Architecture, Culture, and the Arts of Byzantine Empire

Byzantine architecture

Byzantine history spans the period from the late Roman Empire to the beginning of the modern age. Constantine the Great, first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, moved his capital to Byzantion in 330, renaming the city Constantinople. The state he ruled was Byzant, but the citizens called themselves Rhomaioi (Romans).

The Byzantine Empire was heir to the Roman Empire. With the passage of time Byzantine civilization became distinct, as Greek influence increased and it dealt with the cultural impacts of Europe, Asia, and, after the seventh century, Islam.

During the Middle Ages, when the concept of Europe developed, Byzantium was in decline and isolated from the West. Thus Europe came into being without Byzantium, the successor to the Roman Empire. By the time Europe was a full-blown concept, Byzantium was no longer a remnant of the Roman Empire, and Constantinople was part of the Ottoman Empire.


Historical Background

Constantine established Constantinople as Rome’s capital, so the fall of Rome to the Goths did not end the empire, it merely relocated its center. Byzantine culture was a continuation of classical Greece and Rome but was distinctive in the way that it synthesized those influences with European and Islamic ones.

The early Byzantine period saw the replacement of the ancient gods by Christianity and the establishment of Roman law and Greek and Roman culture. The golden age lasted until the Arab and Persian invasions in the seventh century and the iconoclasm of the eighth century. The Byzantine emperors instituted administrative and financial reforms.

Eschewing the western approach of hiring foreign troops and lacking the tax base of the West, the emperors in Constantinople kept a small military. Although the western area lacked an emperor after 476, Byzantine emperors claimed to be rulers of the entire old Roman Empire, even though Byzantium’s military was insufficient for the reconquest of the West.

For most Byzantine emperors the rhetorical commitment to recapturing Rome was sufficient. Justinian I (527–565) undertook expeditions with some success, taking North Africa and Italy, but Justinian’s wars against the Ostrogoths destroyed Italy economically, devastating its urban culture.

His wars were also a great burden on the treasury. Justinian’s successors had to focus on reestablishing Byzantine finances destroyed by Justinian. They also had to deal with Persians in the east and Germans, Slavs, and Mongolians in the west.

Heraclius I (610–641) settled Huns in the Balkans to thwart the western threat. Then he bested the Persians, ending that empire. The year of Heraclius’s ascent to the throne, in Arabia Muhammad first heard the message that would send the forces of Islam across the world. By the end of Heraclius’s reign, the Muslim threat in Syria and Persia would force Byzantine attention away from the west and toward the east and south.

After initial Muslim successes in Syria and Egypt the Muslims took Persia and pressed into Byzantium several times in the seventh and eighth centuries. Leo the Isaurian (717–741) defeated the simpulan Muslim effort to take Byzantium, and the empire stabilized. Taking advantage of unsettled conditions in the Muslim Caliphate the empire retook most of Syria and reestablished itself as dominant until the 11th century.

After besting the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, the Seljuk Turks controlled Byzantium’s eastern territory. Byzantium called on its coreligionists in Europe for help against the Turks, sparking the Crusades, which produced European kingdoms in Syria and Palestine and the taking of Constantinople in 1204. Byzantium continued in Greece and retook Constantinople in 1261, but the reestablished kingdom was a small city-centered entity, and Ottoman Turks absorbed it in 1453, renaming it Istanbul.

The empire was Christian but its Christianity differed from that of the West. The Latin popes won primacy in a Europe with no centralized secular ruler, but in Byzantium the emperor kept a powerful role in the church. The Byzantine retention of the Roman concept that the emperor was nearly divine would generate a split with the West, particularly through the Iconoclastic Controversy.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

During the fourth century in the Roman Empire, classical forms declined and eastern influences became more important. Constantinople became a new center for artists in the eastern part of the empire, especially Christians. Other centers included Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. When the first two fell to the Arabs and Rome to the Goths, Constantinople was alone and supreme. The first great age came during the reign of Justinian I (483–565).

