The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) (34 page)
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Authors: Anthony Esolen
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All the Greek drama we still have came to the West at this time. So did almost all of the Platonic dialogues. So did Homer’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
, and almost all the rest of our corpus of Greek poetry. So did the work of the ancient historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, much of Livy, and many lesser lights. Some discoveries made for intellectual drama. The cleric and book-finder Poggio Bracciolini discovered a unique manuscript of Lucretius’ materialist epic
On the Nature of Things
, moldering in a monastery in Switzerland. The manuscript was priceless. Poggio set about to make a copy, but was forestalled by his friend Niccoli, who wanted to borrow it to look at it. Niccoli did, made a copy—and the original has never been seen again.
7
Iliad
and
Odyssey
, and almost all the rest of our corpus of Greek poetry. So did the work of the ancient historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, much of Livy, and many lesser lights. Some discoveries made for intellectual drama. The cleric and book-finder Poggio Bracciolini discovered a unique manuscript of Lucretius’ materialist epic
On the Nature of Things
, moldering in a monastery in Switzerland. The manuscript was priceless. Poggio set about to make a copy, but was forestalled by his friend Niccoli, who wanted to borrow it to look at it. Niccoli did, made a copy—and the original has never been seen again.
7
Once the scholars caught fire, the artists took notice. They too hunted down books: for example, the rediscovered classic on architecture by Vitruvius. Leonardo so admired the Roman’s emphasis on harmony and balance that he called his most famous sketch of human proportions, a nude self-portrait, Vitruvian Man. They also hunted down works of art. Donatello went to ancient ruins and literally dug up sculptures, to study their technique. Others, from surviving scraps of classical painting and the clean lines of classical architecture, learned the mathematics of perspective, and could suddenly achieve effects never seen before in the West, not even in ancient Greece or Rome. Consider, for example, Andrea Mantegna’s tour-de-force of foreshortening, the dramatic
Dead Christ,
the pierced soles of the Savior dominating the foreground as he lies on a slab, mourned by the holy women to his left and right.
Dead Christ,
the pierced soles of the Savior dominating the foreground as he lies on a slab, mourned by the holy women to his left and right.
These men who found, copied, edited, commented upon, translated, and adapted the ancient texts, and the artists who were inspired by them, are called humanists. That implies nothing about their beliefs. Nowadays, a “humanist” is someone who denies the influence of the divine upon the life of the individual or the history of man, as in the notorious twentieth century
Humanist Manifesto
. But Luther, the theologian who asserted that only the grace of God could break the bonds of man’s sinful, enslaved will, was a humanist. So was his theological enemy Thomas More. More cheered the introduction of Greek studies into England, agreed with Luther on the need to reform the morals and relieve the ignorance of churchmen, and wrote the wittiest piece of fanciful political philosophy of the era, the
Utopia.
Humanist Manifesto
. But Luther, the theologian who asserted that only the grace of God could break the bonds of man’s sinful, enslaved will, was a humanist. So was his theological enemy Thomas More. More cheered the introduction of Greek studies into England, agreed with Luther on the need to reform the morals and relieve the ignorance of churchmen, and wrote the wittiest piece of fanciful political philosophy of the era, the
Utopia.
Erasmus, translator of the Greek New Testament into Latin, and the finest scholar of his day, a friend of More, a detester of the warlike Pope Julius II, and the one man Luther wanted to join his movement, was a humanist. Erasmus affirmed the freedom of man’s will, his capacity to do good, and his most common trait, folly. Calvin, who followed Luther and asserted, from Scripture, the transcendent majesty of God and his sovereign predestination of all things, including the damnation of unrepentant sinners, was a humanist. So were: the skeptic and legend debunker Lorenzo Valla (whom Luther called his favorite Italian);
8
the quack alchemist Paracelsus; the writer of obscene verses whom people simply called The One and Only Aretine; and the gentle moral philosopher Enea Silvio Piccolomini, better known as Pope Pius II.
8
the quack alchemist Paracelsus; the writer of obscene verses whom people simply called The One and Only Aretine; and the gentle moral philosopher Enea Silvio Piccolomini, better known as Pope Pius II.
But the humanist project then was not what it would be now. Now, we’d shrug and say, “If Machiavelli wants to study Livy and Thucydides, that’s his choice, and if John Colet wants to bring the Greek Scriptures to England, that’s his choice. To each his own.” The Renaissance men cared more for truth than that; they were impassioned about it. They knew well, too, what Augustine had said about taking “gold out of Egypt” (
On Christian Doctrine
2.60): that Christians need not despise the pagan philosophers, but could be confident that there was much truth in them, though not the fullness of truth. Like the children of the Hebrews, they could bring Egyptian gold into the Promised Land.
