"The Other Renaissance" by Paul Strathern

Strathern attempts to show that things happening in Northern Europe during the 'Renaissance' (which he fails to define but I presume he means the period from about 1450 to 1600) were on a par with, or more important, things happening around the Mediterranean: "three of the most significant events of the entire Renaissance era would take place north of the Alps" (Prologue), those three being: the invention of movable-type printing, Protestantism, and a heliocentric universe.

To prove his thesis, he provides a number of mini-biographies of mostly well-known figures such as Gutenberg, Luther and Copernicus. Such a cherry-picked sample can't prove anything. Indeed, some of his selections (Paracelsus, for example) seem self-defeating. At one stage he suggests that “The entire Renaissance can be seen as bursting free from the constraint of systematic medieval thought.” But this is in his chapter on Montaigne and on the very next page he points out that Montaigne’s philosophy saw belief in God as a precondition and science as superficial, both attitudes which I would suspect Strathern would regard as typically mediaeval. 

He also repeatedly makes the point that much of what he would characterise as Renaissance behaviours were accompanied by a background of strife, such as the religious wars catalysed by the Lutheran revolution: “Civil turmoil has frequently been accompanied by historic transformations.” (Ch 16) But other renaissances, such as that in twelfth century Europe which led to the first universities and the explosion in demotic literatures, depend on stability (in this case the reduction in threat from Viking raids from the north, Islamic invasion from the south, and Huns and Mongols from the east).

I also think he minimises the intra-Europe links. For example, amongst other contributors to the Northern Renaissance he lists John Cabot, who was born in Genoa, Pietro Torrigiano, from Florence, and Catherine de' Medici, another Florentine. Others such as Copernicus and Nicholas of Cusa were educated or worked in Italy. 

On the other hand, if his intention is to show that developments in northern Europe were equally significant to those south of the Alps, I think he has succeeded. 

The selection of biographies seemed eclectic. As I have said, some were so well known that it scarcely seemed worthwhile rehashing the details. But there are plenty of others about whom I knew nothing, such as Dietrich of Freiburg (although he scarcely fits the time frame), François Viète, and Etienne de La Boétie, or little, such as Nicholas of Cusa, the Fuggers, Mercator, and Vesalius. Unfortunately, for some of these relative unknowns, such as Rabelais (quoted as saying both ‘If you don't want to see a fool, then break your mirror.’ and ‘A child is not a vase to be filled but a fire to be lit.’), and Montaigne, I wished there had been more information. I definitely want to read them both. Strathern can't win! He's wide-ranging but this inevitably comes at the price of an element of superficiality.

The asterisks used to indicate a footnote were extraordinarily small and so very easy to miss. This was a shame since the footnotes sometimes provided fascinating information (see the Selected Quotes below). Otherwise, it is well written (although there are a couple of typos where a date in the 1500s has suddenly been put back 100 years), easy to read and enjoyable. Overall, it is an excellent introduction to the subject.

Selected quotes:

• “There appear to be certain elements common to all these early capitalistic exchanges: a thriving commercially minded bourgeoisie, an entrepreneurial ethos willing to take risks in order to achieve gain, and a form of loosely democratic city governance.” (Ch 2)
• “At the time, the word ‘idiot’ was a general term used to describe any layman or private individual who did not hold public office.” (Ch 3 fn)
• “As a polygon inscribed in a circle increases in number of sides ... so the mind approximates to truth but never coincides with it ... Thus knowledge is at best conjecture.” (Nicholas of Cusa, Ch 3)
• “The decay in China largely came about because of the separation between the intellectuals of the court (philosophers, poets, theologians) and the common people, whose mercantile practices were leading to ever-greater efficiencies, innovations and wealth.” (Ch 3)
• “The silver for these coins would come from the mines at Joachimsthaler in Bohemia, which provided silver for coins all over Germany and Austria. such currency became known as Joachimsthalers, which became shortened to thalers - the origin of the word ‘dollar’.” (Ch 8 fn)
• "Georgius Macropedius [was] regarded by many as the greatest Latin dramatist of the 16th century. Indeed his plays were so widely known that they would later influence the young William Shakespeare. Some of Macropedius’s works were adaptations of ancient Roman comedies by Terence and Plautus.” (Ch 13)
• “Not for him the easy dismissal of human actions or monstrous behaviour as simply ‘evil’, ‘barbarous’, ‘depraved’ or the like. It is by means of such words of disapproval that we distance ourselves from such acts. Montaigne insisted that we instead identify ourselves with such acts, and try to understand how we ourselves might have committed them.” (Ch 16)
• "Ivan the Terrible ... insisted that all his close advisers and courtiers drank with him each evening to ensure that they were too drunk to oppose him, and too hungover in the morning to plot against him.” (Ch 19 fn)

