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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 58, Fisher, Maciavelli, and Durer:
May 3, 2004:
The Popes and the church were not the only religious or imperial hard liners who found execution a viable resort in this time period. Saint John Fisher (1469-1535) got his reward from the notorious King Henry VIII of England. Fisher was chancellor of Cambridge and bishop of Rochester while Paul III held the papal throne.
Though a staunch supporter of the pope and the church, Fisher was an active humanist. He was also a very good salesman. He persuaded the mother of Henry VIII to found two colleges. The first was Christ's College and the second was St. John's College at Cambridge.
The pope really liked Fisher because he took a stand against the heretics of the day, those troublesome Lutherans. His controversialist writings against these heresies won him recognition throughout Europe. He also fought against state interference in church business in the House of Lords. He believed that any reform should come from within the church.
Fisher got into trouble when Henry, needing a male heir, wanted to dump his wife Catherine. He had already secretly married Anne Boleyn. Fisher refused to go along and had the poor judgement to defend Catherine. This pleased the pope and enraged Henry who managed to get his way through the Act of Supremacy. This act, passed in 1534 made Henry the head of the Church of England. It gave him authority over the whole deal and shut out the pope. Fisher refused to recognize this act and refused to take an oath of fealty. That was not bad enough, but the pope made Fisher a cardinal. You got to know that tore it for the king.
Fisher was imprisoned in the Tower of London along with Sir Thomas More who also refused the oath. We'll get to More in a bit. This Tower of London and Tower Hill have an interesting and bloody history of their own. A number of famous people got condemned and lost their heads in these environments. Fisher was tried and condemned for treason. He was executed on Tower Hill on June 22, 1535. It was not a grand victory for Henry. Fisher would have died anyway as he was already seriously ill.
Let's us now look at a person whose very name creates visions of amorality in the minds of many of us. This is the famous Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). Machiavelli was an Italian writer, statesman, Florentine patriot, and political theorist. His major work which created his reputation is The Prince.
Although he had wealthy relatives, Machiavelli's immediate family was of modest means. As a consequence he was not educated in the formal way. He did not learn Greek at all. Most of his learning came from his own reading. As a result he had neither the polish nor the excesses of the Humanists. His was a mind of independent thought. His activities and writings demonstrate that.
At this time, Florence was a free republic. Machiavelli got his break in 1498 when the government of Florence changed with the execution of Savonarola, who had been the leader of Florence until then. You may remember Savonarola as the man who converted Pico della Mirandola to Orthodoxy. Now we find him being executed for heresy. Whatever! With the change in government, Machiavelli, got the post of head of the second chancery. As things evolved, he ended up as director of foreign affairs and defense. So he combined the equivalent functions of the American secretaries of defense and state.
In this position he traveled to other countries often and began his observations and writings that would ultimately lead to his book, The Prince. All the time, he managed to move up in the government of Florence. He finally gained the confidence of the chief magistrate. In that position of power he was able to try out some of the ideas and theories that would make him famous. He created a militia of recruits for Florence to replace the very unreliable mercenaries previously used.
He also continued to travel and to write. Much of his travel was caused by snorting contests between the various popes, emperors, and kings. Germany and France created large problems in Machiavelli's attempts to keep his beloved Florence neutral. It was no good. In 1511 The army of Pope Julius II was on its way to punish Florence for complicity with Louis XII of France. In 1512, Machiavelli's chief was deposed and the Medici family returned to power in Florence.
These rulers were not nice to Machiavelli at all. They found reasons to throw him into prison and to torture him. Even under severe duress he refused to confess and he was finally released. However, he was reduced to poverty and had restrictions put on his activities. He moved to a small property he had inherited and began to write his two most famous works. These were the afore mention The Prince and Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.
Machiavelli imagined and dreamed of his new prince in much the same way the Hebrews imagined and dreamed of their Savior of the line of David. The prince was to unify and restore Italy. It was for the means he saw as necessary that Machiavelli gained his reputation as the advocate of amorality. In his mind, everything available could be used as a tool of power for the state. He noticed that men seemed to be wicked. A society of pure men did not exist and it was the function of the state to bring about an uncorrupt society.
As the politics of Florence evolved, Maciavelli was again able to gain some favor. This got hin the post of official historiographer of the republic at the University of Florence. At this time he created other works and he continued to work on his history of Florence. he presented 8 books to Pope Clement VII in 1525. It could be said that his history was creative. It is not considered to be his best work, being for the most part political rather than exhaustive.
In 1527, The Holy Roman emperor Charles V sacked Rome and restored Florence to freedom. This was little help to Machaivelli. He was on the outside, having had a bit too much favor in his last years with the Medici. The rejection was too much for him and he became ill and died.
We can go to Germany now for a quick look at Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528).Durer was a German painter, engraver, and theoretician. He is the first German artist to gain recognition outside Germany and is considered by most of those who study art to be the Greatest renaissance painter of Germany. He was quite prolific and did religious works, altarpieces, portraits, self portraits, engravings, and woodcuts. He also wrote treatises on art, geometry, and fortifications.
Perhaps Dürer's chief achievement was to adapt the concepts
of the Italian Renaissance to the tastes of Germany. He used perspective
in his work to produce very realistic detail. His humanist bent
shows up in much of his work. Unlike many of his contemporaries,
he did sign his work making them very identifiable.
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