The Renaissance has in
the past been associated with a process of secularisation, an association which
now seems dubious in many respects. The church was the inspirer and purchaser
of a vast quantity of Renaissance art. To understand man was to understand him
in relation to his creator and humanist scholarship was devoted to furthering
this end. The enthusiasm for classicizing did not mean an indifference to, or
abandonment of, Christianity. Certainly there was a huge increase in the number
of works of art, both literary and visual, that were concerned with matters
secular. But the tools of the new learning were also applied to a better
understanding of God - and used as a means of acquiring salvation.
Renaissance religious art
was created to, and still does, inspire reverence and awe. But it also has to
be seen as part of an elaborate insurance policy, increasingly funded by a
laity that wanted assurance of salvation. Salvation within Catholicism was
acquired through a combination of faith and good works, this latter taking many
forms: the provision of masses for the dead; the artistic embellishment of
places of worship; the provision of charity. Such works bought time off in
purgatory, the place where the sinner suffered punishment for sins not fully
paid for on earth. Only saints escaped a spell in purgatory, but plenty of good
works would hopefully cut a substantial chunk off the duration for anyone else.
Hence clergy and laity both had a vested interest in the lavish patronage of
religious institutions.
Prayers for the dead being
efficacious for those suffering in purgatory, it was desirable to commemorate
oneself by a prominent memorial that would remind the living to offer these
prayers. Leonardo Bruni's tomb in Florence does so in a style that
characterises Renaissance aspirations. Bruni (1370-1444), a civic official and
historian of Florence, was celebrated in a classically inspired sculpture, a
reminder of his claim that Florence was the true heir of ancient Rome. His
devotion to the service of the Florentine state is celebrated as a Christian
virtue: his duty was to embrace the world not to flee from it. It became
customary for families amongst the urban elite not just to pay for single
memorials or works of art, but to take over patronage of whole institutions:
monasteries, hospitals or churches. In this way an enduring family reputation,
eternal salvation and the beauty of the city could be simultaneously achieved.
Frequently religious patronage was expressed through confraternities,
associations directed to spiritual ends, which ranged from a handful of humble
artisans attached to a parochial altar to huge companies of the wealthy and
powerful. The Medici effectively controlled the most potent of such
associations in Florence, the Compagnia dei Magi, based in the Convent of San
Marco; it gave them a vehicle for spectacularly pious donations and unrivalled
PR opportunities as they re-enacted each year the journey of the Magi to
Bethlehem.
The confraternity was the
most characteristic form of organisation in the Catholic church of the
Renaissance, indicative of a group mentality that sought spiritual protection
in mutuality. Confraternities might also offer physical comfort to the
distressed, based on the injunctions in Matthew 25:40 'Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me'. The
Scuole Grandi of Venice are perhaps the best known, probably because the best
at self-advertising, of the network of charitable confraternities and guilds
that more or less held together the social fabric of cities and towns - more or
less because the problem of the poor was an ineradicable one. Permanent
underemployment amongst the marginals in urban society threatened to drive
large numbers of people into destitution in lean years. The function of charity
as social cement accounted for the increasing interest of the state in the
administration of such charities. There was also a growing tendency for
specialisation in the provision of charity, with the sick being particularly
favourably looked on, catered for in specially designated hospitals such as
Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.
Protestantism brought a
revolutionary change. The split between Catholic and Protestant had complex
roots; one contributory factor was the textual criticism of the humanist
scholars. Textual criticism did not necessarily lead to a rejection of Catholic
tradition, but this is where a reinterpretation of the New Testament took a
number of radicals, including Martin Luther. Within Protestant theology there
were no intermediaries between man and God, no need to appeal to saints, no
purgatory to be escaped. There was a massive hostility to what was deemed to
have been the superstition and idolatry that had erected this complex and
expensive structure of salvation. Battle lines were hardened as print proved to
be a devastating weapon in the ideological war, deployed to devastating effect
in the form of cheap visual images and vernacular tracts that mobilised mass
opinion. It was a split which came to manifest itself in every aspect of life
from life-cycle rituals to international diplomacy.
So the values of the
Renaissance were expressed differently in Protestant countries where there was
active destruction of, rather than patronage of, religious art, and an emphasis
rather on The Word, God as revealed in the text of the New Testament. The mass
confiscation of the property of religious institutions and confraternities by
Protestant authorities stripped away the purchasing power of a significant body
of patrons. But the Protestant authorities could no more afford to overlook the
socially destructive dimension of poverty, or avoid its challenge to
conscience, than could the Catholic: hospitals, schools, houses for fallen
women continued under the new dispensation.
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