IO T H E RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

jeers. Dolan's book is also interesting because while revising some New Histori­cist assumptions, ir nonetheless participates in the central manoeuvres of the movement: the pamphlets she discusses alongside texts like OtheLLo and The Winters Tale are given the same level of attention - no attempt is made to dif­ferentiate berween the literary quality of her chosen texts.

Another criticism that has been levelled at New Historicism rela tes directly to this open-ended attitude towards culrural artefacts. For New Hisroricists, notio ns of artistic value are themselves cultu rally formed. The way BurckJ1ard r (like many others) privileges Shakespeare and Leonardo as pre-eminem anises possessed of special gifts is fro m this perspective a dubious praClice: by eleva ting Shakespeare and Leonardo, you exclude hundreds of other voices. The process of 'canon for­marion' (the construction of a select list of mas terpieces like Hamlet and the 'Mona Lisa') becomes not just an iss ue of artisti c rasre but of the deliberate exclu­sion of divergent voices. N ew Hisroricisrs demonstrate their resistance to these crad itional critical manoeuvres by ex tending the pa rameters of what should be d iscussed. A good example of this work is the growing attention paid to women write rs of the Renaissance - a group which the traditional male-centred canon had excluded. But New Historicisrs can be accused of simply transferring value from uaditional artists like Shakespeare and Leonardo either to neglected artists, or indeed to modern historians. T he same need to privilege is constant, though the object of the critic's admiration has shifted .

Before closing, we must offset these criticisms with some sense of the value of the New H istor icist approach. As M arrin points out, the attention that has been paid to self-fashioning has helped to refocus attention on Burckhardt's questions and the whole issue of the for mation of the modern individual. By resisting Burckhardt's pictu re, New Historicists have, in Heather Dubrow's phrase, 'spa rked interest in tensions' within Renaissance culture (p. 42). Rather than being the progressive new age envisaged by Burckhardr, the Renaissance emerges as a cross-European cultural moment during which questions of identity were re-negotiated in response to rapidly changing social pressures. I would not be sur­prised if you find rhe whole idea of the unfree subj ect both a bit outrageous and mildly repellent - as Greenblatt's anecdote at the close of Renaissance Self Fashioning is intended to show, we are very attached to the idea of our auton­o my within larger social structures. Personally, I remain to be convinced whether my identity is a socially produced sample - an agglomeration of cliches and partly remembered texts - or whether it remains my own uniquely sel f-a utho red indi ­viduali ty. Bur I am sure that the New Historicist inspection of the constructio n of the self has changed both how I look at the past and how I look at mysel f. Identity - fo r so long something we took fo r granted - has become so rn..: rhi11 g we have to p rove.

In summary:

• New H isto ricism 1 ·t·: 1~ · t, .11·,.1i 11 .. 1 · .. 1,1· I""''" 1• 1 ~ 11 1 111 11 • 111 111 •ivi 11 1·, l111w lii •.t ori .d co nL..:xt sho1dd lw ll '>l'd 111 111111 1111111 1 111, ' 111.1 1 111 , til1 111 .o l ,1111 l.1. l". i

• C l1.11.11 ll ' li , 111 .ill , , il1 11 t1 111 1111 11111111 1 .. 1 II ' 1111 I ii• '• 111 111111·1 I ,1111 1 i1 l1·111 i11·:

1 • 1 l<1 N ON E: THE I MPACT OF H UMAN ISM II

1 mwc r shapes or fashions identity and so shapes the artefacts produced by past 1 1il 111 n·s; New I I isro ricism therefore sees Burckhardr's model as fu ndamentally ourdared I>\' '> t rcss ing the restrictions on individual auro nomy in any given culture; ~~,·w I lis tori cism is vulnerable to criricism in its obsess ion with issues of power; 11 ·, i11iti:il insensitivity to rh e fo rmarion of female identities; while the whole 111 ,, in1 1 of rhe unfree subj ect rema ins contentious.

tJ1t 1111·:1( llEADING

I l11l 111 , h :1 11 ccs E., Dangerous ffw1i!im:<: Represmtrztions o/Drm"·sfic Crimt i11 l:i1gl1111d I)51i-r700 ( I il1.1, .1 .111d London: Cornell U11 i vcrsi ry Press , 1994)

l11li 11 >w. I k cHher, 'Twentierh Cc1Hlll'Y .Shakespear,· Criricis111' in l'he RifJenide .'iiJtr!tespertrc: '"11 11tl l:dition (ed. G. Bbclonort· Ev:1ns .111d J. J. M. 'l(ibi11 . Boston :ind New Yo rk : I i111 1gh1on Miffl in Co .. 1997)

11111 11li l.111 . Stephen, ' In visi ble Bu ll er" in Shr1hespcrzrcrl!'l Ncgotir11io1rs: 'Ill(' Circulation of'Socia/ / 1111 1111 i11 RenaissanCI' F11~!and (Oxford : The CLrn:: 11 do 11 Press, 1988)

11111 11:;11,.,· Seif-Fashioning: Fmm f\lfoff 10 Shalmpmre (C hi c1go an d Londo n: Chicago I l11 1vc"i1y Press, 1980)

111111 " "" · Richard , Forms of Nationhood: rhe fiiz.ttbe1h11n Wri1i11g of England (Chicago :llld I 11 11 d1111: Chicago Un iversi ty Press. 1992)

I l11' IJl1 \', ( :lirisrnpher, Shahespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis itr lreh111d (Cambridge: Cam bridge l li 11 vc1>i1y Press, 1997)

I 1111 11 , 111 1111. 'Inventing sinceriry, refas hi oning prudence: rhc discovery of the individual 111

ll1 1>.11".111Lc Europe', American Historim/ Review 102 (1997) I ilh 11• 1, 1: .. M. W., Shakespeares History P!a)'S (London: Charro c111d Wind us, 1944)

Joli n Martin 'Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe' ~i o 11 rce from American Historical Review, 102 (5) December 1997 pp. 1309-1 7, 1 :~10 42.

111 tl 1l' Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness - cha r which was 1111 11 n l within as char which was turned without - lay dreaming or half awake I 11 111·;11 h :1 co mmo n vei l. The veil was woven of fa ith, illusion and childish pre­j1 11 '"' ·\ ~ in 11, th ro ugh which rhe world and history were seen clad in strange hues. I\ 1.1 11 w:1s conscious of himself only as member of a race, people, parry, family, 11 1 1 01 p1 i r: 11 ion - onl y through some general category. In Italy rhis veil first 111 11 ·d in 10 :1ir; an 11bjccti1N' trea tment and consideration of the state and of all il11 11 ~ '1' or thi s W(l l'ld b · · :1111' possi hk. Th e subjective side ar the same rime 1 11 •d i1.,l'1i'w i1h c<H1\:s11rn di11 i-; ·mph asis; man became a spiritual individual, 1J1d 1t•101·,11i·1cd l1i 1m1 ·lf' ·" ~ 11 1 11 . 111 1\i · s:1n1 ·way rhc G1"ek had once di stin-1·11 1<i l1 ·ti l1i 11 1\1· ll 111 •1 11 tl1•' l1. 11 i1 ,11i. 111 , .111d i\ I(' Ara b had fdt hi ms ·IF an incli -1 lo I 11 . ii 11 ·' I " I " \ \ 1,, " "1 I 1' I I\ ~ ' ' II ll ' 1. II • \\' ii II ' 111 •,1 I \I I ' " "11 I I , I\ m (' 111 h('l'8 I) r ~ r:1 (('.

12 THE RENAISSANCE [N EUROPE: A READER

It will not be difficult t0 show that this result was due above all to the political circumstances of Italy.

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)

More than one hundred and thirty years after its publication, Burckhardt's mas­terpiece The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy continues tO stimulate much of the mosr creative scholarship in late medieval and early modern European hisrory. This book, ro be sure, has never generated a scholarly consensus on the nature of the Renaissance. Ir has, however, accomplished something far m o re valuable. Ever since its publication, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Ita61 has cons istendy invited corrections, modifications, and refutations; it has become a classic, compelling each new generation of readers tO come ro terms with its argu­ments. Period subspecialists define themselves and examine their presuppositions in relation ro this texr. Inrellectual and cu ltural hisrorians who focus on the Middle Ages, for instance, have mustered considerable evidence that many of rhe humanistic and even individualistic ideals Burckhardt viewed as originating in Italy in the Renaissance had in fact emerged much earlier. [ ... ] But fo r the majority of socia l historians, Burckhardt served primarily as a marker of what they were nor. Where Burckhardt had focused on the writings of a few excep­tionally talented figures, they would privilege the ex perience of ordinary people (merchants, artisans, peasants, vagabonds); where he had viewed the state abstracdy, in nearly Nietzschean terms, as a 'work of art,' they had begun ro deci­pher the social and institutional forces that shaped it; and, finally, where he had appeared ro 'celebrate' individualism, they would demonstrate the vitality of cor­porate and collective experience.

This essay, by contrast, is an effort ro underscore the importance of what I believe should still be called 'the discovery of the individual' for our under­standing not only of high culture - arr, music, literature, and imellecrual history - bur also for our grasp of social and political hisrory as well. This does not mean that we must approach the Renaissance in traditional Burckhardtian terms. To the contrary, recent philosophical , anthropological, and literary models of the indi vidual have so transfo rmed our understanding of the human person that it is no longer poss ible to base our analysis of the origins of individualism on the traditional humanistic assumptions that Burckhardt rook as a given. We are, in other words, no longer in the comfortable position of believing, as Burckhardt and many of his nineteenth-century contemporaries did, that the individual existed prior to hisrory; that, if the individual was not a central concern of the Middle Ages, this was due to a veil 'of faith, illusion and childish prepossession'; that, finally, what emerged in the Renaissance was man as he really is. For in recent years, many analysts, inspired by post-structuralist and postmodern arguments and insights, have begun to argue that individualism itself is a consrruction, that, indeed, the human self is in m any ways nothing more rh:rn :1 ri 1 in11, and rh;lt it is above all what might be ca lled rh c Renaissance rcp r 'se111.11 i1111 ·. •ii iill' '· lf" :1 s :111 i11di vid11 :i l, expri',,~ i vv subj· ·1 1ha1 n:q11irc cx pl:1n :11i1H1 ,

1111111 · 111 ·.1 p. 11 1 nl iJ, j., , ... ... 1y. il1 l" l(0 l; ll (', I · ·x .11 11i1io Ill " "'" , j, 11il I II 11 .. Ii, V('

i ' I I 11 1 Ii ' 11111•, I .I I ', I I Jf ll .1 111 11 ' I 11 I ' 1,, 1 ll <'1 I l"'' I" I I 111 1 I I 1 •I • I 1 111 1< I, I I 11 I I 11 q' " I 111 •Ii

I 1 I It l N I lNE: T l-IE IMPACT O F HUMANISM 13

1.!11,ili ., 111 - namely, the work of the Renaissance literary hisrorian Stephen 1"'1 1il 1l:1rr and the New Hisroricists he has inspired . As I shall try ro make clear, 1I11 11 i., 111 uch in the New Hisroricisr scholarship that should interest historians,

