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The Hinges of History #6
Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World
In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill guides us through the thrilling period of Renaissance and Reformation (late fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries), so full of innovation and cultural change that the Western world would not experience its like again until the twentieth century. Beginning with the continent-wide disaster of the Black Plague, Cahill traces the many innovations in European thought and experience that served both the new humanism of the Renaissance and the seemingly abrupt religious alterations of the increasingly radical Reformation. This is an age of the most sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies, and of newly found courage, as many thousands refuse to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. It is an era of newly discovered continents and previously unknown peoples. More than anything, it is a time of individuality in which a whole culture must achieve a new balance, if the West is to continue.
Audio CD
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
Thomas Cahill
38 books583 followersBorn in New York City to Irish-American parents and raised in Queens and the Bronx, Cahill was educated by Jesuits and studied ancient Greek and Latin. He continued his study of Greek and Latin literature, as well as medieval philosophy, scripture and theology, at Fordham University, where he completed a B.A. in classical literature and philosophy in 1964, and a pontifical degree in philosophy in 1965. He went on to complete his M.F.A. in film and dramatic literature at Columbia University in 1968.
In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. He also reads French and Italian. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York.
Cahill has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for The Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full time, he was the Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, divide their time between New York and Rome.
—Wikipedia
In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. He also reads French and Italian. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York.
Cahill has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for The Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full time, he was the Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, divide their time between New York and Rome.
—Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 265 reviews
March 24, 2016
Thomas Cahill's Heretics and Heroes is a great look at the interwoven connection between the Reformation and the Renaissance, taking in a large swath of the primary leaders in religion, politics and the artists during that time period.
To be honest, history buffs won't find much new here as Cahill runs over the basics on the various kings, queens, popes, bishops, painters and sculptors of the 14th through 17th centuries. Take this as a good intro to that period, covering what any history course or book would touch upon.
However, beyond that, it delves deeper into the specifics of religion's grip upon Europe at the time, never wholly with or against the grand edicts of the day. Balance and clear thought are struck through out.
A few relatively minor personages come in for a sort of Wikipedia treatment and add nuance to the history. These were some of my favorite passages in the book, perhaps because they were the least known stories to me. The world is a strange...mainly because of the nonsense us kookie humans have gotten up to.
This is my second Thomas Cahill and I enjoyed it a good deal more than the first, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. It made me feel more confident about this writer, enough that perhaps now I'll overcome move my fear of overhype and move on to his most popular book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.
To be honest, history buffs won't find much new here as Cahill runs over the basics on the various kings, queens, popes, bishops, painters and sculptors of the 14th through 17th centuries. Take this as a good intro to that period, covering what any history course or book would touch upon.
However, beyond that, it delves deeper into the specifics of religion's grip upon Europe at the time, never wholly with or against the grand edicts of the day. Balance and clear thought are struck through out.
A few relatively minor personages come in for a sort of Wikipedia treatment and add nuance to the history. These were some of my favorite passages in the book, perhaps because they were the least known stories to me. The world is a strange...mainly because of the nonsense us kookie humans have gotten up to.
This is my second Thomas Cahill and I enjoyed it a good deal more than the first, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. It made me feel more confident about this writer, enough that perhaps now I'll overcome move my fear of overhype and move on to his most popular book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.
August 23, 2014
It's as if Thomas Cahill invites me to a party thrown for the most interesting people of the 15th and 16th century, so I feel like I have to go to meet everyone! But whenever I start mingling with any of the guests (Christopher Columbus, Michelangelo, Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc.), Cahill interrupts our conversation and starts talking about himself, or makes fun of his guests, or yells at them for living in a different era. Maybe he's just having a bad night.
Cahill does inspire me to learn more about the subjects/people discussed in the book. That's partially because he writes about really fascinating stuff, but also because I don't know how much of his analysis can be trusted.
The "Hinges of History" series is just so hard to resist...
Cahill does inspire me to learn more about the subjects/people discussed in the book. That's partially because he writes about really fascinating stuff, but also because I don't know how much of his analysis can be trusted.
The "Hinges of History" series is just so hard to resist...
October 14, 2022
If you have any curiosity about the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation, you might want to read this book. It is by no means a complete history of all of the above but it is another piece of the puzzle about these subjects. This is the second of Cahill's 'Hinges of History' books I have read and it did not disappoint. Aside from the overall knowledge one acquires from reading this book, it provides many details that you might not otherwise know. For example, I did not know that Luther did not literally nail his 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg- he send them in a letter to the bishop. Also, private Confession originated in Ireland- who knew?
The book introduces (at least to me) many of the artists who had an impact on the time. Cahill explains aspects of Albrecht Durer's art that for this reader, helped me to interpret the art and place it in its time frame. He analyzes the different Davids as well as Carravagio's work, among others. Also, who knew that 'speaking in tongues' originally referred to people who were babbling?
Heretics and Heroes cuts through much of the academic mumbo jumbo present in some work and explains things in a very understandable way. I enjoyed this book and plan to read the rest of the series- which apparently does not need to be read in any particular order.
The book introduces (at least to me) many of the artists who had an impact on the time. Cahill explains aspects of Albrecht Durer's art that for this reader, helped me to interpret the art and place it in its time frame. He analyzes the different Davids as well as Carravagio's work, among others. Also, who knew that 'speaking in tongues' originally referred to people who were babbling?
Heretics and Heroes cuts through much of the academic mumbo jumbo present in some work and explains things in a very understandable way. I enjoyed this book and plan to read the rest of the series- which apparently does not need to be read in any particular order.
March 18, 2024
Cahill writes like a vastly over-qualified tour guide. He presents enormous detail on the personal lives of great artists or writers. He spends pages pointing out the details of particular famous paintings or sculptures. Even Reformation figures like Luther are treated with meticulous attention to their life stories and the specific features of their writings. Cahill's appreciation is so particular that it crowds out more generalized discussions on how these various innovations altered our perceptions, values, and common sense.
With all his loving attention to detail, Cahill runs out of space. He apologizes that he must cut so many things from the tour. There's no time to consider the music, or Scandinavia, or the founders of medicant religious orders, who started to make the church more a servant than a master. It's a good whirlwind tour. But as the title says, it's more about the artists and priests (in their times) than about the Renaissance and Reformation (in world history).
With all his loving attention to detail, Cahill runs out of space. He apologizes that he must cut so many things from the tour. There's no time to consider the music, or Scandinavia, or the founders of medicant religious orders, who started to make the church more a servant than a master. It's a good whirlwind tour. But as the title says, it's more about the artists and priests (in their times) than about the Renaissance and Reformation (in world history).
December 25, 2014
This book is a history of the Renaissance and Reformation era told through a series of short biographies of leading artists and religious leaders. The author frequently comments on parallels to current events which is in keeping with his stated goal of exploring how actions taken in that era led to the world we have today. The history is told in a conversational style that lays out the evolution of our Western sensibility while avoiding a strict chronological series of wars and catastrophe.
Here's a LINK to an extended excerpt from the book about how religion became increasingly bloody over the years in its dealings with heretics. The irony is Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love.
My motive for selecting this book was to see what was said about the Anabaptists. The book does mention the Anabaptists but somewhat briefly. At the end of the book in what the author calls the book's Postlude he apologizes for a number of stories that couldn't fit within his book. In the following quote he is saying that he wishes he would have been able to say more:
Here's a LINK to an extended excerpt from the book about how religion became increasingly bloody over the years in its dealings with heretics. The irony is Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love.
