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The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth Field ended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.

Literature

England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually increased as English use of the printing press became common by the mid 16th century. By the time of Elizabethan literature a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene had a strong influence on English literature but was eventually overshadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt and others. Typically, the works of these playwrights and poets circulated in manuscript form for some time before they were published, and above all the plays of English Renaissance theatre were the outstanding legacy of the period.

The English theatre scene, which performed both for the court and nobility in private performances, and a very wide public in the theatres, was the most crowded in Europe, with a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, and wrote occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure at critical moments of her life. Philosophers and intellectuals included Thomas More and Francis Bacon. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much of the nobility, and Italian literature had a considerable following, providing the sources for many of Shakespeare's plays. English thought advanced towards modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The language of the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, and at the end of the period the Authorised Version ("King James Version" to Americans) of the Bible (1611) had enduring impacts on the English consciousness.

Visual arts

England was very slow to produce visual arts in Renaissance styles, and the artists of the Tudor court were mainly imported foreigners until after the end of the Renaissance; Hans Holbein was the outstanding figure. The English Reformation produced a huge programme of iconoclasm that destroyed almost all medieval religious art, and all but ended the skill of painting in England; English art was to be dominated by portraiture, and then later landscape art, for centuries to come. The significant English invention was the portrait miniature, which essentially took the techniques of the dying art of the illuminated manuscript and transferred them to small portraits worn in lockets. Though the form was developed in England by foreign artists, mostly Flemish like Lucas Horenbout, the somewhat undistinguished founder of the tradition, by the late 16th century natives such as Nicolas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver produced the finest work, even as the best producers of larger portraits in oil were still foreigners. The portrait miniature had spread all over Europe by the 18th century. The portraiture of Elizabeth I was carefully controlled, and developed into an elaborate and wholly un-realist iconic style, that has succeeded in creating enduring images.

Music

English Renaissance music kept in touch with continental developments far more than visual art, and managed to survive the Reformation relatively successfully, though William Byrd and other major figures were Catholic. The Elizabethan madrigal was distinct from, but related to the Italian tradition. Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and John Dowland were other leading English composers.

The colossal polychoral productions of the Venetian School had been anticipated in the works of Thomas Tallis, and the Palestrina style from the Roman School had already been absorbed prior to the publication of Musica transalpina, in the music of masters such as William Byrd.

The Italian and English Renaissances were similar in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy was the musical center of Europe, and one of the principal forms which emerged from that singular explosion of musical creativity was the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published in England the Musica transalpina—a collection of Italian madrigals that had been Anglicized—an event which began a vogue of madrigal in England which was almost unmatched in the Renaissance in being an instantaneous adoption of an idea, from another country, adapted to local aesthetics. English poetry was exactly at the right stage of development for this transplantation to occur, since forms such as the sonnet were uniquely adapted to setting as madrigals: indeed, the sonnet was already well developed in Italy. Composers such as Thomas Morley, the only contemporary composer to set Shakespeare, and whose work survives, published collections of their own, roughly in the Italian manner but yet with a unique Englishness; interest in the compositions of the English Madrigal School have enjoyed a considerable revival in recent decades.

Architecture

Despite some buildings in a partly Renaissance style from the reign of Henry VIII, notably Hampton Court Palace, the vanished Nonsuch Palace, Sutton Place and Layer Marney Tower, it was not until the Elizabethan architecture of the end of the century that a true Renaissance style emerged, influenced far more by northern Europe than Italy. The most famous buildings are large show houses constructed for courtiers, and characterised by lavish use of glass, as at "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", Wollaton Hall and Hatfield House and Burghley House, the style continuing into the early 17th century before developing into Jacobean architecture. Lesser, but still large, houses like Little Moreton Hall continued to be constructed and expanded in essentially medieval half-timbered styles until the late 16th century. Church architecture essentially continued in a late Gothic style until the Reformation, and then stopped almost completely, although church monuments, screens and other fittings often had classical styles from about the mid-century. The few new church buildings were usually still Gothic in style, as in Langley Chapel of 1601.^[1]

Comparison of the English and Italian Renaissances

The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English period began far later than the Italian, which is usually considered to begin with Dante, Petrarch and Giotto in the early 14th century, and was moving into Mannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier. In contrast, the English Renaissance can only be said to begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and continued until perhaps 1620.

