The Renaissance in Italy A Soc Guido Ruggiero

The Renaissance in Italy
This book offers a rich and exciting new way of thinking about the Italian Renaissance as both a
historical period and a historical movement. Guido Ruggiero’s work is based on archival research
and the new insights of social and cultural history and literary criticism, with a special emphasis on
everyday culture, gender, violence, and sexuality. The book offers a vibrant and relevant critical
study of a period too long burdened by anachronistic and outdated ways of thinking about the past.
Familiar yet alien, premodern but suggestively postmodern, attractive and troubling, this book returns
the Italian Renaissance to center stage in our past and in our historical analysis.
GUIDO RUGGIERO is College of Arts and Sciences Cooper Fellow and Professor of History at the
University of Miami. As an author, editor, and translator, he has published more than two dozen
books on the Renaissance and related topics, including, most recently, Machiavelli in Love: Sex,
Self, and Society in Renaissance Italy (2007) and The Blackwell Companion to the Worlds of the
Renaissance (2002). His articles have appeared in many journals, including The American
Historical Review, The Journal of Social History, Viator, The Journal of the History of Medicine
and Allied Science, Xin shehui shi (New Social History), Studi storici, and Quaderni storici. He
has also published numerous essays and articles in edited volumes. Ruggiero has won a number of
fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; two National Endowment for the Humanities
Fellowships; several Delmas Foundation, Orowitz, and Taft Fellowships; as well as an ACLS
Fellowship. He is an elected member of the Ateneo Veneto and has been a Fellow or visiting
professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in Florence, and the
American Academy in Rome.

The Renaissance in Italy

A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento

Guido Ruggiero
University of Miami

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© Guido Ruggiero 2015
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First published 2015
Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Ruggiero, Guido, 1944– The Renaissance in Italy : a social and cultural history of the Rinascimento /
Guido Ruggiero, University of Miami.
pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-89520-0 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-52171938-4
(pbk.) 1. Renaissance – Italy. 2. Italy – Social conditions – 1268–1559. 3. Italy – Civilization –
1268–1559. 4. Italy – Intellectual life – 1268–1559. I. Title.
DG533.R84 2015
945′.05–dc23 2014019659
ISBN 978-0-521-89520-0 Hardback ISBN 978-0-52171938-4 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that
any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Laura

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Maps
Introduction: The End of the World and Its Rebirth (Rinascita) as the Rinascimento
1 Legitimacy: A Crisis and a Promise (c. 1250–c. 1340)
2 Civiltà: Living and Thinking the City (c. 1300–c. 1375)
3 Plague: Death, Disaster, and the Rinascita of Civiltà (c. 1325–c. 1425)
4 Violence: Social Conflict and the Italian Hundred Years’ War (c. 1350–1454)
5 Imagination: The Shared Primary Culture of the Early Rinascimento (c. 1350–c. 1475)
6 Courts: Princes, Aristocrats, and Quiet Glory (c. 1425–c. 1500)
7 Self: The Individual as a Work of Art (c. 1425–c. 1525)
8 Discovery: Finding the Old in the New (c. 1450–c. 1560)
9 Re-Dreams: Virtù, Saving the Rinascimento, and the Satyr in the Garden (c. 1500–c.
1560)
10 Reform: Spiritual Enthusiasms, Discipline, and a Church Militant (c. 1500–c. 1575)
11 Retreat: The Great Social Divide and the End of the Rinascimento (c. 1525–c. 1575)
Epilogue: The Diaspora of the Rinascimento
Bibliography: A Short List of Works Used
Index

Illustrations
1.1 Nicholas III Kneeling with Saints Paul and Peter before Christ

1.2 Plaque Pax Tibi Marce
2.1 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government
2.2 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Effects of Good Government in the City and the Country
2.3 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Bad Government and the Effects of Bad Government in the
City
4.1 Paolo Uccello, Sir John Hawkwood
6.1 The Duomo in Florence (Santa Maria del Fiore)
6.2 Melozzo da Forlì, Sixtus IV Confirming Platina as Papal Librarian
6.3 Mantegna, Camera Picta (court scene)
6.4 Mantegna, Camera Picta
6.5 Fra Angelico, San Marco Altarpiece
6.6 Fra Angelico, Annunciation
6.7 Donatello, David
7.1 Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel
7.2 Giotto, Last Judgment (detail of Enrico Scrovegni)
7.3 Masaccio and Masolino, St. Peter Healing with His Shadow
7.4 Donatello, Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata
7.5 Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of the right wall of the Medici Chapel, showing one of the
Magi in arrival
7.6 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna Lochis

7.7 Giovanni Bellini, Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo
7.8 Sandro Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi
7.9 Verrocchio (and Leonardo), John the Baptist Baptizing Christ
7.10 Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi
7.11 Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin of the Rocks
7.12 Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper
7.13 Chopines
9.1 Veronese, Mars and Venus United by Love
10.1 Veronese, Feast in the House of Levi
11.1 Michelangelo, Pietà
11.2 Michelangelo, David
11.3 Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling
11.4 Michelangelo, Creation of Adam
11.5 Michelangelo, Last Judgment
11.6 Michelangelo, Deposition