My motive for selecting this book was to see what was said about the Anabaptists. The book does mention the Anabaptists but somewhat briefly. At the end of the book in what the author calls the book's Postlude he apologizes for a number of stories that couldn't fit within his book. In the following quote he is saying that he wishes he would have been able to say more:
The Anabaptists are another near omission. They became in time the Mennonites, the Bruderhof, the Quakers. Though universally despised in the early modern period, persecuted and often drowned by both Catholics and Protestants, their main reforms beyond adult baptism--that is a heightened sense of community, compassion for the poor, prison reform, elimination of the death penalty, refusal to take up arms, peace making-- are now the ideals of almost all their former persecutors, whether Catholic or Protestant. From a historical point of view this is an astounding reversal. Today in a way we are all Quakers. We are certainly not the religious vigilantes who took up arms and murdered as many of their religious opponents as could be found.
February 20, 2017
I have enjoyed Cahill's books, and have enjoyed this one as well, because he isn't bashful about telling the story of Western Civilization through the humanities. His books are brisk, occasionally humorous, filled with context and generous. Though occasionally, he makes hamhanded attempts at making the books "relevant" by using contemporary events for context, I don't feel, as some other reviewers have, that he was somehow hiding his worldview. I was amused at what seem his value judgments about John Calvin, who seems only to be redeemed by comments by Marilynne Robinson, while he has no problems with other religious figures of the period with more extreme "body counts," so to speak. I don't make any judgments on how Cahill views Protestantism or Catholicism - only that his background and worldview is humanist.
I will nitpick one particular episode he recounts. He mentions that he was somewhat threatened at a religious book publisher’s convention when some Christian asked him: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?" He says this struck him as smacking of exclusion. Being from an evangelical background, I know this can be offputting for some people. But I think Cahill rightly talks about the open invitation of Christ without realizing that these kinds of questions are also part of that invitation, and are, not exclusive but about including. Nobody's threatening anybody, as anyone is free to say no. It's also interesting that, after writing about the Inquisition and the religious wars of Europe, Cahill seems to think that an evangelical invitation is somehow in the same league, at least from the sneering tone he gives it. (If you don't think so, listen to it on the audio book, as I did.)
I will nitpick one particular episode he recounts. He mentions that he was somewhat threatened at a religious book publisher’s convention when some Christian asked him: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?" He says this struck him as smacking of exclusion. Being from an evangelical background, I know this can be offputting for some people. But I think Cahill rightly talks about the open invitation of Christ without realizing that these kinds of questions are also part of that invitation, and are, not exclusive but about including. Nobody's threatening anybody, as anyone is free to say no. It's also interesting that, after writing about the Inquisition and the religious wars of Europe, Cahill seems to think that an evangelical invitation is somehow in the same league, at least from the sneering tone he gives it. (If you don't think so, listen to it on the audio book, as I did.)
December 3, 2013
Disappointing. I have enjoyed the Hinges of History series and was really looking forward to this volume, which has been a long time coming. It has many of the same excellent qualities as the earlier volumes- highly readable, easily digestible history with wonderful discussions of the contributions of artists, poets and writers. For some reason, this book does not contain any discussion of major musicians of the period - an absence Cahill admits but shuts off. Was it really impossible to add 10-20 pages? More problematic, this volume also contains some of the weaknesses of Cahill's other books, but on a much grander scale. I am referring to his tendency to advance his own political agenda via footnote. This is a book about the 16th Century yet there is diatribe on nearly every page about some conservative Cahill wants to knock - Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson, Pope john Paul II all make the hit list. He also has an obnoxious tendency to name drop -- do we really need to know he was friends with Jackie Onassis thirty years ago and she agreed with him on some issue at the time? I'm sympathetic to many of Cahill's views on politics and religion, but where these occasional notes in earlier books could be charming, they are so frequent and so tangential in this book that they distract from the subject. His editors need to reign him in. I'll still read the next one though. hope it doesn't take another 4 years.
Also, For some reason, my hardcover has a different subtitle: "How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World." Perhaps the failure to cover music by deadline explains the change?
Also, For some reason, my hardcover has a different subtitle: "How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World." Perhaps the failure to cover music by deadline explains the change?
January 13, 2021
Here is history in highly digestible form — but it’s still a heavy meal, because Cahill undertakes to cover BOTH the renaissance and the reformation within one book; he is to be congratulated on having done so in scarcely over 300 pages. Which means that no single aspect of those two gigantic events can be explored in any detail; but that was clearly not his intent. Cahill aimed to show how those hugely disruptive events transformed the medieval world and led to the kind of world we live in today and more specifically the emergence of what we commonly refer to as “western” (i.e. Eurocentric) society.
I’m not sure he has fully succeeded in connecting the dots to our own era but he does map out a lot of the linkages between events, schools of thought and movements over a period spanning the beginning of the 14th to early 17th centuries. He sets the scene by first harkening back to the contrasting philosophical stances of Plato (and those later thinkers who held to the Platonic ideal) and Aristotle (and those who favored Aristotle’s worldview). That notion proves useful in his discussion of a number of conflicting personalities and their schools of thought.
Like any academic, Cahill stands on the shoulders of great figures from the past to tell his story and persuade us on the merit of his conclusions. He quotes John Donne, Gandhi, Erasmus, Thomas More, Luther and others — selectively but in a compelling manner. Only one Pope does he quote, John XXIII (thereby perhaps both denigrating most of John’s predecessors and underlining his own judgment of the church). I will not quote any of the passages from Donne, More or the others he cites, pithy as they are; rather, I will mention some of Cahill’s own words, which are I believe, revealing.
Discussing a Breugel drawing, he asks: Is there something skewed about the way we human beings make our moral judgments? Are we all victims of differences in costume, class and convention?
Of Raphael (a man he deems a “gifted imitator”) who schemed to have himself appointed in place of Michelangelo to paint the Sistine ceiling, Cahill states Had his vile little conspiracy succeeded, we would have had a ceiling that gradually devolved from Michelangelo’s noble conceptions to a sweetly sentimental soup. Easy, untrustworthy Raphael …. often painted in a mawkish style that he knew would be popular.
Inescapably, even though this is history, the dominant theme and the driving force throughout the book is that of religion — specifically Roman Catholicism and the reactions that the behavior of the church provoked due to its overwhelming power. Every aspect of European life, if not determined outright, was deeply influenced by the church. Principalities, wars, language, art, economics, education, scientific opinion, civic life, politics — all either functioned within the dictates of the Vatican or strove against them. Readers who see themselves as devout Christians will find this hard going: the most generous supporter of the church could find little to applaud here. It’s obvious that Christianity had lost its way over 13 centuries and showed little inclination toward finding its way back to something resembling the teachings of Jesus. Cahill is not a neutral observer; those offended by his views (or perhaps objecting to his selection of relevant facts) are unlikely to finish reading the book. In all fairness, however he does not treat the reformation or its leaders favorably either. In the wars, tortures, executions and other outrages perpetrated in the name of religion, there’s more than enough blame to go around.
Some readers have objected to Cahill’s choice to gloss over some topics; he barely touches on the great plague and its impact at the time. He scarcely mentions the great emergence of music. The impact on Europe of the ‘discovery’ of the Americas is hardly mentioned. All of which suggests that Cahill tried to cover too much in one book. Nevertheless, I found it very engaging; I felt compelled to read every word, even the footnotes and captions, which would not usually be the case when reading a book of this kind.
I’m not sure he has fully succeeded in connecting the dots to our own era but he does map out a lot of the linkages between events, schools of thought and movements over a period spanning the beginning of the 14th to early 17th centuries. He sets the scene by first harkening back to the contrasting philosophical stances of Plato (and those later thinkers who held to the Platonic ideal) and Aristotle (and those who favored Aristotle’s worldview). That notion proves useful in his discussion of a number of conflicting personalities and their schools of thought.
