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When the Germanic leader Odoacer dethroned the minor emperor Romulus Augustus in 476, the Roman Empire effectively ceased to exist. With this event, many achievements of antiquity were lost – some irretrievably, others fell into oblivion for hundreds of years. It was only with the advent of the Renaissance that changes in European communities were so serious that they returned to the achievements of the ancient Romans on a larger scale. So what were the causes and consequences of the Renaissance?
In the depths of history
The fall of the Western Roman Empire brought a change of order throughout Western Europe, and these changes, in turn, affected neighboring lands and even wider areas. There was greater or less chaos in various parts of the continent, which resulted in a general regression in various areas of functioning of individuals and entire societies – administration, law, art and architecture, education, and even the style of ordinary, everyday life – it was difficult to make progress when the unifying element was everything, i.e. the Roman Empire, ceased to exist.
Over the centuries, the cultural gap was filled by Christianity, and the Church and the Papacy based in the city of Rome emerged as the informal successor and continuator of the Roman legacy. The entire medieval Europe was built around the Church, the official language was Latin, which was taught in church schools in various countries, it was the Pope who crowned kings through his bishops, the calendar of Christian holidays defined the rhythm of individuals’ lives and finally it was the Church that subsidized initiatives from the world of culture, having an influence on for example, the development of medieval art.
The same Church that stimulated some areas of life also inhibited others, or at least stopped certain directions of development in these areas. The dominant (and actually the only valid at that time) trends in philosophy and architecture were cultivated with the blessing of the Church and without this blessing they had no right to exist. First, Romanism and later Gothic dominated throughout Western Europe, focusing mainly on sacred architecture, and art, which was fully developing at the end of the 14th century, even gained the name of the international style, which shows how similar ideas accompanied creators in England, in Italy or Germany.
The city of Rome itself has lost its former glory over the years. Under the rule of the first emperor, Octavian Augustus, the capital of the Empire was inhabited by over a million inhabitants, and a thousand years later, when Sylvester II sat on the papal throne, this number is estimated at around thirty thousand. The Eternal City was therefore a shadow of itself. However, the inhabitants of Italy must have been aware of the former power, especially in the capital of the former Empire, living among the ruins of imperial buildings.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the role of the Church was losing some of its importance, which created space for a certain relaxation in art and philosophy. Growing wealthy urban centers, especially in northern Italy, focused on crafts and merchants, were able to independently finance various ventures. Italian artists looked east, towards the Eastern Roman Empire, which, although it had followed its own path for centuries resulting from its separation from the Church, was a kind of bridge between the present and antiquity – Byzantine libraries kept numerous Greek and Roman writings and treaties, and the local artists in art, at least in their own way, they used ancient solutions, whether in building chiaroscuro or using foreshortening, which was unknown in Western European painting. This bridge was rather tenuous, as at the end of the Middle Ages the Eastern Roman Empire was also at the end of its existence. It gradually lost influence and power not only because of internal crises, but also largely due to the pressure of peoples from the east; It is worth mentioning here the Arab invasions of the 7th century, which deprived Byzantium of many lands. Nevertheless, many Roman and Greek ideas were still preserved there, and close contacts with the cities of northern Italy were still maintained. Moreover, they developed even on the wave of the Crusades, which allowed the lands in the north of the Apennine Peninsula to become richer.
Dream about the past
It should be mentioned here that significant contributions, especially in the field of painting, were made by an Italian artist working at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, Giotto di Bodone, who, although he was under the influence of Byzantine masters, successfully searched for new solutions and moved away from the schematic, which dominated in medieval painting. The achievements of Giotto, who came from Florence, inspired artists who created after him to draw from his work and seek their own solutions. The people of that time attributed him to the level of ancient masters and, in the wake of general changes, they began to see more clearly that they lived in a country that used to be the center of the civilized world. A world destroyed by tribes of Germans, Goths and Vandals.
Italians were more and more willing to refer to the old era, which they called classical, and began to dream of the revival of Rome’s power. Soon, the times after the fall of the Empire, the transitional period to the expected renewal began to be called the intermediate ages, which were only an interlude between the classical era and the expected era of revival. We still use the name “Middle Ages” today, and the same applies to Gothic art – this is how the Italians named the art that dominated the Middle Ages as a trend belonging to the people who were responsible for the fall of the Empire. Art, in their understanding, was barbaric, just as barbaric were the tribes that destroyed Rome. Today we know that this connection is not entirely accurate, because Gothic style emerged only a few centuries after the fall of the Empire, but this view well reflects the mood that prevailed in Italy at that time.
However, the city of Rome itself remained on the margins of history at the end of the 14th century. Lazio and the southern regions were less wealthy, even clearly poorer, than the northern part of Italy, and it is not without reason that cities such as Florence or Venice, and not Rome, were the cradle of the Renaissance. Moreover, the 14th century was also the time of the so-called the Avignon captivity while the popes resided in southern France, thus further diminishing the importance of Rome itself. Only in the 15th century, when the still young Renaissance culture was already established in Italian society and the papacy had returned to the Tiber for good, the humanist popes, starting with Nicholas V, made efforts to raise the Eternal City from the ruins.
Renaissance fathers
However, before this happened, exactly forty years after Giotto’s death, an