Acknowledgments
Ludovico Ariosto, in his classic sixteenth-century epic/romance/fantasy Orlando furioso, traced the
origins of the Este family, who had patronized that masterpiece, back to a great female warrior of
medieval romance, Bradamante, and a slightly less impressive warrior of even greater lineage

descended from the heroes of ancient Troy, Ruggiero. The origins of this book, by a considerably less
noble Ruggiero, cannot be traced so far back, but to do justice to the debts owed one would need
acknowledgments and a tale of thanks that would approach the epic proportions of Ariosto’s tale.
Undoubtedly the greatest thanks are in order to the two generations of scholars who have virtually
revolutionized the field of Renaissance scholarship since the Second World War. Readers will find
their work informing virtually every page that follows. Moreover, the great debates that flourished in
academia over that same period, especially those over the cultural turn in the humanities and
women’s and gender studies more generally, along with historical controversies that swirled around
the new social and cultural history and theoretical debates in anthropology and literary criticism,
have left me deeply in the debt of those who carried forward those often heated discussions. Readers
will find echoes of all my books and articles throughout this book. Thus I would like to thank all my
publishers here, especially the most important: Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, Blackwell’s, and Oxford.
And I am particularly grateful to my Cambridge editors, Beatrice Rehl and Asya Graf, as well as to
my copy editor, Russell Hahn, for all their help and support.
Thanking those who helped make me a scholar, often overcoming my stubborn resistance, would
be a formidable task. The serious work really began at the university, however, where a number of
professors stepped forward in many ways to actually launch this project, as they tried to mold an
overly self-confident student into a scholar, most notably Boyd Hill at the undergraduate level and
Gerhardt Ladner, Richard Rouse, and Lauro Martines in graduate school and beyond. Once again,
readers will note their influence throughout this book. Ladner’s vision of reform is one of its main

themes, and Martines’s powerful vision of the social world of the time and his always creative
approach to the subject have been a model not just for this book, but for my career.
Less formal teachers, both within academia and beyond, have also been many. But to single out
perhaps the most important: Gene Brucker, Felix Gilbert, David Herlihy, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber,
and John Najemy have taught me more about the history of Florence than they may be happy to admit
and served as models of the committed scholarly life. The same is true of Gaetano Cozzi, Kenneth
Setton, Martin Lowry, Joanne Ferraro, and Ed Muir for Venice. Moving beyond the cities most
studied for the Renaissance in Italy, Nick Terpstra, John Marino, and Tom and Elizabeth Cohen have
been particularly important as well. And although this is only a very limited list of all those who
deserve thanks, when one moves beyond Italy the list grows exponentially. Particularly important
have been Jim Farr, Donald Spivey, Mary Lindemann, Karen Kupperman, Richard Brown, Londa
Schiebinger, Robert Proctor, Sophie De Schaepdrijver, Ronnie Po-chai Hsia, Matthew Restall, and
Natalie Z. Davis, who in many ways unwittingly provided the most important model as well as some
crucial support along the way.
Many beyond history also played a crucial role in this book. Those in literature were especially
important, and to name only the most significant and appreciated among what once again would be a
long list: Deanna Schemek, Valeria Finucci, Denis Looney, Margaret Rosenthal, Linda Woodbridge,

Mihoko Suzuki, Frank Palmieri, and especially Albert Ascoli stand out as informal teachers, models,
and much-appreciated friends. The same should be said for art historians like Deborah Howard, John

Paoletti, and Karen Barzman. Although it might seem strange to include them in this list, my larger
famiglia in Treviso also deserve a special place among my informal teachers. Over the years they
have thoughtfully pushed me to remember that there is a larger world of exciting and interesting
people who do not frequent the halls of academia, libraries, or archives yet are still deeply engaged
with ideas and the broader issues this book attempts to address.
Obviously students and colleagues at the several universities at which I have taught over the years
have also contributed in more ways than I can mention. Hopefully, as they read the book, they will
recall our many conversations and see how much I have profited from their ideas. Thus, although it is
much too brief to be adequate to my debt, let me at least formally thank my students and colleagues at
the Universities of Miami, Cincinnati, Tennessee, Connecticut, and Syracuse in Florence, as well as
the Pennsylvania State University. Along with those great students and fine colleagues, the staffs of
each institution were unusually supportive and special friends as well.
Similar thanks are in order to the granting foundations and institutes for advanced study that have
supported the research and writing that have gone into this book, starting with the Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA and the Regents of the University of California, who
awarded me a handsome University of California Regents Intern Fellowship that allowed me to
complete my studies and carry out my first years of research in Venice. This was followed by a series
of research grants from the Taft Foundation at the University of Cincinnati and several Delmas
Foundation grants that supported more than a decade of ongoing research in Venice and Italy, until an
invitation to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton as a National Endowment for the

