Rebirth (historiography)
See also: Rebirth
This article treats concept of Renaissance in Historiographie , independently of the times or Civilization S where the term is employed by the historians.
The historical cutting of this period hinge between the medieval time and the modern time is prone to a interpretative debate between historians and historians of art: whereas cuttings of the ancient Histoire, the medieval Histoire and the Modern history are commonly allowed, the introduction of a hinge between Moyen-âge and Modern times is more delicate, which shows the interpretative degree of this " revival in the Arts, the Literature, the Sciences ". Vis-a-vis the terminological blur, the historians speak sometimes about prérenaissances before truly the Rinascimento does not start, the such Pre-Rebirth identified in Italy as of the Trecento.
The use itself of Renaissance rises from a perception of the Histoire aiming at giving him a direction, which goes back to the mode of thought of the German idealism of the 19th century, in particular through the concepts of the Western philosopher Hegel. This manner of perceiving the History itself is today discussed.
Concerning the term of Rebirth
Giorgio Vasari was one of the first to use the " term; Renaissance" at the 16th century. The contemporaries of this period were conscious of a deep change in the artistic field. Many humanistic regretted the consecutive losses with the cruel invasions: already with the 14th century, Pétrarque and Boccace spoke about obscure times to indicate times which followed the disappearance of the Roman Empire. Raphaël addressed a letter to the pope Leon X in which it evokes cruel times of the " The Middle Ages ".
To the 19th century, the intellectuals largely contributed to the success of the word " Renaissance" : Burckhardt and Michelet evokes the “civilization of the Rebirth”. In the same movement, the term Moyen-âge took a very negative connotation for this period.
At the 20th century, the historians revalued art medieval and recognized two or three other rebirths: the Carolingian Rebirth (8th/9th century), then the Rebirth ottono-clunisienne (around the Year millet) being connected with the Rebirth of XIIe century.
An attentive examination of works of the Moyen-âge watch that the ancient legacy forever really disappeared: the Latin principal authors, as Plato were known in the Monastère S during the top Moyen-âge, and certain Greek authors (Thalès, Euclide, Ptolémée, Aristote,…) were reinstated starting from the end of Xe century, and especially as from the 12th century, the scientific knowledge and philosophical of the Civilization arabo-Moslem woman. The Liberal arts (trivium and Quadrivium) were at the base of the medieval lesson, with two cuts: 550 - 750 (after the Great invasions), and 850 - 920 (during the invasions Normans, Hungarian women and sarrasines). The medieval Philosophie was much more important than it was claimed.
The specialists discuss in addition beginning of the artistic Renaissance and some do not hesitate to make it go up at the 13th century with Giotto (to read Pre-Rebirth) .
Influence philosophy of the history
See also: Philosophy of the history
Enough early in the modern time, the Lumières brought an idealistic concept concerning the direction of the History , which induces that the latter would proceed according to an identifiable logic; certain times being positive for the Humanity, others darker. The Lights represented by Nicolas de Condorcet (in Draft of a historical table of progress of the human spirit ) and by Emmanuel Kant (in Towards perpetual peace ) but also Hegel and Marx at the 19th century until Wilhelm Dilthey followed this concept. The large historians of the Civilization S of the 19th century, Edward Gibbon at the head, illustrate in particular this logic in their description of the fall of the Roman Empire, perceived like a detrimental loss.
This historiographic orientation would have lived with the Second world war: the school of Frankfurt (Horkheimer, Adorno inter alia) in the Critique of the reason called into question this idealistic design of the Histoire because of the moral upheavals and intellectuals related on the atrocities of the All-out war and particularly to the Shoah.
In France, Gilles Deleuze brought the concept according to which experiments would permanently take place in the cultural surfaces of the world, some leading to changes and others disappearing in the lapse of memory; a historical development which, this time, is not directed any more in a good or bad direction, but in Rhizome S.
A concrete example of this absence of historical Determinism figure in disappearance at the time of the 17th century of the lawsuit of witches practiced by a inquisitorial institution with sitted however uncontested. The last features of shades of the medieval Inquisition, which had coexisted with the centuries known as of revival of Humanity (Renaissance, Lumières), disappeared without identified reason.
European prérenaissances
Since the Fall of the Roman Empire of Occident, historians, hagiographal of the kings or saints, and chronic writers of or ecclesiastical stories did not have of cease to seek the traces of a restoration of the old order, perception manichéenne of a light which would put an end to the shade cruel Temps which was projected on the grounds of the Occident in becoming. This paragraph introduces these " prérenaissances" and draws up the list of it.
Conquests of Charlemagne
The reign of Charlemagne was accompanied by recastings on the legal level, applicable on all the conquered grounds, and by decisions concerning the resumption of a generalized teaching of the writing. It decided adoption of the Christian era in the calculation of the years (Comput). This last decision was generalized only under Charles Simple the in his States. Two hundred years thus had to be waited so that the use of the calculation of Denys Small the stabilizes (he even established in the Années 540 with Rome).
At the conclusion of this historical period, Gerbert d' Aurillac brought the use of the Arab numerals starting from its studies of the Andalusian civilization.
See also: Carolingian Rebirth, Chronology of the Early middle ages
In fact of a " renaissance" , the well-read men of this time spoke about renovatio . Charlemagne carried out a synthesis of the particularisms inherited different the codes from romano-Germanic Droit which developed in the First kingdoms of the Early middle ages. This synthesis is a big step in the foundation of the Western Droit, bases legal for the France and the Germany if it is not the Europe.
Politically, its sacring with the head of new a Western Empire which is rectified finally after 400 years of inexistence, whereas perdurait the Byzantine Empire, gives him the favor of the Pape S of Rome, as of the Clerc S which write the chronicles.
