THE HINGES OF HISTORY
We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage—almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.
In this series, THE HINGES OF HISTORY, I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West. This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.
—Thomas Cahill
THE HINGES OF HISTORY
VOLUME I
HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION
THE UNTOLD STORY OF IRELAND’S HEROIC ROLE FROM
THE FALL OF ROME TO THE RISE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE
This introductory volume presents the reader with a new way of looking at history. Its time period—the end of the classical period and the beginning of the medieval period—enables us to look back to our ancient roots and forward to the making of the modern world.
VOLUME II
THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS
HOW A TRIBE OF DESERT NOMADS CHANGED
THE WAY EVERYONE THINKS AND FEELS
This is the first of three volumes on the creation of the Western world in ancient times. It is first because its subject matter takes us back to the earliest blossoming of Western sensibility, there being no West before the Jews.
VOLUME III
DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS
THE WORLD BEFORE AND AFTER JESUS
This volume, which takes as its subject Jesus and the first Christians, comes directly after The Gifts of the Jews, because Christianity grows directly out of the unique culture of ancient Judaism.
VOLUME IV
SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA
WHY THE GREEKS MATTER
The Greek contribution to our Western heritage comes to us largely through the cultural conduit of the Romans (who, though they do not have a volume of their own, are a presence in Volumes I, III, and IV). The Greek contribution, older than Christianity, nevertheless continues past the time of Jesus and his early followers and brings us to the medieval period. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea concludes our study of the making of the ancient world.
VOLUME V
MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THE RISE OF FEMINISM, SCIENCE, AND ART FROM
THE CULTS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE
The high Middle Ages are the first iteration of the combined sources of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures that make Western civilization so singular. In the fruitful interaction of these sources, science and realistic art are rediscovered and feminism makes its first appearance in human history.
VOLUME VI
HERETICS AND HEROES
HOW RENAISSANCE ARTISTS AND REFORMATION
PRIESTS CREATED OUR WORLD
The European rediscovery of classical literature and culture precipitates two very different movements that characterize the sixteenth century. The rediscovery of Greco-Roman literature and art sparks the Renaissance, first in Italy, then throughout Europe. New knowledge of Greek enables scholars to read the New Testament in its original language, generating new interpretations and theological challenges that issue in the Reformation. Though the Renaissance and the Reformation are very different from each other, both exalt the individual ego in wholly new ways.
VOLUME VII
This volume will continue and conclude our investigation of the making of the modern world and the impact of its cultural innovations on the sensibility of the West.
Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Cahill
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies.
www.nanatalese.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.
Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.
Pages constitute an extension of this copyright page.
Book design adapted by Maria Carella
Map designed by Mapping Specialists Ltd.
Endpaper: Pieter Bruegel, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor
Jacket illustration: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1555 (oil on canvas), Bruegel, Pieter the Elder (c. 1525–1569) / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels / The Bridgeman Art Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cahill, Thomas.
Heretics and heroes : how Renaissance artists and Reformation priests created our world / by Thomas Cahill.— First edition.
pages cm.—(The hinges of history; volume VI)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Renaissance. 2. Reformation. 3. Ego (Psychology)—History. 4. Europe—Civilization. I. Title.
CB359.C34 2013
940—dc23 2013006241
eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-53416-1
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-385-49557-8
v3.1
To Devlin, Lucia, Nina, and Conor, beloved grandchildren
“Qu’est-ce que cela fait? Tout est grâce.”
I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
—Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521
I had expected to vote against Senator Kennedy because of his religion. But now he can be my president, Catholic or whatever he is.… He has the moral courage to stand up for what he knows is right.
—Martin Luther King Sr., from the pulpit of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, October 31, 1960, the day his son Martin Luther King Jr. was released from a Georgia prison, thanks to John F. Kennedy’s intervention
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
PRELUDE
Philosophical Tennis Through the Ages
INTRODUCTION
Dress Rehearsals for Permanent Change
1282: The Sicilian Vespers
1353: How to Survive the Black Death
1381–1451: Lutherans Long Before Luther
1452: The Third Great Communications Revolution
I NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
Innovation on Sea and Land
1492: Columbus Discovers America
1345–1498: Humanists Rampant
II THE INVENTION OF HUMAN BEAUTY
And the End of Medieval Piety
1445?–1564: Full Nakedness!