Reception of Roman Law

During the Renaissance, Continental Europe underwent a pivotal intellectual transformation; cultural, social and political assumptions and structures, once thought fundamental, were questioned and changed to reflect their deliberations. European legal systems were not immune to these changes. After a revival of Roman law in late medieval Italy, the phenomenon spread to France and Germany, among others. These countries were said to have “received” the Roman law. In view of this phenomenon, some legal scholars have questioned why, during the Renaissance, the English common law remained relatively intact. After all, the classic historian opinion assumed that the common law was in serious difficulties at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and that ‘the continuity of English legal history was seriously threatened’ by current Romanizing trends. [Baker p. 4] By the time the Roman laws reached England, the country was far too politically stable and effective for a foreign legal code to usurp its national law.

In the late eleventh century, a complete manuscript of the Digest was found in Pisa, Italy. [Stein p. 43] The Digest was part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law issued under Justinian I. A professor at the University of Bologna, Irnerius, made the interpretation and explanation of the Digest, as well as of the other parts of Justinian’s legislative work, his enterprise. [Stein p. 46] He and his school, comprised of students from all the countries of Europe, attempted to recreate the science of Roman law. Since the Corpus Juris did not expound clear legal principles per se, these scholars, known as “Glossators,” would compare potentially conflicting texts and infer principles that would explain the apparent contradictions. [Stein p. 46] Their work would extend into the early thirteenth century. By then, they had laid the groundwork for a theoretical understanding of the Roman civil law, which would come to serve as the foundation for most of the legal systems in continental Europe.

Later on, the Glossators became Commentators, who took the next step of attempting to codify the previously extracted legal principles into a cogent system of laws. [Stein p. 75] They combined Roman law with the statutory law of Italian cities and with canon law; Roman law was adapted to address practical contemporary needs. [Stein p. 75-86] And so, lawyers began to be trained in Roman law. However, these events were not isolated only in Italy. The new science of Roman law, as inaugurated by the Glossators in Bologna, spread out into other countries, including France and Germany. Through the action of university trained judges, lawyers, and draftsmen of legal documents, the Roman law began to spread across Europe. This was called the “Reception”.

It is not possible to understand Roman Law as the law of the Roman Empire, but only as the Justinian Civil Code, which was the only major law book available to the European Kingdoms at the time. This great codification containing a universal system of written laws, non-contradictory fundamentals and amount of application, caught the attention of many kingdoms, specially the new absolutism monarchs. However, rather than enacting roman laws as laws of the kingdom, the new absolutist movements only took their centralized and universal written court system. Examples of such systems can be found in the Spain and Germany of Habsburgs and in the France of the Valois. Such systems were comprised of great codifications and a creation of centralized systems of courts and laws. These centralized processes assured Monarchs that they would have further control over the legal system, replacing tradition, natural law, and local practices with their own personal version of a universal and centralized Civil Code.

In England, the story of the Reception is a bit more complicated. King Stephen (1092/6-1154) took suspicious notice of the spread of the study of civil law. His opposition, however, was ineffectual. [Re p. 466] Roman and canon law began to be taught at Oxford by Vacarius, an Italian scholar; Cambridge also issued degrees in the civil law. [Stein p. 467-8] “Every ambitious youth studied eagerly the Corpus Juris” [Re p. 467]

Around this time, intellectuals were attacking the language and content of English law as barbarous, and praising the Civil law as refined and humane. [Baker p. 4] Henry II (1154-1189) established a well-ordered system of royal courts, and Henry III (1216-1272) forbade the teaching of Roman law in the schools of London. The royal courts made possible the beginning of a unification and soon, comprehensive statements of the national law.

