THE

CHAPTER III

THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

1485-1603

HE victory of Henry Tudor on Bosworth Field marked the end of the Middle Ages and ushered in the era which contained in itself the vast forces that created the modern world. By the defeat of Richard III, the great nobles forever lost their power, and the middle class began to make itself felt in the life of the nation. The knight gave way before the civil statesman and the courtier, whose first consideration was to make their country powerful and wealthy. Commerce flourished, great families came into existence through their close connection with financial affairs, and prosperity became general through the island. In agriculture, which still remained the basic industry, the gradual enclosing of ✓ the common lands created the system of landlordism, developing a new aristocracy of landlords which remained the chief power in the realm until English life was again disrupted by the immense changes consequent upon the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century.

Many changes in social life accompanied the political change. The reign of Henry VIII was a sumptuous one, for his pleasure-loving nature set no limit to his expenditures. The Field of the Cloth of Gold, on which he received his brother sovereign Francis I of France, is the

celebrated example of the royal extravagance. Court and people followed their king, and the whole nation expanded in the sunshine of its self-will. Greater refinements of life accompanied the greater accumulation and expenditure of wealth, and social luxuries were sought by those who were winning wealth and position. Domestic comfort in house arrangements took the place of medieval cheerlessness; the great hall was divided into private apartments; a new order of house architecture, the heavy timbered house with steep gables and high central beam, came into being, and the chimney-corner won its place in the English home. The Thames river was early lined with stately and expensive palaces, ornamented and made attractive to the passer-by with rich wood carvings, charming Italian landscape gardening, and every adornment the expanding mind could invent. In dress, too, the gallants outdid each other in gay colors, seeking not so much conformity to style as novelty of effect.1

In every respect it was an age of expansion; and the reasons why men suddenly threw off the shackles of narrow surroundings and limiting views of life are deeply in

1 For the curious, Stubbs's Anatomy of Abuses, a contemporary Puritan diatribe against the dress and morals of the time, will prove interesting reading. John Stowe's Survey of London is a contemporary description of London, its physical appearance, its manners, and its morals. Of modern books, Traill's Social England is an authoritative account of social usages of this as of every other period of English history. Traill's volumes should be at hand in any serious study of English literary history. Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland and Edward Hall's History of the Union of Lancaster and York are contemporary histories of the latter years of the Middle Ages, and had the honor to become the chief source books for the historical plays of Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights. Richard Hakluyt's Voyages, published at different times during the last two decades of the sixteenth century, is a stirring record of adventurous Englishmen who tried to search out new lands and discover a short passage to the Indies.

volved in the great changes that were marking the complexion of life at this time. The Renaissance, or Rebirth, came into full flower during the great age of Elizabeth, finding expression in the loftiest and most creative literature England has produced. This Renaissance was both secular and religious, and we need to glance at each of its phases if we would comprehend this complex period. We need also to review the intellectual currents that were in process of sweeping away the long hold of scholastic philosophy upon the minds of men. Before doing this, however, let us understand a little more clearly just what this philosophy meant to the Christian world.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDIEVAL THINKING

The night of barbarism after the break-up of the Western Roman Empire was pierced only by the fitful flame which the Roman Catholic Church kept burning. Upon Greek philosophy, which has become the framework of the thought of the world, and the Roman sense of the value and reality of government and law, which has become the foundation of modern society and without which true spiritual progress would be impossible, was imposed the Christian ideal of the reality of the individual soul and the equality of all men in their common relation to God. The Church slowly and painfully molded the rugged natures of the barbarians who had wrecked the ancient world and who had in turn yielded submission to an authority more autocratic than imperial Rome. This work of education gradually ripened through hundreds of years until the human material became pliable in the hands of the vast hierarchy of Rome. The anvil

upon which this chain was forged was the system of disputation known as scholasticism. The scholars, or schoolmen, endeavored to do two things. First, they created a philosophy of dogmatic religion, which based itself upon infallible revelation and accepted the matter of its argument as absolute and unquestioned. This attitude of the Church, for the Church stood behind these contentions, prevented any disinterested search for the truth and held back intellectual progress many generations. Second, the schoolmen tried to show how doctrine was self-consistent and reasonable. Their philosophy was in fact a systematizer and rationalizer of religious dogma. This effort in its later stages had the help of Aristotle, whose method was applied uncritically as a complete explanation of the universe; any doubt of his conclusions was regarded as heretical and to be visited by the punishment of Mother Church. His deductive logic, particularly the rigid application of the syllogism, accepted as the means whereby scholars maintained the authority of their dogmas,2 became the chief obstacle to the emancipation of the intellect. Thus disputation resolved itself into fine-spun distinctions which had no contact with reality and which prepared the way for a revolt that came with sudden and overwhelming force.

Though the matter is one of infinite complexity, we may safely name two schools as competing for victory in the intellectual arena. The men who called themselves Realists maintained that the only reality existed in class terms, and the individual did not exist except as exempli

2 A dogma may be defined as a general law derived from the past but uninfluenced by the discovery of new facts and taken as an absolute and necessary truth

ng a class. That is, the more general a term is, the more reality it possesses, as man is more real than particular men. This may be seen to be a modification of the Platonic doctrine of the existence of universals, or ideas independent of the concrete objects which are defined by them. That is, Beauty is more universal and therefore more real than a beautiful thing. Plato, however, did not deny the existence of individual phenomena. Among the Realists was Anselm, who taught the doctrine fatal to freedom of thought, that faith must precede knowledge; Abelard attempted a mediation between Realism and the opposing school of Nominalism. Thomas Aquinas tried to reconcile reason and revelation, while Duns Scotus and William of Occam, both Franciscan friars and Englishmen, were chief among Nominalists.

× Nominalism taught that the individual alone is real, for we cannot conceive of an idea separate from its manifestation in reality. This contention, it can readily be seen, pointed in the direction of modern scientific thought. To admit the reality of the individual would have been to admit more ways of salvation than one and more churches than one; therefore the Church was realistic, and natural science was not born until long after the beginning of this controversy. The Roman Catholic hierarchy built its power upon the dogma of the redemption from sin through the offices of the Church. Since it was the whole of which all are parts, it denied the power of the individual to save himself, and the Church Universal maintained a definite hold upon the lives of men until a resistless impulse, fostered by many forces pressing upon the world, set free the energies of the people to try out truth for themselves.