Baron, H., Burckhardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance'. a Century After Its Publication

7/27/2019 Baron, H., Burckhardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance'. a Century After Its Publication

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Burckhardt's `Civilization of the Renaissance' A Century after its PublicationAuthor(s): Hans Baron

Reviewed work(s):Source: Renaissance News, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Autumn, 1960), pp. 207-222Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2857720 .Accessed: 04/11/2012 18:46

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Burckhardt's Civilization f the Renaissance'A Century fter tsPublication

by HANS BARONN September 960 a hundred ears will have passed ince he ap-pearance f Jacob Burckhardt's ultur erRenaissance n Italien.

No other work has had a comparable nfluence n the formation fthe concept of the Renaissance, nd during he last one or two gen-erations t has become an historical lassic ead n all western oun-tries. Since he re-publication fBurckhardt's riginal ext by WalterGoetz in I922,1 one German reprint has followed another. After thesecond World War he early talian nd English ranslationsbegan oshare n this ever-growing popularity (America has seen three neweditions recently), while the first Spanish translation came out inSouth America in 1942.

How is the Renaissance scholar to evaluate this late posthumoustriumph of a book whose slow acceptance by his contemporaries

brought bitter disappointment o its author? Fifty years ago, whenthe 'revolt of the medievalists' against the nineteenth-century con-

ception of the Renaissance was in full swing, the usual reaction ofscholars o Burckhardt's work was fear that an apparently rrepressi-ble product of a period of historiography ong passed might perpetu-ate an antiquated bias against the Middle Ages and a false image ofthe unscrupulous, uthless, and lusty 'superman' of the Renaissance.

Today, after another half-century, little of that suspicion has sur-vived. Many, of course, disagree with Burckhardt's iews, but fewstill think they are confronted with a work disfigured by strongprejudices against the medieval past. The reason s both a change ofattitude oward some of the phenomena described n the Civilizationof the Renaissance nd, even more, a better knowledge of its author.

Our views of Burckhardt and his place as an historian have been

essentiallyransformed n three

respects. First,we can see more

clearlythe injustice of comparing too closely the positions of Burckhardtand Michelet, the two authors who first entitled books 'The Renais-sance'-even though it is true that Burckhardt borrowed from Mich-

1From the third to the twelfth edition, L. Geiger, as editor, had transformed hebook into a two-volume handbook constantly growing in length.

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elet the famous ormula the discovery f the world and of man'.For whereas Michelet, sheir o eighteenth-century ttitudes, aw heMiddle Agesasa time of'proscription' f nature nd science, f'abdi-cations uccessives el'independence umaine', ne finds no trace ofsuch a disparagement n Burckhardt. hat his work could be at allconsidered o reflect similar nti-medieval prejudice, s explainableonly by the circumstance hat he terse and pointed omments f theCivilizationoftheRenaissance annot be read together with the origi-nally planned ompanion olumes n the culture f the Middle Ageswhich were never published except or the previously written AgeofConstantine heGreat). s an academic eacher n Zirich and n Basel,however, Burckhardt continually ectured n medieval history, andthe carefully repared manuscripts f these ectures, reserved n theBurckhardt rchives, avebeen consulted during he ast ew decadesfor the reconstruction f his historical deas, n particular y WernerKaegi or his fundamental biography f Burckhardt. n his courses,at the very time when he was working out the guiding principles fhis Civilization, e find Burckhardt apologizing o his listeners t

Zurich or the adoption-'for want of something better'-of thefashionable erm Renaissance' ven though he word sounded as fduring he Middle Ages all cultural ife had been sleeping sthoughdead'. He talked bout he 'undying ympathy' hat captures nyonewho has grasped he spiritual armony of medieval art, and evenafter he appearance f his book he never retracted n his ectures, othe end of his long life, his positive approach o the Middle Ages.2

Although rom the I85o's on classic art became his greatest oveand although he now discovered he emergence f a new worldof culture n the Italy of the fifteenth nd sixteenth enturies, e didnot lose his responsiveness o medieval alues. Rather, he set an ex-ample of flexibility, becoming one of the founding athers f his-toricism.

