Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Maps
- Introduction: The End of the World and Its Rebirth (Rinascita) as the Rinascimento
- 1 Legitimacy: A Crisis and a Promise (c. 1250–c. 1340)
- 2 Civiltà: Living and Thinking the City (c. 1300–c. 1375)
- 3 Plague: Death, Disaster, and the Rinascita of Civiltà (c. 1325–c. 1425)
- 4 Violence: Social Conflict and the Italian Hundred Years’ War (c. 1350–1454)
- 5 Imagination: The Shared Primary Culture of the Early Rinascimento (c. 1350–c. 1475)
- 6 Courts: Princes, Aristocrats, and Quiet Glory (c. 1425–c. 1500)
- 7 Self: The Individual as a Work of Art (c. 1425–c. 1525)
- 8 Discovery: Finding the Old in the New (c. 1450–c. 1560)
- 9 Re-Dreams: Virtù, Saving the Rinascimento, and the Satyr in the Garden (c. 1500–c. 1560)
- 10 Reform: Spiritual Enthusiasms, Discipline, and a Church Militant (c. 1500–c. 1575)
- 11 Retreat: The Great Social Divide and the End of the Rinascimento (c. 1525–c. 1575)
- Epilogue: The Diaspora of the Rinascimento
- Bibliography: A Short List of Works Used
- Index
4 - Violence: Social Conflict and the Italian Hundred Years’ War (c. 1350–1454)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Maps
- Introduction: The End of the World and Its Rebirth (Rinascita) as the Rinascimento
- 1 Legitimacy: A Crisis and a Promise (c. 1250–c. 1340)
- 2 Civiltà: Living and Thinking the City (c. 1300–c. 1375)
- 3 Plague: Death, Disaster, and the Rinascita of Civiltà (c. 1325–c. 1425)
- 4 Violence: Social Conflict and the Italian Hundred Years’ War (c. 1350–1454)
- 5 Imagination: The Shared Primary Culture of the Early Rinascimento (c. 1350–c. 1475)
- 6 Courts: Princes, Aristocrats, and Quiet Glory (c. 1425–c. 1500)
- 7 Self: The Individual as a Work of Art (c. 1425–c. 1525)
- 8 Discovery: Finding the Old in the New (c. 1450–c. 1560)
- 9 Re-Dreams: Virtù, Saving the Rinascimento, and the Satyr in the Garden (c. 1500–c. 1560)
- 10 Reform: Spiritual Enthusiasms, Discipline, and a Church Militant (c. 1500–c. 1575)
- 11 Retreat: The Great Social Divide and the End of the Rinascimento (c. 1525–c. 1575)
- Epilogue: The Diaspora of the Rinascimento
- Bibliography: A Short List of Works Used
- Index
Summary
The New, New Men, and Violence
It might seem strange that in the century after the first wave of the plague and the demographic, economic, and social disruptions that followed, the Rinascimento enjoyed a cultural flowering that was flush with the sense of the superiority of its urban civiltà. Central to this was the fact that the popolo grosso had finally come to dominate most of the major cities of Italy as a political and social elite. And their victory was idealized and defended as an ongoing rebirth of first times and cultures that had been the best of times – thus the best of times were returning, literally being reborn. Such claims, and the political and social reality that stood behind them, never totally triumphed, however; in fact, if anything, the uncertainty about the extent and permanence of their victory played an important role in fueling the cultural flourishing of the time and the optimistic claims of the superiority of Italy’s urban civiltà. And, significantly, such uncertainty was accompanied both by a wide range of open conflict and violence that, in an apparent paradox, also typified the cultural flourishing and by a sense of superiority that rose from the ashes of demographic disaster, social conflict, violence, and apparently unending war.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Renaissance in ItalyA Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento, pp. 154 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014