He established a code of law that imposed his religion on his subjects and set the stage for absolutism. He built the Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna (in Italy). After Justinian the empire declined, with Justinian’s conquests lost and Avars, Slavs, and Arabs threatening. Religious and political conflict also disturbed the capital.

In 730 Leo III the Isaurian came into contact with Islamic beliefs during his successful wars against the Muslims. Accepting the purity of the Muslim rejection of idols and images, he banned images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. The Iconoclastic period lasted until 843. Iconoclastic theologians regarded the worship of icons or images as pagan. Worship was reserved for Christ and God, not for the product of human hands, during the Iconoclastic Controversy.

The Iconoclastic Controversy disoriented the Byzantine Church. Byzantine religious culture and intellectual life, previously known for innovation and speculation, were stagnant from that point. A wholesale destruction of art showing inappropriate figures occurred.

Restrictions on content meant that ornamental designs and symbols such as the cross were about the limit of expression. Without human figures, mosaicists borrowed Persian and Arab designs, such as florals, and the minor arts remained vibrant.

The papacy adamantly rejected iconoclasm as a threat to the authority of the pope. Leo’s son Constantine V (740–775) was more adamantly iconoclastic than Leo. Although Byzantium abandoned iconoclasm in the ninth century, the breach persisted. The end of iconoclasm brought about the Macedonian Renaissance, beginning under Basil I, the Macedonian, in 867.

The ninth and 10th centuries were times of improved military circumstances, and art and architecture rebounded. Byzantine mosaic style became standardized, with revived interest in classical themes and more sophisticated techniques in human figures.

After the Iconoclastic Controversy resolved itself in favor of using icons, the empire flourished from 843 to 1261. During this period the arts prospered, the official language was Greek, and Christianity solidified its hold from the capital through the northern Slavic lands.

Afer the Macedonians came the Komnenian dynasty, starting in 1081 under Alexios I Komnenos. This dynasty reestablished stability after the major dislocations of Manzikert, which cost Byzantium Asia Minor. Between 1081 and 1185 the Komnenoi patronized the arts, and a period of increased humanism and emotion occurred. Examples are the Theotokos of Vladimir and the Murals at Nerezi. As well as painted icons, this period saw mosaic and ceramic examples, and for the first time the iconic form became popular through the empire.

Excellent Byzantine work of this period is also found in Kiev, Venice, Palermo, and other places outside the empire. Venice’s Basilica of St. Mark, begun in 1063, was modeled on the now destroyed Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. The Crusades, specifically the massacre of Constantinople in 1204, ended eight centuries of Byzantine culture. The Frankish crusaders of the Fourth Crusade pillaged Constantinople, generating even more destruction of Byzantine art than did the iconoclastic period.

Palaeologan Mannerism

The state reestablished in 1261 included only the Greek Peninsula and Aegean Islands. After the crusader period (1204–61), Byzantium had a simpulan surge until the Ottoman conquest. The simpulan bloom of Byzantine art, the Palaeologan Mannerism, occurred under the Palaeologan dynasty, founded by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1259.

This periode saw increased exchange between Byzantine and Italian artists, new interest in pastorals and landscapes, and the replacement of masterful mosaic work such as the Chora Church in Constantinope by narrative frescoes. Byzantine culture included women and men alike, unlike practices in classical Greece and Rome or in medieval Europe.

Women could not attend school, but aristocratic females received tutoring in history, literature, philosophy, and composition. The greatest Byzantine writer was the female historian Anna Komnene, whose biography of her father, Emperor Alexios, is among the best of medieval histories.

Byzantine art was underpinned by the art of ancient Greece, and until at least 1453 it remained strongly classical yet unique. One difference was that the ancient Greek humanistic ethic gave way to the Christian ethic. That meant that the classical glorification of man became the glorification of God, particularly Jesus.

Byzantine art replaced the classical nude with figures of God the Father, Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth, the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. Byzantine art emphasized strongly the icon, an image of Christ, Mary, a saint, or Madonna and Child used as an object of veneration either in church or at home.

