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The other, more important Renaissance you never learned about

A new book by historian and author Paul Strathern argues that the
Northern European Renaissance has long been overlooked.
a black and white drawing of two men in a library.
Credit: Archivist / Adobe Stock
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Italy is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, in part because
of its Roman heritage. At the same time, significant artistic and
scientific developments were taking place in Northern Europe. In many
ways, these developments were more important than the ones happening
further south.

Tim Brinkhof
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In the mid-15th century, Pope Nicholas V was wading through the bowels
of the Vatican archives when he stumbled across a dusty manuscript
titled De Medicina, or On Medicine. It was written in the 1st century AD
by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the finest physician of the Roman Empire, and
it contained chapters on the benefits of exercise and the treatment of
pneumonia, among other topics. It was thought to have been lost
centuries ago, and would have stayed lost were it not for the curiosity
of the pope.

On Medicine is one of several ancient texts whose rediscovery
facilitated the Renaissance. This movement, which lasted roughly from
1300 until 1600, is often discussed in relation to Italy — and for good
reason, as many of those aforementioned texts ended up there through
Roman conquest. Italy was also the home of many a Renaissance star,
including Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Michelangelo,
whose contributions to humanity were funded by the fortunes that Italian
merchants accrued along the Silk Road.

But while the Renaissance may have originated in Italy, it was by no
means a uniquely Italian phenomenon. In his new book, The Other
Renaissance: From Copernicus to Shakespeare: How the Renaissance in
Northern Europe Transformed the World, Paul Strathern — philosophy
lecturer at Kingston University and author also of The Medici and The
Borgias: Power and Fortune — argues some of the most consequential
events from this time period took place in northern Europe, often
independently from what was happening down south.

Among these events, Strathern counts the invention of the printing press
by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany, the Protestant Reformation instigated
by Martin Luther (also in Germany), and the heliocentric theory of
Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, which holds that the Earth
revolves around the Sun rather than the other way around. Additionally,
several chapters from The Other Renaissance are devoted to acknowledging
other, lesser known heroes from these regions, like Paracelsus.

Mysteries of putrefaction
The Swiss physician Theophrastus von Hohenheim is not only remembered
for his bold ideas but also his colorful personality. He wore alchemist
robes, carried a large broadsword on his hip, and went by the name
Paracelsus, meaning “greater than Celsus” (that is, the aforementioned
physician from the Roman Empire). During his 1526 inaugural lecture as
professor of medicine at the University of Basel, he surprised his class
with a plate of human excrement, warning them that “if you will not hear
the mysteries of putrefaction, you are unworthy of the name of physicians.”

Though often told for laughs, this anecdote highlights an important
change in scientific thought. Paracelsus lived in a time when medicine
was moving away from philosopher’s stones, zodiac alignments, and humors
— the notion that disease is caused by an imbalance of blood, phlegm,
and bile — toward something more empirical. By studying excrement,
Strathern writes, Paracelsus hoped to understand “how the human body
functioned, gaining its nourishment and expelling extraneous, often
toxic, matter.”

a painting of a man holding a book.
A portrait of Paracelsus. (Credit: Louvre / Wikipedia)
Paracelsus was a rebel. Reading his namesake’s On Medicine (courtesy of
the Vatican) led him to reject the academic orthodoxy of the Dark Ages.
Instead of attending university, he traveled throughout Europe and Asia
Minor collecting medical knowledge from societies that were politically
and culturally isolated from one another. Back home, he used this
knowledge to treat the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, who up
until then had been unable to find a cure for his mysterious ailments.

As a teacher, Paracelsus valued experience over instruction. “The
patients are your textbook,” he said, “the sickbed is your study.” Like
Luther, who translated the New Testament so Christians could read the
text for themselves without interference from a preacher, Paracelsus
delivered his lectures in German rather than the customary Latin so he,
says Strathern, “would be understood by all the local barber-surgeons,
alchemists, and itinerant quacks whom he publicly invited to hear him
speak.”

Over the rainbow
More than two centuries before Paracelsus was born, a Dominican friar
known as Dietrich (Theodoric) of Freiberg looked up at a rainbow and
wondered what it was, where it came from, and why it only appeared in
tandem with rain and sunlight. The explanation offered by his fellow
friars — that rainbows were a literal gateway to heaven and a
manifestation of God’s promise to Noah to never again conjure up another
world-ending flood — did not satisfy him.

Dietrich sought answers not in the Bible, but a commentary on Euclid’s
Optics written by the 10th century Arabic mathematician Ḥasan Ibn
al-Haytham. Al-Haytham agreed with the ancient Greek geometer’s
proposition that sight was created by light, but where the latter
thought our eyes emitted that light, the former believed they merely
received it. Inspired by Al-Haytham, Dietrich wondered if rainbows could
really just be nothing more than sunlight, refracted into different
colors by raindrops.

a drawing of a ray of light being drawn.
One of Dietrich’s diagrams. (Credit: 2d copy / Wikipedia)
Thinkers from previous generations might have written down their theory
and called it a day, but Dietrich felt compelled to put it to the test.
In lieu of an actual droplet, the friar filled a large round glass with
water, held it up to the sun, and in so doing created his own miniature
rainbow. Not only did Dietrich prove what rainbows were made of, but
also why they lack a point of origin: Because they are made of refracted
light, their approximate location changes depending on one’s point of view.

Strathern puts Dietrich’s discovery, which may seem small and
insignificant compared to the feats of modern science, into perspective.
“During this period,” he writes, “the whole idea of practical
experimentation was for the most part confined to the dubious
fume-filled realms of the alchemist’s den.” Knowledge was “confirmed by
appeal to authority,” usually the Church, rather than verified through
inquiry, giving rise to the very system Paracelsus would go on renounce.

Underappreciated art
Despite its relevance, much of the Northern European Renaissance’s
artistic output languishes in the shadow of David and the Mona Lisa. The
French writer François Rabelais combined the elegance of Greek
literature with the obscenities he witnessed in countryside taverns. His
Gargantua and Pantagruel series, about a duo of bawdy giants, includes
all the “scandalous behavior of everyday life which had been missing
from much of the respectable literature of the medieval era,” Strathern
says.

Gargantua and Pantagruel reads like an early form of parody, namely,
writing that criticizes and questions institutions and conventions
rather than praising or accepting them. In the prologue, Rabelais
dedicates himself to “illustrious drinkers” and “pockified blades.” In
one story, the protagonists open an exclusive monastery where monks and
nuns live side by side, eat their fill, and follow a philosophy that
encourages them to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

a black and white drawing of a woman.
Albrecht Dürer’s portrait of his mother Barbara. (Credit:
Kupferstichkabinett Berlin / Wikipedia)
Perhaps the most famous artist from the Northern Renaissance was
Albrecht Dürer, who between trips to Venice returned to his hometown of
Nuremberg (itself a prominent trade hub) to develop a style that was
entirely his own. Where Italian painters chased an idealized concept of
beauty, Dürer treated art primarily as a medium of self-expression. His
greatest work is personal — a plot of vegetation or a portrait of his
aging, world-weary mother. He was also a prolific printmaker.

Dürer helped steer northern artists in a different direction than their
southern counterparts. Whereas the Southern Renaissance, Strathern
writes, “remained devoid of Dürer’s influence, moving away from his
all-but-transcendent realism into the distortions of mannerism and the
ornamentation of the baroque,” Dürer foreshadowed the increasing
popularity of printmaking, which in the North would be elevated to the
same level as painting.