The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 布克哈特史学名著《意大利文艺复兴时期的文化》(ISBN=9780140445343) 电子书 pdf 百度云 下载 epub 2025 免费 mobi 在线

　　For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the

Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the

modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the

competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and

politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states

of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form

of society, and traces the rise of the creative individual, from

Dante to Michelangelo. A fascinating de*ion of an era of

cultural transition, this nineteenth-century masterpiece was to

become the most influential interpretation of the Italian

Renaissance, and anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche's concept of

the 'Ubermensch' in its portrayal of an age of genius.

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　　Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) intended to join the Church, but

lost his faith while studying theology. Thereafter he studied

history at the University of Basel, gaining his doctorate in 1843

and becoming a lecturer. He moved to the Zurich Polytechnic as

Professor of Architecture and History in 1855, which is where he

wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. In 1858 he

returned to Basel, where he lived for his work as a teacher at the

University. Peter Burke is Reader in Cultural History, University

of Cambridge, and Fellow of Emmanuel College. He has published

widely on the Renaissance and cultural history. Peter Murray was

Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of

London. He taught at the Courtauld Institute from 1949-1967 and was

subsequently chair of Art History at Birkbeck College. He published

widely on the architecture of the Renaissance. He died in 1992.

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　　Introduction

　　This work bears the title of an essay in the strictest sense of

the word. No one is more conscious than the writer with what

limited means and strength he has addressed himself to a task so

arduous. And even if he could look with greater confidence upon his

own researches, he would hardly thereby feel more assured of the

approval of competent judges. To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of

a given civilization present a different picture; and in treating

of a civilization which is the mother of our own, and whose

influence is still at work among us, it is unavoidable that

individual judgement and feeling should tell every moment both on

the writer and on the reader. In the wide ocean upon which we

venture, the possible ways and directions are many; and the same

studies which have served for this work might easily, in other

hands, not only receive a wholly different treatment and

application, but lead also to essentially different conclusions.

Such indeed is the importance of the subject that it still calls

for fresh investigation, and may be studied with advantage from the

most varied points of view. Meanwhile we are content if a patient

hearing is granted us, and if this book be taken and judged as a

whole. It is the most serious difficulty of the history of

civilization that a great intellectual process must be broken up

into single, and often into what seem arbitrary categories, in

order to be in any way intelligible. It was formerly our intention

to fill up the gaps in this book by a special work on the ?Art of

the Renaissance??an intention, however, which we have been able to

fulfill only in part.1

　　*1. Burckhardt?s History of Architecture and Decoration of the

Italian Renaissance was first printed in 1867. His Notes on

Renaissance Sculpture were posthumously published in 1934, as a

part of Vol. XIII of his Collected Works. Of his intended History

of Renaissance Painting three chapters only were finished: ?The Art

Collectors,? ?The Altar-piece,? ?The Portrait?; in fact, three very

fine essays, published in 1898, a year after the author?s

death.

　　The struggle between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen left Italy in

a political condition which differed essentially from that of other

countries of the West. While in France, Spain and England the

feudal system was so organized that, at the close of its existence,

it was naturally transformed into a unified monarchy, and while in

Germany it helped to maintain, at least outwardly, the unity of the

empire, Italy had shaken it off almost entirely. The Emperors of

the fourteenth century, even in the most favourable case, were no

longer received and respected as feudal lords, but as possible

leaders and supporters of powers already in existence; while the

Papacy, with its creatures and allies, was strong enough to hinder

national unity in the future, but not strong enough itself to bring

about that unity. Between the two lay a multitude of political

units?republics and despots?in part of long standing, in part of

recent origin, whose existence was founded simply on their power to

maintain it. In them for the first time we detect the modern

political spirit of Europe, surrendered freely to its own

instincts, often displaying the worst features of an unbridled

egotism, outraging every right, and killing every germ of a

healthier culture. But, wherever this vicious tendency is overcome

or in any way compensated, a new fact appears in history?the State

as the outcome of reflection and calculation, the State as a work

of art. This new life displays itself in a hundred forms, both in

the republican and in the despotic States, and determines their

inward constitution, no less than their foreign policy. We shall

limit ourselves to the consideration of the completer and more

clearly defined type, which is offered by the despotic

States.

　　The internal condition of the despotically governed States had a

memorable counterpart in the Norman Empire of Lower Italy and

Sicily, after its transformation by the Emperor Frederick II. Bred

amid treason and peril in the neighbourhood of the Saracens,

Frederick, the first ruler of the modern type who sat upon a

throne, had early accustomed himself to a thoroughly objective

treatment of affairs.

　　2. The rulers and their dependants were together called ?lo

stato,? and this name afterwards acquired the meaning of the

collective existence of a territory. acquaintance with the internal

condition and administration of the Saracenic States was close and

intimate; and the mortal struggle in which he was engaged with the

Papacy compelled him, no less than his adversaries, to bring into

the field all the resources at his command. Frederick?s measures

(especially after the year 1231) are aimed at the complete

destruction of the feudal State, at the transformation of the

people into a multitude destitute of will and of the means of

resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer.

