第4章　文艺复兴和宗教改革

Questions for Revision:

1What made Italy the birthplace of the Renaissance?

【答案】Because of its geographical position, foreign trade developed early in Italy. This brought Italy into contact with other cultures and gave rise to urban economy and helped Italy accumulate wealth which was an essential factor for the flowering of art and literature.

For two centuries beginning from the late 15th century, Florence was the golden city which gave birth to a whole generation of poets, scholars, artists and sculptors. There was in Florence a revival of interest in classical learning and rising of humanist ideas. And to spread the new ideas, libraries and academies were founded. In the 15th century printing was invented and helped to spread humanist ideas.

2What are the main elements of humanism? How are these elements reflected in art and literature during the Italian Renaissance?

【答案】Humanist is the essence of Renaissance. Humanists in renaissance believed that human beings had rights to pursue wealth and pleasure and they admires the beauty of human body. This belief ran counter to the medieval ascetical idea of poverty and stoicism, and shifted man’s interest from Christianity to humanity, from religion to philosophy, from heaven to earth, from the beauty of God to the beauty of human in all its joy, senses and feeling.

The philosophy of humanism is reflected in the art and literature during the Italian Renaissance in the literature works of Boccaccio and Petrarch and in the art of Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Giorgione, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian, etc. In their works they did not stress death and other world but call on man to live and work for the present.

3Why do we look upon Petrarch as the father of modern poetry?

【答案】Petrarch was a prominent figure of his time, a great figure in Italian literature and one of the great humanists during the Renaissance. He has written numerous lyrics, sonnets and canzonets. Petrarch rejected medieval country conventions and sang for true love and earthly happiness in his sonnets. Later sonnets became a very important literary form of poetry in Europe and a lot of poets, such as Shakespeare, Spencer, and Mrs. Browning, were indebted to him. Thus we look upon him as the father of modern poetry.

4How did Italian Renaissance .art and architecture break away from medieval tradition?

【答案】The Italian Renaissance art and architecture radically broke away from the medieval methods of representing the visible world. Compared with the latter, the former has the following distinct features:

(1) Art broke away from the domination of church and artist who used to be craftsmen commissioned by the church became a separate stratum doing noble and creative works;

(2) Themes of painting and architecture changed from purely celestial realm focusing on the stories of the Bible, of God and Mary to an appreciation of all aspects of nature and man;

(3) The artists studied the ruins of Roman and Greek temples and put many of the principles of ancient civilization into their works;

(4) Artists introduced in their works scientific theories of anatomy and perspective.

5In what way was Da Vinci important during the Renaissance?

【答案】Leonardo da Vinci was a man of many talents, a Renaissance man in the true sense of the word. He was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, an engineer, and a scientist all in one. As an artist, he was very important. He has left to the world famous works such as Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Then his excellent use of contrast between light and darkness showed him as an excellent painter. Most important of all, da Vinci had profound understanding of art. In his 5000 notebooks, he put down his observations of life and his sketch drawing. In his painting he stressed the expression of emotional states. His understandings of art exerted great influence upon painters of his own generation and generations to follow. He was also very important in the science of medicine. During his life he dissected more than thirty corpses and was a great anatomist in Italy. He placed art in the service of anatomy as a science based on extensive research.

6What are the doctrines of Martin Luther? What was the significance of the Reformation in European civilization?

【答案】In Reformation began in 1517, Martin Luther put forth the following doctrines:

(1) He rejected the absolute authority of the Roman Catholic church and replace it with absolute of the Bible. People can communicate with God directly instead of through the church;

(2) He opposed the purchase of indulgences and called for institutional reform of the church;

(3) advocated translating the whole Bible into vernaculars and made the Bible accessible to every man;

(4) He preached love and ideals of equality, and he was a fighter for democracy and nationalism, a humanist who helped to build a competent educational system in Germany. The Reformation was significant in the European civilization. Before Reformation, Europe was essentially feudal and medieval. In all aspects of politics, economy and spirit, it was under the absolute rule of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. But after the Reformation things were different. In educational and cultural matters, the monopoly of the church was broken. In religion, Protestantism brought different forms of Christianity to challenge the absolute rule of the Roman Catholic Church. In language, the dominant position of Latin had to give way to the national languages as a result of various translations of Bible into vernacular. In spirit, absolute obedience became out-mode and the spirit of quest, debate, was ushered in by the reformists. In word, after the reformation Europe was to take a new course of development, a scientific revolution was to be under way and capitalism was to set in with its dynamic economic principles.

7What was Counter-Reformation? Who were the Jesuits? Are they still active now?

【答案】The counter the Reformation and to bring back its vitality, the Roman Catholic Church mustered their forces to examine the Church institutions and introduce reforms and improvements. In time, the Roman Catholic Church did re-establish itself as a dynamic force in European affairs. This recovery of power is often called by historians the Counter-Reformation. The seed-bed for this Catholic reformation was Spain with the Spanish monarchy establishing the inquisition to carry out cruel suppression of heresy and unorthodoxy. Ignatius, a Spaniard who devoted his life to defending the Roman Catholic Church, and his followers called them the Jesuits members of the Society of Jesus. Today the Society of Jesus is still active with a membership of 31,000, having institutions in various parts of the world.

8What did French Renaissance writers propose in their writings?

【答案】(1) The French Renaissance writer Rabelais expressed his ideas in Gargantua and Pantagruel that the only rule of the house was “Do As Thou Wilt”—to follow our natural instinct;

(2) Ronsard held that man of letters should write in a style that was clear and free from useless rhetoric;

(3) The Essais of Montaigne records his views on life, death and his skepticism towards knowledge, in simple, straightforward style, his famous motto is “What do I know?”

9Why did England come later than other countries during the Renaissance? In what way was English Renaissance different from that of other countries? Who were the major figures and what were their contributions?

【答案】Because of the War of Roses within the country and its weak and unimportant position in world trade, Renaissance came later in England than other European countries. Compared with the Renaissance in other countries, the Renaissance in England has the following features:

(1) It came later; but when it did come, it was to produce some towering figures in English literature and the world literature;

(2) The Renaissance in England found its finest expression in drama, crowned by Shakespeare;

(3) The Renaissance in England enjoyed a period of political and religious stability under the reign of Elizabeth I.

The major figures of this period were William Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, Sir Thomas more, Francis Bacon, and etc. Shakespeare has contributed to the world a legacy of literature heritage by turning out so many outstanding plays and poems. He was one of the two reservoirs of modern English language. Thomas More has written Utopia and depicted in this work an ideal non-Christian state where everybody lives a simple life and shares the goods in common. He contributed to the western tradition of envisioning an ideal state. Spencer has influenced many English poets.

10What were some of the scientific advances during the Renaissance?

【答案】During the Renaissance, many sciences have made great progress.

Firstly, it was an age of geographical discoveries: Columbus has discovered the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1487; da Gama discovered the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope in 1497; Amerigo discovered and explored the mouth of the Amazon and accepted South America as a new continent.

Secondly, Copernicus believed that the earth and other planets orbit about the sun and that earth is not at the center of the universe. Here began the modern astronomy.

Thirdly, both da Vinci and Vesalius were good at anatomy. Vesalius wrote Fabrica and was regarded as the founder of modern medicine.

Fourthly, printing was invented in Italy.

Finally, Dante, Machiavelli, and Vosari have contributed a great deal to political science and historiography.