Byzantine miniatures showed both Hellenistic and Asian influences. Byzantine architecture rested on Roman technical developments. Proximity to the Hellenized East meant that Constantinople’s architecture showed Eastern influences. The Basilica of St. John of the Studion, dating from the fifth century, exemplifies the Byzantine use of Roman models. Some criticize Byzantine art as lacking in realistic depictions of humans.

Byzantine art lacked some of the naturalism of ancient Greek art. Particularly in sculpture, technical expertise declined as emphasis shifted to Christian themes. However, Byzantine art had periodic technical revivals, and it maintained enough of the Greek classical influence to allow the Renaissance to happen.

Rejecting sensual pleasure, pagan idols, and personal vanity, Byzantine artists worked to serve Christianity by showing not the external perfect human form but the internal, spiritual element of the subject. Stylized and simplified representations were appropriate to this purpose.

New techniques and new levels of accomplishment characterized Byzantine silver- and goldsmithing, enamel, jewelry, and textiles. Byzantine mosaics and icons showed high levels of originality. Architecture found its highest expression in the Hagia Sophia, superior in scale and magnificence to anything in the ancient world.

Although skill levels fluctuated over time, in most Byzantine art forms certain usages, patterns, and practices remained constant. Mosaics served as the predominant decorative art for domes, half-domes, and other available surfaces of Byzantine churches.

Byzantine painting concentrated to a great extent on devotional panels. Icons were vital to both religious and secular life. Icons lacked individuality, their effectiveness resting on faithfulness to a prototype. Byzantine painting also included manuscript illumination.

Byzantine art continues in some aspects in the art of Greece, Russia, and the modern Eastern Orthodox countries. Enamel, ivory, and metal reliquaries and devotional panels were highly valued through the Middle Ages in the West. Byzantine silk was a state monopoly and a highly prized luxury.

In Italy Byzantine art was a major contributor to the Romanesque style in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne had close ties to Byzantium; he and other Frankish and Salic emperors transmitted the Byzantine influence through their domains.

The official end to Byzantium came with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but in the meantime the culture had diffused with Orthodox Christianity to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and, most significantly, Russia, which took the mantle from Constantinople after 1453. The Ottomans allowed Byzantine icon painting and small-scale arts to continue.

Byzantium transmitted classical culture to Islam and to the West. More important, Byzantine culture and religion strongly influenced the Slavs, particularly the Russians. Around 988 the Russian Vladimir converted to Byzantine Christianity. When Byzantium collapsed in 1453, Russia’s rulers took the title “caesar” (czar), that of the Byzantine emperors. The Russian czar proclaimed Moscow the “Third Rome,” after Rome and Byzantium.

The Byzantines also preserved culture, pursuing science, philosophy, and classical studies. Byzantine basic education entailed mastery of classical Greek literature, including the works of Homer, largely unknown in the West. Byzantine scholars studied and preserved the works of Plato and Aristotle, making them available to first the Islamic world and then western Europe.

Papal States

Papal States

The Papal States were originally private property, owned and controlled by the popes in Rome. After the eighth century the term was applied to the duchy of Rome and surrounding feudal estates.

Constantine the Great, the first Holy Roman Emperor, declared that the Christian Church was a legal entity in the empire. Included in this declaration were the rights of the church to own and administer landed possessions. Constantine set the example for this civil doctrine by gifting the Lateran Palace to the church.

Many noble Roman families, some with a millennium of pedigree, followed suit and donated land to the church. Some of these properties still bear the name of the family who donated them. Donation of large estates ended in the early seventh century.


During the early centuries of the papal estates, lands in the provinces of Gaul and Africa were included, but this practice stopped as non-Christian Germanic tribes conquered these areas. Most of these properties were lost in the early eighth century and by the end of that century the German invaders also confiscated the properties in Italian sectors outside Rome.

