Showing posts with label Petrarch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Petrarch. Show all posts

Monday, November 23, 2015

To Restore Rome

The Glory of the Roman Empire was seen by the Middle Ages as a Golden Age. Petrarch lamented the loss of learning and art between the peak of the Roman Empire and his own age. In Petrarch's lifetime, however, there seemed to be a chance to restore the greatness that was. The post of the supposed "King John I of France" mentions the figure who tried to elevate the humble Giannino di Guccio to the throne of France, Cola di Renzo (c.1313 - 8 October 1354).

Cola di Rienzo
at the Capitoline Museum
Cola di Renzo himself had humble origins. The son of a washer-woman and a tavern-keeper, he inspired himself with stories of Classical Rome, its literature and history and figures until he decided to make it his life's work to restore Rome to greatness. At this time, remember, Italy was a collection of city-states; Rome was the capital of nothing but itself, and even the popes had forsaken it for Avignon.

After becoming a notary, he was sent as a messenger to Pope Clement VI in Avignon, whom he impressed so much that he was given a place at the pope's court. He eventually returned to Rome and spent a few years gathering support for a "coup" to eliminate corrupt politicians. On the Feast of Pentecost in 1357 (20 May), dressed in armor, he made a speech at the Capitol in which he outlined his plans for a new and restored Rome.

The crowd accepted this speech, and the person who made it, and proclaimed him their ruler. Many politicians and public servants, seeing the tide of popular opinion turning against them, fled the City. Cola di Rienzo took the title of Tribune. Petrarch wrote a letter, urging him to continue in his great work.

Having succeeded in taking over Rome and making changes, he set his sights on restoring/uniting the entire Roman Empire, starting with Italy. He sent letters to all the major cities, bidding them send representatives. He also sent to the rival Holy Roman Emperors, Louis IV and Charles IV, to appear before him. He then celebrated a "festival of unity" in which he was officially proclaimed Tribune.

Unfortunately, although the Kingdom of Naples recognized him, no other political entity felt compelled to declare loyalty to him. Pope Clement VI, wary that di Rienzo's aim would include making the papacy subordinate to him, sent a league to arrest him. It was a little over six months since the speech in Rome that had seemed to cement his future good fortune. His initial success against his enemies did not last, and in December of the same year in which he was declared Tribune, he fled Rome, first hiding in Naples, and then for two years in a mountain monastery.

In 1350 he appealed to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who held him under arrest for a year before turning him over to Clement. He was condemned to death, but the sentence was delayed (possibly due to pleas for leniency from Petrarch) until Clement died. His successor, Pope Innocent VI, sent him back to Rome with the title Senator and the mission to revive his goal of restoring Rome's glory. Within weeks, however, his arbitrary decisions had led to his death by an angry mob.

When two of his goals—the unification of Italy and the reduction of the pope's temporal power—were achieved in the 19th century, Cole di Rienzo was seen as a visionary and a praise-worthy historical figure.

Monday, February 3, 2014

An English Mercenary

Funerary monument to Hawkwood
This is the story of how an English soldier of no particular background rose to such prominence that a monument to him sits in Florence, Italy.

John Hawkwood was born about 1320, perhaps in Essex; anecdotes that he apprenticed in London as a tailor before becoming a soldier cannot be substantiated. He served in the Hundred Years War under Edward III. He may have fought at Crécy and Poitiers—again, we cannot be sure of his exact whereabouts during the war—but it is certain that he was no longer employed as a soldier once the Treaty of Brétigny was concluded in 1360.

The life of a soldier suited him, apparently—or he simply had no desire to find passage back to England. He joined one of the mercenary companies that sprang up on the continent. These groups, with no particular allegiance to any nationality and willing to fight for pay against anyone, were called Free Companies. He soon became a member of one called the "Great Company of English and Germans," also known as the White Company. By 1362 he was leading the White Company in battles all over Italy.