Like any academic, Cahill stands on the shoulders of great figures from the past to tell his story and persuade us on the merit of his conclusions. He quotes John Donne, Gandhi, Erasmus, Thomas More, Luther and others — selectively but in a compelling manner. Only one Pope does he quote, John XXIII (thereby perhaps both denigrating most of John’s predecessors and underlining his own judgment of the church). I will not quote any of the passages from Donne, More or the others he cites, pithy as they are; rather, I will mention some of Cahill’s own words, which are I believe, revealing.
Discussing a Breugel drawing, he asks: Is there something skewed about the way we human beings make our moral judgments? Are we all victims of differences in costume, class and convention?
Of Raphael (a man he deems a “gifted imitator”) who schemed to have himself appointed in place of Michelangelo to paint the Sistine ceiling, Cahill states Had his vile little conspiracy succeeded, we would have had a ceiling that gradually devolved from Michelangelo’s noble conceptions to a sweetly sentimental soup. Easy, untrustworthy Raphael …. often painted in a mawkish style that he knew would be popular.
Inescapably, even though this is history, the dominant theme and the driving force throughout the book is that of religion — specifically Roman Catholicism and the reactions that the behavior of the church provoked due to its overwhelming power. Every aspect of European life, if not determined outright, was deeply influenced by the church. Principalities, wars, language, art, economics, education, scientific opinion, civic life, politics — all either functioned within the dictates of the Vatican or strove against them. Readers who see themselves as devout Christians will find this hard going: the most generous supporter of the church could find little to applaud here. It’s obvious that Christianity had lost its way over 13 centuries and showed little inclination toward finding its way back to something resembling the teachings of Jesus. Cahill is not a neutral observer; those offended by his views (or perhaps objecting to his selection of relevant facts) are unlikely to finish reading the book. In all fairness, however he does not treat the reformation or its leaders favorably either. In the wars, tortures, executions and other outrages perpetrated in the name of religion, there’s more than enough blame to go around.
Some readers have objected to Cahill’s choice to gloss over some topics; he barely touches on the great plague and its impact at the time. He scarcely mentions the great emergence of music. The impact on Europe of the ‘discovery’ of the Americas is hardly mentioned. All of which suggests that Cahill tried to cover too much in one book. Nevertheless, I found it very engaging; I felt compelled to read every word, even the footnotes and captions, which would not usually be the case when reading a book of this kind.
May 25, 2019
This is a very readable brief history of the Renaissance and Reformation by Cahill. He focuses on the history of art and religion especially identifying people that challenged authority and made an impact not only for that time but for future generations as well. This is the second last in a series of Cahill’s “Hinges of History” series that started with the book How the Irish Saved Civilization. I would recommend all books in this series. A good read.
May 8, 2019
Library Audiobook, well read by the author.
Overall I enjoyed the book. Even though I mostly agree with the author's political views, his insertions and comparisons of present to past were sometimes distracting due to the vigor of his opinions. It helps if you have some familiarity of the events and people of the Reformation.
In particular I enjoyed the parts about the artists. As with the Reformation, helps if you have some familiarity of their lives and works. Again the author clearly asserts his opinions which feel free to agree or disagree with.
I assume the print edition had some illustrations but the works mentioned can be easily accessed online.
This is apparently part of a popular series I had not heard of, maybe I'll read another.
Overall I enjoyed the book. Even though I mostly agree with the author's political views, his insertions and comparisons of present to past were sometimes distracting due to the vigor of his opinions. It helps if you have some familiarity of the events and people of the Reformation.
In particular I enjoyed the parts about the artists. As with the Reformation, helps if you have some familiarity of their lives and works. Again the author clearly asserts his opinions which feel free to agree or disagree with.
I assume the print edition had some illustrations but the works mentioned can be easily accessed online.
This is apparently part of a popular series I had not heard of, maybe I'll read another.
July 3, 2017
Perhaps because I consider myself a fan of Prof. Thomas Cahill, and someone who learned from and enjoyed his last book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History); I am making a point of my disappointment with Heretics and Heroes. It is not a bad book, it is not an exemplar of what Cahill can do. In some sections you can almost watch as he hits the coast button and indulges himself in soft peddling things like the Spanish Inquisition and taking sides between the Popes of the last 40 years. The book itself is amazingly well illustrated with very sharp details and colors. The illustrations are needed because Cahill does a very good job of connecting the visual arts and their effects on and reflections of the predominate philosophies of their time and place. My recommendation: not a bad book, just not Cahill at his best.
Heretics and Heros begins with a self-indulgent fictional game of tennis between Plato and Aristotle. No such game was ever played. It is in the introduction to lead us to what should be a central theme of the book. A historic alternation between the philosophies proposed by the two Greeks. Either:
Reality is where humans live and it is in learning about this world that goodly humans learn how to best live.
Or
A competing belief that reality is false and the task of being a goodly person consists of looking past reality and preparing for the Kingdom to come.
This thread will appear from time to time in the text. Usually when it does it is up to the reader to spot it.
Too much of the text is about too many things not all tied to the period under study. There are regular asides about modern people and politics and opinions about where the Vatican has and does not have it right.
When he is focused on the people of the Renaissance and Reformation we do get flashes of the biographical and historic analysis that is the good in Prof. Cahill. This is said with reservations. Martin Luther is necessarily a central figure of this period. Cahill shrugs off any possibility that the man had major psychological scaring from his upbringing. The historian would have you believe that the human child decides upon psychological attitudes, not based on what and how he is treated in the so called formative years, but by polling his contemporaries and rationalizing hurt against a standard deviation of normal levels of domestic violence. The diaries of Luther include descriptions of instances wherein the reformer had physical fights with the devil, ended when Martin tosses his feces at Satan. Cahill will only admit that Luther had constipation, and that only while under the physical constraints of safe keeping.
A fair percentage of Heretics and Heroes is built around the visual artists of the Renaissance and Reformation. This is consistent with the promise of the book’s subtitle. It is another aspect of the good in the book. Perhaps of necessity the artist chosen are limited, but in making his choices, he tends to depend on expressions like “the best” or the ‘only’ when the more legitimate expression would be a favorite or the ones the Cahill has chosen to represent a period. Allowing for this compromise, too much of what Cahill says about the artists is an echo of earlier opinions by Lord Kenneth Clark. Still the illustrations are reproduced with amazing technical exactitude. They are present in generous numbers.
I liked Heretics and Heroes. I wish it had been written closer to the standard Thomas Cahill has elsewhere achieved.
Heretics and Heros begins with a self-indulgent fictional game of tennis between Plato and Aristotle. No such game was ever played. It is in the introduction to lead us to what should be a central theme of the book. A historic alternation between the philosophies proposed by the two Greeks. Either:
Reality is where humans live and it is in learning about this world that goodly humans learn how to best live.
Or
A competing belief that reality is false and the task of being a goodly person consists of looking past reality and preparing for the Kingdom to come.
This thread will appear from time to time in the text. Usually when it does it is up to the reader to spot it.
Too much of the text is about too many things not all tied to the period under study. There are regular asides about modern people and politics and opinions about where the Vatican has and does not have it right.