Humanities Fellow in the early 1980s pulled together the first part of my career and gave me the
opportunity to consider the broader issues that stood behind my first two books and pointed to this
work. These were followed by another NEH Fellowship for a year at Harvard’s research villa in
Florence, I Tatti, in the 1990s and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, part of which I
again spent at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. There and at I Tatti in 1990–1991 I began
formally writing this book. The handsome research support that I received soon after as the Weiss
Chair in the Humanities at the Pennsylvania State University was continued at the University of Miami
and enhanced generously by my being made a College of Arts and Sciences Cooper Fellow there.
Each freed up considerable time for writing this book. Invitations to the American Academy in Rome
as a Rome Senior Visiting Professor and once again to Harvard’s Villa I Tatti as the Robert Lehman
Senior Visiting Professor allowed me to finish it.
A special note of thanks is also due to my colleagues at each of these idyllic study centers; they
have taught me much more than they realized and have enriched my life. My deep gratitude also goes
to the staffs, who did so much to make my time profitable and truly special. Although once again there
are many who should be named, let me note just five of the most important: Chris Celenza, director of
the American Academy in Rome; Walter Kaiser, former director of Villa I Tatti, and its current head
librarian, Michael Rocke, and director, Lino Pertile, along with his gracious partner and organizer of
life at the villa, Anna Bensted.
Finally, thanks are due to all who have read or discussed parts of this book over the years, most
importantly to the readers for Cambridge University Press, John Marino and Nick Terpstra, whose

comments were both encouraging and most helpful. Colleagues who also read parts or all of the book,

Konrad Eisenbickler, Karen Barzman, Michele Laughran, Jim Farr, Mary Lindeman, and Laura
Giannetti, were crucial for inspiring the many revisions that have gone into it and made it far stronger
than it otherwise would have been. Laura Giannetti, who has long been much more than a colleague
and mentor, not only read the whole book more than once, saved me from numerous foolish errors,
and made crucial suggestions, she also lived the book with me for the last twenty years that have gone
into it and made them truly special. Thus I dedicate the book to her along with all those who have
contributed so much to it and made the path to its completion less epic and slightly less furioso than
Ariosto’s tale, but rich with shared pleasures and good friendship.

Maps

Map 1.

Main cities of Italy c. 1300.

Map 2.

The north of Italy c. 1426.

Map 3.

The states of Italy in 1559.

Introduction: The End of the World and Its Rebirth (Rinascita) as
the Rinascimento
The End of the World
Did the world end in 1260? Was there an Apocalypse that we have forgotten seven and a half
centuries later? Certainly if that were the case it would be convenient for a book that considers an
Italian Renaissance or, as it is called in Italian, a Rinascimento, a rebirth (a rinascita) of the world in
Italy that began at about that time and continued on through the last decades of the sixteenth century.
Perhaps surprisingly, one thing is clear: in the middle of the thirteenth century many people were
expecting the world to end. And we are not talking about those on the margins of society or the typical
fringe groups that today we associate with prophecies of impending doom, but rather emperors and
popes, kings, nobles, powerful clerics and merchants, as well as rural priests, peasants, and denizens
of the dark alleys and warrens that often typified the Italian cityscapes of the day.
Perhaps the best place to start is with Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202), an Italian preacher and
prophet who, although virtually forgotten today, enjoyed great popularity in his time. In fact, he was
so popular that no less than two popes encouraged him to write down his prophecies, which spread
quickly not just through the learned world of theologians and church leaders, but also through the
more general culture – especially that of the rapidly growing and prospering cities of Italy. At the
heart of Joachim’s prophecy was a discovery he had made while studying that mysterious section of
the Bible known as the Book of Revelations. There, following a long tradition of allegorical reading,
he found a concealed deeper truth: a hidden third gospel to go along with the Old Testament and the
New – the Everlasting Gospel.
Like many others, Joachim believed that the Old Testament was the book given by God the Father
to organize and guide humans in the first age of the world: from the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
the Garden of Eden to the coming of Christ. This had been an age dominated by a wrathful and
vengeful God, punishing humans for the first sin of Eve and Adam. But a new age began with the life
and suffering of Christ, a new order of the world and a new relationship with God. The New
Testament was the new gospel for that new age that was ushered in by Christ’s life and death to save
humanity: an age of love, a return of grace, and the birth of the Church of Rome that Christ and his
disciples established. Crucially, however, that second age literally ended one world and began
another – the whole order of reality was changed with Christ’s life and death. A world of suffering
and despair before the wrathful God of the Old Testament ended, and it was followed by a radically
new world watched over by a loving God, fully human and fully divine, Christ.
But, significantly, the Christian view of God was Trinitarian: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If there
had been an age of the Father/Old Testament and if Joachim was living in the age of the
Son/Christ/New Testament, it was logical to assume that there would be a third age of the Holy Spirit
and a new third gospel. That age, as revealed in the hidden Everlasting Gospel, like the age of the
Son, would be radically different from what had gone before. Once again one world would end and a
new one would be born, ruled over by the Holy Spirit. In that age the Church of Rome and Christ’s
vicar on earth, the pope, both of which were temporary institutions for creating a Christian society in
the second age, would be replaced by the direct rule of the Holy Spirit. In fact, all institutions and