111 ii in social or intellectual, and that needs ro be taken ser iously. Indeed, at 1 1 II h,.,\I, these scholars offer tantalizing insights imo the play of social forces 1111 1 ideological currents on Renaissance texts and Renaissance selves . Yer, as I !1 il l .11 g11e, their accounts are, paradoxically, profoundly ahistorical. On the on e

l1111il , 1li ci r analytical strategies tend to view the formation of rhe Renaissance II 111 111 1 wi thin a synchronic Framework, one frozen in time, with little sense of

il11 1111n: llion of more slowly developing hisro rica l - or diachronic - forces on ,j,, 11101.css of what has come to be called 'Renaissance self-fashioning.' 1 On the ·olt 1 h. 111d,_ their analyses also rend to be based on a rotal izing view of politics 111.l 1111w T 1n the Renaissance world - a view that leaves lirrle room for opposi­lll11 t.il n r d lssennng voices. Accordingly, in the second part of this essay, I rry to • 1111 1 I ti 1 is by offering an alternat ive approach to a sa li ent aspecr of the history .t il1 lm 111at10n of Renaissance selves . Jn particular, I examine the effort on both

111 11 11• 11 :ii and practical levels during the Renaissance period ro redefine certain "1111 ii • .11 cgories relating ro sincerity and prudence and the relation of these redc­l111111t1 11' 10 the formation of an increased sense of subjectivity and individual­' 111 J\ 1)'. cl aim isnot that rh_ese shifts alone were responsible for the generation I t1H l1v1d11:d1sm 111 the Renaissance. As Michael Mascuch has recen tly cautioned

111 111 "' ud y of the self in seventeenrh -cenrury England, 'i ndividualism is a mul-11. l111 11'1 " i1111al phenomenon, an amalgam of practi ces and values with no dis-

111il1 k l rnrer. A variety of forces - social, economic, political, intellectual -11111 d1111 vd ro its making, each one of which was paramoum at some rime or

111 111 111 1, vi1hcr separately or jointly with others . Thus a single account of indi-hl1 1 il1 ·, 111 can not possibly represent its development, its contours, its funct ions.'2

• 1111 1 li r l ·ss, the evidence I have gathered does suggest that this shifr in moral •" ii 11 if .11 y played a significant role in the construction of new notions of indi-11 !11 il 1' 111 i11 rhc Renaissance world.

1 1 • 1 1I1 · p:1 s1 few decades, scholars have approached the problem of the emer-111' 111 1 he mod ern self from a variety of perspectives . [ ... J But, as I indicated

11.,1 •. 1hl' 111m1 inAuenrial and innovative treatment of the Renaissance self is I 11111, I 111 1hc work of Stephen Greenblatt and, most notably, in his now class ic

111 1I1 l.'r•11r1i sst111cc Self Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. This book, which 1 I 11 .. 1 p11hl is li ed in 1980, has proven enormously influential. This is especially

1 11° 111 < ;, · ·nhl:1u's own Field oFliterature, where his ideas have been fundamental loil 1111 1lvvl·lnplll L"IH or New Hisro ri cism, a critical movement that, in its reac­"' "' 11•,. 111 1'.t th · lor111: dis1 en idealist readings of the New Critics, has sought ro • 1°1 1111 1,11 1vx1s :1s c:11l111ral :1nifocts or practices, dialectically related to the spe­

lt• 1il1 111 ,il , ' O ·i:d, :i nd polirical ·01Hex rs in which they were written. In addi-11 11 11 11 1d w/1 .11 i ~ k- i ~ i vc l1 n · tl1 e N -w J li ~ 1ori c is rs also view the self, like a

1 " ' '' ,1 ,11 1.1111 1111111 111111 " 1·111i1 1 11111 r:1Llwr :is :1 si1 · 0 11 which broader institu­" ' 11 ,J 1!11l 111.J 111 1.d 11>1• "" .11 1· """ 1i/,,.,1, j,, . / Svlf' r'." l1 i11 11 i1 11·. l1:1s hco rn · :1 c111r:il 111 lllO -: 11 111, I j•/<11 ,111" 11 11 1 I' • II ll '•', 11\o I ol lll l 1'. lli }' lll11<l 1•111 f 1ililll (0 j',1"11("1.ii/)I, IJ

Tf!E RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

is dqlloy ·I 111 a v:1ric1y o!' liclds: i11 social history, art history, intellectual histo ry, rlH: history ()!" .,cience, and it even has important implications for the study of the self" in other rimes and places.

On many levels, this development is noc surprising. As a descripti ve category, self-fashioning seems to capcure much of what is popularly believed about Renais­sance life. As Greenblarc notes, 'the simplest observacion we can make is that in che sixteemh century there appears to be an increased sel f-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.' Above all, self­fashioning appea rs to make sense of a world in which the court was central to literary life - for thi s was a world in which prudent accommodation and even deception were often seen as virwes. And indeed, the Renaissa nce world was a tbearrical age - an age of masks, of masq uerades, of role playing, of the swdied nonchalance of sprezzatum lease of manner in style or performancej, even of 'hones t dissi mulacion.' Clearly, at least among the priv ileged orders, men and women were ofren conscio us of fashioning particular selves in order to survive or advance in the high-stakes world of co urt society.

Bur self-fas hioning is nor only powerful descripti vely, it is also heuristically powerful. Ar a point when social history appears to have reached an impasse in its ability to offer convincing explanations of culwral developments, self­fashioning holds our the promise of offering scholars new ways of thinking about the interplay of social and culm ral life. As Greenblan himself notes, 'self-fash­ioning derives its interest precisely from the fact that it functions without rega rd for a sharp distinction between literature and social life.' In shore, ir seems to offer a way around both idealist accounts of culwre such as chose found in tra­ditional histories of lirerature and ideas and chose Marxist accounts that privi­lege the infrastructure to such a degree that culrural life is viewed passively, as a mere reflecrion of social relations. In theoretical terms, we mighr say, self-fash­ioning avoids borh the abstract aesrheticism of formal analyses and the reRec­tionist assumptions of much Marxist theory. Throughout his work, Greenblatt deftly merges a consideration of ideas and social life; he argues against rheories chat deny 'any relation between the play and social life' and those char affirm 'thar the larter is "the thing itself, " free from interpretario n. ' In his view, 'Social actions are themselves always embedded in systems of public signification, always grasped, even by their makers, in aces of interpretation, while the words rhar con­sritute the works of literature rhat we discuss here are by their very nature rhe manifest assurance of a similar embeddedness .' Orher scholars have fastened onto rhis dimension of his ideas. As the historian of science Mario Biagioli has put it in his recent study of Galileo, the 'focus on processes of self-fashioning may help bypass some of the deadlocks of the so-called externalists-versus-internalisrs debate that has characterized much of recent and not so recent science smdies.' One can view Galileo's insights , that is, not exclusively as rh o nscq uence of external social and political facrors impinging on rhc s ' irn 1i f;, i111 ,11\ i11:11iD11 nor as merely rhe res ult of developments wirhin Rcn:1i s~. 1111 ,. 111 ,11 l11111 .11 i1 ·, :111d asr ronomy, b111 r:11h er as ihe rn 1rc0111 · o l C:dil ·o's ow11 'ff1oi1 1111111 1• 11 1 111 11nl ( 1ili 111 1· .111 tl j,, 11.1i 1rn1.11•,c <'Xi>< 'rl. 11 inn., i11 nl 11 it1 11'"I11 1 I • 11 •1 ""' to 1 l1,11<1< p1 · .,, I I 111 ' I I 11 ( ' ii ii· '111 II I I ii II I j, "I i '· t I 111 '< . I II " .I ii I II' I ii II I I .i " I ii I I 1 1111 ' 1 •1 I '•I

I I 11< lN ONE: TH E IMPACT Of H UMAN IS M 15

1111 1 purely of developments intrinsic to science bur of the way these t\vo spheres 11 11 ·r.,ected in Galileo's studied 'self-fashioning.' [See page 322 below.]

h 1lccially significant, however, is Greenblatt's insistence on a new notion of 1 Ii · It 11111an person - one that wo uld have been w ho!ly alien ro Burckhardt. For wli ilt· irs ride seems to suggest a kind of independence on the pan of rhe self, or, 1 n11L· cri tic has crenchantly observed, while G reenblart seems at times ro invite 11 '10 read "self-fas hioning" as free, expressive self-making,' Renaissance Self / ,1 ,/1i1111ing is in fact a study not of th e way in which human sub jects fashi oned il1<·111.,clves but rather oF the way in which cerrain politi ca l and religious forces 11 1 l1 l' Renaissance created the fiction oF individual autonomy. For, in th e end, 111·L· 1dil:m's Renaissance Se!fFtZShioning offers a view of die se lf as a cul rural arti-

l 11 1, .1 hi storical and ideological illusi on gen era ted by the eco nomic, social, reli­' 111 11, , :111 d politica l uph eava ls oF th e Renaissance. Creenblarr's project, in shorr,

Ii t'• rn mibuced in decisive ways to a new hi storiograph y oF the self. Ea rlier Iii 1111·ies - grounded in the liberal and conservative myrhs of rhe gradual ln11 l1noic emancipation of rhe individual - have given way to histo ries that 1 l' l(/ rv the varied constructions of the self in different time periods and differ-

11 1 11ilr ures. Not only is it no longer poss ible ro view its history as one of con-11 1111rn 1s development, bur indi vidualisrn, [ . . . J is itse lf nor a uniquely Wesrern pli 'Jlll lll el1011.

l I 1 i .~ new understanding of the history of individualism is ex plicit in the struc-111 1 v < , ( Ncnaissance Self Fashioning in which the various 'authors' -Thomas More,

' il li.1 111 ' l)1ndale, Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, C hristopher Marlowe, and ill i, 1111 Shakespeare - are each viewed as shaped above all by the social, cul tural,

,, l11·,i01 1s , :i nd political tensions of Tudor England. T hus identity is nor a given; 1 1il1 v1. 11 is a cultural or political artifact, or, as Greenblatt pithily remarks, 'we 111 11• ~: 1 y rhar self-fashioning occurs at the poim of encounter between an 111 1ll<" i1 y :111d an alien.' More's self-fashioning, fo r example, is portrayed as raking iii l•l' i11 1h l:' interplay of his submission to the authority of rhe church and his " I 11111 ... i 1 io11 w heresy and the monarchy, while Tyndale's self is depicted as devel-111 11 11 1'. <> 111 oF the tensions between his opposition to the church, on the one hand , 111d l1 is s11hrnission ro Scripture as authority, on the other. Or, as Green blatt 1 d ,.,( 1 v · .~ . in :111 eloquent comparison of the processes of self-fashioning that Ii 111 ·d 1h ·identities of More and Tyndale, 'The Bible ... provides for Tyndale

li ,11 il1 e C hurch prdvides for More: noc simply a point of va ntage but a means 111 1h""rl' the :1 mbiguiri es of identi ty, the individual 's mingled egotism and self-111 1ii1i 11 •. i11io a larger, redeemi ng certainty.' [ . .. ]

