Renaissance debate
Topic: Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Changing Cultural Traditions"
Meaning
The Renaissance debate is about how new the Renaissance really was. "Renaissance" means "rebirth". In 1860 Jacob Burckhardt described it as a sharp break, in which a "modern" humanist culture replaced the church-controlled Middle Ages. Later historians say this is exaggerated. Scholars already knew Greek and Roman culture before it, religion stayed central to life, and many "Renaissance" features go back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Europe also learned a great deal from India, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia and China. Older history books ignored this because they were written from a Europe-centred point of view.
Example
The English historian Peter Burke argued that Burckhardt exaggerated two things: the "rebirth" of Greek and Roman culture, and the idea that a non-Christian outlook replaced the Christian one. Some historians even find a similar flowering of literature and art in ninth-century France.
Don't confuse with
- Burckhardt's view of the Renaissance: Burckhardt saw it as the birth of modern, individual man. The debate questions how sharp and how purely European that change was, but it accepts that some real changes took place.