The renaissance of a renaissance man

Machiavelli's Virtue. By Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998) xvi + 372 pp. $15.00, £11.95 paper.

From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance. By Peter Godman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998) xviii + 366. $49.50, £33.50 cloth.     

The renaissance in Switzerland

The geographical position of Switzerland made contact with Renaissance manifestations in Italy and Germany easy even if the country was too small and poor for notable buildings or works of art. Participation in the wars in north Italy increased interest in military and governmental aspects of the Renaissance.Basel was an early centre for printing, and its presses, particularly when intelligently directed by the Amerbach family and by Froben, contributed largely to the availability of Greek and Latin texts.Erasmus lived for many years in Basel and attracted numerous scholars - Bär, Glarean, Capito, Beatus Rhenanus, Vadian, Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Myconius wrote near-classical Latin and all had some knowledge of Greek. Konrad Witz, Manuel, Urs Graf and Asper were painters of repute: Dürer and Holbein did some of their work in Basel.The Swiss cities, Basel, Zurich, St Gall, Glarus and Bern, encouraged scholarship and education: with Tschudi, Justinger, Schilling and Anshelm, a new approach to the writing of history was possible. Paracelsus and Gessner made contributions to medicine and natural science.     

The renaissance in Switzerland

The geographical position of Switzerland made contact with Renaissance manifestations in Italy and Germany easy even if the country was too small and poor for notable buildings or works of art. Participation in the wars in north Italy increased interest in military and governmental aspects of the Renaissance.Basel was an early centre for printing, and its presses, particularly when intelligently directed by the Amerbach family and by Froben, contributed largely to the availability of Greek and Latin texts.Erasmus lived for many years in Basel and attracted numerous scholars - Bär, Glarean, Capito, Beatus Rhenanus, Vadian, Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Myconius wrote near-classical Latin and all had some knowledge of Greek. Konrad Witz, Manuel, Urs Graf and Asper were painters of repute: Dürer and Holbein did some of their work in Basel.The Swiss cities, Basel, Zurich, St Gall, Glarus and Bern, encouraged scholarship and education: with Tschudi, Justinger, Schilling and Anshelm, a new approach to the writing of history was possible. Paracelsus and Gessner made contributions to medicine and natural science.     

Jewish-Christian disputations and the twelfth-century renaissance

An important aspect of the medieval debate between Christians and Jews was Jewish-Christian disputations. These disputations were either records of real discussions or academic treatises written in the form of dialogues. They invariably reflect current intellectual trends in Christian and Jewish circles. The Dialogus inter Christianum et Iudeum de fide Catholica, which has been wrongly attributed to William of Champeaux, is a fictitious Jewish-Christian disputation which has never received the attention it deserves. Previously it has been regarded as either an uninteresting pastiche of Gilbert Crispin's Disputatio Iudei et Christiani or a poor imitation of Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo. Far from being as dim-witted as it has been made out to be, this disputation would seem, in fact, to reflect some of the teaching that went on in the school of Anselm of Loan and William of Champeaux. As such it provides us with an opportunity to learn more about how the work of some scholars of the twelfth-century renaissance influenced the form and contents of contemporary Jewish-Christian disputations.     

Literacy,authorship, and belief in medieval and renaissance Europe

Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530. Edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xxv + 293 pp., £37.50/$59.95 cloth.

Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance. By Andrew Hadfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvii + 261 pp., £35.00/$59.59 cloth.

Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464–1720. By Alan H. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 179 pp., £35.00/$59.95 cloth.