I 11 h · ·' "re, i here arc moments in Renaissance Self-Fashioning and elsewhere in 111 w11 rl, wli ·n Cr· ·11hlatt seemingly longs for a more resilient self - moments iJ , 11 1011ll' ' lose Lo r ·ifyi11 g 1he con ·epr of sel fhood rhar he elsewhere unrelent-1111 ',11• d \'1 n 11 ~ 1l'l1 l l ~ . Ai one p<>i11t, li e ·li :1rannizes rhe Renaissance self as ' brinle 111il 111 ,11k1 p1 ,11 1·': :11 .111<lll 1t;1', I . . . I li11 all y a11d 111osr poignanrly, in the final sen-11 111 1 1 .. /,'1 ·11111'111////'I' S1•/f' !·;1, /1i1111i11,<;. :11'1 ·r of'i' ·ri1q ' :111 anecdorc, Greenblatt ! pl 11 m 111 ·, 11 1'1'< 1111 1<' 11 .i 111 1· ,1111 ,il •.111 11' :1 ,,1111 1 :1h<)1 11 hi111 ~ ·I( - h ·c~n1 s., a~ h · 11111 II ' I \\ ,1111 l• i 111 •I \\' 111 1< '\ \ I I il 11 ' J.,.,, ,,, 111 \1 11 v1 ·111.dw l111 il'I', 111 •t•d Ii• \ll\Llill il11 11 111 •,1<1 11 il 111 I ,1111 1111 111111°11•11 11 1,il I I " ' Ill\ 11 1\1 11 1.J, ·11111 1 ' 1'i ·111 <' il1 <' l1 •;>, , '.I I • 11

r6 THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

passages are fleeting, and for the most part Greenblatt maintains or implies that even the most substantial selves are egos built on fictions. In one of his m ost

revealing discussions of Renaissance selfhood, for example, G reenblatt, after

citing a famous passage from Leviathan in which Thomas H o bbes offered his

definition of 'person,' notes that

in Hobbes, the 'narura l person' originates in the 'artificial person' - the m ask,

the character on a s tage 'translated ' from the theater to the tribunal. There is

no laye r d eeper, more authentic, than theatrica l self-representation. This con­

ception of the self does no t deny th e im porrance of the body ... but it d oes not anchor perso nal identity in an inali enable biological co nrinuity. The crucial

consideration is ownership: wha t distin guishes a 'narn ral' person from an 'a rti­

ficial ' perso n is that the forme t· is considered to own hi s words and actions. Con­

sidered by whom? By authority. But is autho rity itself then nacural o r artific ial?

In a move that is one of rh e corne rstones of Hobbes's absolutis t po lit ica l phi­

losophy, authority is ves ted in an anifi c ial person who represents the words and

actions of the entire nation . All men th erefo re are impersonators of themselves,

bur impersona tors whose clear title to ident ity is secured by an authority irrev­ocably deeded to an arrifical person. A grear mask allows one to own as o ne's

own face ano ther mask.

Or, as G reenblatt concludes in the epilogue to Renaissance Seif-Fashioning, ' the

human subject itself began to seem remarkably unfree, the ideological product

of the relations of power in a particular soc iety. ' Greenblatt, in shorr, is power­

fully historicist in his argurnen t. Like other histo ricisrs, he sees the sel f not as a

free, autonomo us subject b ut ra ther as subj ec ted to (because gene rated by) the codes o f cu ltu re and power, o r what Greenbl an calls 'the culcural poetics' of a

particula r ser of cultural, political, and social relations. fd entity is shaped from

the outside. [ .. . J Thus from the vantage point of much new literary criticism , Burckhardt's self­

creating individual is largely myth. This is so much the case, in fact, that among

New Historicis ts and othe r scholars influenced either by Greenblat t or other post­

srructu ral isr and postmodern discourses, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy now serves as a canonical market of a paradigm surpassed. [ .. . ]

The ride has shifted , then, from Burckhardt's notion of the discovery of the

individual to a New Hisco ri cist analy tics of self-fashioning. Certainly many

aspects of th e notion self-fashio ning are, as I have tried to suggest, compelling at

both a descriptive and a h euristic level. But how are historians to make sense of this transformation in the radically altered understanding of the construction

of the self in Renaissa nce Europe> Are we simply to accepr the view that the self,

in the Renaissance as in all periods, is a m ere culrural artifact, and that the

humanist self was (and remains) no more than an illusion - something 'remark­

ably unfree' o r merely 'the ideological product of the relations of power in a par­ticular society'? W as the individual, in fact, 'cominually mad · :111d 1· ·1 11ack'> Ill

short, does the concept of self- fashioning provide an adcq11 :1tc · cl c·., t 1 ip1io 11 o F th, ·

production o f subj ectivirics o r. m o re prnsa i a lly. or tl w .Ii· .. •1 \1 '· I "' iill' i11di vi d 11 :il in 1 lw l~v 11 : 1 i' '· 111 t .- '

11 I It I N <lN l ·.: THE IM PACT OF HUMANISM 17

1 1111 111 1 hv m ost striking features of Renaissance notions of the self was an ex plic-

1il I 1y1 ·1 ·d quality, which represented a sense not only of inwardness or inreri­

'" 11 \ I H 1t a lso of mystery abour w hat Renaissance writers, drawing on a lo ng 11 1. 11 111111 , imagined as their inner selves . This concern was manifest as ea rly as 1I11 J111 11 IL"L' ll th century in Petrarch's writings, especially the Secretum [what is

• 11 t I 111 which, under the influence of Augustine, Petrarch examined th e depth

111 I Ii · , horrcomings of his own soL1l. In the six teenth century, however, this

1<11•' • 11 1cached a new level of intensity. The Venetian reforme r Gaspa ro Con-1111 111 10 11 vcyed a sense of this inwa rdn ess in a celeb ra ted letter, his epi stle • • l11111 111 :1so G iusriniani of April 1511: ' if yo u were ro know me from within

I l/'/111riw ffo), as I really am (but eve n l do nor kn ow inyse lf well) , you wo uld

t•"I 111 ii · s11 ch a judgmenr about m e.' In a similar vein, John Calvin, in language ii• 11 11 h, t amially exp anded the topograp hy of inte rioriry, encouraged his

• • L 1 111 look more d eeply into themselves: 'The human hea rt has so many cran-

li 1c vanity hides, so man y holes where falsehood lu rks, is so decked o ur

11/1 ii l' iving hypocrisy, that it ofi:en du pes itself' M onta igne, one of rhe pre-11111111 11 .1rchitccts of inwardness in the sixtee nth century, made a similar obser-

1111n1 ·1 , who make no other profession, find in me such infinite depth and

1111 I ~. 1 l1 :1t what I have learned bears no other fruir than to make me rea lize

111 11 h I sti ll have to learn .' And th e wo rks of Wyatt, the Tudo r poe t, as

1d1 l,111 h imse lf notes, are m arked both by rhe ir ' inwardness' and thei r

11 ' I)' 11v1sonal' na ture.

11111 1.I , "''c can point not only to author after author from the Ren aissance -I ·:r:1srn us, Luthe r, More, Montaigne, Shakespea re - who made iss ues of

1111 111 c 11 tral to his discussion of the human situat ion but also to th e way Ii 11 I 1 th is dimension of experience was registered beyond the rea lm o f g rea t

11 c-., 11c ·i;1 1ly poignant series of examples derives from the inquisito ri al

, 1. I ,111 l th e 111a1·tyrologies of this period. The Acts and !Vlonuments of the

I 111 11 11 111.1 1·tyrologisr John Foxe, for instance, are filled with Protestant saints

I 1" 11 ii l.1 1 · ove1 the q ues tion of whether or not rhey sho uld reveal their beliefs

II• / , • 111 v" 1 ions to rl 1c Catholic prelates who examined them , before fin ally elect­' • 111 t11 ,il · t I 1 ·i r ' i 111J er' convictions known. Inquisitorial archives provide similar

1I11 1 1 1p~ t <.:ckhrated oF which was tha t of the Italian lawyer Francesco Spiera,

1,,. '' "f"l" k I wi 1 h 1 he qucs rion of whether or not to dissimulate his beliefs as • 11 d i111 n tliv t1·ibunal in Venice, only to abjure his convictions befo re the

1111111 11,.1 111d l:i tc1 10 reg rcr ir so deep ly that he starved himself to death, co n­

"" d 111 w. 1 go ing 10 l lcll. Calvin , w ho was familiar w ith this case, raised the

1 il11 l111 111.1 1 Sp i Ta was hard ly an isolated example. The Catholic lands, he 1 '" 111 .1 ·.c1 j, ., 111' t r ·ar ises :111<l lcm::rs, were filled with those he called

1 .. ,I, '' "" " 111 1c-l' ·rc ·11 c · to di e ea rl y Christian Nicodemus, who, according to ii 1 ""1'1 I cd !1.!111 , h.1d ·0 1n,· to J ·s 11 ,, 'liy night') - men and women, that is,

J,,, ' 11 1'11<1 1 '. 1,1111 Ii lwlid h 111 wl1 0 ·o rJL inucd to arrend Mass and m ake a

I 11 11 1 111 111 1" ( '. 1il 111li t 11 1 1i111 IC<I tl1 ·ms ·Ives :rnd 1h t·ir f:1milies fro m persecu-rn111 !1 11 Ill il 11 1{1 lld i .' .. 11 11 I ' I 111111 . I •, W1•ll , tht• i., ,'il!" Or iii ,· n.: pr "$ "lll :lliOll ()r th e

I I I 1111 .1 , 111111 II "" " 11 1 " " Id , ,ii il1 1• 1•li1 1'·,, Tl w Vl' I p11p11l :1rit I o r I ,] 11 di1111i •, / /1111/. 11/ //11 ( 11/111/1 '/ 11•11 "Iii \' 111 11.i/1 11111 1il111111•. l111 11i

18 THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READE R

Europe provides evidence of this. The Italian humanist and historian Francesco Guicciardini gave simultaneous expression to courdy and religious concerns when he observed in his Ricordi [Diaries]: 'And yet the position I have filled under several Popes has obliged me for personal reasons [per el particulare mio] to desire their greatness. But for this I should have loved Manin Lmher as myself.'

The experience of personhood in the Renaissance world was, in short, often the experience of a divided self, of a person who was frequently forced to erect a public fac;:ade that di sgu ised hi s or her convictions, bel iefs, or feelings. In the Renaissance generally and the sixteenth century in particu lar, we see a new emphasis on inwardness or rhe idea of an interior sel f as the core of personal identity. To be sure, there was nothing new about the notion of irnerioriry per se. Medieval soc iety, especia lly in the wake of the culmral and monastic reviva ls of the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, had numerous writers and theolo­gians who fashioned a deep sense of inwardness and inrerioriry. Bernard of Clair­va ux's mystical rheology, which was even distributed in vernacular translations, elaborated rhe most complex psychology of the soul since Augustine. Peter Abelard's ethics shifted the attention of moral judgmenc away from deed to the intention that lay behind it. Aelred of Rivaulx underscored the importance of inwardness in his celebrated treatise on spiritual friendship. And medieval peni­tential theory and practice began to stress conrririon - genuine so rrow for one's sins - over external acts of penance. But there was something signifi cantly new abo ut the way in which men and women in rhe Renaissance began to concep­tualize the relation between what rhey saw as rhe interior self on rhe one hand and the expressions of one's thoughts, feelings. or beliefs on the other. Indeed, it is by carefully analyzing chis shift from medieval ro Renaissance notions of the relation of the interior self to such expressions that we can both better grasp what has come to be called the Renaissance discovery of the individual along with the new sense of subjectivity (bo th in the sense of ownership of and agency behind one's speech, thoughts, and actions) that it entailed. H ere my analysis shall be limi ted , as I noted earlier, to two relatively well-focused developments: rhe Renaissance refashioning of the virtue of prudence and the rather more sudden emergence in sixteenth-century discourse of the ideal of sincerity.

