تاريخ النهضة الأوروبية: الطباعة، الفكر والسياسة في القرن الخامس عشر

hi I'm John Green and this is crash course European history so when we left off last time the Renaissance was a very

big deal provided you were a member of the elite in approximately this part of the world today we're gonna follow the

spread of the Renaissance to France England Spain the Low Countries and the 72 bajillion mini states of Central

Europe also suddenly there are a lot more books to read the Renaissance was shaped and promoted

by the discovery in the mid 15th century of movable type printing their credit mostly goes to the German Goldsmith and

tinkerer Johannes Gutenberg whose printing press from the 1440 s produced the famous Gutenberg Bible and fuelled

the spread of printed books now printing techniques including movable type had been used in China for many centuries

but printing could be quicker in Europe because the Latin alphabet only contained 26 characters and also

innovations made the letters easier to eject and reset to form new words that eventually became pamphlets and

newsletters and then entire books in fact there are books in the center of the world today it's my favorite center

of the world yet I love books it's really hard to exaggerate just how big a deal printing was like before our friend

Gutenberg most books in Europe were copied from other books by hand this was time-consuming and expensive and it

introduced errors and it also meant that books were not part of most people's lives like if you were among the around

80% of people in England and France who worked in agriculture at the time it's not just that you didn't need to learn

to read to do your job there was generally nothing you could read but printing changed all of that

incredibly quickly the first printing press arrived in Venice in 1469 by 1500 there were 417 printing presses in the

city in the first 50 years after printing came to Europe over 20 million volumes of books were printed this

included the great works from the classical world that the Renaissance was rediscovering but also many legal works

and as jurists work to decipher the meaning of every Latin word of the corpus of Roman law the Western legal

tradition was born more copies of the Bible were available to read and argue about and new stories and poems could be

shared more widely think of it this way whether you were interested in science or literature or law or mathematics

printing meant that more people had the opportunity to encounter far more voices across time and space

and as Renaissance ideas spread north in part by printing it followed that writers and scholars would see the ideas

of humanism through the lens of local concerns also of course northern European thinkers downplayed the

movements Italian origins one of the great rules of history is that whenever Italy has an idea northern Europe will

be like yet no we totally already had that idea like eight times our version is so much different and better wait

till you see how we do the black death / ballet / fascism / automatic weapons / pizza / defensive-minded football anyway

pietro Bruegel's dutch proverbs is one example of how different Northern Renaissance art was from its Italian

counterparts Bruegel is still interested in the ideas of humanism in this painting its secular focused on people

set in the natural world but you can see that Bruegel's painting of scruffy rural villagers acting out

ridiculous common wisdom has none of the lyricism or elegance of say Botticelli's Birth of Venus then again in many

respects the Northern Renaissance wasn't so unique the touchstone was still the classical world and its art and writing

Florentines had made much of the Roman legal tradition that empowered the paterfamilias or male head of the family

and this was very much embraced in the north as well the idea was that all social and political order stemmed from

the exercise of the father's authority over the family unit from the father's secure position the well-being of the

family flowed and more than that the well-being of the larger state depended on the good order of all the families it

encompassed just as the successes of Rome had rested on familial underpinnings and if humanism was going

to open the door to rethinking current values some sort of anchor was needed to prevent chaos and people to the north

and south agreed that this security was gonna rest in the classical tradition of the father's legal dominance in both

north and south humanism also went radical some humanists began regularly teaching not just discussing its

principles and its main subject matter rhetoric which may not seem like a big deal to you but it meant that at least

in parts of the radical fringe of the Renaissance world ancient Latin and Greek were being taught not

just the medieval versions of those languages which would eventually contribute to a rethinking of what

certain texts actually said perhaps most notably the Bible also girls sometimes joined their brothers in being tutored a

radical idea indeed although one that could also trace itself back to the old light in justifying the education of

girls scholars cited ancient women who'd received tutoring including Sappho aphasia and Cornelia the daughter of the

Roman general Skippy oh and as humanism grew so did the number of universities European universities had long taught a

system of theology and philosophy known as scholasticism that focused on early church teaching and Aristotelian logic

but now they began to embrace humanism spending less time studying religious texts and more time investigating the

human condition and thinking about how to organize human societies including how to establish and enforce laws and

omit these developments Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam also known as the Prince of the humanists became the

commanding figure in the Northern Renaissance let's go to the thought-bubble Erasmus contributed to

taking humanism along its twisted path from ideas of the study of humans and the act of life into politics he went to

study at the University of Paris and began publishing his opinions on public affairs including the responsibilities

of a ruler a prince he declared in the education of a Christian prince needed to study the classics and the deeds of

worthy ancient leaders and in these examples he would discover the means by which great leaders achieved the public

good and keep the peace even in troubled times he also emphasized the importance of reading the Bible and the leading