When he is focused on the people of the Renaissance and Reformation we do get flashes of the biographical and historic analysis that is the good in Prof. Cahill. This is said with reservations. Martin Luther is necessarily a central figure of this period. Cahill shrugs off any possibility that the man had major psychological scaring from his upbringing. The historian would have you believe that the human child decides upon psychological attitudes, not based on what and how he is treated in the so called formative years, but by polling his contemporaries and rationalizing hurt against a standard deviation of normal levels of domestic violence. The diaries of Luther include descriptions of instances wherein the reformer had physical fights with the devil, ended when Martin tosses his feces at Satan. Cahill will only admit that Luther had constipation, and that only while under the physical constraints of safe keeping.
A fair percentage of Heretics and Heroes is built around the visual artists of the Renaissance and Reformation. This is consistent with the promise of the book’s subtitle. It is another aspect of the good in the book. Perhaps of necessity the artist chosen are limited, but in making his choices, he tends to depend on expressions like “the best” or the ‘only’ when the more legitimate expression would be a favorite or the ones the Cahill has chosen to represent a period. Allowing for this compromise, too much of what Cahill says about the artists is an echo of earlier opinions by Lord Kenneth Clark. Still the illustrations are reproduced with amazing technical exactitude. They are present in generous numbers.
I liked Heretics and Heroes. I wish it had been written closer to the standard Thomas Cahill has elsewhere achieved.
July 10, 2017
One of the most pivotal periods of Western civilization occurred during the Renaissance and the Reformation, to culturally impactful events that overlapped one another across Europe. Heretics and Heroes is the sixth book in Thomas Cahill’s series “The Hinges of History” highlighting the artists and the priests that changed how Europe viewed creativity and worshipped God.
Cahill begins this volume talking about philosophical struggle over the ages between Plato and Aristotle, through it is the fourth time he has discussed this millennia-long debate during the series it allows Cahill to refer back to it in the text and gives the reader a basis to understand its importance during this era. Cahill continued setting up both the Renaissance and Reformation by highlighting moments during the Late Middle Ages, especially the effects of the Black Death, leading up to and allowed for these two important moments in Western history to occur. The ‘discovery’ of the New World by Columbus and rise of the humanists begin the look at the titular heretics and heroes that will dominate the book, using both events Cahill shows the changing trends in Europe just before both the Renaissance and Reformation completely change it. The Renaissance and it’s complete change of artistic creativity of the previous millennium is taken up first through the lives of Donatello, Leonardo, and Botticelli before focusing on its height and sudden stop as a result of the Counter-Reformation in the life of Michelangelo. Then, save for a brief look at the art of Northern Europe, Cahill turns to the Reformation of Luther and the Catholic Counter-Reformation with brief looks at the Reformed movements and the development of Anglicanism.
The entire book is packed with information in a very conversational style of writing which has always been one of the strengths of Cahill’s writing. As always with a popular history book, Cahill had to pick and choose what to focus the reader’s attention on while covering as much as possible about the subject he’s decided to write about. While Cahill is pretty successful at hitting the high points and pointing readers looking for information to the appropriate place to look, his personal opinions at times overwhelm the history and themes he’s trying to bring to fore. All history authors have their personal opinions influence their work; however Cahill’s armchair psychiatry and personal theological arguments that actually have nothing to do with the debate he’s writing about at that moment in the text. While Cahill’s personal opinions have been in all of the previous books of the series, this volume it seems to not be subtle but almost blatant.
Overall Heretics and Heroes is a fine addition to the “Hinges of History” series written in a very readable style by Cahill. However, unlike the previous books in which the reader was left with wanting more, the reader will be wishing less of Cahill’s opinion and more of actual facts. Yet even with this drawback and forewarning a reader will find this book very informative.
Cahill begins this volume talking about philosophical struggle over the ages between Plato and Aristotle, through it is the fourth time he has discussed this millennia-long debate during the series it allows Cahill to refer back to it in the text and gives the reader a basis to understand its importance during this era. Cahill continued setting up both the Renaissance and Reformation by highlighting moments during the Late Middle Ages, especially the effects of the Black Death, leading up to and allowed for these two important moments in Western history to occur. The ‘discovery’ of the New World by Columbus and rise of the humanists begin the look at the titular heretics and heroes that will dominate the book, using both events Cahill shows the changing trends in Europe just before both the Renaissance and Reformation completely change it. The Renaissance and it’s complete change of artistic creativity of the previous millennium is taken up first through the lives of Donatello, Leonardo, and Botticelli before focusing on its height and sudden stop as a result of the Counter-Reformation in the life of Michelangelo. Then, save for a brief look at the art of Northern Europe, Cahill turns to the Reformation of Luther and the Catholic Counter-Reformation with brief looks at the Reformed movements and the development of Anglicanism.
The entire book is packed with information in a very conversational style of writing which has always been one of the strengths of Cahill’s writing. As always with a popular history book, Cahill had to pick and choose what to focus the reader’s attention on while covering as much as possible about the subject he’s decided to write about. While Cahill is pretty successful at hitting the high points and pointing readers looking for information to the appropriate place to look, his personal opinions at times overwhelm the history and themes he’s trying to bring to fore. All history authors have their personal opinions influence their work; however Cahill’s armchair psychiatry and personal theological arguments that actually have nothing to do with the debate he’s writing about at that moment in the text. While Cahill’s personal opinions have been in all of the previous books of the series, this volume it seems to not be subtle but almost blatant.
Overall Heretics and Heroes is a fine addition to the “Hinges of History” series written in a very readable style by Cahill. However, unlike the previous books in which the reader was left with wanting more, the reader will be wishing less of Cahill’s opinion and more of actual facts. Yet even with this drawback and forewarning a reader will find this book very informative.
December 17, 2013
A lot of reviews have point out how in this book Cahill doesn't attempt hide his biases or prejudices, an observation with which I concur. I grant that no historical book can be written entirely free of the author's prejudice, which is fine; an author is free to have a contrary interpretation of the facts and his own opinions.
However, Cahill not so infrequently caricatures his figures as paragons of virtue or monsters (Oh, those awful Jesuits!), goes out of his way to write tangents that demonize people or institutions he doesn't like (He lists in a sidenote the torture devices used by the Spanish Inquisition or possibly the fictional version of the Inquisition from English Gothic novels), and concludes his book with another list of suggestions that he, a liberal Protestant, thinks the Catholic Church ought to take him up on (For my part, I don't dare suggest as a Catholic what the Presbyterian or Episcopal Church ought to do).
In spite of the book's flaws, this was an interesting and intelligent read, one that provoked much constructive thought and argument. I rather like engaging with a book like this, but not that much.
However, Cahill not so infrequently caricatures his figures as paragons of virtue or monsters (Oh, those awful Jesuits!), goes out of his way to write tangents that demonize people or institutions he doesn't like (He lists in a sidenote the torture devices used by the Spanish Inquisition or possibly the fictional version of the Inquisition from English Gothic novels), and concludes his book with another list of suggestions that he, a liberal Protestant, thinks the Catholic Church ought to take him up on (For my part, I don't dare suggest as a Catholic what the Presbyterian or Episcopal Church ought to do).
In spite of the book's flaws, this was an interesting and intelligent read, one that provoked much constructive thought and argument. I rather like engaging with a book like this, but not that much.
January 3, 2014
Cahill brings us a masterful account of how the Renaissance came to be and how it changed the world forever.
Read how artists, scientists, and theologians, rediscovered Greek culture and science and discreetly put their doubts and accusations about the Church in their works. And they could spread their ideas thanks to Gutenberg. His adapted wine press caused a knowledge boom like the internet does today.
Read about the new Humanist thinking, the origins of new Christian religions, the Inquisition and the Reformation, and the escape of the persecuted to the New World.
Captivating, interesting, a complicated era depicted in human language. History as it should be written.