Prudence, unlike sincerity, is an ancient virtue, with classical roots. It played a central role for Aristotle, who viewed prudence (phronesis) as the practical reason that guided one's choice in the process of ethical decision-making. In late antiq­uity, a number of authors - mosr notably, Augustine - linked this classical ideal to the Christian concept of Providence. Indeed, the two terms prudentia and prov­identia both derived from the Latin providere ('to foresee,' 'to take precaution,' 'to provide for' ). As a result, throughout most of the Middle Ages, prudence was viewed as Christian wisdom and took its place alongside remr 'l':t11 ·, r(lrrirude, and justice as one of rhe four cardinal virtues. For insr:111 '\", 11 11' 11Vt" lr1 h ·nrury theologian Alan of Lille stared in his /)e virtutihm I 011 !111· 1111/111 .j , 'p1 11el ·11 · · is rhe discemmentof rhoserhings rha1 ar· ood , 1,: vil , 111 1111 .,I 1 11 11 iJ,, .1vnid. 1111 '« of evil and rhe election of 1 h(" J',Ont I. ' I 11 ' J 'I 10 111.1 " • 111111 • •,,, /,, ,1/11,1•1.1.- [ !'lit' / ."f\('l//i11!1 11(711N1/i1,<!_ )I[ , p1111 l1 1111 I ~ ' ' '1111 ".1' 111 11 1 ·'" I 1111 11 1 qd · td 1111 1· I 11111 il .. 11 '"

d I 11< lN ONE: THE IMPACT OF HUMANISM 19

111, i ~ ivc , when properly developed, in holding the pass ions and the appetites in , Ii ., k when these threaten one's ability to obtain happiness or salvation. ' Pru­ii , 11 c,' Thomas wrote, 'is a virtue most necessary for human life. For a good life , rn" ists in good deeds. Now in order to do good deeds, it matters nor only what 1 111 .11 1 does but also how he does it; to wit, that he do it from right choice and 11111 111 n dy from impulse or pass ion.'

Y1 ·1 1 his ideal underwent a significant shift in the I rali an Renaissance, especially 111 1l 1v Lire fourteenth and fifteenth cenmries, when humanisrs began reading and 1111 1 111rcring Aristotle's wo rks - above all , his Nicomachean Ethics - outside a

1111 il y 1heologica l context. In rbe hands of such humanisrs as Coluccio Salurati, I ' 11 11.1rdo Bruni , Giovanni Ponrano, and Lorenzo Valla , prudence w;1s no longe r iii l'quivalent of providence bur r;Hher an ethical srrarq,')' rhat gave new

111p l1." is to the individua l's will. And in the ea rly sixteenth century, in rhe work ol tvl.1 l1 iavelli, prudence was divorced entirely from ethics . As Machiavelli argued

Ill I f,11 11ous passage of The Prince, 'a wise ruler r uno signore prudente] cannot, nor I 1111 ild I 1L» keep his word when doing so would be to hi s di sadvantage and when

il11 11 .1"0 11 s rhat led him to make promises no longe r exist ... But one must know 1111 111 di sguise this nature well, and how to be a fine li :u and hypocrite [simu­

''"' r rli.rsimulatore]; and men are so simple-minded and so dominated by their I" 1 111 11 ccds that one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself 1 • Io ti ., civet! .' In Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, the humanist Pietro Bembo 1 11. 1I1.11 one should never rrusl anyone, nor even a dea r fri end , to the extent I 111 111 1n11n ica ring without reserva tion all one's thoughts to him ,' while the

lq .J 111 11.1 1 1:nlerico Fregoso, the primary speaker of Book II, explicirly recorn ­"'' 111 11 '. 1 Lc rrain studied diss imulation' in one's co nversation. Although other

1111, 1lil' llrcscnred as objecting to the opinions of these speakers, the overall ii 1111 1 nl C.1s1 iglione's dialogue is to view conversation as an an, in which nothing

111 I 1 li .11 I 1a ~ not previously been thought through. As Federico remarks at the I 1 111 11 111 1" of' Book 11 , 'One should consider carefully whatever one does or says, 111 11. !1 111" 10 1hc place where one does it, in whose presence, at what rime, and 11 1111 t1 1v · 1; >r one's actions, one's own age, profession, the ends one is striving

I ' 11 11 I ii 1 · nH-;1ns rhar can lead there, and thus, with these things having been 11 111111 .1, crn1nr, ler him accommoda~e himself discreerly for all he wishes to

I 1 11J JH 11 . '

11 11 11 1 w 1111d l'J'sr:rnding of prudence was widespread. [ ... J 111111 1 111i.il rli ·101ic was, moreover, an increasingly important dimension of

, , 1 rl.1 y, I 11 ;1 v:iri uy of venues, great emphasis was placed on the impor-' 11l 1 1il1l v .11 i11 ~ :1 ·cri :i in :1111higuity about one's beliefs in daily interactions.

11" 1 I 111 (1k.~ frnm 11:10 !0 d:1 Cerr;ildo's Lihro di buoni costumi to Leon "' 1 1 \ 1 J ,1 11 i "· /)1'//11 /(1111~~/irt ro Francesco Cuicciardini's Ricordi - recom-

11 111 I. , I 1 11 11.1 i11 , .1 111 i1111 i11 r ·v ·:di11g one's convictions or feelings. To a large II I 11 <1 1 '. llllll j, jllf\ il 1.11 iJ1 c dcn1 :i 11ds of \'V• Tyd:ty li fe, both in the cities

' I 111 1111 111 , 11 1 l\1 ·11.1i·,o,. 111 11 • 1:111i11 l,-, w11d ·d to co ll :ips' 1hc rr;idirional distinc­{. 11 1111 , , 11 111111!1 ·11 11 .1111! .! i1,o, i11 11il .11 irn 1, /\ lil1"11 1\ l1 l1i s1ori ' :ii sour cs ;trc

111 .1 1 1111 !11 11 "''11" , 11 •1 . .iii .. 111 •.1111 1' .. r iii« ·.i ·ll 111 11 rl .111 111 111 1· x1, . In Ii II 111 11 11 (I < 1111111111 1 tli1 l o 11 1111«1 I to 11 11 I \ 1 '. , ,j iJ 11 11 111 'iJ', lil111I ". .1111[ 11 \111 1

20 THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

workers or to negotiate the demands of their own sexuali ty against a backdrop of seemingly impossible religious demands, for example, it is evident that lay people in the !are Middle Ages often viewed the self as a complex entity. For the early Renaissance, ev idence is mos t persuasive in such se ttings as Florence, where merchants, bankers, and affluent artisans began keeping diaries (ricordz) that often provide revealing glimpses of these inrernal conAicts. And a recent study of sexuality in Renaissance Venice has made it clear that adu lt Venetians, while posing publicly as moral members of a Christian society, often self-consciously engaged in a va riety of sex ual practices beyond the expected boundaries of proper behavior - evidence th at self-fashio ning was an aspecr of the li ves of townspeople as well as those of courti ers.

T he Renaissance refashioning of prudence ind icates a significa nt shift in the understanding of th e self. Both the emphas is on deli bera tion - as, for example, in the popularity of dialogues in which the inte rl ocutors deba te issues from dif­ferent perspectives - and the practical divo rce of prudence from ethics placed new emphasis on the hu man subject. To be sure, there was much in Aquinas's thought that had invested the self (whe ther understood as intell ecr or will) with a significam role in decision-making, but Aquinas's emphasis consistently fell on the need to bring the appetites and the will into conform ity with properly deter­mined ends. In the Middle Ages, it was the role of the virtues bo th to hold the pass ions in check and to encourage thoughtful delibera tion abo ut the proper ends of one's acrions. from the fiftee nth century on, by contrast, the wi ll was seen as increasingly free of these external (and internal) consu aims and more emphasis was placed on the feel ings, emotions, and express iveness of what we m ight describe as the individual subject.

This new emphasis on the self as subject is even mo re appa rent in the Renais­sance inventio n of si ncerity. Like many words that eventually gained a wide cur­rency, sincerity had many significations . Befo re the Renaissance, the word 'sincere' had genera lly referred to something (often a materi al substance such as a liquid or a metal) that was pure or unadulterated, bu r in the sixteenth century, as the eminent literary hisrn ri an Lionel Trilling argued in a famo us essay, sin­ce rity became a moral category, referring, as Trilling pur it - concisely but use­fu lly - 'rn a congruence between avowal and acrual feeling.'3 T har is, in rhe midst of the sixreenrh cenrury (altho ugh there is some ev idence rhat this new moral meaning of si nceri ty had begun to appear in earl ier Renaissance writers such as Petrarch and Valla), we discover a growing moral imperative to make one's feel­ings and convictions known. Indeed, I would argue that this is a characteristi ­cally modern concern: to stare char someone is sincere or nor sincere, to see particular urrerances and works of an and literature as essential ex press ions of individual selves, above all , tO desire tO connect speech wirh lt-r lin g. The sixtc ·nrh and seventeenrh centuries explored many face rs of rliis i.!1•.il , ' /l , /11 11 1 · in th y hca rr, and wrirc' - as Sir Philir Sid n /s m11sc ·n ·011 1·:11•,1 '< 1 11 1111 11 11 ;111 lw SlT ll

as :111 ·p igr:im of tlK· :igc, :1'. 111 igl11 tl 1 · Sl1. 1k ·spt'. ll l'. 111 :1111 11 1 111 , 11111 11 l'11 l1J11i 11,, '111 1l 1i 1ll t1\'.11 ., ,·II lw 11 111'' 11111 1lt1· ""1J',J '. l1• (111 ii ,. 11111 11 1o l 11 1., · 111 1,1il111,

1 • I IN t>NI ·: : THE IMPACT OF HUMANISM 2I

111111111 tlic lralian humanists, though ic was the ea rl y Protestant refo rmers who I 111 ii ' i ncerity to a defining virrue.