All that remained were the lands in and around Rome, which were then owned not by the church, but by the pope. The pope thus became the largest landowner in Italy. The revenues of the papal estates supported the church in Rome and the many monasteries, convents, hospitals, orphanages, and poorhouses in the area.

In times of famine it was the pope, not the emperor, who had the responsibility of providing Roman citizens with food and water. Thus the emperor could fend off political scrutiny in regard to agriculture disasters or epidemics by saying the pope was responsible for the evils visited upon the capital city.

As the number of lands under control of the papacy increased after the ninth century, the temporal power of the popes increased in proportion. In time all other rulers on the Italian peninsula had to contend with and gain the support of the popes for their social, economic, political, and military campaigns.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the pope became the most powerful leader in Italy and in all of western Europe. Even during the Ostrogothic occupation, the pope was given control over temporal affairs in the region.

In 554 Emperor Justinian I issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which entrusted the pope and the Roman senate with control of weights and measures in the area, granting them indispensable powers in the region and ensuring loyal support from the region’s rulers for the government in Byzantium.

This loyalty was felt most bitterly among the Roman populace, whose only recourse to excess taxation and conscription by the Byzantine authorities was the Roman court system, which most often sided with the emperor. Election of the pope by the people of Rome, the practice of the time, did not deter the popes from choosing the emperor over the Roman citizenry.

As the Lombards began sacking Italian cities in the north, the papacy was in danger and an appeal was made to the emperor at Byzantium. But the Lombards conquered Italy, including the papal estates, in the eighth century.

In 754 Pepin, king of the Franks, agreed to fight the Lombards and return the papal estates to the church, the first valid documents to give credence to the papal estates. Charlemagne and his armies would later protect these lands from Lombard domination. But Charlemagne exerted so much control over these lands that tensions rose between the church and the Frankish court.

The Frankish kings also maintained control over papal elections, only rarely actually dictating the outcome, but more commonly guaranteeing the elections’ taking place through the Constitution of Lothair, a legal document that kept the protection of the pope by the emperor.

In the ninth and 10th centuries the control of the papal estates came under great influence by various Italian kings and their families, including the many counts of Tusculum. The area controlled by the popes of this time had dwindled to that of the areas around the duchy of Rome.

Under the Holy Roman Emperors Otto I and Otto II, the pope was often in exile, having his allegiance to the emperors as the primary reason. Only conquest by Otto III helped return the popes to Rome.

In the 11th century the naming of popes and antipopes confused the relations of the church with the people in the papal estates. In 1059 Pope Nicholas II sought to free the papacy from the control of the Holy Roman Empire. New regulations for electing the pope were enacted, removing the choice from the hands of the emperor.

Various Norman and Italian nobles added more land to the papal estates in the 12th and 13th centuries. When Emperor Frederick II and the Roman curia quarreled in the early 13th century, the lands were again placed in jeopardy.

Many conflicts and wars in northern Italy led to French control over the papal estates. During the Avignon exile of the popes in the 14th century, France controlled not only the election of the pope, but also the papal estates.

This period saw the decline in the influence of the pope in the papal estates and the rise of the control of the region in the hands of the Colonna and Orsini families. Certain regions of the estates revolted and a near anarchy resulted in some regions. In 1353 Cardinal Albornoz brought the area again under subjection to the pope, a state that would remain in force until 1816.

Viceroyalty of New Spain

For 300 years (1521–1821), the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the richest and most important political jurisdiction in Spain’s American holdings, expanded from its original boundaries in central Mexico south and west to the Pacific Ocean; south and east to include the Yucatán Peninsula, Florida, the Caribbean, northern South America, and Central America to contemporary Panama (the latter in a jurisdictional subdivision called the Kingdom of Guatemala); and north to include significant portions of what later became the U.S. Southwest.

At the political, economic, and demographic center of this vast colony was the Basin of Mexico, at the heart of which lay Mexico City, built atop the ruins of the aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.