There has been a corresponding hange n the appraisal f Burck-hardt's chool nd nfluence.When at about he turn of the nineteenthcentury scholars began to criticize and refute the late-nineteenth-century myth of the uninhibited nd secular, f not pagan, man ofthe Renaissance', ittle distinction asmade betweenJohn ddington

2 W. Kaegi,Jacob Burckhardt: ine Biographie, ol. m (Basel, I956), pp. 325 f., 586,590.

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Symonds' lorification f the Renaissance, he effects f Nietzsche'steaching f the superman, nd Burckhardt's wn ideas. SinceWorldWar i, however, a number f investigations, specially n Germany,have

sharply roughtut the difference n

spirithat

separatedurck-

hardt's ttitude rom Nietzsche's reinterpretation, difference learlynoticed by Burckhardt imself. n America, Wallace K. Ferguson'shistory of the interpretation f the Renaissance aspointed out thatthe presumed urckhardtian lements hat were attacked ndprunedafter 9oo were actually oa large xtent not Burckhardt's wn views,but rather heir modifications y late-nineteenth-century riters.3This recognition as also influenced he long-standing ontroversyabout Burckhardt's nterpretation f religion n the Renaissance. obe sure, he religious ttitude f the trecento nd quattrocento as re-mained one of the most widely discussedaspects f the period, butthe anti-Burckhardtian sperity f forty or fifty years ago has disap-peared rom most of these discussions ecausewe have become moreaware of Burckhardt's wn tendency o give due place o the Chris-tian religion nd even to the impact of traditional medieval religion,alongside he agnosticism nd theistic religiosity which are stressed nhis picture. Furthermore, oday we realize better hat only throughanachronistic istortion an the ideas of St. Francis nd his first ol-lowers be thought to converge with the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mind. It has become possible o imagine a panorama f theRenaissance n which the influence f Franciscan spirituality n thebeginning of the period s followed and replaced by the secular

individualism hich emerged n the quattrocento.Finally, he perspective f Burckhardt's ork has changed becauseof a widening knowledge f the conceptions f the Renaissance hathad preceded t. Many studies of the history of those conceptionshave established4 ot only that he term Renaissance' sthe name ofan historical period had been n widespread se,especially n France,when Burckhardt adopted t, but also that the view which heldfifteenth- nd

sixteenth-centurytalian ulture o be the first

stagen

3A. v. Martin, Nietzsche und Burckhardt: wei geistige Welten m Dialog (3d ed.,Basel, I945), passim; E. Salin, Jacob Burckhardt nd Nietzsche (2d ed., Heidelberg,1948), passim; W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance n Historical Thought Boston, 1948),pp. 204 f.

4 Especially W. K. Ferguson, op. cit. On the Renaissance onception of the FrenchEnlightenment, see also Franco Simone, Studi Francesi, ix (I959), 399-411.

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the evolution f modern ulture ad been accepted ince he days ofHumanism. Although hehistorians f the Enlightenment ad begunto argue hat he resumption f neglected lassical tudies nd the n-flux to

Italyof Greek cholars fter 1453 could not have caused n

intellectual evolution, hey had not doubted hat fifteenth- andsixteenth-century taly had n fact experienced uch a revolution. AsVoltaire put it, during he age of the Medici the Italians lone hadeverything'-all of the cultural chievements hen accessible. is n-terpretations iffered rom the humanistic iew only in concludingthat legenie des Toscanes' nd not the revived etters ad ultimatelycaused he flowering of the Renaissance, nd that Humanism ndclassical rt contained an element of rational enlightenment hatwould inally blossom, fter he perfection f classicism n the Franceof Louis xiv, into a 'sound philosophy' nd 'la raison humaine per-fectionnee'. Whenever, after that, classicist endencies reappeared,the views of the humanists nd of these eighteenth-century riterscould fuse, strengthening ach other. Gibbon, appraising n the epi-logue to his Decline ndFall the re-emergence f the knowledge of

antiquity n fifteenth-century taly, described he humanistic rudi-tion of the quattrocento s the 'celestial ew' that helped o preparethe ground or the rise of the modern vernacular dioms and itera-tures, and eventually or speculative hilosophy nd experimentalscience. n Burckhardt's wn period, ean-Pierre harpentier ub-lished a two-volume Histoire e a Renaissance esLettres nEurope uquinzieme iecle (1843) n which the Middle Ages and the Italian

quattrocento ere ooked upon astwo different orlds, he Humanismof the quattrocento aving opened he way to the modern nationalliteratures nd to the skeptical, nti-authoritarian pirit which cul-minated n Erasmus ndMontaigne.