Ii illl' v.il authors had also developed an ideal of rhe proper relation between 1111 il1 t·y described as the incernal se lf (homo interior) and one's words and

• 111111 . 1\ 111 , significantly, rhey did not use che term 'sincerity ' t0 describe rhis • I t1Jo 11 1. Turning tO language rhac had in fact developed much ea rlier, within

11'1 t11t •dicval monas ticism, they culrivaced rhe idea l of concordia (harmony o r • 1 1 1 11•11t) :md related express ions [ ... ] to describe the proper interplay between

II 111d 011 c's words and deeds. A key text was rhe Rule of St. Benedict, in which iii 111 111 111r self was tO be fas hioned to correspo nd to rhe language of the psa lms

11 11 1111 11 111 1:1ted the monk's dail y lite, as whe11 Benedi cr co unse led monks rn pray " 11• 11 .1 way 'chat our mind be in agreement with our voice.' Jn che twe lfth

1111111 , il1is ideal took hold. Hugh of St. Victor, in his commentary on the Rule f 111.~wtine, for example, cired Benedicr when he wrore: 'of chose cham ing

• l111H Ii , . . . their mind sho uld be i11 agreement [concordare debet] with their ' I 11 hi s f,{fe of Aeli-ed, the C istercian Walrcr Dan iel pra ised rhc way in which

111 , I' 1v.1t hings were in harmony with hi s li fe and his works: 'he did not li ve Jil l 11 111 11· 1l1 :1 n he taughr, but his work was in ag reemenc [concordabat] with his

111d whar he taugh r in words, he pu t fort h with examples.' Concordia was 1 • 1111 .ii tlm.:ad of the universe in Bernard of Sylves ter's neo .1>lat0n ic Cosmo­,/," Ii ho 1111d che earth to the heavens and che soul ro the body. [ ... J

l11il• 1 ti , 11vcr and over aga in in rhe texts from the Middl e Ages, concordia was 1.I 1" 1l1 c idea l aro und which one should strucrure language and life in rela­

•11 '" Ii · l ie! ~ and convictions. In the ea rly thirteenrh ceritury, Sr. Francis wrote I 11 11 11 1 •, l1 011ld pray in such a way that 'one's voice was in agreement with one's

11111 ' 111 d tlt c ideal of concordia or consonantia persisted rhrough Dan te and t 11111111 .i Ke mpis. Jn rhe late fifteenth century, we find ir as well in the Platonic

11 11111• 111 M:1rsilio Ficino. 'No harmony gives greater deligh t than rhac of heart • I 1111111,i ll' ' is rhc rirl e Ficino gives tO one of his lerrers. Like the other neo-

1l11 .. 1111 w1 itc rs Bern ard of Sylvester and Alan of Lille before him, Ficino coo 1. I, 11 111•.11 !1 1:11 rhc concord between heart and tongue was only one aspect of I 11 • 1 d1 vi11c 11l:i11. /\s he wrote in his letter on music, 'a man is not harmo-

11 1 Ii 11111 11 ·d wlto does nor delight in harmony ... for God rejoices in 1111111 11 1n "' "11 :111 ·xtc n\ rhar he seems t0 have created the world especially for

I 1 1. 1 1111 . 11 1:11 :di irs individual parts should sing harmoniously to themselves 111 111 iiH· wlt ok 11111 vn.~l :.' As an ethic, then, concordia or harmony placed the

111 I 1 11 1pl 1.1~i ~ 01 1 tl1 l' :1 gre ·rn cnc of one person with another in relation to the 1 l1q 1111 C,11d . 11111 iii · slt il_.r ro rhc idea l of sinceri.tas was not merely rhe result

1 l1 il1 11 1 .. 111 i,tl .111d · ·0 11 0111 ic .~rru crures, with the consequences these new 1111·11 11 Ill l1.1d 1;11 I olk ., iv . lili ·. It was rri marily the ou tgrowth of an intel-111ii1111 il111i1111 1v1 111.il tn tl1 c ris · of' l'rot cst:111tism. I ii • 111 ,111 y 111 111 1d i11 11 ·11",io 111, 1l 111 ·d il'va l liJ ", tl1l· idc:il of crmcordia had rested

11 111, 1 1111q•1t1111, wi d1 · ~ p1 '. 1d i11 iii · 111 1111:1s1i · :111 J Ca tholic culrure of rhis 1/.1111.I il111 1111 111 11 11,1111111 .. 11111 "" l1111d .11 111 ·111.dl 1 ~ i 111 i l : 1 r It> ( ;l>d. / ... /Medi ·va l

111 1 • I"• 1 tlh I" 1• 1111111 1; 111 1111 I I\• ll il1 11 111111 \' '< 1111 ,. tll 11111tl1 ·l 1h 1 · 111 ~(' l v1·,

22 THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

on Christ. They viewed the spiritual li fe as preeminently a quest for the recovery of the image of God within themselves. The Delphic Oracle's pro­nouncement 'Know Thyself' became, in their understanding of the human person, not a command to discover a unique personality but rather an ideal to recover the image of God within the self. [ . .. ]

In the late Middle Ages, beginning with William of Ockham, nominalist theologians began to develop arguments that evemually eroded, especially in the work of Martin Luther, the anthropology on wh ich this idea l of concordia bad been based. For, unl ike earl ier medieval theologians and mystics, Luther could not accept the principle that man was essentially similar to God . To the contrary, Lutheran anthropology was based on a principle of dissimilarity. The human person was fundam entall y sinful, a concept that was reitera ted with special force in Calvin's recurrem emphasis on the majesty of God and the depravity of man. The implications of this shift to a new anthropology were manifold, but at the very least they undermined rhe possib ili ty of concordia. The human person was no longer viewed as in a (potentially) harmonious relation to God, the cosmos, and to him or herself but as an inevitably sinful portion of C reation, whose value in God's eyes was largely a mystery.

But if the ideal of concordia had begun to lose its force, how were men and women to conceive of the ideal relation between what they viewed as their internal selves (their thoughts, their feel ings, and their convictions) and the broader world' In the sixteenth century, this relation began to be described in rerms of sincerity. Crucially, rhe rerms concordia and sincerity were nor fully syn­onymous. Whereas concordia was based on a complex assumption about the potentiality of harmony throughout the universe - a harmony thar ideally would be reflected in the way the individual C hristian modeled him or herself on the image of God, the sincere ideal could not appea l, at leas r not for long, to the image of God within the individual person. To be sure, for Luther, grace to some degree substituted - at leas t in rbe elect - for the medieval ideal of simifitudo (likeness). But, in general, rhe sincere idea l could not appea l to a common notion of the internal self. O nce rhe idea of similarity or li keness berween God and rhe human person had been ruptured, it became increasingly difficult to express a common Christian ideal. A particular person's actions and words were viewed as expressing something far more limited: the internal, particular, and even unique self within. However, nor all writers held that one's words and deeds should be a genu'ine represen tation of one's beliefs or feelings at all times. As we have seen, the Renaissance period is largely defined by the ascendancy of a doctrine of prudence that held rhe con trary: that there were numerous occasions on which particular men and women should conceal what is in thei r minds and hearts . N onetheless, in both discussions of sincerity and counsels of prnd ·n e, ;:i new understanding of rhe human person emerged - one rhar pl :i< <' <I 1;1 <'. 11 n s1 r ·ss on the internal self as agent or subjec l, as <lirecro r of 0 11 c',, w•11 1I· .. 111il , l , .,d ~ . /\11d alrhouah the Protestant arrack on 1hc 111 ·divv: d vi ew .. 1 il11 111 111 1111 <" ,1 r ·pr · sl'nl:11inn, howt'Vt'I' fl:i w<·d , of 1l w d ivi1 1 · w.t, nnl v 11111 I''' "' 111 11.1 1l1 .1 ot V<'I / nl 1'1 1' i111l1 v1cl 11. il , 11 i" 111 111 1·1l wlt"·" 1 ll'. 11 111 ,11 ol 11 ,I, I' • 1111111 11 111 11 1 1111 11 .. 111 1.!1 1,il 111 il11I 111 11 '., Ill<< 111.I 111 11. 1c1 1l .. w1ol 1 11 11 111111 1 111 111 11.t I • II ol 11111 110>1 11 \ lh l

I< ' l'ION ONE: THE IMPACT OF HUMAN ISM

l , What was novel abour sixreenth-cernury views of the self was the new under-1.1 11d ing of the relation of one's rhougbts and feelings to one's words and actions. 111 1 he one hand, Renaissance writers, especially by the sixteenth century, placed

111·w emphasis on differences between individuals. On rhe other, in overturn ing 1 li l' medieval idea l of prudent restraint on one's emotions, Protesra n t reformers 1.1w a new legitim acy to the expression of one's emorions - an express iveness of 11 fo1 gs that would, increas ingly, be subsumed under rhe ide<il of sincerity.

l 111 her, Calvin, and other early Protestant reformers pl ayed a pivotal rok in 111i l 1d:i ring this new co ncern with sincerity. Luther was especially forceful in his

111 11 .,t· of this virtue in his ' Preface to the Psa lms.' wh ich he published in his ' 11 1111:1 11 Bible of 1528. The Book of Psalms, Luther argued, far surpassed rht· li ves iii •,,1i11ts and other mora l tales because it 'prese rves, not the trivial and ordinary il<111 g., .~aid by the sa ints, bu t their deepest and nobles i: utterance.,, those which 111 )' used when speaking in full earnest and all urgency to God. Ir nor on ly tel ls 11 wh:it they say abo ut their work and conduce, bur also lays bare their hcans

I 111 enables us to see into their hearts and u ndersrn nd the nature of rhe i r 1l1111 11., l11 s.' Especially noteworthy is the degree to which Luth er's endorsemen t of

1111 1·1 i1y is linked to a new valuing of th e human passions:

11 11 h11 man heart is like a ship on a sto rmy sea driven abo ut by winds blowing 11111 11 .di four corners of heaven. ln one man, there is fear and anxiety abo11r 111IJH' lllli ng disaster; another groans and moans at all the surrounding ev il. One 111111 111 i11glcs hope and presumption out of the good forwne ro which he is l111il 111 g f(Jtward; and another is puffed up with a confidence and pleasure in 11 ! 111Dcnr possessions. Such storms, however, reach us to speak si nce rely and 11 11tl ly, :ind make a clean breast. [Sofche stunnwinde aber feren rnit ernsl reden

iii 1/111 l11Tss offenen, und den grund eraus schutten. ] For a man who is in the 1 1111 tJ I f":1r or di suess speaks of disaster in a quite different way from one who 1 iill1'd wi1h happiness; and a man who is filled with joy speaks and sings abo ut 11 '1'1 1 111 ('~S quire differently from one who is in the grip of fear. T hey say rhat

111 ti .1 ~n r row i ng man laughs or a happy man weeps, his laugh ter and his 111 11 1; do nor come from the heart. In other words, these men do not lay

• 1, 111 ' Pl':tk of things which lie in, the bottom of thei r hearts.

1 11 I , l ,11 1 lt n's view of rhe proper relation of the emotions to bu man action ' I • 111 .. ,,ivl·ncss m<irks a rad ical departure from Aquinas's ethics, which had

1 1 ti , ii 111 prudrncc and reason to restrain the passions and emotions in the 11 q1111 · 11 1 l111111 :1 n :1crs and speech. To Luther, earnes r speech found its model in 1, 11, 1d ,i1· il1 c I khrew Psa lms - an ideal reiterated in rhe writings of Calvin.

