World History

Unit 4: The Emergence of Modern Nations

Chapter 14: The Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution

Mon, Dec 16, 2013

30. Tue, Dec 17, 2013

Like most of the rest of the chapters in this book, this takes in far too much material to make for a coherent view of things. Some of that is understandable — a survey course needs to move along if it's going to arrive at the finish line. What knits the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution together is that all three of them are in a sense wrinkles in the history of ideas, rather than something external being imposed upon people. Nevertheless, they are three very different kinds of intellectual revolutions, and they tended to overlay and offset one another in some very peculiar ways.

Almost any generalizations the textbook can make about the whole of this period will be of doubtful value — and they do make several. The Renaissance finds its earliest roots prior to 1320 or so; the scientific discoveries at the latter end of the chapter are emerging as late as 1650 or so. That's a huge period that saw many changes in the life of the people.

We'll try to split this down the middle by talking about the Renaissance and Reformation today, and the daily-life pictures and the Scientific Revolution on Thursday.

The textbook mentions that around 1550, when the wars of religion had begun to rage across Europe, there was a rapid population growth, which led to certain economic consequences (including inflation). It's probably worth questioning, then, whether religious issues were in every case the actual cause of the wars, or whether it boiled down in some instances to competition for scarce resources, using religious differences as a pretext for attacking the next kingdom or dukedom for material gain.

This is not to suggest that the religious differences were meaningless or inconsequential. Many twenty-first century historians write about this as if it were an incomprehensible aberration in human behavior — why would anyone fight about religion? The rationale is a lot easier to grasp if one realizes that these were people who actually took their beliefs seriously, and those beliefs intersected almost every aspect of life and interaction.

We have already suggested that you should be suspicious of sweeping generalizations in a book like this. Also be suspicious of undefined terms. The textbook tells us:

Both Protestant and Catholic leaders believed that knowledge would lead a person to support the faith. In spite of this common concern for education, the followers of the different religions struggled to coexist peacefully. Neither side, unfortunately, included tolerance in its teachings.

It's worth pointing out that the idea that this is unfortunate is a value judgment, not a matter of historical fact. You may agree with it, as do I, but it's seldom that simple. The tricky part is nailing down what a term like "tolerance" actually means. Their broader claim well be true on some definitions of the word "tolerance" and not on others. Much of what is currently called tolerance is in fact a matter of indifference. It is not a matter of tolerance that I don't raise an objection when a neighbor puts jam on his pancakes where I might prefer syrup — because I really don't care what he puts on his pancakes. True tolerance, it seems to me (DrMcM) has more to do with what we do when something of real importance to us is on the line. For modern secularists to be tolerant about religious belief and observance is no great challenge.

• What were the real goals and suppositions of the (self-identified) humanists of the Renaissance? The linkage of the term "humanist" with modern secularism or even atheism is unfortunate. What were the ideals espoused by Francesco Petrarca, Poggio Bracciolini, Thomas More, and Desiderius Erasmus, and what were they really striving for?
• What suppositions underlie the Protestant reformation? What unspoken suppositions does it take for granted?
• How does the Reformation intersect in form and substance with the Renaissance? How did they influence, reinforce, or interfere with each other?

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