As a preeminent example of mid 20th century thought describing what the European Renaissance meant for them, an English audience, JD Mackie lays out his case and bases it on familiar ground.
"... the Renaissance was not an event but a process."
"Birth ... is the result of long silent processes ... like most other births it moved from infancy to splendour and to decay. It did not come to all the countries of Europe at the same time, and it did not develop in the same way and at the same rate in different atmospheres."
"Yet wherever it was felt, and whatever form it took it represented the same thing. It was a rebellion of the facts against the theories."
Thought and institutions were not static Mackie asserts. But the "... basic theories of church, of state, of economics, of philosophy, of life generally were set in the frame of that universalism which survived amongst the ruins of the Roman empire. The world was the special creation of God and the centre of the universe. It was an ordered unity, reflecting the divine harmony of the New Jerusalem where Christ presided over the holy angels. Every individual, man or institution or idea, had being as part of the great whole from which it was derived."
[p.1]
"There was a single church ruled by the pope, in which all ecclesiastical authority originated, and ... a single state governed by the emperor, from which all temporal authority was derived."
"In philosophy there was one single truth from which proceeded all particular truths."
"In morality there was one single code of righteousness; legislation was the enunciation of the eternal right rather than the formation of anything new."
"In the realm of economics every article had its justum pretium [just price], and the customary rents and the customary wages represented the divine institution concerning these matters."
Despite these "...complete and satisfying theories, the actual facts had at no time tallied, and as the centuries passed the discrepancies became more and more apparent." [p.2]
Examples follow, but the point is hammered home that these discrepancies required reconciliation with the universal theories of truths. The particular could not be contrary to the principles that 'ruled' them. These processes of reconciliation worked to harmonise and show the truer or higher or more sublime reality of the theoretical truths.
"So ignoring, pretending, and philosophizing, the middle ages went on their way until the discrepancies between theory and fact grew too wide to be ignored by minds well practiced in the serach for truth."
"...it was clear enough that all questions could not be settled out of hand by an appeal to authority."
While Bernard of Chartres would say men in his day were 'dwarfs mounted on shoulders of giants', he implied they at least could see farther. In another interesting turn of phrase, Mackie positively attests that Abelard of Bath in the 12th century "... said that to accept authority in the face of common sense was the action of a senseless brute...".
With these 'critical faculties', "...the established ideas and the established institutions became steadily less able to endure criticism."
[p.3]
More examples follow including the deterioration of the Empire (specifically cited, that under Frederick the Great), the diminished power of Rome, and traditional sources of wealth were being transferred to the towns. "The impact of a critical spirit upon theories far removed from actuality is what is called the Renaissance. The inquiring spirit turned itself upon the universe..." and Copernicus, Columbus, de Gama, Magellan are mentioned. This inquiring spirit turned itself to human society and found they were not really 'divided by class or tenure' but by 'vertical lines of geography'.
"The world-state was a fiction, but the nation states were real and their relations were governed not so much by divinely appointed law as by human opportunism." It turned itself to the body and found it beautiful, not a 'clog upon the spirit'. It turned itself to the soul and found it 'possessed of an infinite yearning for God' that was not satisfied by 'authority or even other's experience' but had to find a 'personal satisfaction and security of its own'. The Renaissance in time grew and its own theories were turned back on itself.
But the "... essential feature of the early Renaissance was its reliance upon facts." [p.4]
"Its genius was to reveal and accept the thing which was actually there.[pp.4-5] Many of the facts were self-evident. The world was round... the human body was beautiful... the national state was actually ... governed [by]... a 'new monarchy'." [p.5]
These all took time and all was in accord with this new "...unconscious pursuit of realism."
This then leads to a quick sketch by Mackie of what a 'new monarchy' might mean especially in relation to previous notions of medieval kings and princes.
These are just close notes I gathered from the first five pages of the first chapter in JD Mackie's 1957 corrected version of the 1952 edition of The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558. This of course was Mackie's installment of the massive collection of fourteen books then scheduled to be produced by Oxford then, called The Oxford History of England , which was edited by GN Clark. This edition of that, incidentally is a former library book from a Mt St Mary's Convent in Dodge City, Kansas. I bought it used in 2015.from a fabulous guy. He's a Greek-American migrant who has run the same bookshop in Wichita for at least thirty years. The book's in excellent shape.
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