governments would fall away, unnecessary as humanity would live in perfect harmony with God via
the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Trinitarian promise would be fulfilled. And the last
age would be one of peace and perfection awaiting the Last Judgment and the end of time.
What changed this radical but not immediately threatening vision into a prophecy with teeth were
Joachim’s calculations, based on the Bible, that the first age, from the expulsion of Adam and Eve
from the Garden of Eden until the birth of Christ, had lasted 1,260 years. As he expected that each age
would be of the same length, that meant that things were about to get exciting because the year 1260,
or 1,260 years after Christ’s birth, should signal the end of an age and a world and the beginning of
something completely new. To make this more interesting and perhaps a little less strange and
unlikely, Joachim found in the Book of Revelations a series of signs that would signal that the last
days were at hand. Among the most significant there would be: a unification of all religions under the
umbrella of Christianity, so that all could enter the Age of the Spirit; a rapid growth of a new order of
preachers with a new leader to lead the way into the new age; and in the last days of the old age, the
reign of the Antichrist that would destroy secular society and the Church. For with perfect symmetry,
in the name of ultimate evil, the Antichrist would perpetrate the ultimate good, by preparing the
ground for the end of the Christian era and the last age of the Holy Spirit.
All this would be only mildly amusing were it not for one troubling fact. After Joachim’s death in
1202, many came to believe that his prophecies were coming true. And, significantly, they seemed to
be coming true more clearly in the Italian peninsula, especially in the north, where literally dozens of
little city-states in the thirteenth century prospered, struggled, and appeared to many to be on the
verge of a new age and world order. In those cities a traditional medieval order, typified by what
might be labeled the Great Social Divide – where society seemed to be essentially divided between a
hereditary nobility and the rest – had been radically and often violently challenged by new social
classes, new social and cultural values, and new wealth. In essence the power of an old nobility had
been challenged and, at least in the larger cities, pretty well limited by new groupings of
merchant/banker/artisan powers who usually called themselves the Popolo (the People).
The struggles between the Popolo and the older nobility were often violent and bloody and
frequently meant that when one group won power, the other was exiled from the city or worse. Also,
of course, some nobles deserted their peers – after all, there was a long medieval tradition of tension
and fighting among noble clans – to join the Popolo, and in turn some members of those
merchant/banker/artisan groupings were also prepared to abandon their peers in an attempt to grab
power in alliance with the older nobility or merely to ape their aristocratic ways. The result was
messy and violent, but usually seen at the time as pitting the Popolo of a city and their new wealth and
power based on commercial and artisanal activities against the nobility and their more rural landed
wealth. Prophecies like those of Joachim, with their prediction that these changes signaled the end of
the world, thus found a wide swath of the population ready to give them credit. This was especially
true because these negative novelties promised a better last age, preordained by God, where the
Great Social Divide would be wiped out and replaced by a unified populace led by the Holy Spirit.
Thus when a humble preacher from the little Italian town of Assisi who would become Saint
Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) founded a new preaching order (quickly labeled the Franciscans)
and preached what seemed to most a new and more spiritual vision of Christianity, it was soon seen
as a confirmation of Joachim’s prophecies of a new leader and new order leading the way to the end.
But even before that was recognized, Francis’s preaching caught the imagination of a wide range of

