Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 | Page 5

while history itself is one and continuous, so that our utmost endeavors
to regard some portion of it independently of the rest will be defeated.
A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the
dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no immediate
possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had
deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism: the fragments of Roman
civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated: the Germanic
nations had to receive culture and religion from the people they had
superseded; the Church had to be created, and a new form given to the
old idea of the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern
nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be

formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth
accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of
the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which fulfilled
these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The reason
why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy possessed a
language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and commercial
prosperity, at a time when other nations were still semi-barbarous.
Where the human spirit had been buried in the decay of the Roman
Empire, there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the Papacy,
called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, seated, throned
and crowned, upon the ashes thereof, to some extent bridged over the
gulf between the two periods.
Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the
Renaissance was intellectual, that it was the emancipation of the reason
for the modern world, we may inquire how feudalism was related to it.
The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant
prostration before the idols of the Church--dogma and authority and
scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were
bound down by the brute weight of material necessities. Without the
power over the outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts
communicate, without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure,
without the traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state
of utter rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a
difficult hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved during
the Middle Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was
done unconsciously--that it was a gradual and instinctive process of
becoming. The reason, in one word, was not awake; the mind of man
was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to
think of the mediæval students poring over a single ill-translated
sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole
systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles
hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the
time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and
Aristotle were alive but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the
Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern
mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of
humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but

unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life
down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping the
sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and
with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time within their breasts
and brains the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized,
the spirit of freedom which erelong was destined to restore its birthright
to the world.
Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own work. Slowly and
obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations
and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany
took shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several
characters, and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should
be expressed. The qualities which render modern society different from
that of the ancient world, were being impressed upon these nations by
Christianity, by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came
a further phase. After the nations had been molded, their monarchies
and dynasties were established. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into
various forms of more or less defined autocracy. In Italy and Germany
numerous principalities sprang into pre-eminence; and though the
nation was not united under one head, the monarchical principle was
acknowledged. France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of
which the king could say, 'L'Etat c'est moi.' England developed her
complicated constitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At the
same time the Latin Church underwent a similar process of