History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [283]
The Renaissance was not a period of great achievement in philosophy, but it did certain things which were essential preliminaries to the greatness of the seventeenth century. In the first place, it broke down the rigid scholastic system, which had become an intellectual strait jacket. It revived the study of Plato, and thereby demanded at least so much independent thought as was required for choosing between him and Aristotle. In regard to both, it promoted a genuine and first-hand knowledge, free from the glosses of Neoplatonists and Arabic commentators. More important still, it encouraged the habit of regarding intellectual activity as a delightful social adventure, not a cloistered meditation aiming at the preservation of a predetermined orthodoxy.
The substitution of Plato for the scholastic Aristotle was hastened by contact with Byzantine scholarship. Already at the Council of Ferrara (1438), which nominally reunited the Eastern and Western Churches, there was a debate in which the Byzantines maintained the superiority of Plato to Aristotle. Gemistus Pletho, an ardent Greek Platonist of doubtful orthodoxy, did much to promote Platonism in Italy; so did Bessarion, a Greek who became a cardinal. Cosimo and Lorenzo dei Medici were both addicted to Plato; Cosimo founded and Lorenzo continued the Florentine Academy, which was largely devoted to the study of Plato. Cosimo died listening to one of Plato's dialogues. The humanists of the time, however, were too busy acquiring knowledge of antiquity to be able to produce anything original in philosophy.
The Renaissance was not a popular movement; it was a movement of a small number of scholars and artists, encouraged by liberal patrons, especially the Medici and the humanist popes. But for these patrons, it might have had very much less success. Petrarch and Boccaccio, in the fourteenth century, belong mentally to the Renaissance, but owing to the different political conditions of their time their immediate influence was less than that of the fifteenth-century humanists.
The attitude of Renaissance scholars to the Church is difficult to characterize simply. Some were avowed free-thinkers, though even these usually received extreme unction, making peace with the Church when they felt death approaching. Most of them were impressed by the wickedness of contemporary popes, but were nevertheless glad to be employed by them. Guicciardini the historian wrote in 1529:
'No man is more disgusted than I am with the ambition, the avarice, and the profligacy of the priests, not only because each of these vices is hateful in itself, but because each and all of them are most unbecoming in those who declare themselves to be men in special relations with God, and also because they are vices so opposed to one another, that they can only co-exist in very singular natures. Nevertheless, my position at the Court of several popes forced me to desire their greatness, for the sake of my own interest. But, had it not been for this, I should have loved Martin Luther as myself, not in order to free myself from the laws which Christianity, as generally understood and explained, lays upon us, but in order to see this swarm of scoundrels put back into their proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without vices or without power.'1
This is delightfully frank, and shows clearly why the humanists could not inaugurate a reformation. Moreover, most of them saw no half-way house between orthodoxy and free-thought; such a position as Luther's was impossible for them, because they no longer had the medieval feeling for the subtleties of theology. Masuccio, after describing the wickedness of monks and nuns and friars, says: 'The best punishment for them