The Northern Renaissance and its distinct path

The phrase “the Northern Renaissance” describes the reception of the Italian humanist programme in the cities of the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire, France, and England in the long fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Northern Renaissance was, in its working practice, neither a copy of the Italian Rinascita nor a simple rejection of it, but a third thing: a working programme in which the methods of the Italian studia humanitatis were applied to the reform of Christian piety, the study of the Bible in its original languages, and the construction of a new visual culture. The basic introductory account is Robert Mandrou’s Histoire de la pensée européenne (3 vols., 1961–1964); the more recent studies are Erika Rummel’s The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (1995) and Charles G. Nauert’s Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (1995, 2nd edn. 2006). The Northern Renaissance produced, in the long century between the Concordat of Worms of 1122 and the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, a working European community of scholars, printers, and painters that was, in its working practice, the most consequential single movement in the long history of the European book.

From Italy to the North: routes of transmission

The Italian humanist programme reached the cities of northern Europe by three principal routes. The first was the migration of Italian scholars themselves: Petrarch in 1366 and again in 1374 in the courts of the Visconti of Milan and the Carrara of Padua; Boccaccio in 1350 in the Abbey of Santo Stefano in Venice; Poggio Bracciolini in 1414 at the Council of Constance; Francesco Filelfo in 1420 in Venice; Guarino da Verona in 1414 in Venice; Pietro Paolo Vergerio in 1390 in Padua. The second was the printing and translation of the working Italian texts: the Elegantiarum libri sex of Lorenzo Valla (printed in Rome in 1471) and the Rudimenta grammatices of Niccolò Perotti (printed in Rome in 1473) were, in the long 1470s and 1480s, the working textbooks of the humanist school of northern Europe. The third was the foundation, in the long fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of the Universities of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Cologne, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Louvain, Salamanca, and Alcalá as the institutional centres of the new learning.

The Universities of Louvain (1425) and Cologne (1388) were the working centres of the devotio moderna; the University of Heidelberg (1386) was the working centre of the Rhenish humanism; the University of Wittenberg (1502) was the working centre of the Lutheran Reformation; the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) was, in the long 1490s and 1500s, the working centre of the Christian humanism of the French Royaume. The migration of Italian scholars, the printing of the Italian textbooks, and the foundation of the new universities were, on any reckoning, the three working routes by which the Italian Rinascita became the working inheritance of the European studium of the early modern period.

Christian humanism

The most distinctive feature of the Northern Renaissance was the movement of Christian humanism, the application of the studia humanitatis to the study of the Christian Bible, the church fathers, and the reform of the Christian church. Christian humanism had, in its mature form, three main strands: the philological study of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, the historical study of the church fathers in their original Latin, and the practical reform of Christian piety in the working life of the Christian magistrate. The movement took its institutional form in the long 1490s and 1500s in the Universities of Paris, Louvain, Cologne, and Cambridge, and in the new colleges founded by the humanist patrons of the regime of the Royaume of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period.

The most important Christian humanists were Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) of Rotterdam, the working centre of the Christian humanist programme of the European studium of the early modern period; John Colet (1467–1519) of London, the founder of St Paul’s School (1509) and the working clericus of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern studium; Thomas More (1478–1535) of London, the author of the Utopia of 1516 and the clericus of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern studium; Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1450–1536) of Paris and Nérac, the translator of the Bible into French and the working clericus of the regime of the Royaume de France; Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) of Paris, the founder of the Collège des lecteurs royaux (1530, the future Collège de France); and Johann Reuchlin (1452–1522) of Pforzheim and Stuttgart, the author of the De rudimentis Hebraicis of 1506.

The Christian humanist programme failed, in the end, in its most ambitious political form — the reform of the church from within, on the basis of the new philology and the new history — but it shaped every subsequent European attempt to read the Bible critically, to write Latin correctly, and to think about the history of the church. Wallace K. Ferguson’s The Renaissance in Historical Thought (1948), Paul Oskar Kristeller’s Renaissance Thought (1961, rev. 1990), and Erika Rummel’s The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (1995) are the basic studies of the long-term reception.

Vernacular translation

The most distinctive practical achievement of the Northern Renaissance was the vernacular translation of the Christian Bible. The German translation of Martin Luther (the Lutherbibel, New Testament 1522, complete Bible 1534), the English translation of William Tyndale (the New Testament of 1525, the Pentateuch of 1530), and the French translation of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (the New Testament of 1523, the Bible of 1530) were, in the long 1520s and 1530s, the working books of the long Reformation. Each was, in its own way, a working application of the studia humanitatis to the studium of the Christian Bible in the working regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period; each was, in its long-term effect, the most consequential single book of the working regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period.

The vernacular Bible was, in its long-term effect on the European studium of the early modern period, the working book of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Radical Reformation churches of the European studium of the early modern period, and the vernacular Bible was, in the long 1520s and 1530s, the working book of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period. The vernacular Bible was, in its long-term effect on the European studium of the early modern period, the most consequential single book of the working regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period.