,, 1. 1 ~ l1 i ()l1i11 v nf' 1h . id ·;d or prudence and the emergence of rhe sincere '11 l111tl1 W(IVV 11 . 1 ~ 1w1l 1hr ·:ids among many - into the complex web of il 1,11 ll'd, i11 iii · H. • 11. 1i .~s: 1 1 1 t; l' p -riod , to ilw di scovery of the individual,

111111 1 11 1l11 11111 if',< ' 111 · 1,1 :. i11 u ·ri1 y is 1l:1nic11l :1rly r ·v ·: ding. i-;or, unlike I., 1 j,,, 11 111 1".11 1l 11 11 1. !11 11 :11' "' .. i111 ili1 11< I<· h ·1wcr1 1 ( ;<>d :111d 1h · l1u111 :111

11 11 il11 11111 11111,J ,11101 I., 11\11 •II il l! 111',ll I .11111 1111 • 11111 1', 11 1', <Ill ti ll' 11(111'1 , Ill 111 1 tl 110 1d °7ltll 1 11 Ill' ' " 1,, " " . 11 I" ( ~ 11 1· 11 111 11 1il1.tl 11l l1111 11 i111 1·

THE RENAISSAN CE JN EURO PE: A READER

between the heart and the tongue, but the heart was now viewed nor as a micro­cosm of a grea ter whole bur rather as an individual entity, which, while perhaps similar ro other hearts in its proclivity to sin and ro self-deception, was above all characterized by its own irreducible individuality, its particular desires and affec­tions that set it aparr from other persons. Luthe r's image of the diverse passions (fea r, anxiety, hope) of men at sea, rossed about ' by winds blowing from all fo ur corners of heaven,' Lmderscores this new sense of individual ity. In Loci communes [Common p!ttces], Melanchthon was more explicit: 'we see that in some char;icters, some :tffections rule, and that in other person s, orhers hold sway. Each is drawn by his ow n des ire.' Similarly, Montai gne emphasized that he was writing not of men in general but of 'a parricubr one.' In a world cut off both from a communion based on similitude with God and an implicit anthropolog­ical identi ty with other C hristians, even the most sincere individual could appeal to no truth greater rhan that based on his or her fee lings, emotions, [Jass ions, or affections. As an idea l, therefore, sincerity may have seemed to preserve some­thing of rhe traditional medi eva l concern with the need rn bring expression and behavior into harmony with o ne's internal beliefs. Jn reality, chis harmony was profoundly limited, or individualistic. It reached our precariously from an indi­vidual speake r's or writer's he<1 rt. One's language, therefore, may have resona ted with th e feel ings of a friend or lover, or perhaps, fleetingly, with those of one's readers. Writing of hi s fri endship with La Boetie, fo r exa mple, Montaigne observed that their very souls had communicated with one another 'to the very depths of ou 1 hearts. ' But ultimate ly, no matter how si ncere one was, such expres­sions, precisely because rhey were based on te elings and emotions, were unable to establish consensus or a sense of comrnuniLy Where God once was, the indi­vidual now stood alone, faced with an increasingly complex dilemma of not knowing if those whom one add ressed would ever understand one's deepes t feel­ings, concerns, or hopes .

The discovery of the individual was to a large degree, therefore, the result of fun­damental shifrs in the ethical visions of Renaissance humanists and Protestant reformers. In fashioning their re li gious, socia l, even personal identities , Renais­sance men ;md wom en could draw on rwo distinct, even opposed virtues. On the one hand, there were those who embraced what I have been describing as a Renaissance notion of the prudential self (a rhetori cal posture d1at subordinated honesty to decorum); on the other, there were those who favored the ideal of sin­cerity (which subordinated decorum to honesty). Guicciardini exposed the con­flic t between these t\VO virtues in his Ricordi: 'Frank sincerity,' he wrote, ' is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing ro everyone, while simulation [simulazione], on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yc1 ((ir :1 111:1 11 \ self: simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sinccri1 y [rl'llli1,fl 11•1!(li1 q• r:ithcr to the in terest of others.' To be sure, for the ovc rwhcl111i1 11', 111 ,q111 11 1, lil1 • w," lived in th e gmy ar ·ash ·1 wc,· n, as Jlolo11ius's " (>111i.~ ·I iii ! l t111 1!1 ·1 ;111'1'1 1 l111 l11 1d1 " 1>\>l 01111' 1t•111i1ul1'<I I .11· 11 1'' 111 lw 111 11· 1n l1i 1m vli" li1 i1 ,,i .,., ,,, ·1 • 111 I il 111 11 1'. l11 •, '"' 111111"111 ' l\111 ili1· 11 11., 11111 l11 1w11 11 1w11 , 11111 11 11i11 1' 1 il 11• 11 111 .. d• I 1"' 111 1 , 111 "' '

I • I Ill I II ii II .1. 1,11 lll ll • 1'· 1111 I I I"" 11 1111 1 I I 11 10 1! 11 'I ii 11111111 11 ,1 Ii d111

lll N • lN1' : THE IMPACT OF HUMANISM

1 lll'W i11 rhe sixteenth century. For, despite the very real differences between 1/1 111 , h111li prudenrialism and the sincere ideal played pivotal ro les in shaping

11° I 1 · 1 1.1i .~sance notion of the sel f as an individual and expressive subject. It was 1111 ' " ' 11 :t self that could be called upon, as circumstances shifted, to project a

I 11ilil1 d 1qircsentation ofirs concerns, its feelings, its beliefa ro the outside wo1·ld 1 111 111 ild them in check, co ncea ling chem. This is nor to say thar what con-11q1111,11 ics imagined as the inn er sdf was, as we are ofLo·n inclined ro believe,

11111 1' 111.111 the ways one chose to represe nr it. eithe1· 1n the city 01· the court. I 11'111 , 1hc new sense of the self views the human helllg :ts ~ 1 ge nr, subjccr, or

'11I1111 .1s someone responsible for his or her actions and :1.ssc rrio11s. Moreovn, 11 1 1 \' ·x istence of such a duality (between prud ence and sin cniry) in Ren:1is­"' 1 di ,L o1irse is itself revea ling. lt provided a kind of ethicil field on which

111 1 11 1 ·11 and women in this period nego tiated the demands of everyday life. 111! nv1 ·1· 1ime, it sharpened contemporary nori ons oF the self as :1 uniqu e, 1111 •I ' Ill lry.

1111 \ l' ll Sl' of particularity or individua.liry emerges with special clari ty in the 1d rvlonu igne. Much of the scholarship on Montaigne has connected his

1111 d11 1 ~ 0 1t self-knowledge and on the individual with hi s decision in 1571, at 11•1 11 1° I hirry-eight, to retire from public life an d devote his leisure to th e

"I 11 1 hi111sclf - a project he ultimately rea li-t,es in rhe hsap. ' JO be sure, there 111111 I 1 1 h:n lends support ro this connection. Monuigne memo1·ia l izcd his 11 1111•111 wi1h a Latin inscription engraved on th e wall of" his srudy; he only

1 l 11 •111 med to public service (twice as rnayor and briefl y in 1588 as a go-1 1> 111 1 he nego tiations between the king and Henri of Navarre in the co urse

I d11 I 11 · 11 ·Ii w:irs of religion); and, in his Essays, he 1·eiter:i ted the value the " 111 pl1L" rc had assumed in the course of his li fe. Indeed, he is perh aps best

111 11 1111 1li c image he created of the individual culti va ting freedo111 entirely 1 '" 1111 111 Il l hers. 'We must reserve a back shop [arriereboutique] all our own , 11111 11 ·.- . in whi ch to establish our real liberty and our principal ret re:i t and

11111 f, .'' I Inc,' iV1 on taigne continues,

111 •111 1111 ,u 1 ·o nvc rsarion must be between us and ourselves , and so private rhat 11' 11111 11.lv ,1,,soci:11iun or communication can find a place ... We have a soul

11 1 ' 111 Ii ' 1urncd upon itself; it can keep itself company; it has the means to

11 o l 111 d 1 h,· mean8 ro defend, the means to receive and the means ro give: 11 11111 11·.11 tli:it i11 rhis solirude we shall stagnate in tedious idleness: In so!i­

/, 111 tft )N -1(11 1hm11/!. I Tihullus]. Virtue, says Antisthenes, is content w ith Ii 1!1 1111 11 11 il e,, , without wmds, without deeds.

1 111 1111\ 111 1',I , Cr ·1·11l1l:itl makes mu ch of this passage, which he cites from I 111 I 11111 11\ 111( H 11.1 n ~ l : 11i1 ) 11. l.i kc 111any orhcr commentators, Greenblatt is

111 111111l1l h.11 k 111(1 111 , il w t1 r r iach1)//fi1;111', rhe pbcc that fl o ri o had translated 1" ' ' ! 111 11 ~1' ,1 11il il l(' 1 n1111ill' 11 i.il 11111101:11io ns i1 uni ·ash es. This wo rd, Green-

11111 1111 I \ 1111j 11 11"' Ill' ol w111ld q i' 11 r :~11 1 i 11 1 11 [h11 ~ in <:ss J, i11 dk ·1 :1 world or 11 "' J'i "I " '' ' II 1\ l11 1111 i;111 1p1i11 •.i l•, .1 11110 .11 f1 111 11 1hi •, wn rl cl, hl' is, :11 1111:

• 111 111 1 111 111 1, " 11 o 1.11" • , il1 ,11 1·,, 111 ,, -.111 · .. ,,r .,, 11 i i11 ·.i 11. 11 .il d1 11 .. 111 1, i .. 11 1 il11 /.1111//,/1/1 11111 - .li II II j 'I d Ill I 111l,11111 iil Ill Ill '1 11111 f\ )1 11111 11' 11 11

Tl-IE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

individualism or self-fashioning is primarily a consequence of the dynamics of an emerging capitalism; the self is implicated in the structures of an economy that would place a supreme value on separating one's private from one's public life.

Yet the emphasis that Greenblatt and other commentarors have placed on the split between the public and the private in Montaigne's writings misses an equally fundamental tension in his thought, namely, Montaigne's deeply felt desire to be both prudenr and sincere. Indeed, we can al so read the Essap and therefore Montaigne's own self-fashioning as an effort ro negot iate the tensions between these two ideals. Montaigne's praise of sincerity applies ro both spheres, just as bis own sense of the importance of prudence does. This does not prevem him from condemning prudence in the sense of needless dissembling and dis­simulation (though he more often uses this term in the more traditional sense of a kind of practical reason) , nor does it mean that he is himself fully sincere. But it does imply that Monrnigne's sense of self is largely shaped by his consciousness of the degree to which the pressure to dissemble can conflict with the ideal of sincerity.

