While the Great Schism of the papacy played out following the Avignon period, the glories and excesses of the Renaissance were being realized. Painters, sculptors, artists, and poets—by blending paganism and Christianity—sought to capture the essence of Greek and Roman splendor as expressed through art and literature. Amidst the creative explosion, the popes sought to elevate Rome to new heights and restore her former glory.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 23: The Renaissance
In the midst of the pre-Reformation movement was the European Renaissance—also called the Italian Renaissance—which covered the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and ushered in the modern era. In this cultural period, politics incorporated the custom of diplomacy, while science relied more on observation and induction, where conclusions were drawn from a part to a whole, or from particulars to generals. This was also a period of education reform, and in the arts, particularly oil painting, natural realism was the new aim, therefore new techniques were developed to achieve it. Accomplished artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo soon emerged and helped define the Renaissance.
While the period has its origin in fourteenth-century Florence, it soon spread to other Italian city-states, such as Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, and Rome, among many others. Later, the culture flooded into western Europe. Of course, there was no true nation of Italy at the time, nor an Italian language; those would come centuries later, along with the recognized territorial boundaries featured on modern maps of the peninsula. So, in referring to Italy, I do so merely to frame a historic region and period for the contemporary mind. That said, the Renaissance witnessed the revival of antiquity, wherein Latin manuscripts were copied and circulated. And, after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, exiles from Byzantium fled to Italy and filled the country with classical Greek literature. This literary awakening eventually spread to Europe as well. Scholars began to focus on humanism, which is what we call the humanities today—otherwise known as liberal arts. The term humanism has been used to encompass a spate of activities and ideas, but during the Renaissance, it had two important, harmonious meanings:
“First, there is social (sometimes called civic) humanism, which describes the outlook of the upper middle class in the Italian cities during the Renaissance.”
Writes Norman F. Cantor in The Civilization of the Middle Ages.
“The upper bourgeoisie, glorying in its new political power, expressed its independence by placing great emphasis on human autonomy and on the value and grandeur of the city-state. The new class imitated the French aristocracy of the thirteenth century, taking up the aristocratic education, style, and courtly life that they considered suitable to their own emancipation and to their equality with the northern aristocrats. Social humanism inspired a passionate civic patriotism, a belief that all urban resources should be applied to the defense and beautification of the republican commune.
“The second major aspect of humanism was the intellectual movement, based on Platonic philosophy, which emphasized the primacy of human values and individual creativity over feudal and ecclesiastical traditions and institutions. Humanist philosophers believed that the human mind was capable of deciding for itself without relying on traditional authority. In both its social and intellectual aspects, humanism drew strength and inspiration from the Greek and Roman classics, which taught the value of the city-state and its self-governing urban elite and upheld the critical powers of the individual human mind.”
Humanists in Italy focused on the study of Scripture using their newfound philosophy, which they mingled with notions from secular classical literature. Many humanists were dedicated Christians, yet, like the Neoplatonists and Gnostics before them, Christian humanists of the Renaissance sought to infuse their religion with pagan philosophy and mysticism. Despite these leanings, Rome—seat of the mother church—was in fact the spiritual and intellectual center for these humanists. More to the point, several popes were humanists as well, hence their full support of the arts during the Renaissance.
Humanism at the time did not merely denote the philosophy and intellectual bent of the Italian nobility, where the sole focus was the humanities as it is today; humanism also emphasized the so-called “genius of man,” and in fact praised the ability of the human mind, which was considered to be “extraordinary.” This kind of man-worship was at the heart of humanism, while its proponents looked back to the literature, language, and values of ancient Rome and Greece, as these were viewed as the twin epitomes of man’s great achievements.