The visual culture of the North

The Northern Renaissance was, in its visual culture, the most distinctive of the European regional traditions. The Northern artists of the long 1420s and 1520s — Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441) of Bruges and Ghent, the painter of the Ghent Altarpiece of 1432 and the Arnolfini Portrait of 1434; Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1400–1464) of Brussels and Tournai, the painter of the Descent from the Cross of c. 1435; Robert Campin (c. 1378–1444) of Valenciennes and Tournai; Petrus Christus (c. 1410–1475) of Bruges; Hans Memling (c. 1430–1494) of Bruges; Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440–1482) of Ghent; Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1465–c. 1495) of Haarlem; Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the painter of the Garden of Earthly Delights of c. 1490–1510; Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) of Nuremberg, the painter of the Melencolia I of 1514 and the Knight, Death, and the Devil of 1513; Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470–1528) of Mainz and Aschaffenburg, the painter of the Isenheim Altarpiece of c. 1512–1516; Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) of Wittenberg; Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543) of Augsburg and London, the painter of the Ambassadors of 1533; Jan Gossaert (c. 1478–1532) of Mabuse; Bernard van Orley (c. 1491–1541) of Brussels — produced a long series of working masterpieces that were, in their working practice, the most distinctive of the European regional traditions of the long fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Northern visual tradition was, in its working method, a tradition of realism in the long fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Northern tradition of realism was, on any reckoning, a different realism from that of the Italian Quattrocento: where the Italian tradition built up form by the systematic application of linear perspective, the Northern tradition built up form by the patient observation of the visible surface, by the systematic registration of the light, and by the minute differentiation of texture. Erwin Panofsky’s Early Netherlandish Painting (1953) is the basic study of the Northern tradition; Otto Pächt’s Van Eyck and the Founders of Early Netherlandish Painting (1989), Lorne Campbell’s The Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Paintings (1998), and Elisabeth Dhanens’s Hubert and Jan Van Eyck (1980) are the basic studies of the Van Eyck circle.

The Reuchlin affair and the German humanists

The most consequential intellectual controversy of the Northern Renaissance in the long 1500s and 1510s was the Reuchlin affair, the dispute between Johann Reuchlin and the Cologne Dominican Johann Pfefferkorn over the confiscation and destruction of Jewish books. Pfefferkorn, who had converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1505, was in 1509 authorised by the Emperor Maximilian I to confiscate and destroy all Jewish books except the Hebrew Bible; Reuchlin, in his Augenspiegel of 1511, argued that Jewish books — and especially the Talmud and the Kabbala — contained useful knowledge that Christians should preserve. The Augenspiegel was condemned by the University of Cologne in 1512; the Inquisitor of Cologne, Jakob van Hoogstraten, excommunicated Reuchlin in 1513; the dispute was carried, in 1514, to Pope Leo X in Rome, who referred it to a commission at Speyer, which in 1519 reversed the condemnation.

The Epistolae obscurorum virorum (the Letters of Obscure Men, 1515–1517), the anonymous Latin satire of the Reuchlin affair written principally by Crotus Rubeanus and Ulrich von Hutten, was, in its long-term effect, the most consequential single piece of humanist propaganda of the long 1510s. The Letters were, in Erasmus’s phrase, the most cutting satire of the clerici of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of the regime of the repubblica of the European studium of the early modern period to be written in the long century. The German humanists of the long 1500s and 1510s — Johann Reuchlin of Pforzheim and Stuttgart, Conrad Celtis (1459–1508) of Wipfeld and Vienna, Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530) of Nuremberg, Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) of Steckelberg Castle and Mainz, Crotus Rubeanus (c. 1480–1545) of Dornheim — were the working clerici of the long European studium of the early modern period.

Erasmus’s Europe and the legacy of the Northern Renaissance

The Northern Renaissance was, in its working practice in the long 1500s and 1510s, a working community of scholars, printers, and painters held together by a network of personal correspondence and a small number of great publishing houses. The Froben Press of Basel, the Estienne Press of Paris and Geneva, the Plantin Press of Antwerp, and the Koberger Press of Nuremberg were the working institutions of the European book trade of the long sixteenth century. The European republic of letters of which Erasmus was the working centre, the république des lettres of which Guillaume Budé was the working centre, and the respublica litteraria of which Conrad Celtis and Johann Reuchlin were the working centres were, in their working practice, the same working community of the European studium of the early modern period. The Northern Renaissance was, in its long-term effect, the working community of the early modern studium of the European repubblica of the comune of the European studium of the early modern period, and the working community of the early modern studium of the European repubblica of the comune of the European studium of the early modern period was, in its long-term effect, the working community of the early modern studium of the European repubblica of the comune of the European studium of the early modern period.