Consequences of Colonial Rule

Three hundred years of colonial rule bequeathed to New Spain an enduring legacy whose consequences remain amply apparent in Mexico and Central America today. Most fundamentally, the new colonial order created new social and racial hierarchies, with Spaniards dominant, Indians subordinate, and, as time passed, mestizos (“mixed-race” Spaniards and Indians) occupying a widening middle ground.

During the first century of colonial rule, the colony’s major social institutions can be identified as the following: the colonial state and its byzantine administrative apparatus; the Roman Catholic Church, both its “regular” and “secular” branches; encomienda; Indian communities; and the patriarchal family.


From around the mid-1600s, hacienda, generally accompanied by debt peonage, displaced encomienda as the principal institution governing land-labor relations between Spaniards and Indians, largely in consequence of steep population declines among Indians resulting from the ravages of epidemic diseases, which effectively rendered encomienda obsolete.

Secular Church's Power Grows

During the same period, the so-called secular church (the ecclesiastical hierarchy emanating from Rome, with the pope at its head) grew in power relative to the regular church (composed of quasi-independent missionary or “mendicant” orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, and others, each governed by specific reglas or rules).

This growing power of the secular church, densely entwined with the colonial state, was especially apparent in the most densely populated core regions, while the missionary orders remained strong in the colony’s peripheral zones, such as Yucatán, the northern deserts, and elsewhere.

The overall animo of the colonial period was for the regular church to initiate the process of conversion in peripheral areas, and, over time, as populations grew and the state extended its reach, to cede ecclesiastical authority to the encroaching secular church.

Far from a monolithic institution, the colonial church was wracked by division and conflict, both within and between its major branches. By the end of the colonial period, the Roman Catholic Church, both regular and secular, was not only one of the colony’s most important social institutions, but also far and away its largest landowner.

Contrary to a popularly held view, surviving Indian communities in New Spain and elsewhere retained various forms of collective (or “corporate”) landownership throughout the colonial period. This too became a crucial colonial legacy, especially evident in liberal efforts to privatize landownership in the decades after independence in 1821, efforts fiercely resisted by both the church and Indian communities.

Industry

The Basin of Mexico became and remained the colony’s breadbasket and major source of grain, meat, and other foodstuffs, as well as domestic industry such as obrajes, with expanding market relations especially important in the fertile and well-watered zones north and west of Mexico City.

In the 1540s, the discovery of large deposits of silver northwest of the Basin of Mexico, centered on the province of Zacatecas, provided the colonial state with a steady supply of silver bullion, fueling a price revolution in Iberia and the rest of Europe and transforming the regional colonial economies of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and other mining regions.

By the mid-1600s, the sprawling colony sank into what one scholar dubbed “New Spain’s century of depression,” though the nature and extent of that “depression” remain the subject of scholarly debate. Compared to the thriving colonies of British North America and elsewhere, however, New Spain did experience a prolonged period of relative economic stagnation.

The imperial state’s efforts to redress its colonies’ relative economic decline, launched after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13), are known collectively as the Bourbon Reforms, named after the ruling dynasty that assumed power in Spain after the fall of the Habsburgs.

In a process similar to that unfolding elsewhere in the Americas, as time passed, the “creoles” (or criollos, i.e., Spaniards born in the Americas) became an increasingly important and powerful group, despite its relatively small size—a gradual shift that by the late 1700s led to a growing sense of American identity and the first stirrings for independence from Spain.

Indian and “mixed-race” rebellions and uprisings occurred throughout the colonial period, but most remained local and regional and focused on redress of specific grievances relating to colonial governance or perceived abuses by individual authorities.

Demographics

The demographic makeup of the colony changed markedly over time, from its initial overwhelming preponderance of Indians and tiny number of Spaniards, to steep Indian population decline, to increasing number of mestizos and others of “mixed race,” Africans, and a small but growing number of creoles.

New Spain’s population at the end of the colonial period is estimated at around 6 million—around 50 percent Indian, 30 to 40 percent “mixed race,” 10 to 20 percent Spanish and creole, and less than 1 percent African.