Christian authors it was for this that he came to be known as advocating for a middle road between the pagan ancients

and the more recent Christian thinkers but he was at times also very critical of the Catholic Church Erasmus was also

a central figure in the rising Republic of Letters of growing international community of humanists in Europe in

he corresponded with some 500 people around Europe including everyone from Sir Thomas More to Martin Luther to Pope

Leo the 10th aside from his work on biblical translations he also edited translated and published ancient pagan

texts like Cicero's and the works of many pivotal religious authors especially st. Jerome he was

astonishingly prolific hiring editors proof readers and even ghost writers to help him produce mountains of humanistic

texts and fashioned himself as the quintessential figure of the Northern Renaissance before dying suddenly of

dysentery at the age of 69 because you know it was the 16th century thanks thought-bubble so before he died Erasmus

saw the rise of the Protestant Reformation and he disagreed with much of Martin Luther's teachings and

remained loyal to the Catholic Church but Erasmus a--'s emphasis on inner spirituality over ritual did in some

ways pre sage Protestantism some felt that Erasmus had laid the egg and Luther had hatched it but Erasmus dismissed

that saying Luther hatched a different bird entirely also for the record neither Erasmus nor Martin Luther could

lay eggs because they were mammals but now we're venturing into biology and getting a bit ahead of ourselves with

the Reformation before we started debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin we should acknowledge the

other great Renaissance thinker who shaped what we now call political science

niccolò machiavelli who was like the Erasmus living in the upside down Machiavelli had been a faithful

supporter of Florence's Republican traditions after the death of Lorenzo Medici in 1492 Machiavelli served the

Republic in several positions but after Spanish papal and other forces defeated the Republic in 1512 Machiavelli was

imprisoned and tortured he was hung by his wrists until his shoulders were dislocated he was eventually released

after three weeks in prison and then set out to write his masterwork the prince which was only published in 1532 five

years after his death the prince was very different from the work of other humanists especially from

the political ideas of Christian humanism found in Erasmus's essays and letters Machiavelli imagined a grounding

in the classics for an aspiring leader his day but he believed the attitudes necessary for leaders were vastly

different from what the ancients had counseled his most quoted advice focused on whether a ruler should aim to be

loved or feared one should wish to be both but because it is difficult to unite them in one person it is much

safer to be feared than loved Machiavelli took a so-called realist view of politics he focused on how a

prince could retain power and maintain order and he was much more interested in what was effective than what was like

noble and unlike many humanists focus on maintaining peace Machiavelli believed that war was necessary in fact he wrote

a book about it called art of war he argued that rulers needed to prepare for war by studying great military

leaders of the past and he believed that effective military leadership was vital to effective political leadership

because those who win wars get to gain peace on their terms but there were also idealists among Renaissance humanists

like the Englishman Thomas More who was one of harass mice's 5-billion friends and a close one in fact Moore wrote the

classic book utopia which imagines a society without private-property where reason and cooperation have replaced

struggles for glory and power it's an odd book Moore was a devout Catholic and in fact would eventually be

executed for opposing King Henry the eighth's turned toward Protestantism and yet this

seemingly enlightened utopia is very much not Catholic like the utopians have married priests

for instance and also they can get divorced but regardless Moore believe that humanistic analysis could lead to

widespread peace and prosperity which by the way I would argue turned out to be sort of correct even though a it would

take a while for human isms benefits to be felt and be more did not really get to enjoy them on account of being

separated from his head in 1535 a century before mores utopia another book that imagined an ideal city-state book

of the city of ladies was written by Christine de Pizan de bazan was born in Venice but moved to

France as a kid when her dad got a job as the French king's astrologer as you do she

married and had three kids but then her husband died of the plague and thereafter she earned her living writing

in book at the city of ladies de Pizan gathered up all the great and good women of history and placed them in a city

where the Virgin Mary is queen the book argues that women can be virtuous leaders and rational beings and that

leadership by virtuous women could beget virtuous communities a stark contrast to Machiavelli's worldview so at this point

it's common to ask students to think about the relative merits of idealism and realism is a prince or princess or

for that matter a student at a high school better off being loved or feared is it more important for a community to

be fair or stable should leaders prioritize virtue or effectiveness these are big interesting questions and

I think they're worth considering but I would also ask you to look at the lens through which you're approaching

those questions Machiavelli's life was marked by endless wars and shifting alliances he saw many

short-lived government's fail to achieve stability Christine de Pizan saw the intense oppression of women and the

dismissal of their talents and intellect Erasmus didn't exactly have an easy life he was born out of wedlock and both his

parents died of plague when he was a teenager but he saw a very different world in northern Europe than

Machiavelli saw in Italy or then Christine de Pizan saw where do you sit in the world and how might that shape

what kind of community you wish to see thanks for watching I'll see you next week

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