Heretics and Heroes

by Thomas Cahill

  THE HINGES OF HISTORY

  We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage—almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.

  In this series, THE HINGES OF HISTORY, I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West. This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.

  —Thomas Cahill

  THE HINGES OF HISTORY

  VOLUME I

  HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION

  THE UNTOLD STORY OF IRELAND’S HEROIC ROLE FROM

  THE FALL OF ROME TO THE RISE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE

  This introductory volume presents the reader with a new way of looking at history. Its time period—the end of the classical period and the beginning of the medieval period—enables us to look back to our ancient roots and forward to the making of the modern world.

  VOLUME II

  THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS

  HOW A TRIBE OF DESERT NOMADS CHANGED

  THE WAY EVERYONE THINKS AND FEELS

  This is the first of three volumes on the creation of the Western world in ancient times. It is first because its subject matter takes us back to the earliest blossoming of Western sensibility, there being no West before the Jews.

  VOLUME III

  DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS

  THE WORLD BEFORE AND AFTER JESUS

  This volume, which takes as its subject Jesus and the first Christians, comes directly after The Gifts of the Jews, because Christianity grows directly out of the unique culture of ancient Judaism.

  VOLUME IV

  SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA

  WHY THE GREEKS MATTER

  The Greek contribution to our Western heritage comes to us largely through the cultural conduit of the Romans (who, though they do not have a volume of their own, are a presence in Volumes I, III, and IV). The Greek contribution, older than Christianity, nevertheless continues past the time of Jesus and his early followers and brings us to the medieval period. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea concludes our study of the making of the ancient world.

  VOLUME V

  MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES

  THE RISE OF FEMINISM, SCIENCE, AND ART FROM

  THE CULTS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE

  The high Middle Ages are the first iteration of the combined sources of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures that make Western civilization so singular. In the fruitful interaction of these sources, science and realistic art are rediscovered and feminism makes its first appearance in human history.

  VOLUME VI

  HERETICS AND HEROES

  HOW RENAISSANCE ARTISTS AND REFORMATION

  PRIESTS CREATED OUR WORLD

  The European rediscovery of classical literature and culture precipitates two very different movements that characterize the sixteenth century. The rediscovery of Greco-Roman literature and art sparks the Renaissance, first in Italy, then throughout Europe. New knowledge of Greek enables scholars to read the New Testament in its original language, generating new interpretations and theological challenges that issue in the Reformation. Though the Renaissance and the Reformation are very different from each other, both exalt the individual ego in wholly new ways.

  VOLUME VII

  This volume will continue and conclude our investigation of the making of the modern world and the impact of its cultural innovations on the sensibility of the West.

  Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Cahill

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies.

  www.nanatalese.com

  DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

  Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Pages constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  Book design adapted by Maria Carella

  Map designed by Mapping Specialists Ltd.

  Endpaper: Pieter Bruegel, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

  Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor

  Jacket illustration: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1555 (oil on canvas), Bruegel, Pieter the Elder (c. 1525–1569) / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cahill, Thomas.

  Heretics and heroes : how Renaissance artists and Reformation priests created our world / by Thomas Cahill.— First edition.

  pages cm.—(The hinges of history; volume VI)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Renaissance. 2. Reformation. 3. Ego (Psychology)—History. 4. Europe—Civilization. I. Title.

  CB359.C34 2013

  940—dc23 2013006241

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-53416-1

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-385-49557-8

  v3.1

  To Devlin, Lucia, Nina, and Conor, beloved grandchildren

  “Qu’est-ce que cela fait? Tout est grâce.”

  I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

  —Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521

  I had expected to vote against Senator Kennedy because of his religion. But now he can be my president, Catholic or whatever he is.… He has the moral courage to stand up for what he knows is right.

  —Martin Luther King Sr., from the pulpit of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, October 31, 1960, the day his son Martin Luther King Jr. was released from a Georgia prison, thanks to John F. Kennedy’s intervention

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  List of Illustrations

  PRELUDE

  Philosophical Tennis Through the Ages

  INTRODUCTION

  Dress Rehearsals for Permanent Change

  1282: The Sicilian Vespers

  1353: How to Survive the Black Death

  1381–1451: Lutherans Long Before Luther

  1452: The Third Great Communications Revolution

  I NEW WORLDS FOR OLD

  Innovation on Sea and Land

  1492: Columbus Discovers America

  1345–1498: Humanists Rampant

  II THE INVENTION OF HUMAN BEAUTY

  And the End of Medieval Piety

  1445?–1564: Full Nakedness!