A wide-ranging and enjoyable history. April 2024; 324 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The making of Europe" by Robert Bartlett

This is a history of Christendom (Western Europe) during the Middle Ages (from 950 to 1350). It follows the expansion of the Normans into England and later Wales, Ireland and, at least culturally, Scotland. It follows the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors and it follows the expansion of the German speaking world around the Baltic and into the territories of the pagan Wends and Slavs. Even in Italy, the Christians drive down south and recover Campania, Calabria and Sicily. It is thus principally a story of expansion.

What drove this expansion? Was it the extraordinary vigour of the Franks? Was it the religion? Was it the  economic model of prototype capitalism? Or was it technology? Inventions such as the modern plough enabled German farmers to cultivate much more land than the pagan Wends and to increase the productivity of their farms. This in turn led to their ability to support more monks, warriors and merchants. And this drove expansion. Frontier Lords repeatedly found new towns and are able, because of the agricultural improvements, to invite colonising peasants on favourable terms knowing that they will make a profit even if they tax their peasants at a lesser rate.

What is remarkable about this story is how modern everything is. Founding charters talk of investments and profits. And yet things are strange. Ethnicity is principally a matter of language and religion; therefore one can change one's ethnic group by converting and learning a new tongue. For the multi-cultural populations that grow up in frontier colonies there is the expectation that each will be tried by their own traditional laws; it is only with time that unified laws for all people in the same region are developed.

And there are the novel institutions. The Benedictine monasteries are each individual, though following the one Rule of St Benedict. The Cistercians, however,are all bound through mother houses back to the great grandmother abbey of Citeaux. But the expansion of monasteries, which each require a significant capital outlay to found with sufficient resources to sustain themselves, is dwarfed when the mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans which need much less investment expand. And Universities set alight the touch paper of learning.

So this is an extraordinarily fascinating period. But the book is really difficult to read. It is a scholarly work but the general reader will find it tedious. Bartlett spends too long mustering his evidence, and sometimes defending his sources and criticising other authorities, and too little time telling the glorious story of these years. This does not make it a bad book. For its audience it is great and I hope to keep it as a work of reference. But I was frequently bored.

Exhaustive and sometimes exhausting. March 2013; 314 pages

"Vanished Kingdoms" by Norman Davies

The 'history of half-forgotten Europe' seems to be cobbled together from various scholarly articles that Professor Davies has assembled over the years; in the Introduction he immodestly lists other examples he would have included had he more space. This gives the book a slightly rag-bag feel with chapters of significantly different lengths. It also means that there are moments when the professor is unable to restrain academia. The word 'Amalfings' which apparently refers to the Visigoths post-Alaric is not explained (and does not appear in my dictionary); does it refer to people from Amalfi on the Italian coast? He often quotes in Latin (although he almost always provides a translation). He insists on calling the British Isles the 'Isles' explaining in a footnote that "The 'Isles' became British by monarchical criteria in 1603 and constitutionally in 1801. They ceased to be British in 1949.' His conceit is often to call the vanished kingdom by a name that almost no-one else ever uses: Sabaudia for Savoy, Rosenau for Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Byzantion for Byzantium or Constantinople etc. And to say "Studying the Burgundian succession of the 1360s, one can easily develop 'Palis-Rondon' - as the Japanese call a squint" serves no purpose other than to tell the reader that the author can show off in Japanese as well. Furthermore, he rattles through history at such a speed that the procession of names, places and titles leave one dizzy.

There is a slitghtly contrived structure. Each chapter has a first part which is a sort of tourist guide to the place where the vanished kingdom originated followed by part two, a lengthy history of the kingdom and part three, which explores the kingdom's heritage.

Nevertheless this is a fascinating book.

