DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0063
THE SCHOLARS OF THE RENAISSANCE 37
written a drama and compelled actors and scenery to fall in
with her purposes. Such an epoch was the Renaissance. Writ-
ers have sought for its antecedents; they have accounted for it
in a dozen ways. Yet when they have done their best, the
enigma is unanswered : the mystery of birth remains impreg-
nable. All that they can achieve is to throw light, not on the
origin of the Renaissance, but on the conditions which made its
existence possible. Those conditions are by now too well-
known and have been too often discussed to need re-stating in
these pages. The subject is too vast, the task too big for us.
But apart from general causes there are secondary ones,
different in each country according to its individual history.
France was no exception. The wars of three successive
monarchs—Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I—with
Italy had done an immense amount in spreading Italian
art, Italian literature, Italian standards of beauty. If the
royal busybodies worked sad mischief by always meddling,
whether called for or not, with the politics of Milan, of
Venice, or of Florence, they also did a great deal of good.
The constant relations between the two peoples had widened
the field of commerce; and Italian merchants as well as
Italian artists settled in French towns. Besides this, the
influence of Italian churchmen—many of them patrons of
learning—the cosmopolitan nature of the Medicis Popes, the
universal correspondence of Scholars in all lands: all these
facts had their share in bringing about the great result. So
had such Court marriages as that of the Princess Renee with
the Duke of Ferrara, or that of the Dauphin with Catherine
de Medicis. Side facts too have their importance. The general
appointment of resident Ambassadors instead of special Envoys,
written a drama and compelled actors and scenery to fall in
with her purposes. Such an epoch was the Renaissance. Writ-
ers have sought for its antecedents; they have accounted for it
in a dozen ways. Yet when they have done their best, the
enigma is unanswered : the mystery of birth remains impreg-
nable. All that they can achieve is to throw light, not on the
origin of the Renaissance, but on the conditions which made its
existence possible. Those conditions are by now too well-
known and have been too often discussed to need re-stating in
these pages. The subject is too vast, the task too big for us.
But apart from general causes there are secondary ones,
different in each country according to its individual history.
France was no exception. The wars of three successive
monarchs—Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I—with
Italy had done an immense amount in spreading Italian
art, Italian literature, Italian standards of beauty. If the
royal busybodies worked sad mischief by always meddling,
whether called for or not, with the politics of Milan, of
Venice, or of Florence, they also did a great deal of good.
The constant relations between the two peoples had widened
the field of commerce; and Italian merchants as well as
Italian artists settled in French towns. Besides this, the
influence of Italian churchmen—many of them patrons of
learning—the cosmopolitan nature of the Medicis Popes, the
universal correspondence of Scholars in all lands: all these
facts had their share in bringing about the great result. So
had such Court marriages as that of the Princess Renee with
the Duke of Ferrara, or that of the Dauphin with Catherine
de Medicis. Side facts too have their importance. The general
appointment of resident Ambassadors instead of special Envoys,