An evolutional cheme of modern history hat ncluded he Ren-aissance had, therefore, been commonplace or several centurieswhen Burckhardt et to work. What was new and important n his

approachas, n the first

place,he difference hat, after

havingbeen

a follower of Romanticism n hisyounger ears, he was neither readyto identify he spirit f Renaissance Italy with the infancy f enlight-ened thought nor willing to agree with the neoclassicist hesis of acausal ole or the revival of ancient etters; isbook, n fact, aboundswith rebuttals gainst his classicist elief.Some others of the princi-

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ples he followed were also ar rom being basically ersonal nd sub-jective guesses, incethey were borrowed rom contemporary ove-ments n which he found support or his revolt rom the Romanti-cism of his

youth.The notion hat here had been a

'discoveryf the

world and of man' during he Renaissance, as shared y many ofhis contemporaries ho, after abandoning he romantic ult of theMiddle Ages, were wondering about the nature and origin of theworld which had succeeded he age of feudalism ndreligious sceti-cism. While the succinct and elegant formula la decouverte dumonde et ... de l'homme' ame rom France, similar approach asfound n Germany. here, Hegel and historians ike Karl Hagen whowere nfluenced by him had begun o define he tendencies initiatingthe modern world in terms of a new self-respect, vindication ffamily ife and material goods, the dignity of labor, and a new in-terest n 'man's nner ife' and n 'external ature'. ome of the crucialelements n Burckhardt's leitmotifof'the evelopment f the ndivid-ual' were derived rom Goethe. To his German ranslation f Ben-venuto Cellini's autobiography published n I803), Goethe had ap-pended a sketch of Cellini and his contemporary world that hadturned he old, time-honored ccusationsagainst he wickedness nddepravity f the sixteenth-century talian nto a searching sycholog-ical analysis. n studying Cellini, Goethe had formed he idea of anage which had brought orth men of rare passion, marked by grosssensuality nd feverish, brutal vindictiveness, ut also by higheryearnings: n honest respect or religious nd ethical alues, or the

genius of great men, and for noble enterprises. n Goethe's appraisal,the impulsiveness f Cellini's nature yields to a thousand tempta-tions, but does not finally succumb o lowly pleasures. he force ofthis psychology (and perhaps of some comparable ortrayals fsixteenth-century talians by Stendhal n France) s felt throughoutBurckhardt's analysis f the development f the individual

The fact hat Burckhardt ove all these various trands f thoughtinto his Civilization oes not detract rom its

originality.t is

highpraise f it can be said of an historian's ork that he has helped oput some of the most fruitful deas of his own time nto the frame ofreference used in exploring an area of the past. In Burckhardt'scase, the newly mapped area comprised he Italian quattrocento ndpart of the trecento fterDante and Petrarch-in other words, oughly

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the stretch f history on which he historiography f Humanism ndof the Enlightenment ad long centered. Focusing he historicalquestions f the early nineteenth century upon this very part ofItalian

historywas nonetheless

somethingew.

Hegelwhen attribut-

ing the beginning f the modern age to the Reformation, s well asMichelet when placing he dividing ine n the sixteenth century ndchiefly outside taly, had both expressly isparaged he civilization fquattrocento taly.5 And the psychological bservations f the poetsand writers, hough referring o Italy, had dealt with the sixteenthcentury. Consequently, lthough t is true hat some of Burckhardt'sbasic questions ad been adopted rom contemporaries r predeces-sors, no one had yet, by using hese questions, hrown light on theperiod which, sinceBurckhardt, as to be called he Italian Renais-sance. Burckhardt ad found he first ncentive or this shift n quat-trocento rt;6but before his observations ould develop nto a state-ment on the role of the quattrocentoor Renaissance ulture n general,he had to assimilate n entire new world of chronicles nd other his-torical ources hat had never been seriously xploited or 'Kultur-

geschichte'. rom Kaegi's narrative we can now learn that Burck-hardt accepted he call to Zurich during he half-decade precedingthe publication f the Civilization n part because n important ol-lection of editions of fourteenth- nd fifteenth-century ources adbeen brought ogether here. One by one he took home the hugevolumes of Muratori's erum talicarum criptores nd all the rich ma-terial brought o light in his own time, laying oundations roader

than hoseof any previous ffort o reconstruct he history of the ageof humanistic iterature nd culture.Our awareness f the gradual rowth of the historical conception

set forth n the Civilization f the Renaissances the third actor re-sponsible or the differences etween our present ppraisal f Burck-hardt and the judgments still current n the I920's. No one familiarwith the antecedents nd he genesis fBurckhardt's ork will won-

5 On Hegel, cf. D. Cantimori n Annali della ScuolaNorm. Sup. di Pisa, ser. n, vol. I(I932), 235-239.

6 In the Cicerone I855) he had, for the field of architecture, laced the beginning of'the Renaissance n the proper sense' (eigentliche enaissance) t 'about I420' (Burck-hardt, Gesamtausgabe, ol. m, p. 153); cf. also the magnificent description f the 'newspirit' in painting developing 'during the first decades of the Isth century' (ibid.,vol. iv, p. 186).

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der whether his apparent iscovery f a new period was, perhaps,a rash act of illusion-whether (as was asked not many years ago)there was any Italian Renaissance t all.