  1565–1680: Charring the Wood

  III NEW THOUGHTS FOR NEW WORLDS

  Deviant Monks

  1500–1517: Erasmus and Luther

  IV REFORMATION!

  Luther St
eps Forward

  1518–1521: From Dispute to Divide

  INTERMISSION: IL BUONO, IL BRUTTO, IL CATTIVO (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY)

  A Portfolio of Egos

  V PROTESTANT PICTURES

  And Other Northern Images

  1498–1528: Apocalypse Now

  1516–1535: Utopia Now and Then

  1522–1611: The Word of God Goes Forth—  First in Hochdeutsch, Then in Shakespearean English

  1520s: Encounters and Evasions in Paris

  1525?–1569: The Ice Is Melting

  VI CHRISTIAN VS. CHRISTIAN

  The Turns of the Screw

  1516–1525: From Zwingli to the Peasants’ War

  1525–1564: From Princely Conversions to the  Second Reformation

  1545–1563: Catholics Get Their Act Together

  1558–1603: The Religious Establishment of a Virgin Queen

  1562–1648: Let’s Kill ’Em All!

  VII HUMAN LOVE

  How to Live on This Earth

  1531–1540: Nuns with Guns

  1572–1616: Men in the Middle

  1615–1669: The Deepening

  POSTLUDE

  Hope and Regret

  Notes and Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Index

  A Note About the Author

  Illustrations

  Other Books by This Author

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  COLOR PLATES

  1. Donatello, David, 1440s

  2. Donatello, Mary Magdalene, c. 1457

  3. Verrocchio, David, c. 1476

  4. Verrocchio, Baptism of Christ, 1472

  5. Leonardo, The Annunciation, c. 1472

  6. Leonardo, The Virgin of the Rocks, 1482–1483

  7. Masaccio, Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter on His Throne, 1425

  8. Masolino, Adam and Eve, c. 1424–1425

  9. Masaccio, Adam and Eve, c. 1425

  10. Piero della Francesca, Resurrection, 1458

  11. Piero della Francesca, La Madonna del Parto, c. 1465

  12. Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482

  13. Botticelli, Athena and the Centaur, c. 1482

  14. Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1483

  15. Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485–1487

  16. Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487

  17. Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–1499

  18. Michelangelo, David, 1504

  19. Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512

  20. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512

  21. Michelangelo, Moses, c. 1513–1515

  22. Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1537–1541

  23. Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, 1593–1594

  24. Caravaggio, Basket of Fruit, 1599

  25. Caravaggio, Madonna dei Pellegrini (Our Lady of the Pilgrims), 1604–1606

  26. Caravaggio, The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610

  27. Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1610

  28. Bernini, David, 1623–1624

  29. Bernini, Saint Teresa in Ecstasy, 1647–1652

  30. Anonymous, Manuel Chrysoloras, 1400

  31. Hans Memling, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1472–1475

  32. Pietro di Spagna (aka Pedro Berruguete), Federigo da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo, c. 1476–1477

  33. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail from The Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule, 1482–1485

  34. Domenico Ghirlandaio, An Old Man and His Grandson, c. 1490

  35. Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, Maximilian I, 1502

  36. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1500

  37. Albrecht Dürer, Jakob Fugger, c. 1519

  38. Raphael, Heraclitus, 1510

  39. Raphael, Portrait of Pope Leo X, 1518

  40. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as a Monk, 1520

  41. Lucas Cranach, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1529

  42. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Sir Thomas More, 1527

  43. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Erasmus, 1534

  44. After Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Henry VIII, 1536–1537

  45. Hans Holbein the Younger, Anne of Cleves, 1539

  46. Titian, Portrait of Isabella d’Este, 1534–1536

  47. Michelangelo, Portrait of Vittoria Colonna, c. 1540

  48. Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, A Spanish Knight, 1558

  49. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Painter and the Buyer, c. 1565

  50. Tintoretto (?), Veronica Franco, c. 1575

  51. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Portrait of Rudolf II, 1591