1565–1680: Charring the Wood
III NEW THOUGHTS FOR NEW WORLDS
Deviant Monks
1500–1517: Erasmus and Luther
IV REFORMATION!
Luther St
eps Forward
1518–1521: From Dispute to Divide
INTERMISSION: IL BUONO, IL BRUTTO, IL CATTIVO (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY)
A Portfolio of Egos
V PROTESTANT PICTURES
And Other Northern Images
1498–1528: Apocalypse Now
1516–1535: Utopia Now and Then
1522–1611: The Word of God Goes Forth— First in Hochdeutsch, Then in Shakespearean English
1520s: Encounters and Evasions in Paris
1525?–1569: The Ice Is Melting
VI CHRISTIAN VS. CHRISTIAN
The Turns of the Screw
1516–1525: From Zwingli to the Peasants’ War
1525–1564: From Princely Conversions to the Second Reformation
1545–1563: Catholics Get Their Act Together
1558–1603: The Religious Establishment of a Virgin Queen
1562–1648: Let’s Kill ’Em All!
VII HUMAN LOVE
How to Live on This Earth
1531–1540: Nuns with Guns
1615–1669: The Deepening
POSTLUDE
Hope and Regret
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgments
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index
A Note About the Author
Illustrations
Other Books by This Author
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOR PLATES
1. Donatello, David, 1440s
2. Donatello, Mary Magdalene, c. 1457
3. Verrocchio, David, c. 1476
4. Verrocchio, Baptism of Christ, 1472
5. Leonardo, The Annunciation, c. 1472
6. Leonardo, The Virgin of the Rocks, 1482–1483
7. Masaccio, Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter on His Throne, 1425
8. Masolino, Adam and Eve, c. 1424–1425
9. Masaccio, Adam and Eve, c. 1425
10. Piero della Francesca, Resurrection, 1458
11. Piero della Francesca, La Madonna del Parto, c. 1465
12. Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482
13. Botticelli, Athena and the Centaur, c. 1482
14. Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1483
15. Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485–1487
16. Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487
17. Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–1499
18. Michelangelo, David, 1504
19. Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512
20. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512
21. Michelangelo, Moses, c. 1513–1515
22. Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1537–1541
23. Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, 1593–1594
24. Caravaggio, Basket of Fruit, 1599
25. Caravaggio, Madonna dei Pellegrini (Our Lady of the Pilgrims), 1604–1606
26. Caravaggio, The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610
27. Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1610
28. Bernini, David, 1623–1624
29. Bernini, Saint Teresa in Ecstasy, 1647–1652
30. Anonymous, Manuel Chrysoloras, 1400
31. Hans Memling, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1472–1475
32. Pietro di Spagna (aka Pedro Berruguete), Federigo da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo, c. 1476–1477
33. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail from The Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule, 1482–1485
34. Domenico Ghirlandaio, An Old Man and His Grandson, c. 1490
35. Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, Maximilian I, 1502
36. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1500
37. Albrecht Dürer, Jakob Fugger, c. 1519
38. Raphael, Heraclitus, 1510
39. Raphael, Portrait of Pope Leo X, 1518
40. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as a Monk, 1520
41. Lucas Cranach, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1529
42. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Sir Thomas More, 1527
43. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Erasmus, 1534
45. Hans Holbein the Younger, Anne of Cleves, 1539
46. Titian, Portrait of Isabella d’Este, 1534–1536
47. Michelangelo, Portrait of Vittoria Colonna, c. 1540
48. Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, A Spanish Knight, 1558
49. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Painter and the Buyer, c. 1565
50. Tintoretto (?), Veronica Franco, c. 1575
51. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Portrait of Rudolf II, 1591
52. Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait at Easel, 1556
53. Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1610
54. Pieter Bruegel, Beggars, 1568
55. Pieter Bruegel, The Wedding Dance, 1566
56. Pieter Bruegel, The Fall of Icarus, c. 1558
57. Pieter Bruegel, The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568
58. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1627
59. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1634
60. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1659
61. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, c. 1669
62. Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1669
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
63. Leonardo, Two Heads, no date
64. Leonardo, Self-Portrait, c. 1515
65. Leonardo, Vitruvian Man, c. 1492
66. Anonymous, Three Graces, twelfth century
67. Raphael, Leda and the Swan, 1505–1507
68. Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen, 1497–1498
69. Albrecht Dürer, The Battle of the Angels, 1497–1498
70. Albrecht Dürer, Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, 1498
71. Albrecht Dürer, Young Woman Attacked by Death, c. 1495
72. Albrecht Dürer, Hare, 1502
73. Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515
74. Albrecht Dürer, The Fall of Man, 1504
75. Albrecht Dürer, The Prodigal Son, 1496
76. Albrecht Dürer, Peasant Couple Dancing, 1514
77. Albrecht Dürer, Nemesis, c. 1502
78. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait in the Nude, c. 1505
79. Albrecht Dürer, Head of the Dead Christ, 1503
80. Albrecht Dürer, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, 1523
81. Albrecht Dürer, Christ Before Caiaphas, 1512
82. Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death, and the Devil, 1513
83. Pieter Bruegel, Big Fish Eat Little Fish, 1556
84. Pieter Bruegel, Beekeepers, c. 1568
MAP
85. The Permanent Religious Divisions of Europe after 1648
PRELUDE
PHILOSOPHICAL TENNIS THROUGH THE AGES
In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.