Reform clunisienne
The introduction of the Ordre of Cluny can be regarded as heralding in the Carolingian grounds the Gregorian Réforme, and possible a Fin of the Early middle ages. The monastic orders acquire an increasingly precise form, opening on an unequalled capacity in the centuries following on the temporal one and the spiritual one at the same time.
See also: Rebirth clunisienne
Reign of Otton of the Holy roman Empire
The reign perceived like enlightened of Otton Ier of the Holy roman Empire, contemporary of the development of the Order of Cluny on the grounds of Francie, carried out at the end commun run of " Rebirth ottono-clunisienne " , identified Years 920 with 1000 and valid on the grounds of the Christian Occident from now on indeed founded. Moreover, the imperial relationships to Roman papacy are with the harmony.
See also: Rebirth ottonienne
The historical time is rather that of a central Moyen-âge (950 - 1250), in which this last acquires its particular civilisationnelles characteristics, definitively breaking with those of the late Antiquité and evolving/moving compared to those of the Early middle ages.
Byzance under the Macedonians
Equivalent contemporary with the Rebirth ottono-clunisienne, valid for the European East related to Constantinople.
August 1st
See also: Rebirth Macedonian
Rebirth starts as of the 12th century
Historical cuttings of the An millet with the Années 1250 contradict, in the medium of the historians medievists, the idea of a Rebirth at this time, since according to them the " civilization médiévale" on the contrary entered a golden age which sublimates it, as the Roman civilization knew his.
See also: XIIe century: the old one of gold of the medieval occident
The term covers 1060 - 1200, over two centuries, and corresponds to the central Moyen-âge for the historians Médiéviste S (950 - 1250): Charles H. Haskins makes it start in the Années 1070.
Italian Trecento
The latter " Pre-Renaissance" the good one is this time since it starts the artistic and technological revival so much awaited.
It is acted in fact of a revival primarily impelled in the quoted rich person of north of the Italy by the Byzantine refugees of Greek culture who flee gradually the city of Byzance, generalizing the techniques of mosaic and sheets gilded of the Byzantine Art at the time of the Latin interlude on the Retable S of the churches.
See also: Trecento, Pre-Rebirth
Historical and artistic Rebirth European
See also: Rebirth (historical period), artistic Rebirth
Width
The Rebirth built the direction known as Classique in the Peinture, the Sculpture and arts of the Western civilization, nothing less: traditional, in the sense that very student of these disciplines cannot make abstraction in his training of it; traditional still, since the prolongations carried out by the artists of the Renaissance, who amalgamated with those of the artists of the Antiquité, became it with the eyes of those which were going to bring the later evolutions: in French Literature, to see the point of view of Old in the Quarrel of Old and Modern the.
-
the Histoire of Art considers that Masaccio (1401 - 1428), gave rise to the Western Peinture modern, by its application of the laws of the linear Perspective to the drawing. Giotto di Bondone also formed part of the applicants to the title.
-
the single character of the advent of the Rebirth in the human history, like its influence on the artistic movements, returns suitable to differentiate the account suitable for the Histoire from Italy of that of the Histoire of art, over the same centuries.
-
From a philosophical point of view, Italy played the part of relay of Transmission of the knowledge in the Occident, absorbing the points of view coming from the fringes of the Occident and the Mediterranean world: the Byzantines, the contributions of the Middle East during the Latin States of the East, for which the Italian ports ensured the provisioning, where a syncretism of thought developed on these territories with the means-Eastern Culture , and to finish the contributions of Al-Andalus, at the end of the lifetime, arriving in Italy by the ways of the Provence.
-
On the ground even of the Italy, the excavations took by surprised the artists of a dying Moyen-âge, exhuming the vestiges sculptors of a dazzling civilization of refinement. Making reappear, these artists reflect fine with the medieval time in the Italic peninsula.
Réappropriation of historiography as from the Rebirth
One of the most significant ruptures with the tradition appeared in the field of the Histoire : the Historiography. The historians, among whom appear Flavio Biondo (15th century), and Machiavel and Guicciardin (16th century), gave up the medieval vision, related to a concept of time relating to the advent of Christ, to develop an analysis of the events which has its origin in a laic design and the critical attitude towards the sources.
The history becomes a branch of the Littérature and either of the Théologie. She refuses the conventional division Christian which was to start with Creation, followed Incarnation of Jesus-Christ and Last Judgment. The vision of the Rebirth exalte on the contrary the world gréco-Roman, condemns the Middle Ages like one era of cruelty, and proclaims the new time like era of light and rebirth of the traditional world. The enthusiastic interest for antiquity is concretized in the research and the restoration of the manuscripts of the Greek and Latin great authors: the Dialogs of Plato, the Investigation of Hérodote, Thucydide, works of the large Greek poets, redécouverts and published after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, gave birth to in Europe a new philosophical enthusiasm which led to a better knowledge of the ancient Greek.
Though the drafting of volumes of ecclesiastical Histoire continues, the writers leaving of the files are not only any more of the monks, as from the Rebirth; as it was the case during the Early middle ages for Bède which, with its ecclesiastical Histoire of the English people, constituted the only document which managed to us to know the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the island of Brittany.
Generalization of the term
In the same order of idea and out of the context related to Western Europe such as above mentioned, one finds:
-
the Rebirth Macedonian (), qualifying the reign of the Dynasty Macedonian on Byzance ();
- the American Rebirth (), in Architecture, identified of 1880 to 1914 (Architecture in the United States);
- the Rebirth of Harlem (), in Arts, music and literature at the time of the Great depression;
- the Rebirth of San Francisco, Years 1950, literary and poetic movement;
- the Scottish Rebirth (), 20th century, literary movement;
See too