the population because it had a deep resonance with the spiritual problems created by the burgeoning
wealth of the cities of Italy. Preaching a spiritual life of poverty to the poor peasants of medieval
Europe made little sense and had little to offer. When virtually everyone was poor, it did not seem
like an impressive sign of spirituality to be poor; it seemed merely normal. But in a society where
people were accumulating impressive wealth, seemingly in opposition to the poverty that Christ had
preached and that the Bible endorsed, a new preacher and a new order that promoted poverty and
called for a more spiritual life had real relevance, hitting at the heart of the changes that worried
people, even many of the newly rich.
Francis dramatically stripped off his clothes in the main church of his hometown of Assisi to go
naked as God made him – literally with no belongings – into the world and demonstrated his rejection
of all property. His followers in turn wandering the cities of Italy in rags, begging their way without
material possessions, were potent symbols. In a world powerfully attuned to such signs, they
demonstrated the spirituality that came with a denial of worldly goods in the name of living a
Christlike life of poverty. In fact, Francis’s preaching was so extreme and potentially revolutionary
that the leaders of the Church forced him and his followers to moderate their calls for poverty and to
dress in clothing that at least covered their nakedness. They eventually settled on the brown robes
similar to those still worn by Franciscans, belted with a knotted rope that suggested a commitment to
the vow of poverty that remained central to the order. A number of Francis’s followers, however,
were not happy with such compromises, and a splinter group developed called the Spirituals – again
perfectly named for Joachim’s prophecy of the coming age of the Spirit. By the end of the century they
were declared heretics for their commitment to complete poverty and a spiritual life. Significantly, a
number of the Spirituals, when they discovered the parallel between their teachings and Joachim’s
prophesies, combined the two to preach the impending end of the world with success in the cities of
Italy.
As if this were not enough, Francis himself seemed to have begun to fulfill yet another prophecy of
Joachim. For not only did he preach Christianity to the birds and animals, he also set out to convert
the pagans, actually petitioning the pope to go to the Holy Land to convert Muslims. He eventually
made it to Egypt in 1219 with a crusading army and reportedly entered the Muslim camp to try to win
converts. And if Francis was the prophesized new leader, right on time a candidate for the Antichrist
appeared, the Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250, emperor 1220–1250). He, of course, did not see
himself as such. Officially elected emperor by German electors following medieval tradition in 1220,
he was much more a Mediterranean, born and raised in southern Italy. Most of his life he lived there,
balancing effectively a rich rural nobility with newer urban centered merchant wealth and supporting
an impressive and vibrant court.
As emperor, and thus theoretically ruler of all the West, Frederick saw himself as the ideal leader
to bring peace and order (and taxation to fill his treasury) to the cities of Italy, especially the rich but
tumultuous cities of the north. In fact, many cities of the north supported him in the hope that he would
deliver peace and order. Others, however, were not so enthusiastic about his attempts to dominate the
peninsula. Their resistance was supported by a series of popes, who saw themselves in competition
with emperors for power in Italy. For the moment this long story can be made quite short: to the
struggles for power in the cities of the north, Frederick brought a new series of wars in which he
squared off against local powers usually aligned with the papacy – making them frequently seem to be
wars against the papacy itself. In sum, much as Joachim had predicted, here was a ruler who with one
victory after another seemed to be slowly but surely destroying the papacy and the Church and

fulfilling the requirements of an Antichrist, ending the reign of the Church of Rome and the papacy to
clear the way for the Last Age.
Was the Second Age of Christ and the New Testament coming to an end? Was the Age of the Spirit
at hand? Everything seemed to point in that direction at midcentury. The Franciscans, especially their
more spiritual wing, were preaching a new, more spiritual world; an Antichrist was ravaging the old
Church; and the cities of northern Italy were in turmoil. Change was rife, and an old world order
seemed to be dissolving in chaos and violence, just as Joachim had prophesized.
But as Frederick’s victories mounted, and as the last days seemed ever-more nigh, Frederick II,
not the Antichrist but just a powerful emperor, died suddenly in 1250 as mere men are wont to do.
Some, unwilling to give up on him as the Antichrist, claimed that he was buried along the Rhine
waiting for the call to begin the true last age. Some of the Franciscan Spirituals continued Joachim’s
prophecies into the fourteenth century and beyond, seeing themselves as preparing the way for that
last age still to come. In fact, Joachim’s prophecies endured, often emerging in times of crisis or
influencing religious enthusiasms that featured world-changing visions. Ultimately, true to the
strangeness of his prophecy, even some of the Nazi propagandists who preached their own last age –
an age of the third and last millennium, the Third Reich – still claimed in the last century that
Frederick was waiting to be called to usher in their final age.
Of course, it might seem obvious that the world did not really end in 1260 as Joachim had
promised. A good historian would certainly admit that it did not, yet in a way that is at the heart of
this book, I would suggest that one world did end around the middle of the thirteenth century in Italy,
and another was born. What has been labeled misleadingly the Middle Ages, a rural feudal world
dominated by a nobility whose wealth was based on land and a medieval church whose economic
roots were similarly rural, was largely superseded in Italy by a new age often labeled the Italian
Renaissance. The change did not occur in a day or a year or ever completely, for the nobility
continued and even the urban world of Renaissance Italy was highly reliant on the rural world that
surrounded it and supplied many of its basic needs. Moreover, its culture and traditions drew heavily
on medieval precedents.
And of course, this new age was not the age that Joachim had predicted: poverty did not replace
wealth, and churches and governments did not wither away as humanity came to embrace the peace
and harmony of the Holy Spirit. Rather, ironically in the north of the Italian peninsula and slowly
elsewhere, wealth and material goods came to power as never before, and more urban-based
churches and governments flourished. And obviously Joachim’s promise of an age of peace and
harmony remained unfulfilled. But still I would suggest that the many signs that his followers saw as
indicating the imminent fulfillment of his prophecy were in a way correct, for they signaled the end of
one world and the start of a new age. The culture and society of that strangely new/old/reborn age is
the story of this book.