On Christian Doctrine
2.60): that Christians need not despise the pagan philosophers, but could be confident that there was much truth in them, though not the fullness of truth. Like the children of the Hebrews, they could bring Egyptian gold into the Promised Land.
If these scholars had shut their minds against pagan intimations of truth and beauty, there would have been no Renaissance. But had they shut their minds against the very idea of objective truth (except for that smallish portion of it that can be quantified) and beauty, as our schools teach students to do, then too there would have been no Renaissance. Livy and Seneca were wise; the Renaissance thinkers believed that, and it was for them more than a taste or an opinion. Christ was the Way, the Truth, and the Life; all of the greatest among them, with the possible exception of Machiavelli, believed that too, even when they rebelled against it. How to reconcile it all, in a coherent and glorious whole? That struggle gives us the Renaissance.
I could multiply examples of this drive to reconcile apparent contradictions, to subordinate a lower truth to a higher, to adapt pagan wisdom to Christian scriptures in surprising and revealing ways, to “baptize”
eros
, to see as manifest in our age what the pagans had glimpsed fitfully in theirs. Michelangelo covers the Sistine ceiling with imposing portraits of the Jewish prophets—and the Greek oracles! All point toward Jonah, the unwilling prophet fairly falling into the sanctuary below. Why Jonah? Because he is a foreshadowing of the resurrected Christ: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). Philip Sidney pens a long romance, the
Arcadia
, examining man’s fallen will, his foolish attempts to evade divine Providence, and the disorder in his loves. It is a thoroughly Protestant work, set in pagan Greece, with characters searching for a truth that has not yet been revealed to them. It is one of the principal influences upon Shakespeare’s
Winter’s Tale,
whose characters go by an indiscriminate mix of Greek and Latin names, and who live in a Sicily that seems unfixed from any age, and a Bohemia with a shoreline, unfixed from any geographical place. The French poet Du Bartas, inspired by Ambrose’s
Hexameron
, writes
The Divine Weeks
on God’s creation of the world in seven days, and incorporates into his poetry the arguments of the ancient materialist Lucretius, on lightning and volcanoes and the wheeling of the stars.
9
eros
, to see as manifest in our age what the pagans had glimpsed fitfully in theirs. Michelangelo covers the Sistine ceiling with imposing portraits of the Jewish prophets—and the Greek oracles! All point toward Jonah, the unwilling prophet fairly falling into the sanctuary below. Why Jonah? Because he is a foreshadowing of the resurrected Christ: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). Philip Sidney pens a long romance, the
Arcadia
, examining man’s fallen will, his foolish attempts to evade divine Providence, and the disorder in his loves. It is a thoroughly Protestant work, set in pagan Greece, with characters searching for a truth that has not yet been revealed to them. It is one of the principal influences upon Shakespeare’s
Winter’s Tale,
whose characters go by an indiscriminate mix of Greek and Latin names, and who live in a Sicily that seems unfixed from any age, and a Bohemia with a shoreline, unfixed from any geographical place. The French poet Du Bartas, inspired by Ambrose’s
Hexameron
, writes
The Divine Weeks
on God’s creation of the world in seven days, and incorporates into his poetry the arguments of the ancient materialist Lucretius, on lightning and volcanoes and the wheeling of the stars.
9
Or take this account of a renovation. Julius II, who spent more time on horseback with a spear than at a fireside with manuscripts, wanted Rome to be more than a dilapidated hole. It should be the city to which all the newly centralized European nations would look, just as all worldly wisdom must find its completion in the wisdom that transcends it, the wisdom of God’s revelation as taught by the Church. That was his aim. So he needed to finish a project begun by his predecessor Nicholas: to rebuild the Basilica of Saint Peter, not least because the old basilica’s walls were buckling dangerously.
Part of his scheme involved painting a small library, tucked behind the sanctuary of the Sistine Chapel. So he hired the popular young Raphael to paint the
meaning
of a library in the Vatican: that is, Raphael was to paint the Church’s embrace of all truth, from whatever source, and its ordering of the truths toward Christ. If you can understand what Raphael is doing in this room, you can guess what Milton is up to with his classical devils in
Paradise Lost
, or what Castiglione means by his Platonic ladder of love, described by a Cardinal, in
The Book of the Courtier
, or why Bernini sculpts a classical Cupid as the angel about to pierce the heart of the holy nun in his
Saint Teresa in Ecstasy
.
meaning
of a library in the Vatican: that is, Raphael was to paint the Church’s embrace of all truth, from whatever source, and its ordering of the truths toward Christ. If you can understand what Raphael is doing in this room, you can guess what Milton is up to with his classical devils in
Paradise Lost
, or what Castiglione means by his Platonic ladder of love, described by a Cardinal, in
The Book of the Courtier
, or why Bernini sculpts a classical Cupid as the angel about to pierce the heart of the holy nun in his
Saint Teresa in Ecstasy
.
