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.
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Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera
Fascinating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2022Susannah Carr
Civilisation of no mean order
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2015