Read how artists, scientists, and theologians, rediscovered Greek culture and science and discreetly put their doubts and accusations about the Church in their works. And they could spread their ideas thanks to Gutenberg. His adapted wine press caused a knowledge boom like the internet does today.
Read about the new Humanist thinking, the origins of new Christian religions, the Inquisition and the Reformation, and the escape of the persecuted to the New World.
Captivating, interesting, a complicated era depicted in human language. History as it should be written.
April 22, 2015
surprisingly good for bedtime reading. too interesting and lively to lull me into la la land.
September 17, 2018
A great book, the latest in Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History series. As with his previous book’s, Cahill provides an in-depth look at the philosophies and mindsets that underpinned major shifts in Western culture. In this case the rise of the Renaissance, the subsequent (and very related) Reformation, and the shifts of the Counter-Reformation (though Cahill makes a point of explaining why the Counter-Reformation should be treated on an equal footing with the Reformation and not bluntly separated out as the next chronological event). Cahill is an especially pleasing author for the way in which he takes very complicated and deep philosophical thoughts and makes them understandable and relatable to the modern reader. Whether it was comparing the effects of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies on the various generations through the lens of a tennis match or tackling Martin Luther’s 95 Theses as a compare and contrast discussion, Cahill makes complicated topics easier to understand, without taking away any of the complexity. Starting from its roots in the late Middle Ages and continuing up to the heyday of the Wars of Religion, Cahill covers the convoluted and sometimes incongruous three centuries which brought about our modern world, at least the modern world of religious and philosophical thought, the modern world of technology and political dynamics still needed time to emerge. Cahill does this explaining through the lives of various great thinkers, such as artists, churchmen, politicians, writers, and educators, and sometimes those who made up multiple categories into one busy life. In this way we see the slow but ever present development of thought which led from the humanism of the Renaissance (which Cahill rightly starts in the late Middle Ages) to the very related but reactionary doctrines of the Reformation. Very few authors can succinctly draw the line from Boccaccio’s Abbess to Calvin’s dictates to Loyola’s army, but Cahill pulls it off with style. A great book for those want to know more about the origins of thought for both the Renaissance and Reformation, or who want to better understand the Doubles Match between Team Plato-Augustine and Team Aristotle-Aquinas.
July 21, 2022
I have been reading these Cahill books for quite some time now. I have spread them out a lot, though, so I can't say I am really tracking with his overall themes. But I have enjoyed every one that I have read. I don't always agree with his particular take on some of the history or the characters he addresses (sometimes, I have read extensively about some of his topics, so I know enough to disagree), but I always like the way that he organizes things together to make some interesting points. Just as one example from this book. at the end, he addresses a few characters of this time period about whom historians truly do not know for sure whether they were Protestant or Catholic, yet they are nearly universally loved (Rembrandt and Shakespeare are two). That's an interesting way to finish your discussion of the Renaissance and Reformation, and not at all what I was expecting, but he makes a compelling point that it was possible to be significant, famous, and also not partisan with your religious affiliations in this time period. We would think that was impossible based on so much of what we know of the time period and how religious choice often led to violence, but it wasn't.
Overall, this book didn't teach me anything very new (although the detail on Erasmus was excellent and more than I had ever read), but it reinforced a lot of important details and themes for me since I teach a Renaissance Unit and Reformation Unit each year to my 7th graders. The only reason for the four stars is that sometimes Cahill's personal beliefs get a bit too much in the way for me (he is sympathetic to religion, but often too harshly critical of some aspects or characters based on his own personal beliefs). But I still look forward to reading anything else he has written that I have not yet read.
Overall, this book didn't teach me anything very new (although the detail on Erasmus was excellent and more than I had ever read), but it reinforced a lot of important details and themes for me since I teach a Renaissance Unit and Reformation Unit each year to my 7th graders. The only reason for the four stars is that sometimes Cahill's personal beliefs get a bit too much in the way for me (he is sympathetic to religion, but often too harshly critical of some aspects or characters based on his own personal beliefs). But I still look forward to reading anything else he has written that I have not yet read.
March 3, 2019
The first sentence of his "Acknowledgments" could serve as a summary of my review: "Each volume in the Hinges of History series has presented its own challenges to the author, but no volume has been so challenging as this one."
I confess that I have not yet read some of the middle volumes in the series, but this entry lacks the cohesion and consistency of the first two. It may be that as time unfolds and history ages, it becomes simpler to link events of the past to developments in subsequent periods. Cahill certainly found more success highlighting the contributions of the Jews and the Irish during Rome's dominion and demise. It did not come nearly as easily to Cahill when trying to tie together the visual arts and the Christian upheavals of the 16th century. Certainly, I learned a few things, some of which I was likely taught in high school or in undergrad general-ed humanities courses but had long-since forgotten. But if there was an "a-ha" moment in this book, I missed it.
When I picked up the book at the library, I was sad to see that the final book of the series had yet to be written. I was looking forward to a front-to-back reading of the series. After finishing "Heretics and Heroes", I am less so. The promise of the first two volumes was not realized here...and I am not convinced it will be.
I confess that I have not yet read some of the middle volumes in the series, but this entry lacks the cohesion and consistency of the first two. It may be that as time unfolds and history ages, it becomes simpler to link events of the past to developments in subsequent periods. Cahill certainly found more success highlighting the contributions of the Jews and the Irish during Rome's dominion and demise. It did not come nearly as easily to Cahill when trying to tie together the visual arts and the Christian upheavals of the 16th century. Certainly, I learned a few things, some of which I was likely taught in high school or in undergrad general-ed humanities courses but had long-since forgotten. But if there was an "a-ha" moment in this book, I missed it.
When I picked up the book at the library, I was sad to see that the final book of the series had yet to be written. I was looking forward to a front-to-back reading of the series. After finishing "Heretics and Heroes", I am less so. The promise of the first two volumes was not realized here...and I am not convinced it will be.
June 1, 2017
Thomas Cahill has a knack of taking a deep and expansive of research and presenting to the reader the wide brush strokes that result from the specific. Good stuff. In this book, the sixth in his _Hinges of History Series_, he investigates the cultural transformations that led to our current understanding and celebration of the individual though the Renaissance and Reformation. His examples are fascinating and if you listen to the book (read by himself) like I did, you’ll need a scarp of paper and pencil so you can keep track and look up his less well-known examples.
From a Sicilian “spontaneous” rebellion against the French in the 13th century though Columbus to Luther and Erasmus to Henry VIII and John Calvin, Cahill paints a clear story of changing of western civilization. Perhaps I would have liked a bit more reflection on the effects of growing capitalism during these centuries but the strength of this book is in it’s delightful supported generalization.
From a Sicilian “spontaneous” rebellion against the French in the 13th century though Columbus to Luther and Erasmus to Henry VIII and John Calvin, Cahill paints a clear story of changing of western civilization. Perhaps I would have liked a bit more reflection on the effects of growing capitalism during these centuries but the strength of this book is in it’s delightful supported generalization.
October 4, 2023
A sardonic survey of the renaissance and reformation. Without a clear subject and protagonist, however, the story stalls and flounders in the mire of Cahill’s witty observations. A stark contrast from How the Irish Saved Civilization, which stuck the landing in this same genre. I deeply enjoy Cahill’s writing style, which is the only reason I managed to finish this volume.
Also: a grossly unreliable source for coverage of any and all conservative reformation theologians.
Also: a grossly unreliable source for coverage of any and all conservative reformation theologians.
July 7, 2022
Cahill has a vast knowledge of history. He weaves personal stories of the great players on the world stage into a telling of history understood within the context of the lives of the people that make history.