PC Myth: The World Was Believed to Be Flat Before ColumbusA favorite classroom myth to aggrandize the Renaissance, deprecate the Church, and slander the Middle Ages is that before Christopher Columbus, people thought the world was flat. While almost everyone today knows this “discovery tale” is a myth, the nineteenth-century Romantics repeated it enough that it was accepted as true.Of course, the Earth was widely held to be a sphere centuries before Columbus set sail, but who wants to credit premodern man with such insights?
Consider the most famous of Raphael’s paintings in the library, his
School of Athens
. You can hardly find a work that better illustrates the confidence, almost arrogance, of Renaissance man, and yet there is a profound humility to it too, a deference to the excellence of the ancients. Raphael has portrayed the men of his day as the philosophers of old, all in one place and time, even though those philosophers spanned many lands and centuries. Leonardo, as I’ve mentioned, serves for Plato. He’s carrying his
Timaeus
, a dialogue on the creation of the world, and is gesturing upward, towards divine truth. His younger comrade and pupil, Aristotle (whose head may be that of Raphael’s fellow painter Titian), gestures forward and slightly downward, towards the earth. He is carrying his
Nicomachean Ethics
, that practical guide on how to be trained in the moral virtues and live among men in the world. The rest of the scene is studded with Renaissance and classical pagan stars. The lonely and intense Michelangelo is brooding in the foreground: he is the philosopher Heraclitus, who believed that the fundamental element of the universe was fire. The bald fellow with the compasses, teaching the lads in the lower right, is the geometrician Euclid, or rather is the architect Bramante, the genius whose charge lay the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. Raphael himself looks boldly out towards us, the third head from the right at the top.
School of Athens
. You can hardly find a work that better illustrates the confidence, almost arrogance, of Renaissance man, and yet there is a profound humility to it too, a deference to the excellence of the ancients. Raphael has portrayed the men of his day as the philosophers of old, all in one place and time, even though those philosophers spanned many lands and centuries. Leonardo, as I’ve mentioned, serves for Plato. He’s carrying his
Timaeus
, a dialogue on the creation of the world, and is gesturing upward, towards divine truth. His younger comrade and pupil, Aristotle (whose head may be that of Raphael’s fellow painter Titian), gestures forward and slightly downward, towards the earth. He is carrying his
Nicomachean Ethics
, that practical guide on how to be trained in the moral virtues and live among men in the world. The rest of the scene is studded with Renaissance and classical pagan stars. The lonely and intense Michelangelo is brooding in the foreground: he is the philosopher Heraclitus, who believed that the fundamental element of the universe was fire. The bald fellow with the compasses, teaching the lads in the lower right, is the geometrician Euclid, or rather is the architect Bramante, the genius whose charge lay the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. Raphael himself looks boldly out towards us, the third head from the right at the top.
Plato and Aristotle, the contemplative and the practical philosopher, sum up between them the greatest wisdom that man can attain on his own. But in the painting there’s something else between them. It’s hard to notice, because it’s something that Raphael shows is
not
there. The
School of Athens
, with all its amazing series of arches, resembles, suspiciously, the incomplete Saint Peter’s where Raphael is working, and all the classical lines of perspective merge in the center of the circle suggested by the arch above Plato and Aristotle, a space where there are the clouds and sky—nothing else. Raphael has emulated his masters here. From Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam
he has learned to suggest, by emptiness, something that transcends not only the viewer but even the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle. From Leonardo’s
Last Supper
he has learned that mathematics can merge into philosophy and theology. He has seen how Leonardo funnels the lines of the architecture of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie into the architectural structure of his painting, directing all perspective towards the quietly radiant center, the head of Christ.
not
there. The
School of Athens
, with all its amazing series of arches, resembles, suspiciously, the incomplete Saint Peter’s where Raphael is working, and all the classical lines of perspective merge in the center of the circle suggested by the arch above Plato and Aristotle, a space where there are the clouds and sky—nothing else. Raphael has emulated his masters here. From Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam
he has learned to suggest, by emptiness, something that transcends not only the viewer but even the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle. From Leonardo’s
Last Supper
he has learned that mathematics can merge into philosophy and theology. He has seen how Leonardo funnels the lines of the architecture of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie into the architectural structure of his painting, directing all perspective towards the quietly radiant center, the head of Christ.
