a preference for the Renaissance

The people living in the land are fierce
and we are grasshoppers compared to them.
The past is not edenic golden age
where we may lie around and pluck the fruits
but a contested land, a land of peril
and promise, a land of fear and desire.

Recently, I've posted a series of quotes about the Renaissance: a sprawling age that runs perhaps from Dante in Italy (but not Chaucer in England) to Pierre Corneille in France.

The first quote, citing Dante, the Norton World Masterpieces (this section edited by P.M. Pasinetti) says that:

«Once the notion of this grand unity of design has lost its authority, certainty about the final value of human actions is no longer to be found.»

But the proto-modernist spectacle of Frederick II was already history for Dante. At the brink of modernity, Dante - seeing everything - looks us in the eye and speaks prophecies to us, urging us to regain our senses.

Second, Christopher Dawson's thesis is that Renaissance naturalism derived its power and vitality from a tension with Christianity. Modernity is the collapse of this worldview due to a separation between these two great forces. As such, it is an intermezzo that lacks the energy to persist for long.

«The men of the Renaissance [...] turned away from the eternal and the absolute to the world of nature and human experience. They rejected their dependence on the supernatural, and vindicated their independence and supremacy in the temporal order. But thereby they were gradually led by an internal process to criticise the principles of their own knowledge and to lose confidence in their own freedom.»

("Humanism and the New Order")

For me, this quotation is a splendid key for opening the door into the promised land of cultural renewal. Why? Because if the Renaissance is the fecund confrontation between Christianity and naturalism, then cultural renewal is as simple as this: for Christians to embrace nature and experience without forgetting their absolute dependence upon God.

These points bring me, then, to Gregory Wolfe's Summer editorial in Image. He suggests that postmodernist eclecticism betrays a lack of seriousness. He also criticizes the Christian temptation to fantasize about tranquil times. So why does he propose a particular love for the Renaissance?

«That many of the initiatives and creations of the Renaissance were failures is beyond question. The eastern and western churches did not unite; the Reformation further split the church. The effort to forge a synthesis between ancient tradition and modern consciousness did not take hold, and a process of secularization did, in fact, ensue. The early efforts at reaching out to other cultures with respect were followed by harsh, colonialist methods.»

As moderns we are accustomed to judging acts by their success instead of by the ideal which inspires them. Wolfe reminds us that both success and failure can be the tracks left by desire. And what we need now is a desire to do great things and to risk spectacular failure - all in the name of the ideal who walks with us, Christ.