REINASSENCE & MIDDLE AGE: comparing

Journal, Art.5

Was really Middle Age as dark as many people think? So dramatic and tragic? So negative?

Was Renaissance so positive? All about renovation? Something completely new that popped out without roots?

I believe the answer to all this questions is NO.

Probably and mainly because I believe nothing, except main and basic ethical-moral rules of behavior, can be completely black or completely white. Because there is a scale of grays and colors marked by individual thinking and acting, by temporal and geographic context, by social belonging…and by many other things.

Definitely is not possible to argue to much about Middle Age being a difficult moment, very complicated and critical for European society, with many economic and health problems, conflicts… And neither is arguing about Renaissance not being a good renewal moment, full of news, progress, a new post to break with ‘the darkness’ that had been growing along the Middle Age.

But, there is always a but…and in this case, my but is about: was it really so defined and drastic? So clear to everyone? Was the Middle Age Black and the Renaissance so white?

I really don’t think so, maybe in a generic scale, and very summarized is how it is easier to understand it and to define it.

But I do think is important to consider the positive aspects of the Middle Age, and the negative ones of the Renaissance too. So not to fall into such a drastic and radical point of view.

As a matter of fact, during the last period of the Middle Age, Latin started to be less used and substituted by the romantic languages that had been developing them selves and turning into the vernacular languages that in the future were meant to be the current languages nowadays spoken.

So Dante, whom literature masterpiece is the ‘Divina Commedia’, is written in vernacular Italian and not in Latin. Yes he did accuse the excessive dynamism of Florence, but at the same time he abandoned writing in Latin, for several reasons, but maybe one of the major ones, was the fact he wanted his masterpiece to be read by many and not to be restricted only to a limited social group of aristocratic cultured people.

Together with this we must remember universities started to spread, and culture with them and through ‘printing’, which was discovered in the Middle Age.

Also is important to remember the development of architecture and art, and the many buildings that where built.

Renaissance was amazing, at least for what it meant and how people felt about it: freedom, renewal and finally Religion were not in the center anymore, but men, human being as individuals. This is one of the reasons of why, in this moment, a person wouldn’t concentrate in studying and focusing only on one subject, but tried to have a spread culture, a bit of everything (maybe a bit like architecture nowadays?).

But even if it was and it has been such an important and at the same time positive moment we must remember that some things weren’t so white as they seem to have been.

We should definitely remember, that with the big change from a god centered society to a men centered society some men did find themselves lost.

Aristocracy had lost their great power so they started to get more and more conventional, closed minded, and into them.

Its first moment wasn’t as positive, the was an ‘enclosure’ politically and socially speaking.

Latin will never get back to be what it was but definitely Italian started to become deliberately courtly and Latin kind of.

And they wanted to mark so badly the change of moment, the change, that they were very critic about their recent past.

So Renaissance wanted to be new, distinguish itself from the Late Middle Age, but it wasn’t so radically new. It was a RETURN to the classical and humanistic studies, and their celebration. It was a RETURN IN INNOVATION, and this is probably what makes it so special and so amazingly positive rather than negative.