One of the more effective counterweights to the Roman law education at Oxford were the professors at the Inns of Court, a historical analog to the present day bar association, who taught the Common Law. The lawyers who dominated the lower house of the legislature, much of the nation's bureaucracy, and nearly all the courts of law, were trained in advanced schools of municipal law and not in the university law faculties. By the time of Henry VII and Henry VIII, the new absolutism of the Tudors already had a centuries-old centralized courts system, which kept written records. This was only possible due to the Norman Conquest, which successfully created a centralized court at London, in order to oversee the whole country. In such manner, Henry VII and Henry VIII achieved what they wanted without recourse to alien jurisprudence. Under Henry VII, common-law trained ministers such as Empson, Dudley, and Lovell, carried the royal interests as far as any Civilian would have dared. Henry VIII advanced common lawyers for the first time to the offices of master of the rolls and master of requests and, after Cardinal Wolsey, he first appointed a bencher of Lincoln's Inn (Sir Thomas More) and then a sergeant at law (Sir Thomas Audley), as lord chancellor. [Baker p. 418]

Nevertheless, although there are few specific examples, there is evidence that the Roman law was recognized as a valid authority by the English courts for some time. [Re p. 468] In the long run, however, the Common Law obviously prevailed in England. What made a difference in England’s case, as opposed to France or Germany, was that its legal system was too entrenched for a new body of law to usurp it. As one author put it, “the legal fabric of the government and its institutions were not such as to permit the direct reception of Roman law by the King's courts!” [Re p. 468] The Reception tended to occur in places where there was no such robust legal system. The fact that England already had some of the best characteristics from the Civil Code, offered no incentives for change, as they did to the other Absolutist Monarchs. Thus, England didn’t have a particular need for a new body of law. In the words of Maitland, “there was no need in England for that reconstitution de l’unité nationale which fills a large space in schemes of French history, and in which, for good and ill, the Roman texts gave their powerful aid to the centripetal and monarchical forces.” By this time, there was a certain level of political and legal stability in England, unparalleled by any of the territories where the Roman law had its greatest effect.

Criticism of the idea of the English Renaissance

The notion of calling this period "The Renaissance" is a modern invention, having been popularized by the historian Jacob Burckhardt in the 19th century. The idea of the Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural historians, and some have contended that the "English Renaissance" has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the Italian artists (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely identified with the Renaissance. Indeed, England had already experienced a flourishing of literature over 200 years before the time of Shakespeare when Geoffrey Chaucer was working. Chaucer's popularizing of English as a medium of literary composition rather than Latin occurred only 50 years after Dante had started using Italian for serious poetry. At the same time William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower were also writing in English. Even during these war years, though, Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte D'Arthur, was a notable figure. For this reason, scholars find the singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable; C. S. Lewis, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge, famously remarked to a colleague that he had "discovered" that there was no English Renaissance, and that if there had been one, it had "no effect whatsoever".

Historians have also begun to consider the word "Renaissance" as an unnecessarily loaded word that implies an unambiguously positive "rebirth" from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Some historians have asked the question "a renaissance for whom?," pointing out, for example, that the status of women in society arguably declined during the Renaissance. Many historians and cultural historians now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this period, a term that highlights the period as a transitional one that led to the modern world, but attempts to avoid positive or negative connotations.

Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether the name "renaissance" is apt, there was undeniably an artistic flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Major English Renaissance authors

William Shakespeare, chief figure of the English Renaissance, as portrayed in the Chandos portrait (artist and authenticity not confirmed).

The major literary figures in the English Renaissance include:

References

^ Airs, Malcolm, The Buildings of Britain, A Guide and Gazetteer, Tudor and Jacobean, especially chapters 1, 3 and 8, 1982, Barrie & Jenkins (London), ISBN 0-09-147831-6

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