Doesagreement

bout thesolidity

and vastness f Burckhardt'sattainment mean that his view on the place of the Renaissance nEuropean istory s now, after a hundred ears, inally winning hedaye Burckhardt's hesis, o be sure, was not simply hat the basicelements f modern ivilization irst appeared n a rudimentary ormin fifteenth- and sixteenth-century taly, to spread rom there andadvance through henorthern ountries. hiswashow late humanistshad viewed he progress f their cause ince he early quattrocento, ndhow eighteenth-century riters had conceived hat progress romthe Medicean age to the 'sound philosophy' f the French nd Eng-lish Enlightenment. ut to the generation hich had reed tself romRomanticism he cardinal point appeared o be that after he decayof feudalism nd a hierarchical rder a 'modern' type of society hadsomewhere emerged n which the social unction of the individual,his sense of values, and his perceptive owers had changed. Burck-

hardt was searching ot so much or the roots of a gradually nfold-ing modern development, s or the first recognizable vidence f themodern tate and of modern man. 'The Renaissance as to be pre-sented,' Burckhardt eclared during the preparation f his work,'in soweit sieMutter nd Heimat desmodernen Menschen gewordenist'; he book was to point out 'a number f phenomena f the mod-ern mind.' No other leitmotif ccurs as often in the text as the con-

tention that the Italian of the Renaissance was the firstborn amongthe sons of modern Europe', that 'the Italian Renaissance must becalled the leader of modern ages', and that 'the first truly modernmen', 'a wholly recognizable prototype of modern man', arose fromPetrarch's ime to the quattrocento.8 nly two other points are made

7 Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 664, 673.8 The Civilization of the Renaissance n Italy (Modern Library, New York, I954),

pp. Ioo, 416, 219, 249. The last quotation, in German 'ein ganz kenntliches Urbild desmodernen Menschen', runs n the only available, ontinually reprinted ranslation byS. G. C. Middlemore: a significant ype of the modern spirit'. 'Significant', type','spirit', are all inaccurate and misleading renderings-a warning against the use ofMiddlemore's ext without consultation of the German original. Incidentally, hisspecific reference o the 'Urbild des modernen Menschen' was later cancelled, presum-ably because of objections raised by Wilhelm Dilthey; cf. Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 719-722.

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quite as frequently, oth closely nterrelated ith the first. One isthat he classical evival n literature nd art was not the cause of thenew culture, but only a helpful upport. The other s that the freshcultural rowth ook place because by the quattrocento new societyand a new kind of state had delivered he individual rom the bondsof the feudal age and taught him to accept he validity of secularvalues and of critical hought hat was not recognized utside talyuntil the sixteenth century or later.

Couched n these precise erms, Burckhardt's otion of the Ren-aissancehardly ppears obe on tsway to general doption ypresent-day students. t least wo antagonistic volutional chemes ave also

been making much headway ecently. First, a resurgence f the hu-manistic iew of history has come about n a new guise, n spite ofBurckhardt's aveat gainst reating he revival of the classical tudiesascausaprima. sthe classical actor n medieval iterature, hilosophy,and art became better known, he history of European ulture beganto be viewed by some as a continual scillation etween periods ofgreater nd lesser nfluence f the antique-humanistic lements. n

this view, the Italian Humanism f the fourteenth o sixteenth en-turies alls between a medieval haseand a modern phase of human-istic classicism nder French eadership, nd thus Renaissance talylosesmuch of the air of newness which he Burckhardtian perspectivegives o it. In France, r wherever nterest n the medieval Humanismof the twelfth century r in the humanistic aspects f Thomism n thethirteenth as been very strong, he work of Burckhardt as until

now held little attraction or the general eader, or have ts effectson scholars lately ncreased.At the opposite nd are those who, instead f attributing more n-

fluence o the heritage of antiquity han Burckhardt ould allow,wonder whether our standard f what was 'modern' fter 300 hasnot, perhaps, emained ven too close o the humanistic iew of cul-ture; whether we are not wrong to exclude rom our concept of theRenaissance he realistic, ndividualistic, nd urban movements ut-side Italy. Should we not search or changes of European cope nview of such ourteenth- nd fifteenth-century urrents s philosoph-ical 'nominalism' nd Occamistic cience, he naturalism nherent nthe political hilosophy which sprang rom he clashes etween papaland secularpowers, he mystical movements f the ate Middle Ages,

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and the realism f Flemish rte In this larger ramework, hould weattribute o the course of events n Italy more significance han thatof a local or national variety of the European evelopment?