What shaped the Italian Renaissance was fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian culture itself. The wealth of the Italian elite and the structure of society in the city-states, with their unique political systems, saw to the development of the Renaissance as a full-blown cultural movement, rather than a passing expression of ideas and art from a scant few. Europe would look to Italy as the forerunner of cultural rebirth as it emerged from the feudal despotism of the middle ages. Italy was able to do this via its vast wealth, together with the political structure of its powerful city-states. Unlike the antiquated feudal economy that was tied to land …
“By the latter part of the thirteenth century, Italy had a money economy based on trade and finance.”
Writes Norman F. Cantor.
“The late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries saw the rise of the great banking houses. The pope was the bankers’ largest single customer in Europe, since he needed an agency for the deposit and transfer of vast church funds. Money was lent in sometimes staggering sums to kings and merchants and nobles.”
In this way, the city-states of northern Italy were a collective superpower, which Europe looked to and emulated during the Renaissance. While kingdoms and principalities still existed in southern Italy, the politics of the northern Italian city-states differed from other states in Europe, in that many of those Italian governments were not under the control of kings, emperors, or longstanding oligarchs belonging to old aristocracies. Government control rotated in northern Italy, and those governments were more autonomous, with wealthy commoners among the new elite holding high office. This had been the case since the city-states gained independence in the eleventh century following the collapse of imperial power on the peninsula.
Professor Jennifer McNabb, who teaches history at Western Illinois University, adds:
“These political and economic realities helped to create a group of elites not found elsewhere in Europe: a community of citizens, drawn from the successful mercantile interests and the nobility, who, in northern Italy, began making cities rather than country estates their home. These citizens—in many of the northern states bound together by common interests, rather than divided as elsewhere in Europe, between different concerns and visions of authority in countryside and city—forged a new type of self-government: the commune. The elites in these flourishing cities seized political control of their governments. And, by the early twelfth century, the roster of communes included Lucca, Milan, Parma, Rome, Pavia, Pistoia, Verona, Bologna, Siena, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice.”
And it was in some of these powerful city-states—beginning with Florence—that the revival of antiquity emerged, which saw Italian poets like Petrarch, as well as painters, sculptors, and even architects reaching back to the classical era of pagan literature and art for inspiration. And these they interspersed with Renaissance Christianity. The renewed interest in classical knowledge was further fueled by Johann Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press, which he invented in 1439. That innovation, which revolutionized communication between peoples, would be used to even greater effect some 80 years later, during the Protestant Reformation. That would mark the beginning of the masses at last having direct access to the Scriptures in various translations.
The wealth of the Italian city-states during the Renaissance also financed the erecting of great buildings, which were adorned with art commissioned by the bourgeoisie; and that art did not magnify or exalt the Creator so much as human grandeur. Employing paint and stone, painters and sculptors sought to capture past Greek and Roman representations of human glorification, which was interrupted by the invasion of the barbarians and the coming of the Dark Ages. The Renaissance, therefore—a word that is of French origin, and which means, a new birth, or revival—was seen as a rebirth of the glories of classical antiquity. So, in a way, it was also a period of worship of the ancients. But while it was seen as a time of prosperity and great artistic achievement, it was also a time of turmoil.
During the late middle ages, political intrigue plagued the papacy, and that intrigue surmounted during the so-called Babylonian Captivity of Avignon prior to reaching its zenith in the Great Schism, wherein three rival popes claimed to be the legitimate pontiff. Italy was deeply affected by the battles for papal dominance, which dragged a great deal of Europe into the conflict and saw European republics and noble houses swinging their support from one corrupt candidate to the next. We covered this topic in episode 21 of this podcast series.
“What was to become known as the Great Schism was ended only by a series of general councils of the Church.”
Writes Alexander Lee, in his book The Ugly Renaissance.
“But even this caused massive problems. In the wake of the Schism, a group of churchmen known as conciliarists had come to believe that it was simply too dangerous to give the pope too much power. Instead, they wanted a kind of ecclesiastical parliament, convened at regular intervals, to have the final say in matters of great importance. The problem was that this was the exact opposite of what the popes wanted. After the Schism had been healed in 1417, Martin V and his successors wanted to take up the reins of power without any interference, least of all from a council filled with rustic clerics from all over Europe. Mutual loathing between the two camps threw the papacy into yet another bout of internecine warfare.”