• He starts with the Pyrennean kingdom of the Visigoths with a brief nod to the Da Vinci Code.
• Then he plunges into the Dumbarton-based realm of Alt Clud (Clydesdale) with another nod to King Arthur.
• He then traces Burgundy (linked to the Nibelungenlied) from the Danish island of Bornholm across Europe to a kingdom, duchy and county in southern France (including the Dauphine region whose ruler really did adopt a Dolphin as his badge and which later was sold to the French heir to the throne, the Dauphin) whose various acquisitions are later dispersed to France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany leaving only the remnant of Luxembourg.
• The fourth kingdom of Aragon is linked to El Cid and St George. He carefully steers away from the obvious conclusion that the demise of Aragon, centred on Barcelona and therefore sustained by Mediterranean trade and an empire including the Balearics and Sicily, was due to the economic repositioning of Spain towards its trans-Atlantic possessions.
• He is cruel about modern day Byelorussia, a post-communist Communist republic, that once united with Lithuania in the kingdom/ grand duchy of Litva.
• His description of Byzantion is less history and more polemic against historians. He doesn't think much of Istanbul's Nobel-Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk but he is much angrier about Gibbon whose Decline and Fall disposes of Constantinople in a single chapter. Yes, but Davies has spent 80 pages on Litva's 500 years and a breathtaking 16 pages on Byzantion's 1,153 years. A case of the pot and kettle, I believe.
• Borussia is really Prussia (why can't he use the normal names; he seems deliberately obscure). He likes to tantalise with obscurity: on page 364 Davies tells us that Saxon King August the Strong's "amorous adventures have gained him a place in the Guinness Book of Records" but he doesn't say why, not even in a footnote!!! (Wikipedia claims he had up to 382 illegitimate children.)
• Sabaudia (Savoy) was ruled by a single dynasty from 1033 until the last Italian king was deposed in 1946 (although after seceding Savoy itself to France in 1860). One impressive Count of Savoy not only got himself made Duke but after his wife and eldest son died was elected (anti)pope; his second son succeeded him and acquired the Shroud for Turin (bequeathed to the Roman Catholic church only by the last king of the dynasty).
• Galicia which was brought into existence by the Austro-Hungarian empire from bits of Poland and the Ukraine and then dismembered following WWI
• Etruria which was both brought into existence and dissolved by Napoleonic decree; Davies is rather more interested in the dynastic histories of the Bourbons and the Bonapartes than in this Tuscan state.
• When he chats about Rosenau, known to most as Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, he spends almost all the time talking about the most famous resident, Prince Albert, and the machinations of the SCG dynasts whose Leopold not only married the Prince Regent's daughter and would have become king of England had she survived childbirth but was also offered but declined the throne of Greece, became King of the Belgians, and arranged the marriage of his niece Victoria to his nephew Albert thus spreading his tentacles across the crowned heads of almost all of Europe. I was also fascinated to learn that Saxe-Coburg soup was made from Albert's favourite Brussels sprouts. Here is the recipe!
• The fate of Montenegro (he calls it Tsernagora) was interesting: it was the only Allied (and therefore victorious) state to vanish after the First World War. Having been occupied by Austro-Hungary the King and Government were in exile; when the Austrians collapsed the Serbs moved in and manipulated matters so that the Allies at Versailles found it easier to assume that the Montenegrin population had voted to join Serbia. Montenegro has now re-assumed independence from Serbia.
• Carpatho-Ukraine ('Rusyn' - Davies) lasted nearly a whole day. They were tagged on to Slovakia as part of Czecho-Slovakia after the 1919 Versailles Treaty but had managed to gain regional autonomy within this state. On 15th March 1939, when Hitler invaded Prague and the Slovaks declared themselves to be a German protectorate, the C-Us had little alternative but to proclaim their independence. Hungary instantly invaded. An English visitor remarked that in 24 hours he had been in three separate states in one place.
• Eire is an emergent state rather than a vanished one; Davies uses its birth as a springboard to speculate upon the disintegration of the United Kingdom.
• His final example is the CCCP (of course the Cyrillic spelling is preferred to the Latin USSR or even SSSR) which he views from the Estonian perspective.

This is a massive rambling book, full of delightful anecdotes but equally full of rambling dynastic discourses and historiographical rants. It is bizarrely uneven in its treatment: some episodes being scrutinised in detail whilst centuries can pass unnoticed. Even in its state selection it seems eclectic. Eastern Europe has a number of chapters; Scandinavia has none. There are so many other places that could be included: Wales, Venice, Brittany. Since he includes states that are now revived (eg Montenegro) there is even more scope. And there is clearly a book to be written about states that have not vanished such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Trans-Dniester.

Overall I think that it needed firm editing.

January 2012; 739 pages