  52. Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait at Easel, 1556

  53. Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1610

  54. Pieter Bruegel, Beggars, 1568

  55. Pieter Bruegel, The Wedding Dance, 1566

  56. Pieter Bruegel, The Fall of Icarus, c. 1558

  57. Pieter Bruegel, The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568

  58. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1627

  59. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1634

  60. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1659

  61. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, c. 1669

  62. Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1669

  ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

  63. Leonardo, Two Heads, no date

  64. Leonardo, Self-Portrait, c. 1515

  65. Leonardo, Vitruvian Man, c. 1492

  66. Anonymous, Three Graces, twelfth century

  67. Raphael, Leda and the Swan, 1505–1507

  68. Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen, 1497–1498

  69. Albrecht Dürer, The Battle of the Angels, 1497–1498

  70. Albrecht Dürer, Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, 1498

  71. Albrecht Dürer, Young Woman Attacked by Death, c. 1495

  72. Albrecht Dürer, Hare, 1502

  73. Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515

  74. Albrecht Dürer, The Fall of Man, 1504

  75. Albrecht Dürer, The Prodigal Son, 1496

  76. Albrecht Dürer, Peasant Couple Dancing, 1514

  77. Albrecht Dürer, Nemesis, c. 1502

  78. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait in the Nude, c. 1505

  79. Albrecht Dürer, Head of the Dead Christ, 1503

  80. Albrecht Dürer, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, 1523

  81. Albrecht Dürer, Christ Before Caiaphas, 1512

  82. Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death, and the Devil, 1513

  83. Pieter Bruegel, Big Fish Eat Little Fish, 1556

  84. Pieter Bruegel, Beekeepers, c. 1568

  MAP

  85. The Permanent Religious Divisions of Europe after 1648

  PRELUDE

  PHILOSOPHICAL TENNIS THROUGH THE AGES

  In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.

  Antony and Cleopatra

  His nickname is Plato, which means “broad.” He’s an immensely confident if unsmiling Athenian, wide of forehead, broad of shoulders, bold of bearing, who casually exudes a breadth of comprehension few would dare to question. As he lobs his serve across the net, he does so with a glowering power that the spectators find thrilling. Throughout his game, his stance can only be labeled lofty; he seems to be reaching ever higher, stretching toward Heaven while his raised shirt provides an occasional glimpse of his noble abs.

  His serve is answered by his graceless opponent, a rangy, stringy-muscled man who plays his game much closer to the ground, whose eyes dart everywhere, who looks, despite his relative youth, to stand no chance of mounting a consistent challenge to our broad and supremely focused champion. And yet the challenger—his name is Aristotle, son of a provincial doctor—manages to persist, to meet his opponent with an ungainly mixture of styles. From time to time it even appears that he could be capable of victory. Certainly he is dogged in his perseverance. He begins to gain some fans in the crowd among those who prefer the improvisations of Aristotle to the unblinking gloom of great Plato.
/>
  This is a game that has been played over and over—in fact, for twenty-four centuries—before audiences of almost infinite variety. At some point long ago, the game became a doubles match, for the two Greek philosophers were joined by two medieval Christian theologians: Plato by Augustine of Hippo, who could nearly equal him in style and seriousness; Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas, nearly as styleless as Aristotle but, though overweight, ungainly, and blinking in the sun, extremely thoughtful and genial—the sort of athlete who is always undervalued. This centuries-long philosophical doubles match has entertained intellectuals in every age and made a partisan of almost every educated human being in the Western world.

  To this day, it may be asked of anyone who cares about ideas: Are you a Platonist or an Aristotelian? Plato certainly won the opening set, waged in Athens in the fourth century BC; and once he had Augustine at his side, he, if anything, grew in stature during the early medieval centuries. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, medieval academics, such as Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas—who were not only deep thinkers but gifted publicists—were able to create a culture-wide renaissance on Aristotle’s behalf. Then, in the period we shall visit in this book, in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, the pendulum would swing once more, as the graceful team of Plato and Augustine became the subject of nearly universal admiration, while the ungainly team of Aristotle and Aquinas suffered scorn and devaluation.1

  Of course, these men haven’t really been playing tennis (even if some speculate that the game was first played in the Mediterranean town of Tinnis in the time of the pharaohs and even if Plato was celebrated in his day for his physical prowess). Their styles should be accounted athletic only in metaphor, for in actuality, these styles—or lack thereof—are the qualities of their literary output. Plato is a great Greek prose stylist, never surpassed; nor did anyone ever write more well-knit, muscular Latin than Augustine. Aristotle’s Greek is banal, even at times confusing; Aquinas’s Latin prose, though clear, is scarcely more than serviceable. But these men and their philosophical heirs have surely been engaged in utterly serious, if sporting, contests about the ultimate nature of reality; and these contests have had profound, and sometimes deadly, consequences for us all.

  Before Plato’s arrival on the scene, the typical philosopher was a cross between a poet and a guru, dependable for pithy and memorable sayings—“Know thyself”; “Nothing endures but change”; “The way up and the way down are the same”—but quite incapable of elaborating his insight in a layered structure that could withstand criticism. Plato, father to all subsequent philosophical discourse, transformed the pursuit into a kind of science, full of sequential steps, a long course of acquired knowledge that begins in observation and ends in wisdom, even in vision.