August 17, 2023
Very fun to read - provides a very engaging 30,000 ft view of all the major players of the Renaissance and Reformation. My criticism is that Cahill often makes judgements of historical figures using dismissive and snarky language. This prevents him from treating the ideas of someone like St. Ignatius with the seriousness they deserve.
April 4, 2021
I enjoyed this. The author basically spills the tea on all the important figures: authors, clerics, popes, authors, etc. He pulls no punches and isn't afraid to say that they were the absolute 'worst' of their kind.
December 14, 2021
I began reading, “Heretics and Heroes” (book #6) in Cahill’s Hinges of History series because of my particular interest in the Renaissance and Reformation. The book covers a broad scope of a complex history. It made for a good introduction of the time period. A few years ago I read a biography of Martin Luther, so this current reading updated my memory.
Cahill’s great writing style made it easy for me to get through the many historical events, kings, princes, religious leaders and other movers and shakers of the period. Recommended for a non-academic history reader.
I may or may not get to read the rest of the series. I much more enjoy American history, colonial to Civil War. Of course American history is much influenced by European history. “What’s past is prologue”.
Cahill’s great writing style made it easy for me to get through the many historical events, kings, princes, religious leaders and other movers and shakers of the period. Recommended for a non-academic history reader.
I may or may not get to read the rest of the series. I much more enjoy American history, colonial to Civil War. Of course American history is much influenced by European history. “What’s past is prologue”.
December 27, 2013
I read Cahill's earlier HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION and had found his account of how the Irish contributed more to our civilization that they are generally given credit for quite interesting. Cahill is equally interesting, even entertaining, in this latest book in his ongoing history series. His next efforts are apparently going to concentrate on the making of the modern world.
So how did "renaissance artists and reformation priests" create our world, as Cahill claims they did? If there's any way to sum up such a claim covering so many separate individuals, it seems to be that each in his own way helped to develop a new sense of "self", one that no longer depended so much on the rules and structures of a rigid society such as existed in medieval Europe. There have always been strong individuals around, of course, in any period of history, but these new innovators, coming after the devastation of the Plague in Europe, tended to create models of self-invention and self-promotion. A good example is Columbus who invented himself and his project, "something we, for better or worse, are all still doing,” Cahill remarks.
There are many figures in this book, ranging from Italian renaissance artists (some good color plates included) such as Donatello, DaVinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Carvavaggio, all of whom in “humanized” religious subjects in their paintings, to the “deviant monks” such as Erasmus and Luther who shook and overturned the structures of Christianity in the west. Not an inclusive list by any means, but it gives some sense of Cahill’s cast of characters.
His approach is arbitrary, to be sure, and aside from Luther, doesn’t go into much depth on many figures who could easily be the subject of individual volumes. Cahill’s survey, though, is well-informed, and always entertaining, He likes, for example, to become chatty as in “I fear that, despite my best efforts, I have subjected my readers to an awful lot of know-it-alls, men who know what is best for everyone . . . who can articulate exactly what we all must think, believe, do and avoid. The period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation is rife with such types.” Cahill tries to let the hot air out of such intellectual ballooning, and he usually succeeds.
And as one reviewer points out, he has a weakness for interrogatory asides such as “oh really?” “that’s it, isn’t it?” and for colloquial flourishes (“wham bam”, “control freak”). I think, too, that he is prone to making too facile comparisons to current events - often history is more complex than he suggests.
But reading his book reminds you of how much more you COULD read about these “heroes and heretics” and is certainly worthwhile if for no other reason than that.
So how did "renaissance artists and reformation priests" create our world, as Cahill claims they did? If there's any way to sum up such a claim covering so many separate individuals, it seems to be that each in his own way helped to develop a new sense of "self", one that no longer depended so much on the rules and structures of a rigid society such as existed in medieval Europe. There have always been strong individuals around, of course, in any period of history, but these new innovators, coming after the devastation of the Plague in Europe, tended to create models of self-invention and self-promotion. A good example is Columbus who invented himself and his project, "something we, for better or worse, are all still doing,” Cahill remarks.
There are many figures in this book, ranging from Italian renaissance artists (some good color plates included) such as Donatello, DaVinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Carvavaggio, all of whom in “humanized” religious subjects in their paintings, to the “deviant monks” such as Erasmus and Luther who shook and overturned the structures of Christianity in the west. Not an inclusive list by any means, but it gives some sense of Cahill’s cast of characters.
His approach is arbitrary, to be sure, and aside from Luther, doesn’t go into much depth on many figures who could easily be the subject of individual volumes. Cahill’s survey, though, is well-informed, and always entertaining, He likes, for example, to become chatty as in “I fear that, despite my best efforts, I have subjected my readers to an awful lot of know-it-alls, men who know what is best for everyone . . . who can articulate exactly what we all must think, believe, do and avoid. The period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation is rife with such types.” Cahill tries to let the hot air out of such intellectual ballooning, and he usually succeeds.
And as one reviewer points out, he has a weakness for interrogatory asides such as “oh really?” “that’s it, isn’t it?” and for colloquial flourishes (“wham bam”, “control freak”). I think, too, that he is prone to making too facile comparisons to current events - often history is more complex than he suggests.
But reading his book reminds you of how much more you COULD read about these “heroes and heretics” and is certainly worthwhile if for no other reason than that.
December 5, 2023
Thomas Cahill gives us another in the highly accessible and interesting Hinges of History series, and I was happy to jump into his take on the Renaissance – it’s a kick that I’m on lately.
Cahill elegantly draws a fairly straight line from the events of the late 1400’s to the curiosity and new reasoning that characterized the humanism of following 150 years. “The discovery of America served as a goad to the energetic expansion of science. All maps had to be redrawn; and all geography had to reconceived and rewritten. Inevitably, new questions arose in cosmology: if we had been so wrong about the continents of our planet, what might we have wrong about the rest of the universe?”
As promised, he identifies events of the period that are directly reflected in events of today. Some small and interesting, some with much more cultural significance.
For example, the Italian priority on all things beautiful may have meant a 20 year delay in using Gutenberg’s printing press, because of the monstrous appearance of the Gothic letters employed by German printers, but they met the challenge by creating calligraphy: “beautiful and eminently readable script…lean and swift, balanced and shapely, full of sweeping slides and lovely loops (becoming) the typefaces we still use today: roman, italic, and their derivatives.”
We also recognize ourselves in the late 15th century Florentine response to Girolamo Savonarola. “The enthusiasm of the most cultivated and learned (and until he showed up, the most joyful) people of all of Europe” was given up “for an unpleasant, unsympathetic, unbelievable windbag. Why did they not resent their Garden of Love being invaded by these “priests in black gowns… walking their rounds/ And binding with briars their joys and desires” as William Blake would one day express it?” Lemming rule, or the madness of crowds as today’s Louise Penny would call it. In any case, we’re no stranger to it today-- which is both reassuring and frustrating.
Before the birth of the Renaissance, sculpture’s “coupling divinity and nudity…could only make medieval standard-setters squirm. Whatever examples of Greco-Roman sculpture that were not smashed or melted down mostly ended up buried or drowned, awaiting rediscovery in a more appreciative age. The David of Donatello must, therefore, have come as a great shock to viewers in Quattrocento Florence.” After the nosedive stewarded by Savonarola (until his own execution), it took the Florentines of the following century to bring together the divine and the humanist in rediscovery.