Hawkwood was shrewd—some would say "dishonest" or "unethical." Knowing that the White Company was a military force to be reckoned with, he would manipulate the Italian city-states that wanted help. If one offered a contract for the Company's services, he would go to their potential employer's enemy and ask for more money to refuse the initial contract. Sometimes he would be paid simply not to fight for the other side. Florence did this for three months in 1375, when the White Company was employed by Pope Gregory XI to fight Florence.

Despite this behavior, the White Company under Hawkwood gained a reputation for sticking to a contract and not deserting the battle or acting like lawless marauders once a battle was done. Military discipline was one of the commodities you gained when employing the White Company.

Besides being a mercenary, his life dovetailed with other historical events. In 1368, Edward III's son Lionel of Antwerp married Violante Visconti, daughter of then-ruler of Milan, Galeazzo II Visconti. Hawkwood was in attendance and might have met some of the other wedding guests: Geoffrey Chaucer, Petrarch, and the French chronicler Jean Froissart.

John Hawkwood died on 17 March 1394 in Florence. He had lived at that point for several years in peaceful retirement, enjoying the citizenship and pension and villa Florence had given him. Praised for his part in maintaining Florentine independence, he was buried with state honors. Plans for a bronze statue were abandoned due to cost, but 40 years later a monument was created for him by Paolo Uccello, a fresco designed to resemble bronze.

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Beast of Provence

The summit of Mont Ventoux.
Beyond the tower is a chapel built in the 15th century.
The "Beast of Provence" (also known as the "Giant of Provence" or "Bald Mountain") is actually Mont Ventoux [Mount Windy] in Provence. You have probably seen it on television: it is a major part of the Tour de France. It is made challenging not only because it is the highest mountain in the region, but also because of the high winds near the summit.

Winds blow over 50 miles per hour for the majority of the year, and speeds of 200 miles per hour have been recorded. The road over the mountain is often closed due to wind conditions.

The history of the Beast has always included an aura of foreboding, not just because of the wind. Its limestone peak—which can be seen from miles away—allows only sparse vegetation to grow, and so "Bald Mountain" appears to be barren and imposing.

Today is the anniversary of Petrarch's (1304-1374) ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336. The writer claimed he was the first to do so since antiquity, even though his very own account mentioned meeting an old shepherd who had climbed it 50 years earlier. Petrarch has been cited as the first person to climb mountains for pleasure, incidentally creating "environmental writing" along the way by describing the surroundings and being inspired to introspection by them. (One of his musings at the peak is on his years of love for Laura.)

It is unlikely, however, that Petrarch was the first person to climb the mountain since antiquity—even besides the old shepherd. Jean Buridan (c.1300-1361) took a break from teaching at the University of Paris to climb the Beast, probably years before Petrarch. As for doing it "for pleasure": there are German writing from the 10th and 11th centuries about climbing mountains as a pastime.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

More than a Musician

We so often study famous people in isolation, forgetting that their lives and successes probably overlapped other well-known people. Imagine the possibilities when people of vision and ingenuity met with and influence each other?

Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) is not a well-known name today, but in his lifetime he was acknowledged as the greatest musician of the age, and his own works and his connections with others are worth knowing. In his lifetime, he was a diplomat, a soldier, a poet, a composer and music theorist. Like most university-educated men of the Middle Ages, de Vitry was in Holy Orders and held several clerical positions, finally being appointed Bishop of Meaux by Pope Clement VI.