Time and Rebirth: The Rinascimento a New/Old Age
For all its strangeness to modern eyes, Joachim’s prophesy was perhaps most strange to
contemporaries for a claim that would go largely unnoted today – that this third age would be a new
age and a better one because it was new. One of the deep differences that sets modern society and
culture off from most others is that it tends to accept without question that the new is good. The

premodern world, by contrast, had a deep suspicion of change and the new. In fact, in many ways it
was enough to label a thing new or a change as an innovation to ensure that it would be seen as wrong
and rejected. At one level there is a profound logic in this, for if one looks at the world around us, all
things do seem to break down with time and change; thus, from that perspective, change over time,
and the new, imply decay. In the best of worlds, then, the ideal would be to hold things as they are or,
better yet, to return to their beginnings before change and decay set in, that is, return to when they
were first made.
How did this vision of time come to change? This is a complex and perhaps ultimately
unanswerable question, but historians usually posit two very broad cultural factors. The first was a
general acceptance of a Christian vision of time, which saw it as moving forward positively from a
low point with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to the Last Judgment, when
the world would end with the saved living happily ever after with God. The second key factor in this
vision was the idea of progress itself, which to a large extent was merely the secularization of the
Christian promise that in God’s plan for the world, as time passed, things would improve. What both
progress and the Christian vision of God’s unfolding plan for humanity implied was that time was
linear and going somewhere positive, and that meant ultimately that change and the new were good.
But many things in the premodern world and daily life contradicted this vision of linear time and
the new. In fact, many still do today as we live in a culture where we tend to overlook the
fundamental contradiction between a linear vision of time and a circular vision that we use
interchangeably to understand change. Certainly a circular vision of time seemed natural in
premodern times. Perhaps most significantly, along with the way things seem to decay with time, the
cycles of the seasons and the rotations of the heavens, along with the repeating sequences of time –
years, months, days, hours, and so on – all literally turn on the idea that time repeats and thus is
circular, not linear. The mechanical clock, invented in the fourteenth century in Italy, is a mechanized
version of such a circular vision of time. The first clocks used circular gearing to reproduce the
circular motions of the heavens, which were seen as directly creating circular time. In this mimicking
of the very nature of the heavens, and time, mechanical clocks seemed to have almost a magical
dimension. And, in fact, they were often used in magic, before they were adopted by natural
philosophers to measure time in ways that would lead to the development of what we label modern
science – a particularly effective offshoot of earlier natural magic.
Although Joachim built his predictions on a linear vision of time dating from the birth of Christ in
order to predict the end of the world in 1260, most of his contemporaries still had not adopted the
habit of dating from the birth of Christ. In the Middle Ages dates normally were recorded using a
cyclical calendar based on the ancient Roman measure of time, the fifteen-year cycle known as the
indiction. These cycles were often keyed to the rule of emperors, popes, or local rulers, and just as
years and weeks represented time as repeating and circular, so too indictions represented longer
periods of time as circular. It was only in the fourteenth century that the more linear vision of time
associated with dating from the birth of Christ began to catch on more generally, and even then
documents often were dated both in indictions and from the birth of Christ.
The central point, however, is that time remained more circular than linear until the modern world,
which meant that the new was seen almost unquestionably as negative and wrong. Change, in this way
of seeing time, meant one of two things, either positively returning to the beginning when things were
done or made correctly, or negative decay and movement away from good beginnings. The result was

that those who benefited from or saw as positive the changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
found it difficult to represent them as new and positive. They tended to portray and conceptualize the
changes that they wished to present as good not as new, then, but rather as returns (going back to the
first turn of the cycle of time when things were as they should be); reforms (going back to the first,
correct form of things); renewals (going back to when things were new and first put together
correctly, thus undoing the damage of time and decay); or, although the term was used less often,
rebirths (going back to when things first came into being). All these “re” words stressed that the
changes they described were not to something new but rather a return to something old and better,
because time was circular and the first times of things were the best times.
For culture, society, and even government that meant that positive change was portrayed as going
back – return, renewal, reform, rebirth – to ancient, better, first times. In the first-time culture of
ancient Rome, most pertinently, society and government in Italy had functioned as they should and
were perceived as having been virtually perfect, a golden age of peace, prosperity, and happiness.
For spiritual life and Christian salvation, change also needed to be presented as going back to the first
time of Christ and the Church. Positive personal change often aimed at literally going back to imitate
Christ’s life itself, much as Saint Francis had preached. In fact, Francis claimed to have literally
reformed his own body and thus developed the stigmata of Christ, the wounds that Christ suffered in
his passion on the Cross – an impressive personal reforming. The Church also portrayed positive
institutional change as going back to the first Church of Christ’s disciples and the Church Fathers.
Once again the affirmative terms were “return,” “renewal,” “reform,” and “rebirth.”
And significantly, for all these “re” words the crucial first times were often closely associated
with the early days of the Roman Empire, when both that empire and the first Christian Church were
born. For the flourishing cities of the Italian peninsula, especially the cities of the center and north,
such a return to a glorious past was especially attractive because their citizens felt that they were
occupying the same spaces, both physical and spiritual, as their forebearers of those superior first
times. Frequently, in fact, they lived among the ruins and with the relics of that first Christian and
imperial time – the very landscape of Italy was alive with vivid recollections of that more perfect
past. Local memories, ruins of ancient Roman buildings, and relics of the martyrs and founders of
Christianity (often still working miracles that attested to their potency), all supported by oral and
written traditions that recalled superior first times, served as a constant reminder of those glorious
first days. And thus they were everywhere available for rethinking the dangers and fears of change or
the new as instead positive reforms, returns, or rebirths of a better, more perfect time, what we might
call a Rinascimento.