Near the end of the Renaissance, Gian Lorenzo Bernini left a remarkable “imprint on the city of Rome…To him belongs the still-breathtaking Piazza Navona with its three soaring fountains. To him we must credit Saint Peter’s Square, the most extraordinary public space in the world, and the Scala Regia, the grand stairway that leads to the Vatican Palace. To him we must assign much of the interior of Saint Peter’s: the sheltering baldacchino; with its unique, oscillating columns that surround the papal altar, the enormous, floating Chair of Saint Peter in the apse, and the luminous window with its depiction of the Holy Spirit as a dove entering its sanctuary.
“Bernini’s talent was as theatrical as it was sculptural. His combination of paint, glass, sculpture, architecture, and light were principally intended as a dramatic stage sets for the public performance of religious belief and theological assertion,” most especially in the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa.
Don’t mind me – I’m taking notes for my trip, and as I look at the renown art in books, I’m fascinated by what looks like liquid marble in Bernini.
After too brief a time spent on how the Renaissance planted the seeds of so much of today’s culture, Cahill devoted 2/3rds of the book to the Reformation. It was here that I learned for the first time that Martin Luther may not have had all the credibility he was imbued with in my school history classes. Setting aside the fact that his 95 theses were not, indeed, nailed to a door, he had a reputation for “much fasting, self-flagellation, long and stressful hours spent on his knees in prayer, anxious pilgrimage, and frequent interminable confession of his supposed sins. Luther’s much-put-upon confessor and monastic superior tried to jolly him out of his obsessions, even ordering him to take up theological studies in preparation for a career as a university lecturer, hoping that occupation would put the young monk in a healthier frame of mind.” But Luther persisted. This chapter made me wonder why we listened to him, but he did make some pretty good points about the sale of indulgences and other greed of the Church.
But I had to also reflect on Cahill’s credibility. He has created meaningful education about cultural history in other books on the pillars of history, but he also called Raphael a hack and dismissed him entirely as an artist. Um, what? And in one sidebar, he refers to gay and lesbian lives as “alternative sexual lifestyles.” In a book written in 2013, there isn’t much call for that ignorance.
It seems that Luther wasn’t the only depressive of his time. Cahill also lingers on other northern European art of the late 1400’s, reflecting “endless northern winters and the gloom of Germanic folktales, haunted by witches and goblins, not the long, leafy sun-drenched summers of Greco-Roman civilization.” Maybe it’s because life today is difficult enough, but pass me some sun, thank you very much.
Today’s difficulties are not without the conflicts, greed, and sins of those Reformation-era Christians. “As whole regions, whole kingdoms were in the course of adopting “heretical” beliefs—and as princes and other political lords and leaders saw that land grabs and political domination would be ascribed to pious religious motives – (they) progressed swiftly to bloody regional clashes and to unforgiving national wars.”
Fortunately, western civilization has inherited more bright lights to guide by.
“The Anabaptists become in time the Mennonites, the Quakers. Though universally despised in the early modern period, persecuted, and often drowned by both Catholics and Protestants, their main reforms – a heighted sense of community, compassion of the poor, prison reform, elimination of the death penalty, refusal to take up arms, peacemaking – are now the ideals of almost all of their former prosecutors.”
I was already familiar with Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a remarkable man-- but was newly introduced to Muriel Moore. She grew up in the 1930’s in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where she “quietly established (the Episcopal Church of Chelsea) as the largest daily provider of free meals for the poor in the entire city of New York. Thousands of people came each day for food, fellowship, and various forms of continuing assistance.” Her refrain: “We are all the same.” She was widely and well loved, and her funeral in July 2011 brought people from all over the city, and from her semiannual trips to Killarney, Ireland – thousands of people holding her in remembrance.
Cahill doesn’t tell us as much about Renaissance-era heroes as he talks about its heretics, but he brings it home in the souls of these three.
Cahill elegantly draws a fairly straight line from the events of the late 1400’s to the curiosity and new reasoning that characterized the humanism of following 150 years. “The discovery of America served as a goad to the energetic expansion of science. All maps had to be redrawn; and all geography had to reconceived and rewritten. Inevitably, new questions arose in cosmology: if we had been so wrong about the continents of our planet, what might we have wrong about the rest of the universe?”
As promised, he identifies events of the period that are directly reflected in events of today. Some small and interesting, some with much more cultural significance.
For example, the Italian priority on all things beautiful may have meant a 20 year delay in using Gutenberg’s printing press, because of the monstrous appearance of the Gothic letters employed by German printers, but they met the challenge by creating calligraphy: “beautiful and eminently readable script…lean and swift, balanced and shapely, full of sweeping slides and lovely loops (becoming) the typefaces we still use today: roman, italic, and their derivatives.”
We also recognize ourselves in the late 15th century Florentine response to Girolamo Savonarola. “The enthusiasm of the most cultivated and learned (and until he showed up, the most joyful) people of all of Europe” was given up “for an unpleasant, unsympathetic, unbelievable windbag. Why did they not resent their Garden of Love being invaded by these “priests in black gowns… walking their rounds/ And binding with briars their joys and desires” as William Blake would one day express it?” Lemming rule, or the madness of crowds as today’s Louise Penny would call it. In any case, we’re no stranger to it today-- which is both reassuring and frustrating.
Before the birth of the Renaissance, sculpture’s “coupling divinity and nudity…could only make medieval standard-setters squirm. Whatever examples of Greco-Roman sculpture that were not smashed or melted down mostly ended up buried or drowned, awaiting rediscovery in a more appreciative age. The David of Donatello must, therefore, have come as a great shock to viewers in Quattrocento Florence.” After the nosedive stewarded by Savonarola (until his own execution), it took the Florentines of the following century to bring together the divine and the humanist in rediscovery.
Near the end of the Renaissance, Gian Lorenzo Bernini left a remarkable “imprint on the city of Rome…To him belongs the still-breathtaking Piazza Navona with its three soaring fountains. To him we must credit Saint Peter’s Square, the most extraordinary public space in the world, and the Scala Regia, the grand stairway that leads to the Vatican Palace. To him we must assign much of the interior of Saint Peter’s: the sheltering baldacchino; with its unique, oscillating columns that surround the papal altar, the enormous, floating Chair of Saint Peter in the apse, and the luminous window with its depiction of the Holy Spirit as a dove entering its sanctuary.
“Bernini’s talent was as theatrical as it was sculptural. His combination of paint, glass, sculpture, architecture, and light were principally intended as a dramatic stage sets for the public performance of religious belief and theological assertion,” most especially in the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa.
Don’t mind me – I’m taking notes for my trip, and as I look at the renown art in books, I’m fascinated by what looks like liquid marble in Bernini.
After too brief a time spent on how the Renaissance planted the seeds of so much of today’s culture, Cahill devoted 2/3rds of the book to the Reformation. It was here that I learned for the first time that Martin Luther may not have had all the credibility he was imbued with in my school history classes. Setting aside the fact that his 95 theses were not, indeed, nailed to a door, he had a reputation for “much fasting, self-flagellation, long and stressful hours spent on his knees in prayer, anxious pilgrimage, and frequent interminable confession of his supposed sins. Luther’s much-put-upon confessor and monastic superior tried to jolly him out of his obsessions, even ordering him to take up theological studies in preparation for a career as a university lecturer, hoping that occupation would put the young monk in a healthier frame of mind.” But Luther persisted. This chapter made me wonder why we listened to him, but he did make some pretty good points about the sale of indulgences and other greed of the Church.
But I had to also reflect on Cahill’s credibility. He has created meaningful education about cultural history in other books on the pillars of history, but he also called Raphael a hack and dismissed him entirely as an artist. Um, what? And in one sidebar, he refers to gay and lesbian lives as “alternative sexual lifestyles.” In a book written in 2013, there isn’t much call for that ignorance.