In sum, 300 years of colonial rule left a profound and lasting legacy across New Spain, in every realm of society. Grappling with the nature of that legacy remains one of the most challenging and central tasks facing scholars of postconquest Mexico and Central America.

Humanism in Europe

Humanism in Europe

Humanism originated in 14th-century Europe as a movement to recover the culture of the ancient Greek and Roman pagans. The term derived from the identification of ancient pagan texts as “human” rather than divine like the Bible or the writings of the fathers of the Christian Church. With a few exceptions, humanists were not anti-Christian, but attempted to get behind centuries of church interpretation to understand ancient pagan texts on their own terms.

Humanists preferred studying original texts rather than commentaries, and reading whole texts rather than isolating particular sentences or passages, as had frequently been the practice during the Middle Ages. Many violently rejected much of medieval Latin culture and scorned Arab writers such as Avicenna who were greatly respected in the university world.

Humanists searched out surviving manuscripts of the classics from monastery, cathedral, and other libraries, sometimes discovering works that had been lost for centuries. They sought to restore the classical texts to what their authors had originally written, and pioneered scholarly methods of textual analysis and manuscript comparison. They also made the classics public, eventually through print.


The birthplace of the humanist movement was Italy, and the earliest prominent humanist was an Italian, Francesco Petrarch. Italy possessed the strongest connections to pre-Christian culture in its buildings, art, and manuscripts, and the most developed civic life. Humanism was not initially connected with the universities and often flourished in towns without universities such as Florence.

The first few generations of humanists were definitely not university scholars and attacked the Scholastic Latin inherited from the Middle Ages and used in the universities as nonclassical and barbaric. Humanists supported writing a Latin based on ancient authors, particularly Cicero.

Some university professors denounced humanists as neopagan or heretical, although some university scholars and humanists got along well. Rather than being university scholars connected to an institution, early humanists formed an international body, or “republic of letters,” linked by a common Latinity and later by Greek.

Transformation of Humanism

Humanism was transformed by two 15th century events, the decline of the Byzantine Empire and the European invention of printing. The decline of Byzantium, which had been apparent for decades before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, led Greek scholars to make their way west to enjoy greater security. These scholars took Greek manuscripts with them, as well as knowledge of the classical Greek language.

Humanists now had direct access to ancient Greek writings, rather than medieval Latin translations and adaptations (and even these were often adapted from Arabic versions, rather than the original Greek). Greek and Greek authors began to supplement and to some degree even displace Latin ones in humanist study.

The revival of Greek studies led to new interest in the works of Plato, which had been largely lost in the Latin Middle Ages. Humanists influenced by Plato sometimes broke with the political involvement of early humanists to exalt the contemplative life removed from civic affairs.

The revival of Plato, usually seen through the lens of mystical Neoplatonism, was often accompanied by an interest in ancient magic, such as the writings of “Hermes Trismegistus.” Magic was seen as a secret discipline known only to the elite.

Although only a small proportion of early printed texts were humanist, printing had a great impact on the movement and enabled it to institutionalize itself in a way that previous classical revivals during the Middle Ages had not.

Printing standardized the classical Greek and Latin texts, and for the first time it was possible for humanists to be sure that they were all working with the same text and the same pagination, as opposed to manuscripts, all of which are different.

Early printing was not error-free by any means, but to some extent it was possible to correct for this by issuing lists of errata. Manuscripts also physically decayed. Printed books did, too, but fact that printing produces thousands of copies for the same outlay as a scribe producing one or two meant that much less information was lost.

Print enabled learning to survive a series of disasters, ranging from the sack of Constantinople to the destruction of the library of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the ravaging of the English monastery libraries during the Reformation.

Members of Humanism

Many humanists were members of the clergy (including some popes), but humanism also provided a way for European men to be professional intellectuals without having to be in the church. Humanists could support themselves by founding schools to teach ancient languages and writing.