Italy and the Rinascimento
The term more commonly used in English to label the period, the Italian Renaissance, has a number of
problems that the Italian term Rinascimento avoids. First, of course, there was no Italy in a modern
sense in the thirteenth century or across the period usually labeled the Italian Renaissance. The center
and north of Italy in the second half of the thirteenth century were divided into dozens of little citystates, all with their own strong local traditions, loyalties, and local dialects, fiercely defended. Yet
for virtually all of those little cities the business of governance was carried out in a common
language, a late medieval Latin that was understood by lawyers, notaries, and bureaucrats and by the

university-trained in general, as well as by a number of artisans and men of lower status. A
significant portion of what was perceived as the more serious literature of the day was also written in
Latin, including most prescriptive and philosophical works, religious texts, and even local
chronicles. Thus, in a way, a Latin culture that was seen as rooted in a common Roman and Christian
past was shared among the cities of the center and north. Of course, that Latin culture was shared
more widely throughout the rest of Europe as well, but once again the cities of Italy had a special
relationship with that language as they saw it as the language of their own special Roman heritage and
first times.
At the level of the language that everyone spoke, however, things were more complex. Local
dialects were the norm, and at times they could vary virtually from neighborhood to neighborhood.
More pertinently, someone from Venice would have had some trouble understanding a person from
Rome or Florence and even more trouble understanding someone from Naples or further south. But
the key here is “some trouble,” because it was widely agreed that in most cities the local dialects
were just that, dialects of a language or at least an imagined language that was Italian . Thus Dante
could write his famed poem The Divine Comedy in a Tuscan dialect of Italian, and although it was
attacked for not being written in the learned language of Latin, it also came to be seen as a
foundational work for Italian as a language that could be understood by a more general populace in an
Italian cultural zone.
In fact, Dante wrote an important work on the importance of Italian (in Latin, ironically), De
vulgari eloquentia, to convince the intellectual elites of his day that behind the many dialects of the
Italian peninsula there stood a primal Italian language that informed and unified them, a topic that he
had also explored in an earlier work in Italian, the Convivio. Although there appear to be some
significant differences in their arguments, the two works agreed that this more general shared Italian
language was based on shared historical and cultural experiences at least among the cities of northern
and central Italy. At some moments it seemed as if Dante was referring to a language that still needed
to be developed, at others it seemed as if he was referring to his own use of the language that would
pull forth this underlying unifying language.
Later in the fourteenth century the famous poet Francesco Petrarch, even as he advocated writing a
purer, more classical Latin, wrote his love poetry in a Tuscan dialect that he and his admirers again
saw as foundational for Italian as a language. Less well known but equally indicative of this
development of an Italian culture, based on the local dialects of what was not yet one language, was
the decision of many poets in the north of Italy at the end of the thirteenth century to write their poetry
in their own dialects rather than in Latin. In sum, for all their local loyalties, the denizens of the cities
of northern Italy were beginning to see their culture and society as somehow different in terms of a
still largely imagined common language, Italian.
Another measure of a developing sense of Italianità has been suggested by those who study the
medieval Italian trading cities that sent out groups of their citizens, primarily merchants, to live in the
Islamic world and in northern Europe. In both instances these merchants were treated as outsiders and
identified with their homeland as Italians. In Islamic lands their separation was usually more
rigorous, with their living and working conditions strictly regulated – at least in theory – often in
terms that saw them as a particular people. In northern Europe regulations and limitations were
usually less strict, but Italian bankers and traders were again definitely seen as outsiders and often
labeled Italian. Thus although the trading and banking cities of Italy were frequently involved in

