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Ancient & Medieval Church History
Instructor: Dr. David Calhoun
Audio Transcription for Lesson 33: Reform in Italy
The title of this lesson is "The Dignity of Man, the Glory of God, Reform in Italy." One of the people I am going to be talking about in some detail in this lesson is the famous pre-Reformer, Savonarola of Florence. We will begin with a prayer from Savonarola. He is a man who suffered a great deal in his life; he was martyred. This is a prayer that he prayed. Even though we do not face the same problems that Savonarola faced, we face problems in our lives, too. So we can certainly join in this prayer. Let us pray.
"Lord, we pray not for tranquility, nor that our tribulations may cease. We pray for Your Spirit and Your love, that You grant us strength and grace to overcome adversity. Through Jesus Christ. Amen."
As we think about reform in Italy, coming toward the close of the Middle Ages, we need to talk about the word "renaissance." Renaissance is a word that means rebirth. It is a movement that began in Italy in the 14th century. Then it was well established by the 15th century. It began to move northward and influence northern Europe in the 16th century.
There were people in Italy in the 14th century and in the 15th century who began to look back to the previous millennium, the previous 1,000 years. They saw that period of history as a dark period. It was the period after the decline and fall of Rome until their own time. It was about 1,000 years, and they saw it as a dark period of history. It separated their time from the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. So the idea of the renaissance, or the rebirth, of learning comes into play. The Renaissance was characterized by a renewed interest in the classics. In fact, the slogan ad fontes, which means "to the source," was used to describe the attention that the people of the Renaissance began to pay to the ancient Greek and Roman classics. These were the ancient writings of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and also the Scriptures. Classics were the old writings of the Greeks and Romans, including the writings of the Scriptures. These people began to emphasize the classics, not the more recent writings of the scholastic theologians, but the ancient writings, both Christian and non-Christian. They also emphasized the importance of reading these writings in the original languages. So the study of Hebrew, Greek, and ancient classical Latin, not modern church Latin, became very important to the men of the Renaissance. It was said by 1500 in Europe and many places that a good Latin teacher could find students, an average Greek teacher could find students, and even a mediocre Hebrew teacher could find students. There were fewer Hebrew teachers, but there was now interest in the study of Hebrew as well as in the study of Greek and Latin. These teachers were needed in order to be able to read the classics, both pagan and the Scriptures, in the original languages.
It is from this interest in language that we get the word "humanities" and the word "humanism." The humanities refer to the study of languages. In Great Britain, even today, the word humanity means the study of Latin. It is almost as though if you are really truly going to be human, you need to know Latin. The humanities become more generally known as what we now call the liberal arts.
The Renaissance was devoted to the study of the classics. That led to a new study of the text of the classics. Not only is there interest in the original languages in which these great books are written, but there is interest in the text itself. How accurate is it? How much can we understand about the writing through the study of the text? Textual criticism, for the first time in history in the West, became an important concept. The great name in that regard is Lorenzo Valla. He lived in the 15th century. Lorenzo Valla subjected a number of the famous writings to the scrutiny of textual criticism. He came up with some startling ideas for people at that time. For instance, he said that the Apostles' Creed was not written by the apostles. He was right; people had believed for a long time that the Apostles' Creed was written by the apostles. It was also Lorenzo Valla who established that Dionysius, the Areopagite who wrote various things that we studied earlier, could not have been a 1st century Greek apostle or follower of the apostle Paul as was claimed by whoever wrote the writings of Dionysius. Lorenzo Valla subjected that writing to some historical textual study and established the fact that Dionysius, whoever he was, was not Paul's convert at Athens. Instead he was a much later writer who probably came from Syria. After this, Dionysius became pseudo-Dionysius, a false Dionysius.
You may remember, too, the donation of Constantine. It was an alleged document that stated that the pope was making a gift of Rome, the territory around Rome, and all temporal power. It was actually the emperor who was making that as a gift to the pope. Ever since then Rome had insisted on the validity and the importance of the donation of Constantine to establish the fact that Rome had claim to the territory of Rome and the so-called papal states. But as Lorenzo Valla studied that document, he studied, quite rightly, that it could not have been a document from the 4th century written by a Roman emperor. He said, "What have satraps got to do with the case? Do caesars speak thus? Are Roman decrees drafted thus? Who ever heard of satraps being mentioned in the counsels of the Romans?" The word "satrap" was used in the Donation of Constantine. Lorenzo Valla noticed that; it is a wonder others had not noticed it before. He said that Romans do not write and speak like that. It had to come from another source and from a later date. Perhaps the most significant thing that Lorenzo Valla did was to subject the vulgate Latin translation of the Bible to some very careful attention. He pointed out that at many places the Vulgate had mistranslated the Hebrew and the Greek. This caused great concern in the Catholic Church, both then and later.
We are talking about the Renaissance, the importance of the classics, the study of languages, and the ability to subject the text to historical and textual criticism. There was another emphasis of the Renaissance, which was a stress on rhetoric. The rhetoric, or eloquent speech, became important. In church history there are some very eloquent speeches and books. For instance, Saint Augustine was a very eloquent writer. But after Augustine, theology tends to be much more dry. The theology of the scholastics is especially dry. The men of the Renaissance began to want to recover some of the strength, power, and beauty of language. According to the Renaissance figure Petrarch, "Words can sting and set a fire and urge toward love of virtue and hatred of vice." The words of the sentences of Peter Lomard do not really do that. They are not beautiful and powerful language. But the emphasis on rhetoric came through in the Renaissance and would influence theology in times to come. We will see this particularly as we come to The Institutes of John Calvin. We will see rhetoric playing a very natural and wonderful role in theology.
The importance of the classics, rhetoric, new art, and architecture come out of the Renaissance. Let me illustrate that last point in three ways. First of all, let us talk about the Pazzi Chapel built in Florence by Brunellesco in 1430. As you look at this chapel, if you have already been familiar with the great got