Some of the motets he composed have survived. His chief contribution to music, however, was in the evolving system of notation. In Ars nova notandi (Art of the new notation), de Vitry improved on Franconian musical notation that had been set out in Franco of Cologne's Ars Cantus Mensurabilis (The Art of Measurement of Songs); de Vitry recognized the existence and importance of duple and triple meter. For connoisseurs of music:
In the treatise Vitry recognizes the existence of five note values (duplex longa, longa, brevis, semibrevis, and minima), codifies a system of binary as well as ternary mensuration at four levels (maximodus, modus, tempus, prolatio), and introduces four time signatures. He also discusses the use of red notes to signal both changes of mensural meaning and deviations from an original cantus firmus. (source)
And of course he knew other accomplished figures of his age, such as Petrarch, Nicholas Oresme, and Gersonides. In fact, de Vitry's musical approach to mathematics (the two subjects were closely linked in medieval education) prompted him to request of Gersonides a work to prove a theory. This 1342 work, De harmonicis numeris (On the harmony of numbers), maintained that, "except for the pairs 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 8-9, it is impossible for two numbers that follow each other to be composed of the factors 2 and 3." (source) The result is known today as the Theorem of Gersonides.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Why "Middle" Ages?

So if the phrase "Dark Ages" was coined by Petrarch to describe the loss/lapse of much classical learning and advancement since the Decline of Rome (5th century CE), why do we say "Middle Ages," and what were they in the "middle" of?

Petrarch's term didn't become a widespread label; the centuries immediately following him didn't study history dogmatically the way a modern liberal studies education demands. It was a German classical scholar named Christoph Cellarius (1638-1707) who standardized the three general periods of the past two millenia with his mammoth work Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period. "Medieval" was from the Latin medium aevum (literally, "middle age"). This triple division struck the right note and entered the realm of conventional wisdom.

Still, the "Dark Ages" didn't go out of fashion, although its definition and popularity shifted. The American Cyclopaedia in 1883 said:
The Dark Ages is a term applied in its widest sense to that period of intellectual depression in the history of Europe from the establishment of the barbarian supremacy in the fifth century to the revival of learning about the beginning of the fifteenth, thus nearly corresponding in extent with the Middle Ages.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911) defined the Dark Ages as the period from the fifth to the tenth centuries, affirming that "the Dark Age was a reality."

In 1929, however, the 14th edition of Britannica removed the term "Dark Ages" and stated:
the contrast, once so fashionable, between the ages of darkness and the ages of light has no more truth in it than have the idealistic fancies which underlie attempts at mediaeval revivalism.
A scholarly view of the "Dark Ages" has largely been eliminated in favor of the generic term "medieval" to distinguish between the Classical and Modern eras (Cellarius would be proud). In fact, because artistic, cultural, political and technological (et alia) development is a continuum, the division of "eras" has been muddled with a recent trend to refer to the Renaissance as the "Early Modern Era" (I remember a lecture from my grad school days in which we joked that maybe the Middle Ages would soon be labeled the "Really Early Modern Era."

Part of this desire to eliminate the concept of "dark" Ages is also 20th century understanding that not only was the period not a complete intellectual wasteland, but also that there were at least three "re-births" of education and art prior to what we think of as the European Renaissance.

But that's a topic for another day.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Why "Dark" Ages?

Once in a time known as the Dark Ages
There lived a legend whose coming had been foretold
by the great prophet Merlin.
This is the opening of a 1999 film on Joan of Arc. Joan's dates were 1412-1431, a far cry from anyone's idea of the Dark Ages.* What were the Dark Ages, exactly? The term is commonly used to refer to a time when education lapsed and "not much happened." Well, the amount that was happening could fill a daily blog for quite awhile.

The concept of a Dark Age is credited to Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), who traveled Europe looking for Latin classics. The story goes that, upon discovering a "lost" collection of the letters of Cicero (106-43 BCE) in the 1330s, he expressed his disgust that such splendor had existed long ago but not preserved or improved upon in the intervening years:
Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offense and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

Essentially, for Petrarch, the Dark Ages was that period between the glory that was Rome and the glory that was his own era. Nowadays, if the term "Dark Ages" is used at all, it is used for the first half of the Middle Ages, denoting the period right after the fall of Rome to about 1100.

So where/when did we start talking about the "Middle" Ages?

[to be continued]

*And don't get me started on "Merlin" having a prophecy about Joan.