Humanists developed the idea that learning was necessary to the fullest development of the person. Particularly in its earlier phases humanism emphasized rhetoric, the study of persuasive speech, a discipline with a large classical literature but one that had been largely overlooked in the medieval university in favor of logic.

As did teaching, rhetoric opened career possibilities to humanists, who found employment in courts writing and giving formal Latin orations praising the prince or writing formal Latin letters as diplomatic communications.

The early humanists had often presented their skills as useful in the urban republics of northern Italy, but by 1450 humanists mainly adapted to the Italian princely order. (Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the most radical humanists, wrote both The Prince, a manual for autocrats, and Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, an analysis of republics.)

Humanists also rediscovered history as a subject worthy of study, which it had not been during the Middle Ages, when it was not a part of the school or university curriculum. Humanists revived the idea that the “great men” of history could serve as models for emulation, and also that history was a useful stockpile of examples for making rhetorical arguments.

There were a few women humanists, who often faced great difficulties entering humanist professions. However, a woman who overcame these difficulties could acquire renown. Humanistic attainments were often considered incompatible with marriage for a woman, and most successful early women humanists were known either as virgins or as prostitutes.

In their writings on the family, male humanists upheld a patriarchal and domestic ideal. A particularly influential male writer on the family was Leon Battista Alberti, whose second book on the subject, entitled On the Ruler of the Family, was devoted to the dominant role of the father in the household.

In the late 15th and 16th centuries, humanism moved from its Italian base to other countries in Europe, a movement often called northern humanism. Italy remained the center of the movement, and nearly all prominent northern humanists visited Italy, but the northern movement was also distinctive.

Northern humanists, led by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, were as a group much more oriented to employing humanism to lead a Christian life and reform Church institutions than were Italian humanists. Erasmus, followed by other northern humanists, pioneered the application of humanist methods of textual scholarship to the Bible and other ancient Christian texts.

Interest in Religious Texts

The interest in religious texts meant that northern humanists were more interested in Hebrew than were most Italian humanists. Humanists even entered the Jewish ghetto to learn Hebrew from rabbis. This led to a controversy involving Johannes Reuchlin, one of Germany’s leading humanists and Christian Hebraists.

The substance of the dispute was whether it was permissible or desirable for a Christian to study Jewish books. A fanatically anti-Jewish Jewish convert to Christianity named Pfefferkorn set forth an anti-Jewish jadwal including an attempt to enforce a mandate from the Holy Roman Empire for the seizure of Jewish books. Some lesser rulers in the Empire were concerned about this and consulted Reuchlin.

Reuchlin advised them that the seizure of Jewish books was a bad idea for several reasons: Jewish books contained much valuable knowledge, by studying their own books Jews might be converted to Christianity, and seizing the Jews’ books would be a violation of their rights as human beings and Imperial subjects.

He also argued that chairs of Hebrew should be established in the universities. This led to attacks from the theological faculties of various German universities, who supported the confiscation measure and accused Reuchlin of being bribed by rich Jews.

Although humanism was not originally the issue, Reuchlin’s eminence in the humanistic community made it so. Younger humanists who admired him claimed that university professors were attacking Reuchlin as a way of attacking humanism in general and issued vicious works of satire, attacking Pfefferkorn and the university professors for their ignorance and bad Latin.

Interest in Hebrew did not mean that all northern humanists were sympathetic to the Jews. Some such as Reuchlin were relatively pro-Jewish in the context of their times, while others like Erasmus were vehemently anti-Jewish.

German humanists in particular often took a nationalist position, encouraged by the rediscovery of a classical Latin text, the Germania of Tacitus, in the 15th century. Tacitus’s portrait of simple, brave Germans became very popular and was presented in opposition to the alleged corruption of Mediterranean lands.

German humanists argued that the pious Germans were being exploited by the Italian-dominated international church. Like other European humanists, German humanists attempted to connect their people’s past with that of the ancients as descendants of the ancient Trojans or other classical groups.

Northern humanism was greatly affected by the Protestant Reformation. Many humanists initially supported Martin Luther as a reformer but began to distance themselves from him as his message grew more radical. It was common for older humanists to remain in the Catholic Church, while younger humanists were more likely to become Protestants.

Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, a martyr for his faith, were among the humanist leaders who remained in the Catholic Church, while Philip Melancthon and John Calvin were prominent among the many Protestant leaders with a humanistic background.

By the late 16th century, humanism in both Italy and elsewhere in Europe had grown more technical and scholarly. There was less emphasis on the ancients as providers of budpekerti examples and more on recovering the details of ancient life.

For example, there were enormous efforts to recover ancient calendars and to catalog ancient coins. Recovery and reading of a broader range of ancient texts meant that humanism affected more fields of learning.

For example, recovery and study of the ancient mathematical texts of Archimedes and Apollonius influenced the development of European mathematics and science. Humanism influenced medicine both positively, through the study of the texts of ancient physicians, most notably Galen and Hippocrates, and negatively, through the rejection of Arab physicians such as Avicenna.

Humanists also influenced the development of law through the study and promotion of Roman law. As it grew more intellectually diverse, humanism also became more closely connected to university life, at first through humanists’ offering popular lectures outside the formal system of instruction and then through the work of younger university masters with an interest in humanism.

Frederick I

Frederick I Barbarossa

Frederick I, called Barbarossa (Italian for “Red Beard”), ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1152 until his death in 1190 while on the Third Crusade. He was elected emperor upon the death of his uncle, Conrad III, in 1152, when the empire was in decline. He led several expeditions to Italy to regain control over the northern part of the country.

In Germany he broke up the duchy of Saxony when its duke, Henry the Lion, refused to support the emperor on one of his expeditions to Italy. The duchy was divided between the emperor and the lesser nobles of the area in 1180. Germany then experienced a period of peace and prosperity. In 1189 Frederick set out on the Third Crusade, marching his army through the Balkans and Asia Minor. During 1190 while in Asia Minor, Frederick drowned in the Saleph River.

Frederick I was born in 1122 and became the duke of Swabia when his father died in 1147. He accompanied his uncle, Emperor Conrad III, on the Second Crusade and took part in the aborted siege of Damascus. As Conrad neared his death he designated Frederick as his chosen successor.


Thus when Conrad died in 1152 Frederick was elected emperor. The election took place in Frankfurt-am-Main on March 4, 1152. Between 1154 and 1183 he led six expeditions to Italy. On the first, he restored the pope’s authority in Italy and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. During the second, he captured Milan and placed friendly governors in several other cities.

He also supported the antipope and was excommunicated by Pope Alexander III. For the third expedition, Frederick planned to conquer Sicily but was stopped by a league of Italian states. His fourth expedition saw him storm Rome and place the antipope on the throne. The plague broke out in his army, forcing him to return to Germany.

The fifth expedition ended in failure when Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, refused to accompany the emperor to Italy, where the emperor’s army was defeated. After his defeat, Frederick made peace with Pope Alexander III. His last expedition to Italy saw him make a lasting peace with the Italian states and marry his son to the heiress to the Norman lands in Sicily.

During this time Frederick was also working to keep the peace in Germany. Many of the German princes continued to feud with their neighbors and tried to expand their holdings. One of the more successful princes was Henry the Lion. Upon his return to Germany Frederick had Henry tried in absentia and stripped of his lands. Some of his lands went to the emperor, while the rest was divided up among various nobles.

Frederick had initially been married to Adelheid of Vohburg, but he had the childless marriage annulled. He married again on June 9, 1156, this time to Beatrice of Burgundy. Because of this marriage, he gained control of the kingdom of Burgundy. They had several children, including Frederick’s successor, Henry VI.

Answering the call for a new crusade Frederick assembled his army at Regensburg in May 1189. The army marched through Byzantine lands, arriving at Constantinople in the fall of 1189. Advancing through Asia Minor during the spring of 1190, he defeated the sultan of Iconium. He continued his advance and it was during this advance that he drowned. The exact circumstances of his death are not known.