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I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History
The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence
In this first comprehensive study of the effect of Lucretius's De rerum natura on Florentine thought in the Renaissance, Alison Brown demonstrates how Lucretius was used by Florentine thinkers--earlier and more widely than has been supposed--to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies.
To answer the question of why ordinary Florentines were drawn to this recently discovered text, despite its threat to orthodox Christian belief, Brown tracks interest in it through three humanists--the most famous of whom was Machiavelli--all working not as philologists but as practical administrators and teachers in the Florentine chancery and university. Interpreting their direct use of Lucretius within the context of mercantile Florence, Brown highlights three dangerous themes that had particular appeal: Lucretius's attack on superstitious religion and an afterlife; his pre-Darwinian theory of evolution; and his atomism, with its theory of free will and the chance creation of the world.
The humanists' challenge to established beliefs encouraged the growth of a "Lucretian network" of younger, politically disaffected Florentines. Brown thus adds a missing dimension to our understanding of the "revolution" in sixteenth-century political thinking, as she enriches our definition of the Renaissance in a context of newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
To answer the question of why ordinary Florentines were drawn to this recently discovered text, despite its threat to orthodox Christian belief, Brown tracks interest in it through three humanists--the most famous of whom was Machiavelli--all working not as philologists but as practical administrators and teachers in the Florentine chancery and university. Interpreting their direct use of Lucretius within the context of mercantile Florence, Brown highlights three dangerous themes that had particular appeal: Lucretius's attack on superstitious religion and an afterlife; his pre-Darwinian theory of evolution; and his atomism, with its theory of free will and the chance creation of the world.
The humanists' challenge to established beliefs encouraged the growth of a "Lucretian network" of younger, politically disaffected Florentines. Brown thus adds a missing dimension to our understanding of the "revolution" in sixteenth-century political thinking, as she enriches our definition of the Renaissance in a context of newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2010
57 people want to read
About the author
Alison Brown
9 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Alison Brown is Emeritus Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, having been a British Academy Exchange Fellow at the Newberry Library Chicago, and an Invited Visiting Professor and Fellow at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti Florence. She is the author of the biography Bartolomeo Scala 1430–97, Chancellor of Florence which won the Premio Arnolfo in Colle Val d'Elsa in 1979 and The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (2010).
Alison Brown is Emeritus Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, having been a British Academy Exchange Fellow at the Newberry Library Chicago, and an Invited Visiting Professor and Fellow at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti Florence. She is the author of the biography Bartolomeo Scala 1430–97, Chancellor of Florence which won the Premio Arnolfo in Colle Val d'Elsa in 1979 and The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (2010).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 10, 2013
Poor Alison Brown. She had the misfortune of publishing this little book on the reintroduction of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura only one year before the release of the unexpected publishing powerhouse that is Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Both works deal with how Lucretius's rather notably un-Christian thought led to a substantial shift in how people conceived the world. I haven't read Greenblatt's book, but from reviews and excerpts I am very, very wary of it, to say the least. I'd venture to say that Brown's work, despite it being far less known, is a lot more subtle but suffers from some similar problems.
Brown looks at the influence of Lucretius's thought on three prominent Florentines of the late 15th and early 16th centuries: Bartolomeo Scala, Marcello Adriani, and Niccolo Machiavelli. She traces how several themes of Lucretius threaded their way into these men's thoughts and transformed their philosophies: his emphasis on primitivism shaped attitudes towards the New World and shifted beliefs concerning man's relationship to animals, his dislike of religious superstition allowed men like Adriani to stand against the fire and brimstone of Savonarola, and his theory of atomism - with all its swerving atoms that gave Greenblatt's book its name - emphasized the role of fortune and chance in human affairs, and thus offered a new opening for the power of human free will, particularly in the writings of Machiavelli. She argues that while disbelief in the period certainly wasn't widespread, its negation by scholars like Paul Oskar Kristeller is a bit too hasty. If atheism wasn't yet nascent, a growing questioning of Christianity and a flowering of heterodox views certainly were.
It's a very interesting book, and it flies by at just over 100 pages. The section on Adriani and Savonarola is a particular highlight. I'm hesitant to give it unqualified praise, though, because I think that it's view is a bit too narrow. Lucretius pops up rarely in the works of most of these authors, amidst a barrage of other allusions to classical antiquity, and it would have been nice to see how his ideas played off all of the other influences. As is, the work feels a bit like a selective reading of these texts, and since Lucretius is the only one discussed, his influence seems like it may be artificially amplified. More important, though, is that Brown never really asks what it was that attracted humanists to Lucretius in the first place. He wasn't entirely forgotten in the medieval period but he was largely peripheral, so I wish Brown would have further explored why it was that he became incorporated into the thought of so many thinkers. It seems as if there's at least the possibility that Lucretius isn't the cause of anything, he's merely a symptom of something a lot more complex.