The desire for, as well as the impossibility of, sincere speech can be seen as one of the threads that ties the Essctys together. This work gave poignant expression to a widely felt need, in the age of the coun, to find certai n spaces - in one's own room, or library, or fri endships, or writings - to provide a comparatively honest or sincere account of oneself and one's feelings . Yer this virtue is not only to be practiced in private, among friends, bur in public as well. Of course, Mon­taigne himself is anyrhing but private. H e wrires his book for a broad pub! ic. He never really retrears to rhe back room. And he tells us again and again that he rejects dissimulation. Contrasting his own temperament with others who served, as Montaigne did, as a facilirator in the political negotiarions, he writes, 'J have an open way ... I do nor refrain from saying anyrhing, however grave or burning ... This is what makes me walk eve rywhere head high, face and heart open.' 'Ir is painful for me to dissemble,' he remarks, noring rhar this ability is not in his nature. Repeatedly, he lashes out against dissimulation ('among the most notable qualities of this century'). H e favo rs a more direct, a more sincere speech. Bur 'as for this new-fangled virtue of hypocrisy and dissimulation, which is so highly honored ar present,' he writes, ' I mortally hare it; and of all vices, I know none that testifies to so much cowardice and baseness of heart. It is a craven and servik idea to disguise ourselves and hide under a mask, and not ro dare to show our­selves as we are ... A generous heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths [jusques au dedans] .'

Un like the Protes tant theologians who connected sincerity (sindrite, ernst reden, sinceritas, A ufrichtigkeit) with the need to express on ·'s c.: 111utions, the Catholic and stoic Montaigne based his ethic of sincc;:rit y <HI ilw 11 t'<"d 11i he tnt l· to one's natu re or temperament. ln doing so, he took .~<111 lt' 1.J, . 1 ~ 111 1 :11 L1i tiq11i11 1•. the.: CO LI rtly ethos or th . R ·n:1 is.q nc ·:

Nol\ 1111 111\ \'·"' I w11 1t!il 1.11111 1 \11 111 ,1i\ .J , .. ,.,111< 111.\ 111<li • 1 11

11111.lt ".I 11ilil111 1• I 1il111 11 1\111 I 111111 11111 I" ,,1 , 111 11 11i\ ol ... 11111

11 1 11 lN 1 l N F.: Tl-I E IMPACT OF HUMANISM 27

• 11111 g 111 e sincere and outspoken [entier et descouvert] wirhom consideration '" ' 11 tl,,.rs; and it seems to me that I restrain myself a little less whenever ir

111 tlrl \ ,l. appropriate to restrain myself more, and that l react aga insr rhe respect I , , ·1· \111 gmwing more heated. Ir may be, too, that Iler myself foll ow my nature 1111 l.1< k 111" an. When I display to great men the same extreme freedom of tongue • t I lll'. 1ring that I exercise in my own house, I feel how much it inclin es roward

111 .J i' 1 1 t' t ioJJ and incivility. But besides the fact that I am made tb:i r way, I have "''' 1 "llJl jlk enough mind to sidestep a sudden qu es tion and escape ir by so me I." I •1 '. < 1r 10 invent a truth, or a good enough memo ry ro rera i n so mcth ing rhw;

11 '1111·d .. ind certainly nor enough assurance to maintain it; and I pur on a I .I I l.1« ' liccause of weakness. Therefore I give myself up to being candid ;rnd d 11• ,,1y111 g what 1 think, by inclination and by reason, leav in g ir ro rorrunc

1111k tl1 e outcome.

I 11 1 li1 » pro ject - especially in the essays written befo re r580 - m:iy h:1ve had 1 111111 oi" sclf-fashioning, but as Montaign e grew older, he was less co nfident

111 il 1i li1 y Lo shape himself. 'Others form man.' he wrote in <lll essay of 1585. I 1 II iii l1i1 11, and portray a partirnlar one, very ill -formed, who m I should really

.I, 1 1 )' dillc rent from what he is ifI had to fashion him over aga in. But now • 1l11 Jt L'' Ii> be sure, the tension in this semence is enormous. Mo ntaigne does • 1.11 111 or 1:1shion himself, he tells us - only to add rhar this is so mething he

i\ 11 1d11 done. Bur we need not conclude a conuadiction or an inco nsistency. I 1111 1 gtll' \ 11ndcrstanding of self allows for a complex interplay between nature •I 1il t111 v: indeed, it was part of Montaigne's humanist strategy to lin k his

11 I. • 1 111 1li 11 g of individualism with his view of nature. 'Narn ral incl inations,' I ,j, • 1 v1 ti . 'gain assistance and strength from education; bur rb ey <1 re sca rcely

I. 1 \111 11•,n l and overcome.' 'We do not root out these original qualiti es,' he 1111111 11 ii , 'we cover them up, we conceal them.' And then he provides - perhaps 111 1111 di ., ing ·nuously - a compelling (though equ<1l ly contrad icto ry) "'i d' ' I .11i11 is like a native rongue to me; I understand it better than French;

11 111 1 1111 t I' w:1 rs I h;1ve nor used it at all for speaking or writing. Yer in sudden 111111<• \' tno rions, into which I have fallen two or three rimes in my life -

ii tl1 1111 wl1rn I saw my father, in perfect health , fa ll back imo my arms in I I 1.1 v · :ii ways poured out my first words from the depths of my emrails

I 11 11 1 t 4"1 11 11.· s11 rgi ng linrh and expressing herself by force , in the fa ce of long I 1 11, 11, .,r co11rse , 1 he rnnrradicrion lies in the fact that a particular Jan­

' 11111 ,1 p.11'1 ol" 11 :11 11 re hu r rarher of culture, something taught and instilled. 1.1111 111;111·\ pni 111 is rat lier obvious. There are multiple layers in the make­' 1•11 111 1il .11 pv r~on: :1 11 :1111r:il temperament, a cluster of (often conflicting)

1 111i111. 11 h11 g11:1g-. a particular family <1 nd education , as well as 11 1• ' 1111 l11 1t ,il , ·,1ll i. il , .111 d ·1ilt11r:tl lc>rc ·s - all of rhese go into shaping us,

111111 11 \ l111 w1 .11 ', /\t1111dingl .wva rc 11 ·v -rpurel y rhcrol es we play, though i\ 1. 1111 il1 t! i11·. w!Jt• 11 M11111.1i r 11 • l1 i1 11 sdf :1 ·lrnowkdg 'S , that we ca n

11 11 1 11\L , ' l'/11 11•/111/r• 11·111/1/ /i/1/J" " ;11111 .' li e w1l1 1·, , ·i1i11 g l'e1ro11i11s, :111d 11 I 11111 ' 1 1.I I \ 11111 1•,111 il1il1 , 11111 11111 "" il11 I"'"'" ,I 1i.111<l \V1'd I \1. 11. 111 1'1', 1 iii '" 1 I 1111 \ 'I'll' 11111 11 ''' 11111 1 111 11 111 ,d 1 1 11 d , ·\I 111 • . 11111 111 w\1 11 1·.

THE RENAISSANCE IN EURO PE: A READER

foreign what is our very own . We ca nnot distinguish the skin fro m the shin . It is enough to make up OL1r face, without making up our bean [poictrine].

The construction - above all , Montaigne's insistence that our mask need not shape our interior self - is sharpl y at odds with Greenblatt 's view that, in the Ren;i issa nce period, 'there is no laye r deeper, more authentic, than theatrica l self­representarion .' To b - sure, Montaigne's Essel/S often poinr to the prevalence of such self-fashioni ng in Re naissa nce cu ltu re. Bur he also managed to sugges t rhe ex istence of a complex array of o ther forces that shape our identities - forces often inev itabl y in rcnsion or in con fli ct with th e roles we choose to play. Thar he was able to do so srems, I beli eve, from the growing importance placed on the questi ons of prudence and sincerity in the Rena issance. For both these virrues emph,1s ized th e need for the individual to fashion rh e pub li c se lf jiwn within, to know when it was mosr <1ppropriate to prcsenr in one's expressed life a refl ec tion of 'true' feelings (as in the case of the Protestants) or ' true' nature (as in the case of Montaign e) or when, by co mras c. it was more appropriate to project or w wea r a mask, ro dissemble - in shorr, w exercise prudence in one's affairs, whether pub li c or private .

Alrh ough a precise identi fica tion of the forces that led to the invention of sin­cerity and the refashionin g of prudence li es beyond th e scope of this essay, it is ckar rhat histo ri ca l di scuss ions of the emergence of the self as subject - what Burckha1dt long ago ca lled 'the developmen t of the individual' - cannot and should not be co nfi ned to one parti cu lar hi stor ical mom ent or context, especiall y when such a framework is conceptualized as a monolith ic, closed, or total izi ng system. Indeed, if we stand back from New Histo ricist theo ries about self­fashi oning, we see clearly that their analyses are too often developed in precisely such a limited fas hion, with insufficienr attention to broader ideas and vocabu­laries within Europea n culture. This is nor ro say that More's argumems wi th Tyndale, for exam ple, o r Shakespeare's dramas do not command our attention. Much recenr histo ri c :il scholarshi p has benefired from renewed attention to rhe evenr and the anecdote, reinvigoratin g historical writings that had become, all too often, bland and rather predictable social-sciemific reco nsuunions of the pasc. Bur we oughr nor to allow a fascinat ion with grea t works or even with the unusual, the strange , and the anecdo tal to obscure the underlying complexities of longer-term historical changes and their relation to the moral or the cultural li fe. This is nor merely a theoretical claim. To the co ntrary, the evidence I have presented concerning both rhe refashioning of prudence and the invention of sincerity - albei t preliminary and necessarily tentative - points to a gradual ten­dency, beginning in the fifteenth bur accelerating in the sixteenth century, to view the self as an agent or subject and in increasingly individualiz ·d terms. The idea ls of prudence and sincerity, th;i t is, were nor fashio ned HI n11 c p.111 j, 11L11 111 0111 en1 or even in one panicu lar context but devclopcd . rnd11.ill1• 11 \ 1 1 ii i 11u 1sc oi' st·vcra l g n · rnrion~. I., .I h·q111 th is 11 ·rs1w ·1i vc, il 1<· i1l1 11111 11 111 .i1 . l1 11 11111 <.·1, :1,, M11n· .111d ' l'v 11d.il1 · w1·11· 1101 ,i 11q 1l 1 (1 11111i 11 11' 111 '' I", i1,, , , I 111 I 1 1 1h 1d1 •111 i 11 iJ,J, I 1d1111 ii 111.J 1111 111 11 ii 11111 1'" ·o1 11 11 , I '. il 11 '11111 . 11 »I iii 11p11111 lq Il l I 11,11

1 I 11 1 >N O NE: T HE IMPACT Of HUMAN ISM 29

111 1 il .1 r society. To the contrary - even in rhe absence of direct ev idence - th ei r 11 w' of the self and its relative autonomy musr have emerged rhrough th eir expo-

1111 i 11 their educa rio n, their reading, rhei r conversa tion - to new vocabularies 1111 1 l1: 1d , in the Renaissance period, begun w invest the se lf wirh a new sense of

1il 1p 1 iv ity and , above all , in an increasingly frag mented culture, with :1 he1ghr-111 ti M·nse of individuali sm.