This snot theplace

oattempt

oweigh

the relative merits of thethree approaches hus sketched. The point is that we have everyreason o expect hat n the years ahead they will be locked n a vig-orous truggle. n this controversy, o what extent will those who be-lieve with Burckhardt hat he Italian Renaissance s a 'prototype' fthe modern age, still be able to use the Civilization f the Renaissancein Italy as a valid basis? or an answer, we must explore a little morethoroughly han s usual he comprehensiveness r incompleteness fBurckhardt's resentation f fourteenth-, ifteenth-, nd sixteenth-century culture.9

There s a lacuna n Burckhardt's analysis ven rom he viewpointof historical scholarship n the year 1860.A view widespread uringthe eighteenth entury ad been hat prosperity nd vitality had beensparked n the Italian ommunes through he establishment nd suc-cessful defense of freedom during he eleventh, welfth, and thir-

teenth centuries, nd that arts and letters afterwards ose to newheights owing to the revival of antiquity. When during he ater partof the eighteenth entury he conviction ained trength hat antiq-uity would not have been revalued had not the ground been wellprepared n the Italian city-states, here arose an increasing eed toidentify he sociological orces hat after Iooo through everal en-turies emolded ultural ife n Italy. By the early nineteenth century,

two complementary heories ad become accessible o scholars.One was the dea of the nvigorating ower of competition withinand between ree city-states; his was an English ighteenth-centurythought traceable o Hume (who, however, was too prejudicedagainst talian politics and literature o apply t to the Italian city-states) and most maturely developed n Adam Ferguson's ssayonthe History f Civil Society f I767. The Essay argued: when in freesocieties

many ypesof men react o a common

challenge, verysort

of human energy bursts orth; engagement nd 'exertion' ecomestimuli or culture. Greece, ivided nto many ittle states, nd agi-

9 The only omission in the Civilization which is usually mentioned is the neglect(originally not intended) of Renaissance art; cf. Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 665 f., 689 f. Thereare, however, other omissions with graver consequences, as will be seen.

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tated beyond any spot on the globe by domestic ontentions ndforeign wars, set the example n every species f literature. he firewas communicated o Rome; not when he state eased o be warlikeand had discontinued er

political gitations,ut when shemixed he

love of refinement nd of pleasure with her national pursuits, ndindulged n inclination o study n the midst of ferments, ccasionedby the wars and pretensions f opposite actions. t was revived nmodem Europe among he turbulent tates f modern Italy. . .'

The second theory was stimulated by Rousseau's praise f popularsovereignty nd direct democracy n small ocal states. n the light ofhis deas,participation y every citizen n the ife of his city patria p-peared san even more effective actor han he spur of'turbulence'.It was Rousseau's ountryman, imonde de' Sismondi, who duringGeneva's ubjection o Napoleon used Rousseau's deas or a com-parative tudy of the effects f the ancient Greek nd medieval taliancity-states n the behavior nd outlook of their citizens. Sismondi'smulti-volume history f the Italian republics f the Middle Ageswas,it is true, strongly disfigured y a passionate, ften anachronistic,

democratic nd rationalist ias, which caused his books to fall intorelatively arly oblivion; but this does not detract rom the fact thathe was the first o weigh seriously he consequences f the participa-tion of every ull-fledged itizen n sovereignty nd government, nthe Italian as well as the Greek city-states. A man who once had ashare n the exercise f public power, Sismondi argued, estune crea-ture plus noble, plus relevee, que celui qui n'en exerce aucun,' or his

horizons ave widened, his powers of critical eflection ave grown.'Au lieu de ne s'occuper ue de lui-meme, l s'est occupe des autrespour eur plus grand bien. Il a donc ouvert on coeur a des sentimentsplus releves, l a une plus haute dee de sa propre dignite.....' 'Libertepolitique', hat s, active participation n the life of the state, est aplus noble des educations qu'on puisse donner a l'homme'; citizenwho has asted hisdivine ood, 'dedaigne oute nourriture umaine.'One

mightcall this the first

theoryof the historical

consequencesf

polis ife; t is applied o ancient Greece nd ate medieval Italy n onecomparative ffort.10

10On Hume, cf.J. R. Hale, England nd heItalian Renaissance London, I954), pp.46 f.; Adam Ferguson, Essay (Edinburgh, 1767), pp. 27I f.; Sismondi n his Etudes urles constitutions espeuples ibres Brussels, 836) and his Histoire esrepubliques taliennes

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In the works of Adam Ferguson nd Sismondi we find the seedsof an interpretation11 hich intimately onnects psychological ndintellectual changes with the citizen's political way of life. Historiansof the Romantic school carried his

approachtill further. n

I844,the Storia ellebellearti n Italia by Emiliani-Giudici undoubtedly,like Ferguson's nd Sismondi's orks, amiliar o Burckhardt) adea special lea or 'a political nterpretation f literature' ('spiegazionepolitica della etteratura'). olitical nd literary deaswere to be con-sidered n conjunction ecause f the interrelationship hich existsbetween political ndependence nd 'independenza entale'. As lateas the sixteenth century Emiliani-Giudici ndeavored o show) herewas a profound difference n intellectual ttitude between Machia-velli's generation, scrittori utti educati al libero pensare mentrepalpitava ncora l cuore della repubblica', nd the courtiers f thesubsequent eriod under Duke Cosimo I; any understanding f theFlorentine cinquecento epended n clearly differentiating he climateof the first thirty years rom that of the rest of the century.

