A Study Of Urban Societies In Renaissance Italy

Ever since Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) published his masterpiece The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), the Renaissance has been regarded as the great age of initiating the Western modernity, the present author thinks that this definition is problematic, and believes that the Renaissance is mainly a cultural conception, more precisely, the Renaissance is a great movement of cultural innovation by accepting, reviving, appropriating and adapting the classical tradition. Therefore the present author plans to re-examine the Renaissance in this sense. In this dissertation the present author also takes the Renaissance as an age from time to time, but just uses it to signify the time span between 1350 and 1620, and tries to keep the position of the value-free. There have been immense studies and publications on the cultural history of the Italian Renaissance made by both domestic and outside academic world, but the researches available tend to focus on the Renaissance culture as such and seem to isolate the Italian Renaissance from its historical context, such academic practice often results in the overestimation of the significance of the Renaissance or even many misunderstandings. It's for this reason that the present author, by actively echoing the appeal of British Renaissance scholar Denys Hay (1915-1994), is planning to place or replace the Renaissance in its historical context. In present author's view, the Renaissance is mainly a cultural phenomenon taking place in urban space, naturally, the urban space of Renaissance Italy formed the most important historical context for this great cultural movement, but unfortunately this fact has always been neglected. Since there have been plenty of outstanding studies on the ideas and forms of the Renaissance culture, this dissertation will leave limited pages to this aspect but rather try to present the historical environment in which the Renaissance movement took place and developed, and to present the certain expressions of the Renaissance movement, in other words, one of the major tasks of this dissertation is to provide an external history for the Italian Renaissance movement.The dissertation covers roughly the time span from 1350 (two years after the Black Death) to 1620, but the dissertation is not a chronicle or history in timely order but rather a "synchronous" and synthetic study consisted of many themes. The present author follows the methods of thematic synthesis which are adopted by two masterpieces of cultural history, i.e. Voltaire's Le Siecle de Louis XIV and Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, the present author particularly takes the latter as a model, and divides the dissertation into several themes, and tries to paint an organic and harmonious image of the urban society of Renaissance Italy. Since the Renaissance movement took place in the urban society of Renaissance Italy, the present author especially wants to understand it from the perspective of urban geography or "urban space". However, my vision of city and urban history are different from those that are held by popular views. My view of city and urban history are very open, at least are not the city and urban history understood by most architectural historians. In my view city is a complex of two bodies or two spaces, one is physical body ox physical space, another is social body or social space, any researches on cities will have to focus on these two aspects. This dissertation also makes an investigation of the urban society of Renaissance Italy by focusing the two aspects.The former part of this dissertation (Chapter I to chapter V) mainly deals with the physical space or morphologies of Italian Renaissance cities. In the past, the urban history is mainly a monopoly of architectural historians, common historians seldom ventured into this field. The urban constructions and buildings, urban landscape, urban theory and practices occupy a large proportion in the traditional urban history, and all of these are often categorized as urbanism by historians. The present author focuses on the built environment of Italian Renaissance cities, and the interaction between the Renaissance movement and urban space (particularly the cityscape). In sum, the aim of the first part of this dissertation is to help the readers to understand the material environment of the Renaissance movement.The latter part of this dissertation (Chapter VI to Chapter X) turns attention from the concrete material space to the man-centred social space, that is, the various organizations and the life style of urban dwellers. This part is concerned with many aspects such as social structure, economy, cultural bodies, social life, and social problems. Any city is a civitas (community) made up of people, therefore the present author makes an investigation of the occupational structure, ladder, view of society, and the social hierarchy. In addition the present author also analyses the existence of the special group within the urban society, i. e. minority group (Jews) and the formation of Jewish Ghetto. Economy is the foundation on which the urban life bases and operates, therefore, the present author also makes an investigation into the commercial civilization, which includes the auxiliary tools of capitalism, the types of early capitalism, the consumption of commodities and material culture. One of the advantages of city is its position as the centre of cultural production and diffusion, therefore the present author makes an analysis of the cultural and intellectual organization and institutions, and the mode of cultural production and spreading in this period. Then the present author examines the urban life of Italian Renaissance cities from the perspective of social history and popular culture, and discusses the controversial problem of the religiosity and secularity of the Renaissance times, the present author finds that religion played an important role in the daily life of the urban society of Renaissance Italy, and the majority of citizens (cittadini) were still very pious in Christianity, and Burckhardt's view that people's religious belief in the age of the Renaissance experienced a general decline is not able to hold the water. Besides the present author also investigates the leisure and amusement of this period, and the present author thinks that the social life of Renaissance Italian urban society had the striking characteristics of theatricality. Finally, the present author examines the pathology of the body of the Renaissance urban society, in other words, the social problems, including poverty, poor relief and charity, violence and crime, and prostitution. The presentation and illustrations of the social problems particularly reveal the shortcomings of Burckhardt's elitist view of history. In all, this dissertation is a synthetic study which incorporates the urban history, cultural history and social history together.The present author is always echoing and reflecting the classical view that the Renaissance initiated European modernity, which is come up with by Burckhardht. The present author thinks that there is a great limit in evaluating the modernity of the Renaissance merely from the perspectives of so-called Zeitgeist (spirit of times) or elitist cultural history, instead the present author thinks that this problem should be discussed from many perspectives. The present author plans to investigate the modernity of Renaissance times from the perspective of urban space, that is, try to discuss it from the perspectives of the evolution of physical space, economy, cultural bodies, social life and social problem of Renaissance cities. The present author holds that Burckhardt's view of Renaissance Italy was the very beginning of Western modernity only valid under strict qualifications. The urban society of Renaissance Italy did contain the elements of modernity, nonetheless, it also contained lots of traditional ones. The present author in particular emphasizes the approach of history from below, and pays more attention to the daily life, and the historical dimensions neglected by past historical scholarship. Generally the present author believes that the modernity of the Renaissance age was just in the sate of burgeoning, and was immature, and it was the loose and weak modernity. For this reason, the present author thinks that we may name the Renaissance modernity as "proto-modernity". The proto-modernity of the Renaissance times differs greatly from the "high modernity" produced by the industrial society, and from the "late modernity" or "post-modernity" coming into being after the Second World War. Perhaps the naming above is of help to position the era when the Renaissance movement happened and evolved, and is also helpful to revisit the issue of the periodization of the European History. Traditionally the European history is divided into three grand periods: the Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Times (starting with the Renaissance), but we must bear in mind that this three partition of European history is mainly from the perspectives of cultural history, taking as a whole, this pattern of periodization is problematic. According to the new perception of the modernity of the Renaissance times, the development of European history may be divided into five periods: the Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern (from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment), the Modern Times (from the Enlightenment to the World War Two) and the Post-Modern Times (from the World War Two to the present). In my view, as a conception of periodization, "Early Modern" is much better than the "Renaissance".