111 h ·clear, there is no thing :1bout this approach rha t is 11 eccssari ly in compar­iJ,J, wi1h that of rhe New Histo ric ists, whose writ ings ha ve done much ro illu -111111.i ic 1he salient role thar political. wcial, and cultuul institu tions played in

11 l" " f!, the self Bur rhe indi vidual so shaped w:1s not a blank rablct o r tex t on 111111 ' 11 ch institu tio ns or indeed certain fundament:il te n s i o n~ or conHicr.' in

1111 11il 111rc (politi cal and 1-el igious) wen: ' insc ribed. ' ·lo the conr r:1ry, rhc conrcxt ii 1 lll1 1111d in the Renaissa nce world ensured rhar rhc norion of 1)e rso 11 w:t.'> :llly-111111 11111 blank. Increas ingly widely diffused humanisr edu cat iona l practices, 1d 111g child-rearing theo ries rhar stressed <l sensitivity ro each parrirnlar child 's

111 11J 11111s and feelings, a deve lop ing model ofcomp:111 io11are marriage, Pro tes tant 11111111' 1 hat gave warrant to both expressiveness an d plain .~ pcak i ng, the incrcas-

1 li10:1d diffusion of books, new practi ces or read ing, and even the com­IH1 li11 •. 11 ion of the mirror - these and many other facto rs, non..: of which ca n

I 1 d11,cd ro one uni~1 ing cultural o r social ex planation , were parr of th e 11qil1' ~c l of interactions through whi ch Renaissa nce men :rnd women we re

I, 'I" ii wi1h :1 new awareness of the se lF as subj ect, :1s an i11di v1dual. Th e fo sh-11111 1• id se lves in the Renaissance world , as indeed rhe fashi onin g of se lves in ii" 1 11 111 ·~ :111d places, is overdetermined, and is nor reducible ro one particul:1 r 1 1111 111 d i:1l ecric, no matter how powerful or persuasive .

1111 l' ll '11liasis on the broader cultural climate in the shaping of rhe self is crucial 1111 1111 r understanding of the remarkab le res ili ency of certain aspecrs of se lf~

1• I 11 1 1 hl· Re naissance. The Renaissance experience of selfhooJ appea red ro 111 1 11il ' ocia l and cultural experience. 'Someo ne says to me, ''You don't express

11 1 II .1, ii " yo u were Cicero." "What of it ' I am nor C icero. 1 ex press II ,'' Angelo Poliziano wrote in the late fifteenth century, demonstrating the

1 n wli i ·h the self 'Nas seen as something independent , stron g, even God-11 l >111'\ pas r. one's experiences, one's memories, and one's inn er li fe all mar­

l 1 ~ pi t · grnwing anxieties about selfhood or perhaps because of them, men 111111 11 i11 1he IZc'naissance were more than likely to embrace the humanist

Ii'' '11111<11\io 1 h:11 vil'wcd rhc self as something autonomous and willful , indeed, l11111l 11 11l·111:il, underlying essence or as a building block of human society. I 111 1• 111 1\1' c>i' prndcncc and sincerity points ro a sense of interiority, albei t

1 1111° 1° ii , il t.11 .1 111101 he viewed purely reAectively in relation to the cultural 111 11 1 1p.11 1i11il.11' 111:1 ·l' and peri od hut w:1s in fact relatively immune ro the ' 1d 1il111 l1 11•1i1 .ii 1111 \ ., .1 11.J 1<1ta li ;i,ing 11ressurl's of the church or the monarchy

,, 1"'1 1il1 l,111 ,111d ()111 •1 Nl'w I li ~ 1 ori c i s 1 s liav · sc ·n :is derermining if nor as I II 111 1• 11 111111 11 Ill tl 11 l11 111 1. 11 in1 1 or l {C' 1 t. 1i ,~: 11 1 . ' idcnt i1i 1..·s. I I' 11 11 11 il 11 , 1111., 11111.111 1 11 111 1; 11 1 11111 111 1111· p1 i11 11 ol' il w fc11'( ·s tl1 :11 sh:1p ·d >l 11 1111 • •I I• dl11 1• lo 1I I l,11 • 11 111 I 1111.!1 l'. i.llld i11 1\ 1il ilt 1· P<l'o'oiJ )iiil)' 111"

30 THE RENAISSAN CE IN EUROPE: A READER

agency, dissent, and opposition [ . . . ] . T he Renaissance self was something grea ter than the sum of one's social roles. Indeed, the growing importance of the ideals of prudence and sincerity - as well as the tensions betv1een them - made it increasingly possible in the Rena issa nce and in the early modem period gener­ally co view a particular person as a com plex individual, who was self-conscious about the degree to which the inner self, now viewed as largely cut off from God, directed the outer, public self in its daily inreracrions with one's fellow citizens, subj ec ts, or courtiers. At the time of the French Revolution, the repub lican oppo­nents of the O ld Regime self-co nsciously celebrated the sincerity (or the rrans­parency) of their speech and actions.

A historical account of the Renaissance discovery of the individual, therefore, does no r need to embrace eirher the essenrialism of Burckhardt or the narrowly synchronic and totalizing historicism of Greenblatt. The primary cultural facto rs in the making of Renaissance individualism were the emergence of humanism and the development of Protestantism, both of which deeply problematized the relation of what contemporaries viewed as the internal self to one's words and actinns . T he primary social factors were the rapid expansion of urban life and the burgeoning size of the co uns . The demise of the idea l of concordia and the emergence of a new understanding of prudence, as well as the construct ion of the si ncere ideal, point to a ma jo r historical shift in Renaissance Europe. It was, in fact, a religious or ethical revo lution that played a pivotal role in foster ing an emerging ethic of individualism , at least in the sense that the individual came to see him or herself as a unique enti ty, largely responsible for his or her words and deeds, and capable of either concea ling or revealing his or her feelings and beliefs as circumstances dictated . To be sure, such an individual was capable of assum­ing many guises, from the benevolent humanism of Juan Luis Vives ro the aggres­sive individualism of Renaissance despots . That such an individual could rake on narrowly self-interested , self-aggrandizing, or even destructive attributes should surprise no one. Burckhardt himself was deeply ambivalent abo ut the conse­quences of 'the development of the individual' and should not be seen - as he too often is - as celebrating it.

Finally - though a proper investigation of these issues must be done elsewhere - it is clear that the questions Burckhardt raised about the discovery of the indi­vidual are not exclusively a matter for intellectual or literary hisrory. To the con­trary, a grasp of the shifting nature of the self in Renaissance Europe should be at the hearr of our smdies of the social, political, economic, and cu ltural histo­ries of the period . This is not to claim that the self was prior to larger structural fo rces or that the self can be viewed in isolation from them. Nor is it to claim that the Renaissance self always emailed a sense of subjectivity and a related sens<' of individualism. T he Renaissance world was profoundly divers" :ind iris lik ·l y that we can locate many different constructions of id ·nrit y wi 1!1i11 it. l\ur it i,, my hope char this essay will enliven deba te abour rhc ·1111111 1111·1 ·.il'.11ifl(. tll ' t: ol Bu rckhardr's qw.:s rions. 1:o r merely ro :isk rhnn i .~ 10 11 •/11'.1 t• 1ii11 11 11 1111 "· lf'( 1111 . 10 crC1ct' i1 , l'Vl'l1 10 ' l':IS<' i1 :is ii Wt' I'(' !11 vi1 ·wi 111 " II I "" /111 11 11 111 1 iii 11 111 J' 111 i1 11J. 11 1111111 I , ,Il l ,ll' lll<l.l t 11 1J1 ,11 lt ",1d1·., i111 I II olol 1 Ill I 1l1 !11 !1 1 .J j/ 11111 Ill II q111 1 11 •. l11 ii I"' Ifill 1> / ii,. 11,i >, 1 I I In IJ 1 111 1 tol ii i 111 .I 111 1• i ii 111 11

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111001 11 111 identities is, after all, far from a trivial matter; it goes to core questions I • il 11l ,, lit erature, philosophy, and religion - questions chat have emerged as 111 1 ti i11 many of the current discussio ns of both the value and the limits of

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1111 k1·y 1cx r is Srephen J. Creenblar r, Rcnai"-,·a11C<' SelfFr1shio11ing: From Moff to Sht1!<1·­lf'r '1111· (( :hicago, 1980).

11 111 h.1\' I Mascuch, Origins of t!Jr• !11di11idualis1 Self Autohiogrttphy 1111d Sel(ldcntil)' i11 I 118/r111rl, 1591-q91 (Sranford , Ca lif .. 1996), 14. I 11,,H·I Trilling, Sincerity and A111hmtici1y (Ca 111 briclgc, Mass ., 1971), 2. Trilling\ obscr-

1111 •11 ' 0 11 rhe history of rhis wo rd de ri ved fro111 his reading of rhc rntries \ incnc' .1nd 11 n n i1 y' in rhe Oxfind English Dictionary. Nonetheless, my preli 111 i nary 1nc:1rch in ro

1111 l11\11lly of rhis rerm (in English, Ccrm;111 , La 1i11 , and rhc Ro111ance bngu:1gcs) Lugdy 1111 1/ 11 111' ' l i il ling's point.

All1cr1 F~a bil Jr 'The Significance of "Civic Humanism" in h Interpretation of the Italian Renaissance' n1 11 co. lrorn Renaissance Humanism Foundations, Forms and Legacy, Volume 1,

lh11 111111is111 in Italy, ed. Albert J. Rabil, Jr, University of Pennsylvania Press, l1l1 il111 lr. lpl1ia, 1988, chapter 7, pp. 141-79.

11 1 di l. 1.,s ic analysis of the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt asserted thar both 1 '11·111 .111d d ·spot ic states indifferently produced 'the indi vidual ' who emerged

111 111 ~ 1 tinll' 111 fourteen th-century Italy: for rhese men were characterized il l <' I',\' hy their learning, their indifference to politics, and th eir cos­

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I 11 l l:i ~s ic:d culture they found all rhey needed for the expression of 11 11 1111 1 •,i dl'( I 11crsonaliries. Burckhardt admitted that it was above all others

1°11 11 1111 •., 'wl10 111ade antiquaria n interests one of the chief objectives of 11 1 ' ,111d 1!t:i1 'till')' were of peculiar significa nce during the period of

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1 1 • 1 1 ii I', ·n ·r:!l itl ll .\ ah cr 13urckhardt, interpretation of Renaissance "" 111 1 11qil1,1, i·1. ·d it :is an :111riquarian movement more or less diffused

11 111111 1 11 dr. l'l1 t· r.1 ·1 tl 1:1 1 ir first cxtHessed itself mosr forcefully in Florence Ill I il1 0 11( 111 n l 1!1 . r1r1 ·c111li ' ·nt 11ry and that Florence was a republic ra ther 1 1 I" 11 11 • 11 ..,1.1 1 ' , JjiJ 11 p1 I ·:1d :111 yn1iv ro ra ise the question of whether there 111 j,, 11 1111 11111 11 1·{i io1 1 l1 c t w l.·~· n l1111 n:1n 1sm a11d Florentine polity and, if so, d1 1 d 11 ,I. 11111111111 1d l111111.111 i ... 11 1 ·" :1 in11v1·mc111 indill'c rc111 ro poli rics might " 11 1 .. 111 1111 11l d11 .. I. I. I ' 1'111 11 111 ... 1 p11wc1i'1il 1'1· 1i n·s ·111 :i 1i v\.'.S 1l ivic

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Whitlock, Keith, Ed. The Renaissance in Europe. New Haven; London: Yale UP, 200.