Against hisbackground ne realizes hat ome of the already vail-

able approaches ere not included n Burckhardt's explanation f'the development f the individual'. n the chapter o entitled, ftersome nsistence n the disappearance f medieval aste distinctions,he traces ack he ntellectual grasp f many new fieldsof knowledge,the change n the evaluation f life, and the training of uniquely'rounded' personalities, ot to the molding nfluence f a society nwhich citizens were compelled o be rulers s well as ruled and were

exposed o the competitive onditions f civic ife, but rather o theeffects of the tyrants' ourts12 nd to the situation of those who,through eparation rom public ife, gained ultural eisure.The attertype of 'private man, indifferent o politics, and busied partly ..with the interests f a dilettante', s said o have developed under hetyrants swell as in the republican itieswhere men in power often

(Paris, I809 if.); see also H. R. Felder, Simonde e Sismondi: Gedanken iber Freiheit(Diss. Zurich, i954), pp. II, 25, 29.

11 Hardly more than seeds, because Ferguson's Essay did not elaborate upon condi-tions in Italy, and Sismondi condemned the quattrocento oo passionately s the periodof tyrants to search or any survival of liberte olitique fter the fourteenth century.

12 'Despotism ostered n the highest degree the individuality not only of the tyrantor Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he ... used as his tools: the secre-tary, minister, poet, and companion.' Civilization, op. cit., p. IOI.

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had to make he utmost' f a short period of triumph ndafterwards,defeated r exiled, ound hemselves ininvoluntary eisure'. ike hesubjects f the tyrants, uch men, recognizing the dangers nd thethanklessness f public ife', learnt o prize a developed rivate ife'as the necessary asisof cultural pursuits.

Why did Burckhardt imit his nterest o this one sector, why didhe not make use of the rudimentary ociology of city-state ife al-ready prepared y the historians f the Enlightenment nd of Ro-manticism? ertainly ot because emisjudged he roles of Florenceand Venice. His book ncludes ome of the most impressive nd sym-pathetic ages ver written on achievements n the Florentine repub-lic: the spread f political raisonnement nd a keen spirit of calcula-tion among an entire people; he priority n time of the patronageof Florentine itizens o that of the princes; he contrast betweenFlorentine istoriography-written by citizens or citizens, as theancients did'-and the hired, officialhistoriography n most princi-palities; nd the ast, heroic defense f 1529-30, without which Flor-entine history would have been he poorer by one of its greatest nd

most ennobling memories'. he reason why Burckhardt id not de-velop any of these eatures or his general onception f the periodlay in the peculiar ent of his personal elationship o culture. Duringthe mid-I84o's, when he was not yet thirty years old, he had turnedwith abhorrence rom the then rising democratic rend, whichseemed o him to prelude a fatal peril to civilization, eralding nupsurge f the masses, rutal wars, and despotism. His own life, in

such an iron, barbaric ge, was to be devoted o a secluded privateexistence, n which he might help to preserve he old, aristocratictraditions f European ulture. We are not asking here how good ajudge and prophet of nineteenth- nd twentieth-century evelop-ments Burckhardt as; what matters o us is the impact hese pas-sionate onvictions ad on his views and methods as a cultural is-torian. Although ispolitical utlook was far rom he 'liberalism' fGerman Neuhumanistenike Wilhelm von Humboldt. whom he ad-mired, n effect he adopted Humboldt's concept of a separation e-tween ndividual ulture nd the State. While it is true that Burck-hardt was thinking of the nineteenth-century tate of the masseswhereas Humboldt ad been hinking f the absolutist monarchy fthe eighteenth entury, o both the ultimate goal was the harmoni-

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ous growth and training f all the potentialities f the individual nproud ndependence rom the State.13

Was Burckhardt, rom this position of German neo-humanistic'liberalism,

ikelyto

grasp ullythe delicate alance etween unusual

stimulation nd unusual iolation of individual privacy, ypical ofcivic life in a city-state ociety?When Burckhardt n later years de-fined the relationship etween he Greek polis and Greek ulture nhis imposing ectures n the History fGreekCivilization, e empha-sized, more strongly han most classical cholarstoday considerjusti-fied, the tendency of the Greek city-state o force the individual,after he had come to maturity n the hothouse atmosphere f thepolis, o 'flee' he despotic pretensions f the community nd build,like Diogenes, a true and humane ulture apart rom the state. Onthe whole, n post-Burckhardtian cholarship, here has been a grad-ual expansion f the area n which he ife of the polis s recognized shaving had a positive nfluence n the ideas and deals of Greek ul-ture; and Burckhardt's otif of the 'free ndividual' red by the city-state, but forced-and happy-to build his cultural ife independentof the demands f the polis, has retained merely the validity of apartial truth.14

