The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance.

• Author: Hartley, Anthony

That the period of the Renaissance - the turning point between the medieval and the modern - is of great significance in the history of Europe is beyond dispute. But its exact character and the true nature of its significance are the subject of endless discussion. Just how far perspectives have changed over one hundred and fifty years can be seen by the degree to which John Hale's considerable new work differs in its approach from Jacob Burckhardt's classic The Civilization of the Renaissance. For, unlike Burckhardt, Hale is no longer concerned simply with Italy. The northern Renaissance along the Rhine and the Loire, the Atlantic trade routes spreading out in the sixteenth century, the part played by the Fuggers and the Hanseatic towns, alongside their Italian banking colleagues, in the establishment of new patterns of European commerce - all these steps toward a recognizably modern world are included in the new book.

The purely Italian conditions that Burckhardt analyzed so penetratingly still form the starting point of Professor Hale's magisterial account of the changes that the Renaissance brought about and which, in their cultural form, could be symbolized by an English nobleman writing sonnets in Italian or a French king trying to lure Leonardo da Vinci into his service. There is something special about the phrase "Italian Renaissance" - a thrill that can suggest wild beauty or profound wickedness. Its fascination is lasting, since it includes creative achievements of permanent power.

The number of books written on the Italian Renaissance provides testimony as to the attraction it has exercised over civilized Europeans down the years. Yet have we in the past - do we now - altogether approve of the Renaissance? The Elizabethans saw the peninsula as a land given to adultery and assassination, not ill represented in Webster's "Duchess of Malfi" - inglese italianato, diavolo incarnato. The Victorian lady, who purchased her reproductions of Donatello or Della Robbia to grace the vicarage on her return to England, would hardly have regarded the doings of many Renaissance men or women as particularly genteel. More recently a BBC television film introduced a Renaissance pope as he was calling on his entourage to "bring on the whores."

Recently, too, the extreme individualism that informs the Renaissance has become unfashionable in a brave new world where we are told that we should be glad to be Beta children accepting an effortlessly democratic mediocrity. Figures like Colleone's statue in Venice appear so dominating as to be threatening to egalitarian aspirations. It was the energy of Renaissance man that gave him the confidence to undertake great deeds and carry them through. "Oh age! Oh letters! It is a joy to be alive," exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten at the beginning of the century, adding, "Woe to you Barbarians!" to display his pride in the culture he had acquired and his scorn for those who had not done likewise. The modern self-deprecatory language of the professionally modest was unnecessary for those who had no doubts about their own values. Renaissance...