The papacy would emerge triumphant in its war against the conciliar movement and popes would retain the supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. Despite this, a succession of popes would continue to prove corrupt, through acts of simony, nepotism, debauchery, and many other evils. Within this period of intrigue and treachery, upheaval, and the lofty Renaissance ideal the papacy would deteriorate as it moved into the Reformation era.
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
Among the first popes of the Renaissance to embrace the movement was Eugene IV, also known as Eugenius. During his reign, he sought to beautify and embellish Rome by inviting artists Fra Angelico and Donatello to the languishing city. Pope Eugene was also instrumental in helping to end the conciliar movement, but through forced concessions to European princes, which left the papacy relying more heavily on revenues from the Papal States. Pope Eugene IV was a nephew of a prior pope, Gregory XII, which speaks to the prevalent nepotism of the tainted pontificate. And Eugenius was himself guilty of nepotism in helping to establish quasi dynasties in the papacy. As a case in point, Thomas F. X. Noble, professor of history and chair of the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame, tells us that:
“Paul II, Pietro Barbo, was a nephew of Eugenius IV. Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, was a nephew of Calixtus III. Pius III, Francesco Todeschini, was a nephew of Pius II. Julius II, Giuliano della Rovere, was a nephew of Sixtus IV. And finally, the Medici family produced two popes in this period: Leo X and Clement VII.”
To clarify, prominent Roman families did not produce more than one or two popes since power had to rotate between various noble houses. It was generally accepted that the reign of one or two popes was all that was necessary for a particular family to benefit greatly from that pope’s favoritism and bestowal of patronage to family members. Professor Noble goes on to say.
“Now another way we can look at the kind of dynastic politics of Renaissance papal Rome, Eugenius IV named six nephews cardinals. He married his nieces and nephews into some of the great families of Rome and of Italy. He made his favorite nephew, Giuliano—who later became Pope Julius II—get this—archbishop of Avignon in Bologna, bishop of Lausanne, Coutances, Viviers, Monde, Ostia, and Velletri, and also Abbot of Nonantola and Grottaferrata. This is probably the biggest case of pluralism in the entire history of the church. This one man had all these positions.”
It was the role of the cardinals to elect the pope. By naming six of his nephews to the cardinalate, Eugenius—along with successive popes who would follow suit—was able to secure power and steer the election of a future pope, thus keeping the papal throne in the family until another noble house seized power. Whoever controlled the cardinals, therefore, controlled the most powerful clerical body in Christendom.
Successive popes would follow in Eugene’s footsteps in other ways too, by commissioning established Renaissance artists and architects to not only embellish existing buildings with grand works of art, but also to erect new palaces, monuments, and churches that reflected papal grandeur, such as the Sistine Chapel. The papal library was also expanded with literature from the period. In all, vast sums—mostly culled from church revenues—were expended in this colossal undertaking, which culminated in the erection of the famed Saint Peter’s Basilica. But church funds would not be enough. To raise new streams of revenue, one pope, namely Julius II, would wage war.
“Julius wanted a nation-state of his very own.”
Says Professor McNabb.
“[A]nd to get it, he put into place many of the same initiatives that propelled monarchs elsewhere in Europe to new levels of centralization and authority. But fueling those other state-building programs were revenues. And so, the Renaissance papacy too needed to become an institution growing ever more creative in its strategies for meeting its ever-expanding financial needs. This was part of the reason Julius exercised military might in expanding papal claims to the lands of the central Italian Peninsula. The Papal States, over which the pope could exercise direct authority as secular lord, were simply needed to pay the bills.”
