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A Roman Revolution Essay It was May 30, 1347.  Ã‚   The city was once at the center of the world, and varying nations vied to pay homage.  Ã‚   Since that time, however, its institutions, its buildings, and its very name seem to have been forgotten by time.  Ã‚   Local nobility compete for control while the rest of the populace starved, and banditry thrived.  Ã‚   The religious shrines and public buildings were dilapidated, and worn out from neglect.   From this one day, however, and from one such ruin, issued a declaration from a man who stirred hope in people’s breast.   Ã‚   Cola di Rienzo, who in the course of time would ambitiously set himself up as a virtual dictator in the city, at that moment declared the restitution of the Roman Republic, to the cheers of an excited throng.  Ã‚   The restless crowd seemed far disconnected from the reality of a Holy Roman Empire, independent Italian city-states, Norman and Spanish sovereignty in the south, or the hundred more kingdoms and treaties that kept Italy divided and the Republic from becoming reality, but no one cared.   A brief, tragic drama began to unfold, taking hold of the city and its dreamer alike.  Ã‚   For a few months, the Roman Republic seemed to breathe life and its Dictator Rienzo came close to uniting Italy.  Ã‚   The smaller city-states and principalities all sent their delegations and intentions to forming a loose federation with Rome.  Ã‚   And the Dictator put ambitious reforms and decrees, which championed the cause of the people.   His pride, however, got the better of him, and he soon alienated the senators and the Church.  Ã‚   The senators amassed armies against him, and the Pope called to the people to reject him.  Ã‚   Having lost all his allies, he fled the city, wandering Italy to find people to rally for his cause.   Ã‚  Dejected, beaten, his spirit finally broken, he surrendered to the Pope in Avignon, and was allowed to return to Rome where the people could not long stomach his disillusionment and killed him as a traitor[1].   This brief Roman Revolution was an early experiment of that age to attempt the reconstitution of an age that seemed lost in time.  Ã‚   The people of the Renaissance, from the artisan to the poet, was fascinated with ancient Greek traditions and culture and created works of art that mimicked Classic styles.  Ã‚   Ancient texts were gathered from the libraries where it was copied and preserved, and crude attempts at translation were made to introduce these historical artifacts to the world.  Ã‚   Most of the entire Renaissance was electrified at the thought of the old â€Å"heroic† Roman Republic, and the Caesars and Ciceros that once walked the Forum.   In due course, this paper would seek to identify the sources of the ideology behind the Italian Renaissance’s fascination with the ancient Greco-Roman, and how it seemed to suit their needs.  Ã‚   The paper will then explain the various attempts to reconstitute the past in the present, and how close they were in succeeding.    Once more, a Roman World   The thought of a restored Rome was not unique to Renaissance thought.  Ã‚   Even as the western portion of the empire collapsed under the pressure of barbarian migrations, the eastern emperor Justinian drafted ambitious plans of gaining back the lost lands of Gaul, Italy, Spain and Africa. This having failed, the Frankish kings, and later the German emperors, stylized themselves as Caesars that had legitimacy given to them by the authority of the Pope and the acquiescence of the eastern emperor.   Italian dreams of Rome, however, had political and cultural context.   They loathed the plain ugliness of Gothic and barbarian architecture, and largely preserved the Roman tradition and culture.   They lamented Italian as a bastardized form of Latin, and deplored Dante’s use of the former as the vernacular. Italian writers, at the beginning of the Renaissance, began to collect ancient texts from faraway libraries[2].  Ã‚   Petrarch, the Father of the Renaissance, was the first of the writers to amass Greek and Latin texts, and encouraged a fellow writer, Boccaccio, to pore into Greek research.   Unique also in the Renaissance, was the way the ancient texts were interpreted. In the medieval ages, the various ancient works of art were interpreted in Christian context.  Ã‚   Pagan ideals and traditions were explained with a Christian theme. Thus, a Hercules-like figure would be used to represent Christ.  Ã‚   The Renaissance began to separate the contemporary Christian thought from the ancient texts, and began to appreciate the latter in their historical context. They read into classical texts their appropriate classical meaning; they did not allegorize Latin writings as one to justify medieval Christian Europe, but in the context of ancient Rome[3].   The thought of a united Italy was sometimes reconciled with the restoration of the ancient Greco-Roman tradition.   Ã‚  Rienzo certainly thought of this when he donned the garb of the old senatorial toga and declared the return of the Roman Republic. Petrarch saw it when he asked King Charles IV of Bohemia to unite all of Italy[4], and many might have seen it when the son Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, began a long campaign to win back much of the lost cities of the Papal States.   Conclusion: Historical Myopia   For all the dreams and ideals of the Renaissance Italians, a Roman Republic could not be reconstituted from 14th to 15th century Europe.  Ã‚   The Holy Roman Empire, primarily, would not stand for a united Italy outside of their control or power, as they would, and have claimed, Italy as an integral part of the empire. Neither, however, can the Holy Roman emperors be able to unite Italy, as they become too embroiled in disputes with the Pope, who has nominal sway over the Italian city-states.  Ã‚   And the Popes, for all their universal spiritual authority, would not be able to wrest control of all of Italy from powerful independent Italian city-states, the Normans and the Spanish, the Germans and the French, and even the Greeks until their collapse in the latter half of the 15th century.   The Italian Renaissance sought to reintroduce ancient Greco-Roman thought into the mainstream, envisioning a past that was nobly glorious.  Ã‚   Several hundred years brings distance and unreality to history, even when taken from historical context.   The Italian city-states of the Renaissance was freer in practice with its people than the ancient Roman Republic, which countless times brought down reformer tribunes, and curbed attempts to relieve the proletariat in keeping the wealthy in their state.  Ã‚   The ancient Roman Empire was less free as the centuries passed, and its economy was in nightmarish shambles, a thought that the Renaissance Italians might have shuddered at.   In the end, the Renaissance Italians might have fallen in the same way their medieval counterparts have: to see the ancient culture in their contemporary values.   Certainly the Renaissance wanted to detach itself from the â€Å"barbarism† and disunity, which seemed to plague Europe, but the reforms of a Rienzo would have shocked the ancient Roman aristocracy, and Byzantine intrigue would be far closer to Roman court morals than the Renaissance Italian sensibilities.   A final word must be said of the Renaissance dream: in the 16th century, one man came closest to uniting Italy and much of Christendom under a loose â€Å"Roman empire†.  Ã‚   Politics and religion, in the end, got in the way, and Charles V of the Hapsburg dynasty and his successors would find himself humbled by an alliance of French, Turks, Protestants and even the Pope[5]. BIBLIOGRAPHY References Durant, Will. The Renaissance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953. Durant, Will, Caesar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935. Rice, Eugene Jr., The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,1971. Krailsheimer, A.J., The Continental Renaissance: 1500-1600. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1970. [1] Durant, Will, The Renaissance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953) 16-21. [2] Durant, Will, The Renaissance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953) 67-69. [3] Rice, Eugene Jr., The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1970) 72-76. [4] Durant, Will, The Renaissance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953) 46. [5] Krailsheimer, A.J.,   The Continental Renaissance: 1500-1600 (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971) 93-98.