Humanities & Classics 1002
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Renaissance Forum
Humanities & Classics 1002 |
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In Reply to: post # 1 again posted by Mary Lynch on January 04, 1999 at 15:09:24:
Kempis, in his "Imitation of Christ", taught that one should always "despise outward things" that is, those things that don't pertain to suffering and the bible, one must always be meek and then one will be closer to God. Mirandola, on the other hand felt that humans could be gods, that we could raise ourselves to such a level of understanding and intelligence and interpretation of all things that we could become just like the gods themselves.
In "The Name of the Rose" we see these two worldly views conflict, William of Baskerville is stuck in a society in which there is held in the utmost belief that there can be no pleasure on earth, and that pleasure should only come in the afterlife, one should not question the church at all and merely be a slave to what God wants done. No questioning? This medieval thinking is just what William couldn't bend to, he questioned things that went wrong, he wanted to know, he certainly believed in God, and also in suffering and sacrifice of personal comforts, but he was a renaissance man at heart, through and through, he questioned everything, the occurances in the abbey, the relativity of the pope and other church officials taking all the riches that people had, and instead of suffering being wealthy and materially happy, and he wanted to pursue knowledge, to study that which was not supposed to be studied according to the church, ancient texts that might move the monks into a position where they question the church and its power over them. I think of it like the way that some thought about educating slaves, a lot of people believed that if a slave was educated they would know what kind of a situation they were in, and would thus be unsatisfied and crave more, how true this works for both cases! The religious figures of the time couldn't stand the thought of losing believers for the want of more knowledge, they are very single minded indeed.
As for William, the renaissance man, for him there were no hindrances except for religion. He was a combination of Kempis' beliefs and Mirandola's. He believed in the church, that is true, but he also believed that there had to be a line drawn as to freedoms. Mirandola is all freedom in his opinions, so much so that he states that if we educate ourselves enough, and think not of hindrances we too can become like gods. William loved to educate himself in ways that the church despises, such as when he was charting stars, and deducing the crimes that went on in the abbey, everyone dismissed this crimes for simple things until William questioned what had happened. William was just out of his time, he should have lived in a renaissance-type society.
As for the contrast between Medieval and Renaissance beliefs, there are many for they are total opposites, the medieval as depicted by Kempis basically levels down to humble yourself and suffer that you may have a better life after death. Mirandola, however, thinks that we can actually achieve being godlike with enough understanding about the universe.