But Julius II was one of the later Renaissance popes. Immediately following Pope Eugenius IV was Nicholas V, who ruled from 1447 – 1455. Pope Nicholas sought to be a true Renaissance pope by dedicating most of his pontificate to trying to establish Rome as the dominant political city-state in all of Italy. More than that, he wanted Rome to act as the intellectual center of Europe itself, and to further that aim, he tried to attract the greatest living Renaissance authors and artists to his city. It was said that Nicholas V possessed the greatest personal library in all of Europe, but he was not merely a patron of the arts and literature; Nicholas was an exacting pope who did not tolerate those who opposed him. Many were executed during his reign. Yet, he is also the pope who witnessed the fall of Constantinople, and whose call for a crusade to capitalize on the consequential event was ignored. Nicholas also issued a papal bull that permitted the sitting Portuguese king to round up descendants from the tribe of Judah as slaves, as mentioned in our documentary, A History of the True Hebrews.
The successor of Nicholas V was the first of the Borgias—the Spanish noble family—to rule as pope. He took the name Calixtus III and is noted for attempting his own failed crusade against the Turks. Calixtus even sold his possessions to secure and equip a fleet for the endeavor, but the people of Europe did not back him in his cause. Nepotism ran high in the papal court of Calixtus, who appointed his nephew Rodrigo to the college of cardinals, cementing his future election as Pope Alexander VI. Calixtus is also the pope who established the custom of ringing the midday church bell, which was initially meant to remind Christians to pray for crusaders.
Following Calixtus, Pope Pius II occupied the papal throne. He ruled from 1458 – 1464, and was the final Renaissance pope to attempt church reform. Pius is singular also in the fact that he did not use his papal position to amass power or benefit family members to the extent of other Renaissance popes. Pope Pius’s attempts at reform came to nothing due to great opposition from the corrupt cardinals and other clergymen. And their corruption and sinfulness during the Renaissance was hard to disguise.
“[T]he papal court thronged with rich, powerful churchmen who were utterly devoted to greed, gluttony, and lust.”
Writes Alexander Lee.
“The magnificent halls of their palaces buzzed with every variety of sin, giving the Curia a very bad name, especially among humanists like Bartolomeo della Fonte who came to Rome to pursue their art. Vicious invectives were launched against the lifestyle of Renaissance cardinals by various learned litterateurs. Even among the ordinary people of the city, the court earned a rotten reputation, and despite the magnificence of curial palaces the very word ‘cardinal’ became a term of abuse….”
And with each succeeding pope, the corruption and sinfulness of the papal court of the Renaissance seemed to worsen. Pope Paul II, who ascended the papal throne in 1464, was an obese glutton and sodomite given to violent bouts of debauchery and drunkenness that often left him vomiting. His aim, for which he expended great wealth and attention, was to restore Rome’s pagan glory through grand building projects. A few of his contemporaries wrote that he died of apoplexy, which was doubtless due to a life of excess.
In 1471, Sixtus IV was elevated to the papal throne after being elected by a conclave of eighteen cardinals, whom he bribed with many gifts. Noted for his famed project the Sistine Chapel, which is named after him, Pope Sixtus is also responsible for endorsing an assassination plot against the rival Medici family and dragging Italy into war for the sake of his nephews. In fact, enriching his family was a high priority for Pope Sixtus, and he appointed several family members, particularly his nephews, to the college of cardinals, which came with grants of land and other benefices.
“Since he was absolutely determined to make the comparatively obscure della Rovere one of Italy’s foremost noble families …”
Writes Alexander Lee.
“… Sixtus IV’s propensity for elevating his relatives to the Sacred College surpassed that of even his most nepotistic predecessors. As Machiavelli recorded, he was ‘a man of very base and vile condition … the first to show how much a pontiff could do and how many things formerly called errors could be hidden under pontifical authority.’ No fewer than six direct kinsmen were elevated in the space of just under seven years and accounted for almost a quarter of the cardinals present at the conclave after his death.”
