Customer Reviews

Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance

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Mr. Hale's book is full on insight into the transformation that occurred in Europe during the Renaissance. His research is extensive, his analysis detailed, and his knowledge of the subject extensive. I feel that I really learned a lot about this interesting era in European history. Also, the author uses numerous illustrations and prints when discussing various points, which helped me a lot since I do not possess much of a background on this subject. The book will make for a most enjoyable read for anyone already familiar with this time period.

For those of us who do not know a lot about the Renaissance, sections of the text can be challenging. As one other reviewer mentions, Hale takes a thematic approach, rather than a chronological one which did prove challenging for me. Also, some sections are rather "text book like", and somewhat dull. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I just found it more challenging to finish than other historical books that I have read.

I recommend this book to anyone intersted in learning more about the Renaissance in Europe. If you do not know a lot about the subject, like myself, you may want to find a different starting point than this text. Otherwise, you may end up like me wondering how much you missed out based on your ignorance of the materials provided.

Hale is the distinguished author of many books on the history of the Renaissance, and this work--written near the end of his career--is a synthesis of a lifetime of thought, study, and research on the subject. This is a masterful look at European civilization during the age we identify with the somewhat liquid term "Renaissance."

Hale's approach is thematic rather than strictly chronological, and the general reader may find this a bit distracting if he does not have any previous knowledge of the history of the period. For that reader it may also be somewhat scholarly in tone, but it is not a tedious or dry read by any means. On the contrary, Hale's wide range of learning and his use of many wonderful illustrations give the work a distinct and fascinating life, and an even flow that can be taken in easily-digestible chapters and sections. Each chapter is filled with Hale's insight and gift for making complex issues accessible. This is no small task when dealing with a period as complicated and multi-faceted as the Renaissance. Hale's grasp of the original sources is impressive, and he frequently allows them to speak for themselves, showing that we are not so far away from this period in our history (just as we are not so far from the world of classical antiquity which the Renaissance revived). The result is a magnificent study which looks at how Europe (and by extension the world) changed during the "long century" of 1450 to 1620: a period of tremendous discovery, violence and intellectual/artistic achievement.

John Rigby Hale (1922-1999) was a legendary Renaissance scholar, this was his last and probably greatest work. The title is an allusion to Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) - which seems presumptuous considering Burkhardt is the single most important historian of the Renaissance; however it succeeds - Hale has written a modern up to date version of Burckhardt's masterpiece. Just a few months after the final draft Hale had a debilitating stroke, with the final version touched up by his wife and some professional friends. It is one of those rare books that enters the realm of the mythological.

Hale's style can be compared to a French impressionistic painting. The texture and details awash over the reader like so many dots forming grand narratives and themes; one not so much understands in so many words, but experiences understanding through the revelation of others. Unlike many historical surveys which tell the reader how things were, Hale shows it through direct quotes from the people who lived the age. This is not always easy going, the mind has to constantly shift between examining the dots and the image it paints, sort of like the optical illusion of a vase, or two faces looking at one another, back and forth between perspectives, it is not a book for speedy reading but contemplation and absorption.

Although many subjects are covered in this imaginative social survey, the consistent theme of "civilization" has a title role. In the Middle Ages, Europeans envisioned themselves as belonging to one of three "Estates": The Clergy, The Nobles (warriors), The Peasants. The vast majority were peasants who worked on behalf of the other two estates, who in turn protected and prayed for them. Those who work, fight and pray lived ideally in a sort of balanced harmony according to Christian precepts. However the Peasant estate also included urban merchants, and with increased prosperity in the latter Middle Ages, the distinction between peasant and noble became blurred as merchants became as powerful as nobles (Medici). Other things changed like guns and longbows allowed peasants to fight just as well as knights (100 Years War), so the three estate view started to break down. By the Renaissance, with the rediscovery of Classical texts, they looked back and asked how the Ancients structured society and found it was based on a 2-tier system: civilized and "barbarian" (uncivilized). The 3-tier Christian view was gradually replaced with the 2-tier secular system, which we still use to this day (civil laws, clash of civilizations, uncivilized behavior, civics, etc..). Order, peace and harmony is maintained through civilization and all it entails (education, prosperity, freedom, etc), and what that meant was being worked out in this period.

Hale shows a profound and noticeable change within a single generation starting around the middle of the 15th century, people were conscious and aware of a shift, often saying how they now lived in a modern era, one that surpassed even the ancients. Although they wrongly disparaged the Middle Ages as backwards (a sentiment that sadly still lives to this day among some scholars and the public alike), they were correct that things really did change. Hale's primary theme are these changes as so many contrasting bright new colors on the pale canvas of tradition. By the end of the Thirty Years' War in the early 17th century society had absorbed too many structural changes and "civilization" was collapsing - this lead to a retrenchment through the era of the "Old Regime" and finally, after a period of restoration and stability, an era of social and industrial Revolution in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the world we inherit.

The late J. R. Hale was one of THE experts on the European Renaissance (literally writing the book on it -- for Time-Life). That is what makes this book so confoundedly frustrating -- any indivual snippet from it is fascinating, because Hale was an excellent popular writer as well as a learned historian, but the field is so chronologically and geographically vast, covering all of Europe for several centuries, that Hale, in order to emphasize a particular point, throws together information from different countries and different times in the same narrative, sometimes even in the same paragraph.