intercity competition that at times spilled over into war, they ironically often found themselves abroad
grouped as one people, Italians.
Moreover, of course, the Italian peninsula was regularly perceived as a geographical unit.
Separated by the Alps and the sea from the rest of Europe and various peoples who spoke other
languages (perceived by Italians as having less of a Roman heritage), the peninsula of Italy seemed
the center of a Mediterranean world once ruled by the great Roman Empire. In a region where the
technology of sailing meant that ships still hugged the coastline rather than braving long open-water
voyages, that centrality was even more pronounced. And it helped make the peninsula the center of
trade within the Mediterranean and a crucial entry point for northerners into that great sea, which for
most Europeans was still the center of the world. Thus for all its geographical variety, Italy was seen
as a particular and significant geographical entity.
Finally, as a place, the Italian peninsula was highly unusual not just for its association with the
homeland of ancient Rome or its centrality in the Mediterranean, but also for its dozens of burgeoning
cities and towns. It was a land heavily influenced by its rich and rapidly developing urban life, which
had already dramatically changed the economy, culture, and society of the region, wiping out the
Great Social Divide that was the order of the day in much of the rest of Europe. Thus the vague and
largely undefined concept of “Italy” also turned on its unusual urban nature and the culture and society
that went hand in hand with it. In the end, then, while there was no Italy in a modern sense, and while
most people in the region thought of themselves first in terms of their local loyalties, most were
aware that they were in a special land that set them apart from the rest of Europe, one with a glorious
past and a rich and vibrant urban culture, unmatched by that of the “barbarians” of the North or the
rich and dangerously pagan cultures of the East and the north coast of Africa. Like many Italians of the
day, then, we will use the terms “Italy” and “Italian” to indicate this larger geographical, cultural, and
social entity.
The other problem with the label “Italian Renaissance” is the term “renaissance” itself. One
wonders what Dante or even Petrarch, who lived for a good portion of his life north of the Alps in
and around Avignon, would have thought of the idea that they were living in a period that would be
named using a French term, renaissance. Both may well have been pleased to learn that a French
scholar of a much later day, Jules Michelet (1798–1874), was so impressed with the culture of their
day that he coined the term “renaissance” in 1855 largely to celebrate the rebirth of classical culture
in an earlier age and French participation in it. But more than a century and a half later, it does seem
rather strange to continue referring to that earlier time in Italy using an anachronistic term from a
different, later culture and language, especially when in the twenty-first century we no longer share
the same vision of the period. Perhaps, then, it is time to use a term that might have made sense to
those who lived several hundred years earlier. The term that would perhaps fit most closely for
someone like Petrarch or Dante would be the Latin term Renovatio or renewal, as both men, along
with many of their contemporaries, were fascinated with the idea of renewing the Roman world and
the days of the first Christians.
But its Italian equivalent, Rinnovazione, has the unfortunate ring today of fixing something up, an
association that seems to disqualify it for the name of a period of history. Reformatio, another term
that was often used at the time to refer to the positive change associated with reforming past society
or reform itself, has problems of another sort. We already have one Reformation, and labeling a
slightly earlier and slightly overlapping period with the same name, even if one opted for the Italian

equivalent, Riformazione, would create more confusion than clarity. Perhaps the best option, then, is
to return to the term rinascita, rebirth, admittedly less popular at the time, but which is in many ways
the “re-word” that sums up best the thrust of the way reform and renewal were used to refer
positively to the changes that the urban world was undergoing. An age of rinascita or the
Rinascimento seems a much better label for the period, even if the older term “renaissance” might be
used in the sense of a more general period of European history that was heavily influenced culturally,
politically, and economically by the Rinascimento. It should be noted, however, that even this term
has its problems as in the recent historiography of Italy, Rinascimento has become associated with the
birth of the modern era and is used to denote a period that began around the year 1500 and lasted for
two or three centuries. Obviously, when the modern era began (or whether it ever actually did begin)
is an issue fraught with problems beyond the scope of this book, but suffice it to say that here the term
will look more at the period from c. 1250 to c. 1575 as one that with all its returns, renewals,
reforms, and rebirths in Italy fits fairly comfortably under the label Rinascimento.

In Search of a New Paradigm for the Rinascimento
One problem that the period has long faced is that it lacks a generally accepted paradigm. In fact,
unable to agree on an acceptable general vision for some time now, many have uneasily evaded the
issue or ignored the question. At first it might seem paradoxical, but this lack of a clear paradigm is
largely the result of a tremendous explosion of scholarship on the period following the Second World
War. Essentially it completed the scholarly project, already well under way, of destroying the
aesthetically pleasing, but anachronistic, paradigm formulated by the Swiss historian Jacob
Burckhardt (1818–1897) in his classic nineteenth-century work The Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy, published just five years after Michelet’s work in 1860. It did so by greatly expanding our
knowledge of the social and cultural history of the period, in the process largely destroying the last
vestiges of Burckhardt’s vision of the period as foundational for the modern world – an age of
epochal changes that prepared the ground for modern individualism, secularism, and states (as works
of art) in the context of a flourishing of great intellectuals, artists, leaders and “Renaissance men.”
Actually, this new scholarship might be more accurately labeled as “overwhelming” rather than as
destroying. For in many ways this outpouring of studies overwhelmed with detail not only
Burckhardt’s paradigm, but virtually all attempts at a broad overview.
One result of this overflowing of knowledge was the lack of ne