Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Early Modern Europe: An Introduction to a Course of Lectures on the Sixteenth Century
Tudor Period this will serve us fairly well; for there is a strong family likeness in our Tudor sovereigns, and in a certain sense there is, from the accession of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth, a line of policy deliberately pursued in England by five successive rulers: but it is not a term applicable to Europe, or even to Western, or north-western Europe. Shall we try to find a term of wider range? Shall we speak of this Tudor century as the Renaissance? That French word, to which you will in due time be formally introduced by one of your teachers, denotes the new birth or revival of literature and art. No doubt this description of the era, of the cinque cento'as the Italians call it, is more available for the traveller in France and Italy, where the eye encounters in every town some building or some picture dating from 15 and generally associ ated or capable of being associated with some literature of our selected century's creation or revival, whilst this literature in its turn proves on inspection to be linked with some intellectual force acting combatively in some struggle, religious or political, or both: so that in speaking of the Renaissance one would not be merely skimming the surface of human affairs and noticing only what belongs to the taste, but really dipping into the serious life of our awakening Western nations. But it so happens that those who harp upon the word Renaissance are for the most part men who habitually contrast it with what they call the Ages of Faith. Now this contrast is what an ordinary scholar or student of history cannot admit. For, though it is true that Gothic architecture passed out of fashion in our 16th century, it is not true that this was owing to a decay of faith. The very people who then set the fashion of building churches without pointed arches or groined fretted roofs were the early Jesuits, the restorers of faith, the enemies of reason, the champions of the Holy Father, the heralds of Catholic obedience. They built in their new style, I believe, partly because they wanted to be heard when they preached, and partly because Palestrina (1565) introduced at Rome a new religious music, and they wanted smooth resonant walls and roofs for its performance: and to a parallel musical movement you may refer also the construction of heavy organ-lofts and the consequent separation of Choir from Nave in our own Cathedrals and College Chapels. Now it is Obvious that faith or devotion can hardly be decaying where there is an increased desire to hear sermons and to perform devotional music. One is almost tempted to turn the tables on those who use Renais sance as a term of disparagement and to say to them in a downright way: My sixteenth century is the Age of Faith: if you deny this, show me a century which you think better entitled to the name.
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