We celebrate Plato and Aristotle. We honor them by walking in their steps. But we acknowledge that, alone, they are incomplete. All the wisdom of man is incomplete. Hence the
School of Athens
stands opposite another painting, the
Disputa
, a strange two-level work of men on earth and angels with the Trinity in heaven, and again the sky between. In this painting too Raphael has painted men of his day (including an accusatory Savonarola), now as cardinals, bishops, and popes from the early Church. But here there is something besides clouds and space in the center. Raphael directs the eye to behold what bridges the gap between earth and heaven, the worshippers below and the saints above, human theology and divine truth. Here, located against the sky, is something more than a space, a cloud, a patch of blue. It is the Eucharist, the sacrament which, as Raphael and Julius and their fellow Catholics believed, makes the glorified Christ mysteriously yet really present in the sacrifice of the Mass. In this most profound gesture of reverence, the classical Raphael and the rough-and-ready actors of the old Corpus Christi plays were at one.
School of Athens
stands opposite another painting, the
Disputa
, a strange two-level work of men on earth and angels with the Trinity in heaven, and again the sky between. In this painting too Raphael has painted men of his day (including an accusatory Savonarola), now as cardinals, bishops, and popes from the early Church. But here there is something besides clouds and space in the center. Raphael directs the eye to behold what bridges the gap between earth and heaven, the worshippers below and the saints above, human theology and divine truth. Here, located against the sky, is something more than a space, a cloud, a patch of blue. It is the Eucharist, the sacrament which, as Raphael and Julius and their fellow Catholics believed, makes the glorified Christ mysteriously yet really present in the sacrifice of the Mass. In this most profound gesture of reverence, the classical Raphael and the rough-and-ready actors of the old Corpus Christi plays were at one.
“That’s a painter hired by a pope,” you say, “but what about someone not taking his pay from the Church? How about someone working at a trade condemned from the pulpit, rubbing shoulders against whores and ruffians, and gathering crowds on the wrong side of the river?” How about Shakespeare, then?
Consider his play
Measure for Measure,
now popular in academia for its darkness, its willingness to probe the seamy underside of urban life. The Duke of Vienna, who has spoiled his people by lenience, failing to enforce laws regarding decency and morality, pretends to leave the city, giving his authority over to the puritanical Angelo, of whom it is said, according to one waggish whoremonger, “his urine is congealed ice” (III.ii.111). The Duke then assumes the disguise of a friar to keep an eye on both Angelo and Vienna. His subaltern cleans house: he shuts down the brothels and revives a dusty law that condemns fornicators to death. One young man, Claudio, betrothed but not officially married to his beloved Julietta, is condemned for making her pregnant. Claudio sends his friend the wag to beg his sister, Isabella, a novice of the severe Sisters of Saint Clare, to leave her convent and appeal to Angelo for mercy. Isabella does, in words of such hardly restrained passion that they move Angelo—but not to mercy. He requests another interview, at which he puts the moral and legal case to Isabella thus: if she will sleep with him, he will spare her brother.
Measure for Measure,
now popular in academia for its darkness, its willingness to probe the seamy underside of urban life. The Duke of Vienna, who has spoiled his people by lenience, failing to enforce laws regarding decency and morality, pretends to leave the city, giving his authority over to the puritanical Angelo, of whom it is said, according to one waggish whoremonger, “his urine is congealed ice” (III.ii.111). The Duke then assumes the disguise of a friar to keep an eye on both Angelo and Vienna. His subaltern cleans house: he shuts down the brothels and revives a dusty law that condemns fornicators to death. One young man, Claudio, betrothed but not officially married to his beloved Julietta, is condemned for making her pregnant. Claudio sends his friend the wag to beg his sister, Isabella, a novice of the severe Sisters of Saint Clare, to leave her convent and appeal to Angelo for mercy. Isabella does, in words of such hardly restrained passion that they move Angelo—but not to mercy. He requests another interview, at which he puts the moral and legal case to Isabella thus: if she will sleep with him, he will spare her brother.
The Duke, who has been playing spiritual counselor to Claudio and Julietta, arranges a subterfuge. He instructs Isabella to agree, but on condition of utter silence and darkness; and he arranges that Angelo’s former betrothed, a woman named Mariana whom he jilted when she lost her dowry, should sleep with him in Isabella’s place, unbeknownst to Angelo. On the next day, however, Angelo, fearing that the brother would avenge the sister’s disgrace, orders that Claudio be executed anyway. The Duke, revealing himself to the jailer, forestalls the execution. Still in the guise of the friar, he instructs Isabella and Mariana to be present among the crowds later in the day, when the Duke will return to Vienna and redress complaints against his second in command.
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