He centralized, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole

judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to

be filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of

the offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants.

The taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in

accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel

and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible

to obtain any money from Orientals. Here, in short, we find, not a

people, but simply a disciplined multitude of subjects; who were

forbidden, for example, to marry out of the country without special

permission, and under no circumstances were allowed to study

abroad. The University of Naples was the first we know of to

restrict the freedom of study, while the East, in these respects at

all events, left its youth unfettered. It was after the examples of

Mohammedan rules that Frederick traded on his own account in all

parts of the Mediterranean, reserving to himself the monopoly of

many commodities, and restricting in various ways the commerce of

his subjects. The Fatimite Caliphs, with all their esoteric

unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of all

the differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick,

on the other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious

inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible when we

remember that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the

representatives of a free municipal life. Lastly, the internal

police, and the kernel of the army for foreign service, was

composed of Saracens who had been brought over from Sicily to

Nocera and Lucera?men who were deaf to the cry of misery and

careless of the ban of the Church. At a later period the subjects,

by whom the use of weapons had long been forgotten, were passive

witnesses of the fall of Manfred and of the seizure of the

government by Charles of Anjou; the latter continued to use the

system which he found already at work.

　　At the side of the centralizing Emperor appeared a usurper of the

most peculiar kind; his vicar and son-in-law, Ezzelino da Romano.

He stands as the representative of no system of government or

administration, for all his activity was wasted in struggles for

supremacy in the eastern part of Upper Italy; but as a political

type he was a figure of no less importance for the future than his

imperial protector Frederick. The conquests and usurpations which

had hitherto taken place in the Middle Ages rested on real or

pretended inheritance and other such claims, or else were effected

against unbelievers and ex-communicated persons. Here for the first

time the attempt was openly made to found a throne by wholesale

murder and endless barbarities, by the adoption, in short, of any

means with a view to nothing but the end pursued. None of his

successors, not even Cesare Borgia, rivalled the colossal guilt of

Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten, and his fall

led to no return of justice among the nations, and served as no

warning to future transgressors.

　　It was in vain at such a time that St. Thomas Aquinas, a born

subject of Frederick, set up the theory of a constitutional

monarchy, in which the prince was to be supported by an upper house

named by himself, and a representative body elected by the people.

Such theories found no echo outside the lecture-room, and Frederick

and Ezzelino were and remain for Italy the great political

phenomena of the thirteenth century. Their personality, already

half legendary, forms the most important subject of ?The Hundred

Old Tales,? whose original composition falls certainly within this

century.3 In them Ezzelino is spoken of with the awe which all

mighty impressions leave behind them. His person became the centre

of a whole literature from the chronicle of eye-witnesses to the

half-mythical tragedy of later poets.

　　3. Cento Novelle Antiche, ed. 1525. Despots of the Fourteenth

Century

　　The tyrannies, great and small, of the fourteenth century afford

constant proof that examples such as these were not thrown away.

Their misdeeds cried forth loudly and have been circumstantially

told by historians. As States depending for existence on themselves

alone, and scientifically organized with a view to this object,

they present to us a higher interest than that of mere

narrative.

　　The deliberate adaptation of means to ends, of which no prince

out of Italy had at that time a conception, joined to almost

absolute power within the limits of the State, produced among the

despots both men and modes of life of a peculiar character. The

chief secret of government in the hands of the prudent ruler lay in

leaving the incidence of taxation as far as possible where he found

it, or as he had first arranged it. The chief sources of income

were: a land tax, based on a valuation; definite taxes on articles

of consumption and duties on exported and imported goods; together

with the private fortune of the ruling house. The only possible

increase was derived from the growth of business and of general

prosperity. Loans, such as we find in the free cities, were here

unknown; a well-planned confiscation was held a preferable means of

raising money, provided only that it left public credit unshaken?an

end attained, for example, by the truly Oriental practice of

deposing and plundering the director of the finances.

　　Out of this income the expenses of the little court, of the

bodyguard, of the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings

were met, as well as of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged

to the personal attendants of the prince. The illegitimacy of his

rule isolated the tyrant and surrounded him with constant danger;

the most honour- able alliance which he could form was with

intellectual merit, with- out regard to its origin. The liberality

of the northern princes of the thirteenth century was confined to

the knights, to the nobility which served and sang. It was

otherwise with the Italian despot. With his thirst for fame and his

passion for monumental works, it was talent, not birth, which he

needed. In the company of the poet and the scholar he felt himself

in a new position, almost, indeed, in possession of a new

legitimacy.