Antony and Cleopatra
His nickname is Plato, which means “broad.” He’s an immensely confident if unsmiling Athenian, wide of forehead, broad of shoulders, bold of bearing, who casually exudes a breadth of comprehension few would dare to question. As he lobs his serve across the net, he does so with a glowering power that the spectators find thrilling. Throughout his game, his stance can only be labeled lofty; he seems to be reaching ever higher, stretching toward Heaven while his raised shirt provides an occasional glimpse of his noble abs.
His serve is answered by his graceless opponent, a rangy, stringy-muscled man who plays his game much closer to the ground, whose eyes dart everywhere, who looks, despite his relative youth, to stand no chance of mounting a consistent challenge to our broad and supremely focused champion. And yet the challenger—his name is Aristotle, son of a provincial doctor—manages to persist, to meet his opponent with an ungainly mixture of styles. From time to time it even appears that he could be capable of victory. Certainly he is dogged in his perseverance. He begins to gain some fans in the crowd among those who prefer the improvisations of Aristotle to the unblinking gloom of great Plato.
This is a game that has been played over and over—in fact, for twenty-four centuries—before audiences of almost infinite variety. At some point long ago, the game became a doubles match, for the two Greek philosophers were joined by two medieval Christian theologians: Plato by Augustine of Hippo, who could nearly equal him in style and seriousness; Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas, nearly as styleless as Aristotle but, though overweight, ungainly, and blinking in the sun, extremely thoughtful and genial—the sort of athlete who is always undervalued. This centuries-long philosophical doubles match has entertained intellectuals in every age and made a partisan of almost every educated human being in the Western world.
To this day, it may be asked of anyone who cares about ideas: Are you a Platonist or an Aristotelian? Plato certainly won the opening set, waged in Athens in the fourth century BC; and once he had Augustine at his side, he, if anything, grew in stature during the early medieval centuries. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, medieval academics, such as Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas—who were not only deep thinkers but gifted publicists—were able to create a culture-wide renaissance on Aristotle’s behalf. Then, in the period we shall visit in this book, in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, the pendulum would swing once more, as the graceful team of Plato and Augustine became the subject of nearly universal admiration, while the ungainly team of Aristotle and Aquinas suffered scorn and devaluation.1
Of course, these men haven’t really been playing tennis (even if some speculate that the game was first played in the Mediterranean town of Tinnis in the time of the pharaohs and even if Plato was celebrated in his day for his physical prowess). Their styles should be accounted athletic only in metaphor, for in actuality, these styles—or lack thereof—are the qualities of their literary output. Plato is a great Greek prose stylist, never surpassed; nor did anyone ever write more well-knit, muscular Latin than Augustine. Aristotle’s Greek is banal, even at times confusing; Aquinas’s Latin prose, though clear, is scarcely more than serviceable. But these men and their philosophical heirs have surely been engaged in utterly serious, if sporting, contests about the ultimate nature of reality; and these contests have had profound, and sometimes deadly, consequences for us all.
Before Plato’s arrival on the scene, the typical philosopher was a cross between a poet and a guru, dependable for pithy and memorable sayings—“Know thyself”; “Nothing endures but change”; “The way up and the way down are the same”—but quite incapable of elaborating his insight in a layered structure that could withstand criticism. Plato, father to all subsequent philosophical discourse, transformed the pursuit into a kind of science, full of sequential steps, a long course of acquired knowledge that begins in observation and ends in wisdom, even in vision.