As a "good read" the book is fine, until one starts getting caught up on the niggling suspicions that maybe Hale isn't exactly levelling with the reader 100% of the time. Why is it necessary to bring up a fact from another country in another century so closely upon the heels of a particular statement? Were there no contemporary examples which could have been cited?

Hale does a fine job of showing that the Renaissance was a universal European phenomenon, progressing at different rates in different countries, but what is less apparent is that when a bit of data from Northern Europe is brought in to bolster some bit of data from Italy, for example, which occured a century or more earlier, Italy was already in a different "world" than northern Europe at the time. Even explaining the problem of Hale's melange is difficult: while Italy was experiencing its High Renaissance, northern Europe was still muddling through the Middle Ages; when northern Europe was experiencing Renaissance events which highlight and amplify the events which took place in Italy a century or more earlier, Italy was well into the modern age and its Renaissance glories were cannon-blasted memories.

I repeat: this book IS a good read. What it is not, and should not by any means be considered, is a textbook or thorough history of the Reniassance. Any student who tries to write a paper on the Renaissance from this book is going to be in for a big surprise at grade time if the teacher is even remotely savvy to history.

If one wants to follow a thread diligently, of course, one may go from citation to citation in the index, but that tends to defeat Hale's purpose of writing an entertaining book -- better by far to read some of Hale's "serious" monographs or refer to the footnotes and check the bibliography.

As a simple, relaxing reading experience, however, "Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance" is good brain candy for the intelligentsia, and for snagging a date with someone a cut above the intellectual average, it is much better beach reading than a Harold Robbins novel!

My second year history teacher in college used this book as our text book. Reading this book was like looking at history form the street level, enabling one to understand why they did what they did during that time. And it's also very fun read.

John Hale's treatise is certainly comprehensive and is a must-read for any serious amateur (and I do include myself in the ranks of amateurs, albeit not "serious"). Though it is not an academic work, it certainly is scholarly and therein lies its strengths and difficulties. For an intelligent, educated reader, the book will certainly be challenging (and is this not in itself a reason to read certain books?) but this will entail some serious effort. Hale possesses a vocabulary that forces one often to the dictionary (something for which I am grateful), as many of the words are either British (as opposed to American) and/or fall within the category of "archaic." Prof Hale also often alludes to Renaissance works without necessarily telling us about them in detail (i.e., no "dumbing down" for the reader). In the case of works of art, they sometimes are reproduced within this book, at other times require the reader to possess and inquire within some Renaissance art book. But when the allussion is to some literary work, alas, unless one has had the chance to read the work, the allussion becomes less accessible.

You will come away better educated for having read the book, but be prepared to devote substantial time and effort.

I write this just a few days after the death of Prof. Hale, and can only express agreement with what the other reviewers below have said. This book is a wonderful monument to a great historian and scholar, and is an unmitigated delight to read, and to return to.

John Hale's The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance is a rambling, but engaging, work in which he attempts to explicate how Europeans living during the long-sixteenth century perceived and conceptualized Europe, the Renaissance, and civilization. Additionally, he investigates the relationships between these three concepts. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance makes connects seemly discrete people and events and debunks some common misconceptions about this time period.

Hale's section on Europe was especially insightful. He begins by asserting that the development of a European consciousness located in the area that we today recognize as Europe was not necessarily obvious at the time, nor was it inevitable. Hale argues that mapmaking, along with the Muslim threat, allowed Europeans to define themselves both positionally and ideologically. However, the various parts of the whole defined themselves in opposition to their neighbors. Hale's amusing and detailed description of the European peoples' stereotypes of each other bears a surprising resemblance to contemporary prejudices. This delightful section could benefit, however, from an investigation into the origins of these stereotypes as well as a discussion concerning the stereotypes' correlation to the Renaissance reality.

Naturally, in his discussion of the Renaissance, Hale particularly attends to humanism's role. According to Hale, humanism was not a reaction against scholasticism; rather it was an evolution of it. He writes, "On the whole, however, the attack on scholasticism ... was restricted to its emphasis on training the mind without affecting the heart" (197). Thus, Hale softens the picture of the arid scholastics, making them the forebears, not the antitheses, of humanist thinkers.

Hale also puts Renaissance art in a helpful perspective. He critiques various works regarding their aesthetics and technical developments, and he also places them firmly in the context of when, where, and why they were made. Art had not reached the esoteric "for art's sake" during the Renaissance. This reminder is important for those of us easily overcome by the masters' genius. Hale writes, "In spite of our own homage, [the arts] were not then thought of as part of the equipment that kept civilized mankind barbarian-proof" (413).

Hale's discourse on how these men and women viewed civilization was helpful because he demonstrates that civilization did not equal society. The elites did not recognize the masses as being civilized, and they developed and refined their manners to distinguish themselves from the poorer strata. Barbarism was not simply on the outside, but civilized people felt the need to guard against degenerating into it. This view of civilization is at odds with the common conception of a monolithic Renaissance civilization.

In The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, Hale seems very generous to the persons who populate his narrative. He resists criticizing them unduly, but instead views them as people of their time. However, Hale inexplicably treats John Calvin more heavy-handedly. Hale lays the "theological conundrum" of double-predestination at Calvin's feet without acknowledging Luther's explicit explication of the doctrine in On the Bondage of the Will (not to mention Augustine's). Hale also makes the erroneous claim that "until Geneva burned Servetus the sects harassed and exiled rather than killed one another" (125). Zurich had been executing Anabaptists since 1526. Is this a prejudice on Hale's part, or am I reading too much into him?