There is a very similar divergence between the approaches fmany present-day cholars nd Burckhardt's iews of the relation fRenaissance ulture o the Renaissance tate. Even though no onedenies hat the appearance f a 'private man, ndifferent o politics,and busied partly .. with the interests f a dilettante' as a major

factor n Renaissance ife, especially uring ts later stages, a gooddeal of recent study has focused, ven for the fifteenth nd sixteenthcenturies, n situations n which new values and ideas were createdby men who, emotionally nd intellectually, ere deeply nvolvedin the struggles f their age. Few such inquiries ave been able toproceed rom questions osed n the Civilization of the Renaissance;they have usually ad o make rom an entirely ew beginning. Thishas also been rue of all

attemptso relate o the life and

spiritof the

13K. L6with, 'Burckhardt's ntschluss ur Apolitie', in L6with'sJacob Burckhardt:Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte (Luzern, 1936), pp. I52-I88, 363-371; D. Canti-mori on Burckhardt's apolitismo, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXVI (I954), 532 f., 536.

14Cf. R. Stadelmann's een, though occasionally overstrained, nalysis of 'JacobBurckhardt's griechische Kulturgeschichte', Die Antike, vn (I93I), esp. 57-62.

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Renaissance ts new political cience-those subtle designs of con-stitutions (true Renaissance works of art') hat, drawing n the ex-periences f generations, ried o assure efficiency ndjust shares orthe

competingocialgroups hrough nelaborate ivision fpowers.

Burckhardt, n the fashion f the Romantics, ecries the great mod-em fallacy hat a constitution an be manufactured by a combinationof existing orces nd endencies'; llhe has o say s that on this scoreRenaissance thought must be considered the pattern and earliesttype' of the defects' f the modem world.15 he same ack of sympa-thetic nterest s shown n the Civilization of the Renaissance owardsthe forces by which he vital new philosophy f history was shaped.In post-Burckhardian esearch, he central heme has been he nter-minable controversy f the humanists bout he respective merits ofthe respublica omana nd the subsequent monarchy of the Romanemperors-a controversy ulminating n the well-known quest ofthe historicaljustification f Cicero or Caesar. We have, perhaps, obetter mirror han his controversy or studying he basic differencesin the politico-historical utlook developing n the city-republics nd

at the tyrant courts. Again he Civilization of theRenaissance asnotprovided starting oint for our discussions. rom he manuscriptsin the Burckhardt rchiveswe can now learn hat only a few yearsbefore beginning he preparations or his book he had commented tlength upon Caesar nd Caesar's ssassination n his lectures. One isamazed o find hat he great master f objective istoricism ad beenunable o recognize hat wo ages and Weltanschauungen ad clashed

in that conflagration. o Burckhardt, lllight and historicaljustifica-tion was on the side of Caesar; is murder ad been perpetrated y'genuine riniinals', t was 'the greatest tupidity' ecorded n the an-nals of Roman history.16 Thus still another window through whichthe reciprocity f thought nd political xperience n the Renaissancecan be most clearly eenwas closed o the author f the Civilization fthe Renaissance.

Theconsequences

xtend even to theappraisal

f Humanism.Although Burckhardt ad parted with the classicist interpretationthat he revival of ancient iterature as the cause f the Renaissance,he did not change ssentially he traditional iew about he nature f

15 Civilization, d. cit., p. 68.16 Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 308 f.

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humanistic ontacts with the classical heritage. The notion of a re-nascence f something ld after a long interval emained t the heartof his concept of the humanistic movement, even though the re-

emergencef

many aspectsf ancient Roman

Italywas now more

intelligibly xplained y the romantic Volksgeistdea. The essence fthe classical evival,we read n the Civilization oftheRenaissance, asan 'alliance between wo distant epochs n the civilization f thesame people', a 'partial e-awakening f the old Italian genius ..-the wondrous cho of a far-offstrain'. By this oken, hose eatures fthe humanistic movement which Burckhardt ontinued o call thehumanistic 'reproduction f antiquity' emained n the foreground.This means hat neo-Latin poetry and the new Latin oratory andepistolography ere emphasized, hile 'Latin reatises', ialogues,and works of historiography ere given only a few pages or evenparagraphs. he order of emphasis as practically een reversed nthe study of Renaissance umanism during he twentieth century.Most of the interest-an entire, new branch f critical esearch-hasbeen devoted o the treatises, ialogues, ndworks ofhistoriography.And this has happened recisely ecause hese genera f humanisticliterature, hile probably he east uccessful s mitations f classicalmodels, estify o the originality f the Renaissance, ince throughthem humanists ere able o express heir own convictions nd senseof life and o recreate he picture f the ancient past rom reshpointsof view. In revealing heir authors' minds, hese humanistic worksoften allow us deeper nsights han any other ources nto the differ-

