The Quattrocento Dark Age

“`Renässansmänniskan´: 1400-talets Italien – myter och verklighet” by Swedish writer Michael Nordberg is a blistering attack on the Renaissance in general and the Quattrocento in particular, with Florence and Venice (and Jakob Burckhardt) taking most of the whipping. Nordberg was an authentic history professor, and his book was published in 1993. The iconoclastic prof had previously published a book sensationally rehabilitating the Middle Ages, “Den dynamiska medeltiden”. His book on the Renaissance might perhaps be a *bit* over the top, but it sure is fun reading for those with a slightly revisionist bent. Renaissance aficionados, ye have been warned.

Life in Florence, this supposed pinnacle of human civilization and then some, turns out to have been anything but “secular”, “humanistic”, “enlightened”, “individualist” and what not. But sure, they did paint some really pretty shit. Florence was hit by recurring plague epidemics. In one of them, the notorious plague of 1400, about 13,000 people died within six months. That would have been a fifth of the city´s population! No herd immunity there. Florentine democracy turns out to have been a hierarchic oligarchy, in which a patron-client relationship was the only way in which a common laborer could (perhaps) get some protection. Women were hideously oppressed in all the usual ways: rape, prostitution, early marriages to substantially elder men, demands for high dowries, etc. Prostitution was officially sanctioned by the Florentine authorities, who hoped in this way to dissuade the young males from homosexuality (which was rampant in the city). Violence ruled in the streets as youth gangs habitually attacked each other. Venice may have been marginally better, but frankly not by much. In this cesspool of business as usual Italic barbarity, the city-state of Ferrara stands out as unusually progressive, ironic since the city was openly ruled by an authoritarian duke rather than by a (supposed) democracy. Duke Ercole decreed that only females could be brothel-owners – perhaps a way to minimize the violence against female prostitutes?

Coming this far, we might with some justification wonder if Nordberg has some axes to grind somewhere. We might also wonder if the Quattrocento Renaissance might have been progressive anyway, even outside Ferrara, despite all the undoubted human degradation. After all, people were dying of the plague already during the dynamic Middle Ages! However, Nordberg does have some serious arguments for the 15^th century not being the radical break with the previous period as many like to imagine. The Florentines were hardly “individualist”, but strongly collectivist, usually on a family basis (“family” as in “clan”). The collectivism was strongest in the upper class – the class which patronized the Renaissance humanists and painters – and weakest at the bottom. Among common laborers, there was hardly even a nuclear family! Nor was there any particular secularization. All Florentines were intensely religious and Catholic. The entire worldview was “medieval” and superstitious, with constant religious processions to avert worldly or spiritual dangers. What about modern capitalism? Didn´t that begin in the northern Italian city-states? Not really, according to Nordberg. The merchants of course wanted to make great profits, but very often, these weren´t invested to form future capital, but squandered (from our viewpoint) on grandiose building projects, including the construction of churches. Indeed, the merchants often contributed money to the Church as a way of paying for the sins incurred when earning the riches in the first place! It´s also interesting to note that real wages never rose in Florence during the plague epidemics of the 15^th century, not even for skilled workers, suggesting that there wasn´t a free labor market, but rather an economy tightly controlled by the city oligarchy.

Nordberg also criticizes the usual view of 15^th century Italian art. While the Renaissance painters were undoubtedly creative, their art wasn´t the result of individual aesthetic inspiration. Rather, all aspects of the artworks were controlled by the rich patrons commissioning them. The motifs were usually religious in nature. Even the “individualism” of the portrait paintings can be questioned. In large artworks, the patrons and their families are indeed depicted as distinct individuals, but the context is wholly traditional – such as a religious procession. Otherwise, the usual use of portraits was to show the prospective bride (or her parents!) in a negotiated marriage agreement how the suitor actually looked like. This, of course, was still part and parcel of a collectivist society. It´s also important to note that all painters and sculptors in Italy had to belong to a guild which controlled their education and initiation into the craft. Overall, Nordberg feels that the modern view of Renaissance art is strongly anachronistic. Seen in context, most of the “secularism” and “individualism” simply disappears in favor of a magico-religious corporatism.

But didn´t the Italian humanists rediscover the ancient Latin and Greek writers? Nordberg believes that the Latin “discoveries” are much exaggerated, since these texts had never really disappeared during the Middle Ages. Indeed, many of them were “discovered” in monastic libraries in France! After being read by perhaps ten people, these manuscripts were now studied by perhaps a hundred people instead… Nordberg isn´t overtly impressed by the way the humanists used the Latin corpus. Rather than paying close attention to *what* the texts say, they were mesmerized by their style, by *how* they said it. This led to an artificial resurrection of Classical Latin, often for purely rhetorical or propagandist purposes. Nordberg believes that Medieval Latin was better, since it was a living and evolving language. The ancient Greek corpus was rediscovered to some extent by the Italian Renaissance men, but it had (of course) never disappeared in the Byzantine Empire. Nor would it have disappeared under the Turks, who didn´t destroy such things. The Platonic Academy in Florence around Ficino had a purely marginal influence, Aristotelianism being dominant all over Europe until the 17^th century when it was unseated by modern science, not by Platonism. Indeed, “science” in this sense didn´t even exist during the Quattrocento.

One problem with “`Renässansmänniskan´” is that the author never really tells us how the Middle Ages were finally overcome and the modern era ushered in. If not by the Florentines and Venetians, then who? And when? He does imply that the really important developments took place in France and northern Europe rather than in the Mediterranean region. It was here that a new social formation had begun to evolve already during the High Middle Ages. I also get the impression that the process didn´t come to an end during the 16^th century (the usual starting date of the modern period) but only later, during the 17^th century, perhaps even later.

If Michael Nordberg was right, Renaissance Man was firmly anchored in…the Dark Ages.