Brown looks at the influence of Lucretius's thought on three prominent Florentines of the late 15th and early 16th centuries: Bartolomeo Scala, Marcello Adriani, and Niccolo Machiavelli. She traces how several themes of Lucretius threaded their way into these men's thoughts and transformed their philosophies: his emphasis on primitivism shaped attitudes towards the New World and shifted beliefs concerning man's relationship to animals, his dislike of religious superstition allowed men like Adriani to stand against the fire and brimstone of Savonarola, and his theory of atomism - with all its swerving atoms that gave Greenblatt's book its name - emphasized the role of fortune and chance in human affairs, and thus offered a new opening for the power of human free will, particularly in the writings of Machiavelli. She argues that while disbelief in the period certainly wasn't widespread, its negation by scholars like Paul Oskar Kristeller is a bit too hasty. If atheism wasn't yet nascent, a growing questioning of Christianity and a flowering of heterodox views certainly were.
It's a very interesting book, and it flies by at just over 100 pages. The section on Adriani and Savonarola is a particular highlight. I'm hesitant to give it unqualified praise, though, because I think that it's view is a bit too narrow. Lucretius pops up rarely in the works of most of these authors, amidst a barrage of other allusions to classical antiquity, and it would have been nice to see how his ideas played off all of the other influences. As is, the work feels a bit like a selective reading of these texts, and since Lucretius is the only one discussed, his influence seems like it may be artificially amplified. More important, though, is that Brown never really asks what it was that attracted humanists to Lucretius in the first place. He wasn't entirely forgotten in the medieval period but he was largely peripheral, so I wish Brown would have further explored why it was that he became incorporated into the thought of so many thinkers. It seems as if there's at least the possibility that Lucretius isn't the cause of anything, he's merely a symptom of something a lot more complex.
April 2, 2013
This inspiring book portrays the delicate balance of influence that the re-discovery of Lucretius had on Renaissance Florence in contrast to protecting in from the inquisition and the index of threatening and propitiatory religious authority. What a joy to read to discover such a now-obvious threat in the evolution of humanism that once so tenuous blossomed into the minds of those such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Amerigo Vespucci, Sandro Botticelli, Niccolo Machiavelli. And how wonderful to learn of great minds like Scala and Adriani who could use Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, even under a rule of oppressive ideological dogmatism, could foster a culture where such intellectual progeny as the archetype of the Renaissance could develop. Alison Brown portrays the delicate threat by which naturalism, skepticism of superstition, the dismissal of teleology, and humanism were laid into the great Florentine pillar of society that supports the rise into science, humanism, and secular society that we can now call modern civilization. While less covered in this book, the journey of the atomic theory, an early germ-like theory of disease, an early evolutionary theory of society and biology, an empowerment theory using knowledge rather than propitiation, and the dismissal of superstitious as these theories traveled from Leucippius, Democritus, Protagoras, Epicurus, Virgil, Horace, even Cicero, and in beauty without wonder, Lucretius. Once these ideas made it through the gauntlet of the dark ages, these ideas could go on to empower Michel de Montaigne, Descartes, John Locke and the enlightenment we see as the colonies formed into the United States of America.
September 18, 2011
Excellent study. The author concentrates on three Florentine humanists (Ficino, Scalable,and Macchiavelli) who knew and read Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and were influenced by specific themes relevant to their interests-superstitious religion, evolutionary primitivism, and atomism. The author maps the route of Lucretius' recovery as it evolved from an interest in moral issues to a scientific interest in atomism and theories of the universe. Thanks to the translations in the Harvard I Tatti library series, readers can now easily access the critical authors referenced in this book. Ficino, Politian, Scala, and Pontano are now represented by volumes in this series, which features both newly edited Latin texts and excellent English translations. The only challenge is deciding where to go from here: I should re-read the poem, but I am also tempted to go back to some of the authors referenced in the text.
July 13, 2012
Extremely well-written, the book was a bit too academic for my tastes. Happy to have read it though, as it built on several themes from The Swerve that I wanted to know more about...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews