The Renaissance – Humanism Re-asserted

December 9, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
12. The Renaissance – Humanism Re-asserted

Renaissance Man or cheerful robot? There are possible destinies for man, the late C. Wright Mills pointed out in a searching essay, “On Reason and Freedom.” Professor Mills was speaking of modern man’s vulnerability to being turned into a robot, “by chemical and psychiatric means, by steady co-ercion and by controlled environment....” He also warned that man can become a “cheerful robot.” That is, the psychological needs and wants of man can be so manipulated that he will desire to become a robot without freedom to choose or influence his individual destiny.

What was “Renaissance Man” that he should represent the desirable goal of reason, freedom and creativity?

Although many historians write as though the Age of the Renaissance, usually dated from 1400 to 1525, was a miraculous sunrise, suddenly illuminating man as he came into modern times from the Middle Ages, the change was not explosive. There had been many omens and indications that a new age was to dawn for man and that it was to be one of the most spectacular periods in human history.

The Renaissance represented a revolt against the other-worldly attitude which had been clamped on European man by the medieval church. This life had been looked on as nothing in comparison with the heaven or hell of other-worldly destination. In the Renaissance, the value of this life and the worth of human abilities was re-asserted. This revival of learning, a complete change that seemed to inspire the ideas and creativity of man had numerous expressions:

There was a recovery of classic learning and literature.
The authority of the Church and the grasp of Empire weakened.
The search for truth shook off chains.
Invention and discovery were prime characteristics.
Artistic and literary creativity reached peaks of genius.
Human joy in living became reborn.

This love of life is well-expressed by the first lines of a hymn composed by Lorenzo, the most famous member of the wealthy house of the Medici:

“Let one loud song of praise arise
To God, whose goodness ceaseless flows.”

The city-state of Florence in Renaissance Italy was the superb example of the glory f the revival of learning and art. Under the patronage of the Medici family, creative artists, sculptors, architects, poets and scholars energized a whole tide of human creation that began to wash clean all the dusty corners and gloomy overlooks of the Middle Ages.

Florence demonstrated the great flowering of the fine arts in the Renaissance. Nothing could be compared to it since the days of the ancient, creative Greek classic culture. Many artists and sculptors of Florence and other city-states of Italy combined marvelous creativity with the technical skills of genius. To name Michelangelo, Ghiberti, [Brunelleschi], Frau Angelico, Botticelli, Raphael, is just to list some of the great creators.

Above all was Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most versatile genius ever known in the history of man. Leonardo represented in fullness another phase of the Renaissance, the all-around man. A genius in all fields, a sculptor, painter, inventor, designer, authority even today on perspectives of light and shadow, Leonardo encompassed all fields. With equal ease and facility, he could create admirable designs for irrigation ditches, mausoleums, machines for warfare or a two-tiered city. He designed the airplane and submarine centuries before these could become functioning machines.

During this age inventions and their applications changed the course of history: printing, paper, gunpowder, the mariners’ compass. Vast frontiers, promising wealth and power opened up for Europe.

Inserted note (apparently by Rev. Westman): Following delivery of this sermon, the valid criticism was made that printing, paper, gunpowder, the compass and the exploratory spirit were all characteristics of Asian and other non-European cultures long before the Renaissance. Notwithstanding this correction, it was during the Renaissance that the application of these discoveries became effective in Europe.

There are a number of key dates in this revival of learning and age of new frontiers: 1415, the printing press was used; in 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks and the classical scholars fled to the West, bringing priceless ancient manuscripts with them; in 1492, Columbus discovered the New World.

Humanism was re-asserted as this creativity, love of learning and courage to explore, reflected a profound change in man’s way of looking at the world. There was a renewed claim for human values.

There is hardly a limit to the comment that could be made about the creativity of the artists who were inspired by the ancient Greeks, but not limited by them. Even the popes were patrons of the arts, disbursing wealth almost without restraint for the magnificent buildings and superb art. Julius II and Leo X were largely responsible for St. Peter’s. The Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo’s ceiling memorialized another pope, Sixtus IV. Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), had a staff of hundreds of classical scholars, studying and translating manuscripts so many scholars could become involved in studies. It was said that one time he gave 10,000 gulden for a translation of Homer into Latin verse. His library comprised 9,000 volumes.

But from the standpoint of our Judeo-Christian heritage, our particular debt to the Renaissance is of greater importance even than the enormous contributions of art, architecture and letters. In the Renaissance, the mental boundaries of man stretched, ranging wider than for at least one thousand years. Man became curious again. Inquiry became free as men examined pre-suppositions. Men began searching out what might be true and what might be false. Tolerance increased acceptance of the notion that there is more than one source for truth; that truth can be discovered in the classics that existed long before Christianity; that truth was not confined to the Church’s official doctrines and interpretations of scripture. This was a revival of the mind – a protest against limitations on knowledge. In it was an assumption that had been obscure in Christian Europe for too many centuries: that man is competent to learn about his universe, his fellow human beings and himself. So Renaissance Man began to inquire, to seek, to turn the powers of his curious mind to all the questions, the puzzles, the riddles of this wider mental world of his awakening.

Furthermore, it followed from this intellectual revolution against authoritarianism imposed on the mind, that man was returning to the Greek idea of the individual: the individual as a unique creation of a Cosmic Soul or Universal Order, who had the right to use his mind, his body and his environment to achieve the good life on this earth. Values were asserted which held high human life on this earth.

