The Renaissance in Rome [Paperback]

At the beginning of the 15th century, Rome proclaimed itself, as it had done throughout its history, caput mundi, "the head of the world." The truth, writes Charles Stinger, was less glorious: the popes had long since abandoned Rome for palaces in French Avignon, and the principal trading centers were in places such as Alexandria, Marseilles, and Constantinople. Even within Italy (which was still ununified), Florence and Venice were more important culturally. With the Renaissance, however, as European elites became interested in studying and emulating the ancient past, Rome became a great center anew: the popes returned, and travelers from around the world came to see the ruins of ancient times and to converse with intellectuals and artists. The transition, Stinger writes, was "from medieval alley and tower to Renaissance street and palace," from a closed and suspicious urban village to an open and vibrant city. With a cast of characters including Lorenzo de Medici, Michelangelo, and Lucrezia Borgia, Stinger relates a fascinating story of the city's renewal--which involved no small amount of intrigue. --Gregory McNamee

From the middle of the fifteenth century a distinctively Roman Renaissance occurred. A shared outlook, a persistent set of intellectual concerns, similar cultural assumptions and a commitment to common ideological aims bound Roman humanists and artists to a uniquely Roman world, different from Florence, Venice, and other Italian and European centers. This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of the Roman Renaissance world. Charles Stinger probes the basic attitudes, the underlying values and the core convictions that Rome's intellectuals and artists experienced, lived for, and believed in from Pope Eugenius IV's reign to the Eternal City in 1443 to the sacking of 1527. He demonstrates that the Roman Renaissance was not the creation of one towering intellectual leader, or of a single identifiable group; rather, it embodied the aspirations of dozens of figures, active over an eighty-year period. Stinger illuminates the general aims and character of the Roman Renaissance. Remaining mindful of the economic, social, and political context--Rome's retarded economic growth, the papacy's increasing entanglement in Italian politics, papal preoccupation with the crusade against the Ottomans, and the effects of papal fiscal and administrative practices--Stinger nevertheless maintains that these developments recede in importance before the cultural history of the period. Only in the context of the ideological and cultural commitments of Roman humanists, artists, and architects can one fully understand the motivation for papal policies. Reality for Renaissance Romans was intricately bound up with the notion of Rome's mythic destiny. The Renaissance in Rome is cultural history at its best. It evokes the moods, myths, images, and symbols of the Eternal City, as they are manifested in the Liturgy, ceremony, festivals, oratory, art, and architecture of Renaissance Rome. Throughout, Stinger focuses on a persistent constellation of fundamental themes: the image of the city of Rome, the restoration of the Roman Church, the renewal of the Roman Empire, and the fullness of time. He describes and analyzes the content, meaning, origin, and implications of these central ideas of Roman Renaissance. This book will prove interesting to both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, as well as to general readers, who may have visited (or plan to visit) Rome and have become fascinated and affected by this extraordinary city. "There is no other book like it in any language," says Renaissance historian John O'Malley. "It presents a coherent view of Roman culture...collects and presents a vast amount of information never before housed under one roof. Anyone who teaches the Italian Renaissance," O'Malley stresses, "will have to know this book."