ences n outlook hat existed among he humanists n various ocialgroups, especially etween writers n civic and in courtly ociety.Indeed, t is largely because f the transference f scholarly ttentionto these formerly eglected ections f humanistic ork that Burck-hardt's long-accepted stimate f the respective ontributions f thecommunal nd the 'individualistic' spirit o the culture f the Ren-aissance as recently become a matter of doubt and questioning.

Yet continued imitation f the role ascribed o Renaissance in-dividualism' as n the final count not weakened, ut rather strength-ened the validity of the thesis hat the Italian Renaissance was aprototype f life and thought n the modern world. For the conclu-sion that many of the 'modem' eatures f Renaissance Italy resultedfrom the politics and culture of the city-state s in harmony with

[22I ]


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other persuasions f present-day istoricalphilosophy. With respectto the ancient world, extension f our knowledge over the civiliza-tions of the East has only strengthened he interpretation hat Greekand Roman culture was different-and n some way prototypical fmany aspects f later European istory-because t was founded onindependent ity-states; hat n the tense and bracing tmosphere fthose small commonwealths many of the political, thical, and cul-tural problems which were to remain hose of the moder westernworld were first fathomed and worked out. The more fully werealize he significance which city-state ociety had for the ItalianRenaissance, ven during ts ater phases, he more he relationship fRenaissance ulture o 'modem' ife becomes or us a part of thegeneral problem of the singular ffiliation f western history withtraditions nherited rom early city-state epublics. t is in associationwith the ncreased ttention ow paid o sociological actors hat hecore of the Burckhardtian conception f the Renaissance an carryfull conviction or a reader f today. In this metamorphosis, urck-hardt's iew proves equal and may still, eventually, rove superiorto the competing views about the nature of the transition o themodem age.NEWBERRY LIBRARY

Two Unpublished tageSongsfor the 'Aery of Children'

by ANDREW J. SABOL

AT the turn of the century, few years before he First Quarto ofHamlet (I603) was printed, he reappearance f the choirboy

troupes-the Children f the Chapel and the Children f Paul's-attheir own

privateheaters n London

providederious

competitionto the adult companies cting on the public tages, nd among hemthe Chamberlain's en, Shakespeare's ompany. n a topicality nthis corrupt, reported' ersion of the play, Guildenstem lludes othe popularity f the child actors as he accounts or the visit of thetraveling players:

other persuasions f present-day istoricalphilosophy. With respectto the ancient world, extension f our knowledge over the civiliza-tions of the East has only strengthened he interpretation hat Greekand Roman culture was different-and n some way prototypical fmany aspects f later European istory-because t was founded onindependent ity-states; hat n the tense and bracing tmosphere fthose small commonwealths many of the political, thical, and cul-tural problems which were to remain hose of the moder westernworld were first fathomed and worked out. The more fully werealize he significance which city-state ociety had for the ItalianRenaissance, ven during ts ater phases, he more he relationship fRenaissance ulture o 'modem' ife becomes or us a part of thegeneral problem of the singular ffiliation f western history withtraditions nherited rom early city-state epublics. t is in associationwith the ncreased ttention ow paid o sociological actors hat hecore of the Burckhardtian conception f the Renaissance an carryfull conviction or a reader f today. In this metamorphosis, urck-hardt's iew proves equal and may still, eventually, rove superiorto the competing views about the nature of the transition o themodem age.NEWBERRY LIBRARY

Two Unpublished tageSongsfor the 'Aery of Children'

by ANDREW J. SABOL

AT the turn of the century, few years before he First Quarto ofHamlet (I603) was printed, he reappearance f the choirboy

troupes-the Children f the Chapel and the Children f Paul's-attheir own

privateheaters n London

providederious

competitionto the adult companies cting on the public tages, nd among hemthe Chamberlain's en, Shakespeare's ompany. n a topicality nthis corrupt, reported' ersion of the play, Guildenstem lludes othe popularity f the child actors as he accounts or the visit of thetraveling players:

[222 ]222 ]

Baron, H., Burckhardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance'. a Century After Its Publication

Documents

Transcript of Baron, H., Burckhardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance'. a Century After Its Publication