It seems that Luther wasn’t the only depressive of his time. Cahill also lingers on other northern European art of the late 1400’s, reflecting “endless northern winters and the gloom of Germanic folktales, haunted by witches and goblins, not the long, leafy sun-drenched summers of Greco-Roman civilization.” Maybe it’s because life today is difficult enough, but pass me some sun, thank you very much.
Today’s difficulties are not without the conflicts, greed, and sins of those Reformation-era Christians. “As whole regions, whole kingdoms were in the course of adopting “heretical” beliefs—and as princes and other political lords and leaders saw that land grabs and political domination would be ascribed to pious religious motives – (they) progressed swiftly to bloody regional clashes and to unforgiving national wars.”
Fortunately, western civilization has inherited more bright lights to guide by.
“The Anabaptists become in time the Mennonites, the Quakers. Though universally despised in the early modern period, persecuted, and often drowned by both Catholics and Protestants, their main reforms – a heighted sense of community, compassion of the poor, prison reform, elimination of the death penalty, refusal to take up arms, peacemaking – are now the ideals of almost all of their former prosecutors.”
I was already familiar with Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a remarkable man-- but was newly introduced to Muriel Moore. She grew up in the 1930’s in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where she “quietly established (the Episcopal Church of Chelsea) as the largest daily provider of free meals for the poor in the entire city of New York. Thousands of people came each day for food, fellowship, and various forms of continuing assistance.” Her refrain: “We are all the same.” She was widely and well loved, and her funeral in July 2011 brought people from all over the city, and from her semiannual trips to Killarney, Ireland – thousands of people holding her in remembrance.
Cahill doesn’t tell us as much about Renaissance-era heroes as he talks about its heretics, but he brings it home in the souls of these three.
October 31, 2022
Interesting discussions, but the book never really comes together.
Despite the fact that this author has lots of interesting things to say, particularly when discussing art history, this book has no structure. Instead, this book is a disheveled clusterfuck rambling all over the place. If I were to ask the author, what is the one thing that this book is about, I don't think he could give me a straight answer. The book starts out by talking about something that happened in Sicily in one century, then jumps to a comparison of Dante and Boccaccio, then it jumps back to ancient Greece, and then we sweep into the Renaissance.
He tries to impress you with the broad sweep of his survey, but in truth, it is just rhetorical bombast, covering over how little in-depth knowledge he has. He tries to document the transition that is happening as Western Europe modernizes, but he does so by connecting figures with only the most tenuous connection. When he claims that conciliarism "pressaged" Western democracy, he is making a point that is unsupported, unprovable and so tenuous that it is meaningless. Is there actually any connection between democracy and this early modern movement in the Catholic Church to move power from the Pope to an ecumenical council? What would that even mean? Rather than providing an explanation, he just breezes past the point.
One thing this book does that is excellent is it offers these great interpretations of renaissance artists. His histories of these figures and contextualizations of their artwork was the strongest part of the book.
The first time I read it, I liked this book. I am not sure what I was thinking. This book is too dissipating to be meaningful.
Original Review:
A good history of the Renaissance. Sometimes he is a little fast and loose with facts (Hitler's last name) and he always seeks to connect everything.
Despite the fact that this author has lots of interesting things to say, particularly when discussing art history, this book has no structure. Instead, this book is a disheveled clusterfuck rambling all over the place. If I were to ask the author, what is the one thing that this book is about, I don't think he could give me a straight answer. The book starts out by talking about something that happened in Sicily in one century, then jumps to a comparison of Dante and Boccaccio, then it jumps back to ancient Greece, and then we sweep into the Renaissance.
He tries to impress you with the broad sweep of his survey, but in truth, it is just rhetorical bombast, covering over how little in-depth knowledge he has. He tries to document the transition that is happening as Western Europe modernizes, but he does so by connecting figures with only the most tenuous connection. When he claims that conciliarism "pressaged" Western democracy, he is making a point that is unsupported, unprovable and so tenuous that it is meaningless. Is there actually any connection between democracy and this early modern movement in the Catholic Church to move power from the Pope to an ecumenical council? What would that even mean? Rather than providing an explanation, he just breezes past the point.
One thing this book does that is excellent is it offers these great interpretations of renaissance artists. His histories of these figures and contextualizations of their artwork was the strongest part of the book.
The first time I read it, I liked this book. I am not sure what I was thinking. This book is too dissipating to be meaningful.
Original Review:
A good history of the Renaissance. Sometimes he is a little fast and loose with facts (Hitler's last name) and he always seeks to connect everything.
February 6, 2017
This book, part of Cahill's "Hinges of History" series, covers the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-reformation and other movements in their immediate aftermath. It focuses on the major personalities in each movement but also tracks how surrounding societies influenced their rise and responded to their actions. Many of the biographical stories end in public executions, mainly by fire, not surprisingly for a book about thinkers labelled "heretics" by incumbent powers. Cahill impressively follows the divisive path of what was an almost uniformly Catholic Western world and how priests (and sometimes peasants) slowly turned the wheels of dissent against an abusive papacy. The mere act of translation from Latin to other languages of the Bible was often enough to spur widespread literacy and reform. The good, bad, and ugly of both Protestant and Catholic reformers is highlighted with an embarrassing amount of bloodshed tempering the praise of even the most eloquent theologian of the 15th to 17th centuries. The author deftly sums up what should have been important to those societies, and ours, in these few sentences about the painter Rembrandt van Rijn, "The picture ("The Prodigal Son") doesn't tell us whether Rembrandt was a Catholic or a Protestant. But it may have a message for all religious controversialists: the only thing that matters in this world is forgiveness, which God gives freely, as should we."
March 30, 2023
"Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World" is my last Cahill read of the month, and it was great too.
This volume starts off in the wake of the Plague, and of course leads through the Renaissance and
Reformation.
Along the way, we get the birth of nation-states, Humanism, Protestantism, movable print and the growth of literacy, and much more.
We've got Martin Luther, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Leonardo, Henry VIII and Thomas More's Utopia.
Once again, Cahill leans into religion as a key aspect of the development of the Western world - for good and bad. He's one historian who includes the development of Christianity and Judaism as the foundation of Western history, with only a few mostly well-deserved swipes. I don't agree completely with some of his religious views, but overall you can tell that he takes faith seriously, and I appreciate that.
This is the last of Cahill's Hinges of History books for now (he's supposed to do one more). I'm guessing his next one will be about the Enlightenment.
This volume starts off in the wake of the Plague, and of course leads through the Renaissance and
Reformation.
Along the way, we get the birth of nation-states, Humanism, Protestantism, movable print and the growth of literacy, and much more.
We've got Martin Luther, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Leonardo, Henry VIII and Thomas More's Utopia.
Once again, Cahill leans into religion as a key aspect of the development of the Western world - for good and bad. He's one historian who includes the development of Christianity and Judaism as the foundation of Western history, with only a few mostly well-deserved swipes. I don't agree completely with some of his religious views, but overall you can tell that he takes faith seriously, and I appreciate that.
This is the last of Cahill's Hinges of History books for now (he's supposed to do one more). I'm guessing his next one will be about the Enlightenment.
September 16, 2014
I've loved Thomas Cahill's series of history books, The Hinges of History, since I read the first one, How the Irish Saved Civilization, in high school. Unaccountably, this penultimate volume is not his best work. The topic of the Reformation and the Renaissance is just so large that the books becomes mostly a recounting of interesting bits and pieces from that time. He sometimes is able to focus on a particular argument or perspective- like how religion and nationalism interacted, or Luther's motivations- but often the book just looses itself in this very interesting and dynamic period of European history. Still looking forward to the last book in the series however.
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