　　No prince was more famous in this respect than the ruler of

Verona, Can Grande della Scala, who numbered among the illustrious

exiles whom he entertained at his court representatives of the

whole of Italy. The men of letters were not ungrateful. Petrarch,

whose visits at the courts of such men have been so severely

censured, sketched an ideal picture of a prince of the fourteenth

century. He demands great things from his patron, the lord of

Padua, but in a manner which shows that he holds him capable of

them. ?Thou must not be the master but the father of thy subjects,

and must love them as thy children; yea, as members of thy body.

Weapons, guards, and soldiers thou mayest employ against the

enemy?with thy subjects goodwill is sufficient. By citizens, of

course, I mean those who love the existing order; for those who

daily desire change are rebels and traitors, and against such a

stern justice may take its course.?

　　Here follows, worked out in detail, the purely modern fiction of

the omnipotence of the State. The prince is to take everything into

his charge, to maintain and restore churches and public buildings,

to keep up the municipal police, to drain the marshes, to look

after the supply of wine and corn; so to distribute the taxes that

the people can recognize their necessity; he is to support the sick

and the helpless, and to give his protection and society to

distinguished scholars, on whom his fame in after ages will

depend.

　　But whatever might be the brighter sides of the system, and the

merits of individual rulers, yet the men of the fourteenth century

were not without a more or less distinct consciousness of the brief

and uncertain tenure of most of these despotisms. Inasmuch as

political institutions like these are naturally secure in

proportion to the size of the territory in which they exist, the

larger principalities were constantly tempted to swallow up the

smaller. Whole hecatombs of petty rulers were sacrificed at this

time to the Visconti alone. As a result of this outward danger an

inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and the effect of the

situation on the character of the ruler was generally of the most

sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and

unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from

enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a

tyrant in the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could

trust his nearest relations! But where all was illegitimate, there

could be no regular law of inheritance, either with regard to the

succession or to the division of the ruler?s property; and

consequently the heir, if incompetent or a minor, was liable in the

interest of the family itself to be supplanted by an uncle or

cousin of more resolute character. The acknowledgment or exclusion

of the bastards was a fruitful source of contest; and most of these

families in consequence were plagued with a crowd of discontented

and vindictive kinsmen. This circumstance gave rise to continual

outbreaks of treason and to frightful scenes of domestic bloodshed.

Sometimes the pretenders lived abroad in exile, and like the

Visconti, who practised the fisherman?s craft on the Lake of Garda,

viewed the situation with patient indifference. When asked by a

messenger of his rival when and how he thought of returning to

Milan, he gave the reply, ?By the same means as those by which I

was expelled, but not till his crimes have outweighed my own.?

Sometimes, too, the despot was sacrificed by his relations, with

the view of saving the family, to the public conscience which he

had too grossly outraged. In a few cases the government was in the

hands of the whole family, or at least the ruler was bound to take

their advice; and here, too, the distribution of property and

influence often led to bitter disputes.

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对威廉洪堡而言，国家本身不应单独成为追求的目标，国家主权之值得奋力争取与维护，乃是为了维护个人以及文化的独立自主性。相对于法国人希望透过政治革命的方式立即解放封建传统的桎梏，德意志新人文主义强调透过文化教养培养个人独立自主的心灵，希望借此达到逐步转化社会体制的终极目标。

布克哈特深切关怀在人类社会里，国家与文化之间的关系究竟应该如何，是其来有自的。国家在提供人民国防安全与社会安全之际，是否应该跳脱政治对文化发展的操控，让文化独立自主，以便让生活在其中的公民可以真正涵养出自由的心灵？

在《路易十四时代》第一章导论，他（伏尔泰）提出世界史上有四个足为后世典范的时代：第一是古希腊文化全盛时期伯利克里斯（Pericles)的时代，第二是古罗马凯撒与奥古斯都在位的时代，第三是佛罗伦斯在梅迪奇家族统治的时代，第四是法王路易十四的时代。

本书中译虽然将书名译为《意大利文艺复兴时代的文化》，但"Renaisance"一次在布氏的语义应用里，其实包涵三种意义：(1)文艺复兴作为时代分期的名称，(2)文艺复兴作为特定的价值观，(3)文艺复兴作为人文运动的代称。

也是在《意大利文艺复兴与时代的文化》影响下，欧洲史分期的大架构开始被定型为古代、中古与近现代，而近现代的源头便是文艺复兴。

在布克哈特论述的架构下，国家提供近代个人才性向外发展的舞台，而伦理道德与宗教则提供近现代人心灵视野与内省深度的精神力量。这一前一后两个主干又支撑起第二卷到第五卷所述意大利文艺复兴文化不同发展面向的活动场域

媒体评论

　　?The greatest single book on the history of Italy between 1350

and 1550.??

Hajo Holborn

--

Review

书籍介绍

For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form of society, and traces the rise of the creative individual, from Dante to Michelangelo. A fascinating description of an era of cultural transition, this nineteenth-century masterpiece was to become the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, and anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche's concept of the 'Ubermensch' in its portrayal of an age of genius.