However, it would be an error to assume that Renaissance Man had forsaken the theology or sacraments of the Church. But he had widened his grasp to include various philosophies as well as official theology. In the Renaissance in Italy there were no new, enduring, strong religious movements established of which we have knowledge. As has been pointed out, the Church itself patronized the achievements of the intellect as well as the arts. But in this setting, human qualities began to prevail. The rigidity of a system of thought began to weaken which had fixed men’s minds only on salvation in another world, for which life here was but preparation. Instead there came to be held as a goal, the well-rounded personality seeking knowledge for its own sake – living in this world as a place of joy in which he may find fulfillment.

In all this there was the re-inforcement of the scientific spirit, because man now assumed he was competent to learn truth through experiment and to draw valid conclusions from testing. The truth could be thus achieved and this was far different from truth as pronouncements of dogma formed by councils and popes.

The great historian, Arnold Toynbee made the point in his STUDY OF HISTORY that there was a political re-establishment in the Renaissance which has been a continuing influence. In the Italian city-states, political control gradually passed from bishops and into the hands of boards of magistrates who were responsible to citizens. Again, this was related to the revival of the classic period, for this was the Greek or Hellenic idea of the city-state – governed by free people who live in it. Thus Renaissance Man re-asserted the ancient humanistic values: the inquiring mind, life on this earth which was prized, the integrity of scientific experiment and the wisdom of responsible political government.

However, Utopia had not arrived. The Italian Renaissance was not a seamless fabric of shining virtue. The increased opportunities for freedom also brought greater license. There was joy; there was vigor; there was a re-birth of learning; there was great beauty created. But these movements did not reform the church – Alexander VI, the incredibly evil Roderigo Borga was one of the Renaissance popes. The revival learning co-incided with the rapacity of the powerful, unscrupulous family groups which maintained control over money and politics. There was conspiracy, selfishness, murders. This was also the age when Machiavelli learned the lessons of political knavery well enough to immortalize his classic exposition of unholy expediency.

We shall consider next week how one man revolted against this new holiness granted unto beauty and reminded men sternly that the beauty of holiness was more important.

The German Reformation may have been a counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, but in another sense it was a reaction to it. The Renaissance did not cleanse the Church of greed, of misuse of power, of deceit. The Reformation had to come and then, also, the Counter-Reformation of the Latin Catholic Church. Both of these were in a sense balance weights of the Renaissance period.

In spite of these reservations which can be made to point out that the days of the Renaissance did not mark the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, ... the Renaissance re-asserted the human values of ancient Greece in a more modern setting; spurred great explorations which opened up new worlds of opportunity, even though despotism and exploitation also booked passage for the new worlds. The invention of printing made it possible to spread, not only the “Word of God,” but the words of mankind, to more and more seeking minds than had ever been the case in all the history of man.

The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and all the other momentous movements which have affected us, are significant for us by virtue of what we may recover of value from them and how we may use this wisdom in our time. The past is with us always, but there are many aspects of the past, some good and useful to us if we learn of them, and apply their wisdom to our time. But the past also has a record of infamy and harm to the human family. Knowledge of that should instruct us what not to do.

In his great study of THE CITY IN HISTORY, Lewis Mumford, speaking of Renaissance architecture, points out that in cities like Florence, the original Roman outlines of the city were still there during the Renaissance. The city was not newly created in the revival of art and learning. What Mumford maintains is that there was no Renaissance city. But rather, in the old order, patches of the new appeared. The new was characterized by openings, there were clarifications, there were modifications. As he says (p. 348), “if the new buildings with their impersonal gravity and decorous regularity break up the harmony of the Medieval pattern, they established a contrapuntal relationship which brings out, in contrast, otherwise unregarded, often invisible, the aesthetic qualities in the older streets and buildings, the theme itself remained Medieval. But new instruments were added to the orchestra and both the tempo and tonal quality of the city were changed.”

So it is with us today: the outlines of the old are marked upon us. The old as well as the new buildings are with us. Usually the outlines of the old are detectable. In some of the fascinating photo studies recently appearing in the newspaper, from the pictures taken from high above, one can see old scars on the land, identifying bygone roads and institutions. The world of religion and ideas is like that too. The old ways of imposed thought, iron custom, fixed doctrines, still have their brands deeply etched within us and stir our ancient and nostalgic emotions. But also, the spirit of the Renaissance Man is ours, his quest for truth; his resistance to any limitations to be placed on the acquisition of knowledge, his recognition, implicit in the search for truth, that the truth is a value which ever has newer dimensions of depth and breadth.

Most vital of all, perhaps is that the thinking man, wiling to take upon himself the agony, as well as the joy of choosing his alternatives for decision, as well as making decisions, is the only authentic obstacle in the way of those who would seek to recreate man as the “cheerful robot” or any other variety of automaton.

There is current timeliness in this recognition of the age when man would be free. Tomorrow, December 10, is the observation of Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the Charter of Human Rights of the United Nations. Next Saturday, December 15, is Bill of Rights Day, in commemoration of the date when the United States, aware that it was newborn to freedom, enacted the first ten amendments to the Constitution – the Bill of Rights – most precious of all our privileges of citizenship.

Things will go ill with the family of man if we neglect or ignore the best of our heritage from Renaissance Man: a strong awareness that to be human is to retain the authentic human privileges and obligations of freedom and individualism in a society that gives exercise to these values within an organic structure that never ceased to labor to make democracy real and effective.