to ask what history can tell us about 2020 and come away with hope. Because comparing 2020 to the Renaissance does give me hope, but it’s not the hope of sitting back expecting the gears of history to grind on toward prosperity, and it’s not the hope for something like the Renaissance—it’s hope for something much, much better, but a thing we have to work for, all of us, and hard.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#27

Post by pmontra »

alentist wrote: post #21
api wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is the point even if it's overdone. Many people do think the renaissance and enlightenment were smooth upward transitions when in reality they were periods of profound political and social turmoil. While I do think the enlightenment was mostly a step forward, it wasn't all light any more than the dark ages were all dark. This is something we should keep in mind as we enter the real information age whose…

The “Dark Ages” does not mean what most laypeople think it means. Most historians don’t use the term anymore, because it’s too difficult to shake off the misleading connotations it has to the public.

Nobody ever used that name in Italy, it's Middle Ages here (Medioevo) which started with the fall of the Roman Empire and barbaric invasions (and the settlement of many of the people that eventually became modern Italians.) Anyway we had invasions as long as the 19th century, maybe the 20th as well if you think about WW2, so it's a kind of normal business here and in most of Europe. We also had a constant improvement of arts and technology after the first few bad centuries. Not very dark at all.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#28

Post by scroogeydop »

chrisco255 wrote: post #17
grugagag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the catch is not well put, it’s not going to be just 1C hotter which in my oppinion is off, but the erosion of the coastlines, the near total melting of polar glaciers round, massive rise in sea levels, mass extinctions of many species, chaos and war amongst the remaining people for the diminishing resources, etcetera. All these for technology and comfort at the hands of humans with enormous costs for everything…

I don't know if you've seen the latest, but Greenland just had record ice gain during the middle of the ordinary melt season, after an already substantially strong year (and 3 out of the last 4 years have seen substantial gains): http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ we are thousands of years away from polar melting, if ever. We have less war than they did prior to the industrial revolution. Prior to…

Yawn. Same tired arguments.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#29

Post by goto11 »

throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

The line is not supposed to be taken at face value, and certainly not as a history lesson. In the movie Harry Lime was a criminal selling fake penicillin on the black market thereby killing many people including children (he acknowledges as much, as far as I can remember). The quote is just him trying to justify this to his old friend who is horrified to discover his scheme.

This is like when people take "you cant handle the truth" or "greed is good" or "to thine own self be true" at face value, completely ignoring the context around the lines.

In any case it is a non sequitur. Losts of places throughout history had murder and bloodshed without producing the Italian Renaissance. (And Switzerland did not actually have peace for 500 years anyway although they did stay neutral during the world wars.). But Lime was not a historian, just a cynical criminal trying to justify stealing penicillin.

It is a great line though.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#30

Post by natmaka »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death. There's no way climate change is bad enough to make a world where shirts are luxury items preferable.

Didn't world wars and modern oppression from various regimes kill many?
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