The Renaissance

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2000

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Renaissance, which was first given its role as the birth place of modern man by the nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt. At the start of his immensely influential Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, he wrote “In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness - that which was turned within as that which was turned without - lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues…In Italy this veil first melted into air” But is the Renaissance really a cultural miracle, and is it fair to think of medieval thought as being ‘obscured by a veil’? Should we even call the period around the fifteenth century the Renaissance when the very word implies that culture, for a thousand years, has been dead? What if our idea of the Renaissance is completely wrong? With Francis Ames-Lewis, Professor of History of Art, Birkbeck College; Peter Burke, Professor of Cultural History and Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge; Dr Evelyn Welch, Reader in the History of Art, University of Sussex.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program
0:11.8	Hello, the Renaissance was first given its role as a birthplace of modern man by the 19th century Swiss historian Jacob
0:18.5	Birkhardt at the start of his immensely influential
0:21.8	Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy he wrote in the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness
0:26.8	That which was turned within as that which was turned without lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil
0:33.5	The veil was woven of faith illusion childish prepossession through which the world and history was seen as clad in strange
0:40.8	Shoes in Italy this veil first melted into air
0:45.1	But is the Renaissance really a cultural miracle?
0:47.7	And is it fair to think of many evil thought as being
0:50.8	Obscured by a veil should we even call appeared around the 15th century?
0:54.9	The Renaissance when the very word implies that culture for a thousand years was moribund and is it all to
1:01.7	Exclusively your appear
1:03.3	With me to discuss the value and importance of a period that's often defined as the high point of European culture is Peter Birk
1:09.9	Professor of cultural history Cambridge University
1:12.5	Dr. Irwin Welsh reader in the history of art at Sussex University and Professor Francis Ames Lewis author of a new book
1:18.6	The intellectual life of the early Renaissance artist
1:22.0	Peter Birk, can you outline for us the traditional
1:26.2	Birk heart view of the Renaissance which still holds sway in the popular idea of the Renaissance in modern culture?
1:33.8	Yes, and then it would be the Renaissance miracle to take up the word you've already used so there's this
1:40.0	extraordinary
1:41.3	Flourishing of talent and more specifically greater innovation than before and that would link up with book arts idea that
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