REFORMATION AND RENAISSANCE 5 sophy of Greece, as found in the writings of St. Augustine and the Fathers, of St. Thomas and the Scholastics, and also the Christian Renaissance with its classic scholarship, its critical examination of texts and codices, and its revival in the arts and architecture as guided and sanctioned by the Church. Next 2) came the heathenising Renaissance. Its aim, whether in the arts, learning, or philosophy, was the revival of Paganism, to the exclusion of Christianity, and its ultimate end was solely man's temporal pleasure and satisfaction. Thirdly came the religious revolt 31 of Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer, which was slightly differentiated in each country by the special influences determining its development. The latter two systems, though united in their rejection of the Papal authority, and in a common materialistic tendency, were by no means in complete agreement; for the dominant party in the reform was alike opposed to learning or art of any kind, and it is strange that the Reformation and the Renaissance should ever be spoken of as one and the same movement.1 When, then, and where do we find the true Renaissance in England? The sixty years following on the wars of the Roses, and immediately preceding the Reformation; i.e. from about 1470 to the fall of Wolsey, witnessed the new birth in learning and architecture. The chief leaders of the new learning were William Sellyng, the Benedictine monk 1 Cf. Professor Dowden, "Mind and Art of Shakespeare," 11 (1892). Professor Caird, Contemporary Review, 1xx. 820. of Canterbury, the pioneer of Greek scholarship in this country, Grocyn, Linacre, Dean Colet, Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Warham, and Abbot Bere of Canterbury, to whom Erasmus sent his Greek Testament for revision.1 The ecclesiastical revival was manifested in the quantity and magnificence of the work done in church-building, restoration, and decoration. Among the more notable examples may be mentioned King's College, Cambridge, 1472-1515; Eton College, founded 1441, completed about 1482-3; St. George's Chapel, Windsor, 1475-1521; Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster, 1502-1515, both the work of Sir Reginald Braye; Bath Abbey, rebuilt by Bishop King, 1495-1503, and Prior Birde, and finished under Prior Holloway only six years before the surrender of the Abbey to Henry VIII. in 1533; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, built by Bishop Fox of Winchester, 1501-1528, in conjunction with Prior Silkstede; also Fox's beautiful chantry at Winchester, and the carved wooden pulpit of Silkstede; Jesus College, Cambridge; the Collegiate Church at Westbury, founded by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, 1486-1500; the chantries in Ely of Bishop Redman, 1501-1506, and of Bishop West, 1515-1534; Brazenose College, Oxford, founded by William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, 1496, and Sir Richard Sutton; St. John's College, Cambridge, founded at the advice of Bishop Fisher, by Margaret Beaufort, 1 Gasquet, "The Old English Bible and other Essays, " 317 (1897). DESTRUCTIVENESS OF THE REFORM 7 Countess of Richmond, who also built a school and chantry and other works at Wimborne Minster; Christ Church, Oxford, and Ipswich College, founded by Cardinal Wolsey; St. Asaph's Cathedral, rebuilt by Bishop Redman, 1471-1475; Bangor Cathedral, rebuilt by Bishops Dene and Skevington, 14961533 Such, then, is a brief and imperfect outline of the work effected and the spirit shown by the true Renaissance in England. That it was Catholic and Roman is seen both from the character of its promoters and the nature of their works. Now what was the action of the Reformation? Did it give a fresh stimulus to learning, or found a new era in religious art? The colleges and schools founded under Elizabeth and Edward VI. are sometimes quoted as marking the dawn of education in the country. As a fact, they represent a miserably inadequate attempt to repair the losses effected by the new barbarism. The Reformation was inaugurated by the dissolution of the monasteries, the dispersion of their libraries with their unique treasures of codices and manuscripts, and completed with the spoliation of the churches and the destruction of the highest works of art in the kingdom. The mural decorations of cathedral, church, and shrine, some of which, as the retable of Westminster Abbey, were of very high excellence, and only just completed, were all obliterated by whitewash or distemper. The wood carving, the rood-screen with its "goodly images," the carved stalls, canopies, and magnificent embossed roofs, perished under the hands of the reforming iconoclasts. The metal-work, the silver and gilt shrines, images, reliquaries, lamps, crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, patens, monstrances, pyxes, processional and pastoral staves, spoons, cruets, ewers, basins, the jewelled clasps for missals, antiphonaries, and copes, all these works of an art which, in Italy, was stimulating the genius of a Cellini, in England passed into the royal melting-pot, to the value of some £850,000 of present money, or nearly a million sterling.1 The painting of the needle shared a similar fate. The richly embroidered chasubles, copes, dalmatics, maniples, stoles, were consumed in huge bonfires, or became furniture in the palaces of the king and the new nobles, and the art of embroidery, as of metal-work, for religious purposes ceased to be. That this account is not exaggerated may be seen in Spenser. As a courtier he extolled Elizabeth and all her works, and vilified grossly the ancient faith. But as a poet and philosopher he was wholly opposed to the new order of things. In the "Tears of the Muses," while paying, of course, the usual compliment to the "divine Eliza," he deplores the degradation of the public taste, the contempt for learning, the universal sway of "ugly barbarism" and brutish 1 Gasquet, "Henry VIII. and the Monasteries," vol. ii. 3rd ed., THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 9 ignorance, of "scoffing scurrility and scornful folly." Spenser was in truth very far from being the Puritan that Mr. Carter would make him.1 His whole theory of sacrificial love is, as we shall see, directly opposed to the school of Geneva. In the "Faërie Queene" itself the Red-Cross Knight is purified on the lines of Catholic asceticism, and under the character of the "Blatant Beast," Puritanism with its destroying hand and railing bitter tongue, is thus described : "From thence into the sacred church he broke And the images for all their godly hue Did cast to ground, whilst none there was to rue -Book vi. Was, then, a movement so levelling and destructive likely to produce the dramatic and poetic outburst of the Shakespearian age? That movement, with its brief duration of some fifty years, came indeed in spite of the Reformation, not because of it. No doubt the circumstances of the time, the wealth and ease of the court and its supporters, called for such entertainment as the drama supplied. But the plots as well as the style and art of the great English poets and dramatists came, not from Germany or Switzerland, but from Italy. Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch, not Luther or Calvin, were the masters of Wyatt and 1 "Shakespeare, Puritan and Recusant," 79. |