Prior to being elected, the next pope in line, Innocent VIII, who ruled from 1484 – 1492, vowed to refrain from appointing more than one family member to a high ecclesiastical office. Following his election, Innocent broke his promise on the grounds that, as pope, he was now imbued with power that did not bind him to past oaths, particularly oaths he was forced to make in order to secure votes. Innocent VIII is unique in that he was the first pope to not only acknowledge his illegitimate children (which a pope was forbidden to have) but he also showered them with riches and high honors. Simony too was his order of business, as indulgences were routinely sold for profit, under the careful management of a trusted son. During the first year of his pontificate, Innocent VIII set his sights on suspected witches, and issued a papal bull that touched off a literal witch-hunt that was fueled by moral panic. Hundreds of women, who had nothing to do with witchcraft, were murdered as a result. Those suspected to be witches or who were labeled heretics were usually burned at the stake, on the misguided presumption that the bodies of those who were burned could not be resurrected in the judgment.
“After Innocent’s death, the most decadent of all of the Renaissance popes came to power, shortly after the fall of Granada in 1492.”
Says Professor McNabb.
“Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia, or—to use his regnal name—Pope Alexander VI. Alexander represents the zenith of papal self-involvement and corruption. The enhancement of the papacy wasn’t his primary drive. The ultimate object of his concern was his own family. Alexander had no interest in pretending to celibacy….”
The pope’s many concubines, who were the legal wives of men serving in his court, bore him several children whom he claimed openly without shame. Cesare Borgia, the most well-known of his illegitimate children, was appointed to the cardinalate and was in fact the first person to resign. Pope Alexander placed Cesare in command of the papal army and, after allying with the French, Cesare engaged in war to recapture papal states in Central Italy, one of which was carved out as his own for a brief period. Alexander VI, whose pontificate was occupied with every manner of sin, died suddenly, and his son, Cesare suffered the same fate not long after. A new pope was elected therefore, Pius III, who was set on reforming the church and bringing peace to Italy. But he would be pope for a mere twenty-six days before death came calling.
“… Giuliano della Rovere was one of the strongest personalities that ever reached the papal chair….”
Writes Will Durant in his book The Renaissance, in speaking of our next pope in line, that being Julius II.
“[T]his is the man who for a decade kept Italy in war and turmoil, freed it from foreign armies, tore down the old St. Peter’s, brought Bramante and a hundred other artists to Rome, discovered, developed, and directed Michelangelo and Raphael, and through them gave to the world a new St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the stanze of the Vatican.… [H]e reached the cardinalate at twenty-seven, and fumed and fretted in it for thirty-three years before being promoted to what had long seemed to him his manifest due.”
That of being pope. Yet the regnal name he chose linked him not to a deceased Christian or Biblical figure as with other popes, but to a Roman pagan: Julius Caesar. And upon assuming the papal chair, Will Durant writes that …
“He paid no more regard to his vow of celibacy than most of his colleagues…. Julius was stern, Jovian, passionate, impatient, readily moved to anger, passing from one fight to another, never really happy except at war…. [T]he sexagenarian pope became a soldier, more at ease in military garb than in pontifical robes, loving camps and besieging towns, having guns pointed and assaults delivered under his commanding eyes.”
In 1513, however, death would claim Julius and end his many pursuits. The pope who succeeded him was Leo X, a member of the powerful Medici family. During his pontificate, Leo would be consumed with the arts, to the neglect of his papal duties. So consumed was he in fact that he sought to complete the famed St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which he partially financed by selling indulgences. This particular sin would provoke the protest of Martin Luther. Thus, Leo X would occupy the papal chair as the glories of the Renaissance waned and the Protestant Reformation erupted around him.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: Johann Gutenberg, Petrarch, humanism, liberal arts, city-states, Renaissance, despotism, nepotism, Pope Julius II, Giuliano della Rovere, Medici, Borgia, papal court, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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