COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOT BIBLE To CROMWELL, THOMAS (Renaissance)

COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOT BIBLE

A six-volume, multilingual edition of both the Old and New Testaments, edited by a group of Spanish scholars working at the new University of Alcalá (in Latin, Complutum) under the patronage of the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Francisco Ximénes de Cisneros. His financial support and political connections made it possible for the editors to consult the best Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin manuscripts then known, including materials borrowed from the Vatican Library in Rome. Three scholars from the large Spanish community of converted Jews had charge of the Hebrew text; a learned Byzantine refugee, Demetrius Ducas, and a conservative Spanish theologian, Diego López Zúñiga, were the leading editors of the Greek New Testament; and a number of humanists, including Juan de Vergara and Herman Nuñez de Toledo y Guzmán, directed the work on the ancient Greek text of the Old Testament. Although Cardinal Ximénes was eager to use the new art of printing to make a vastly improved text of the Bible available to scholars, he did not favor the philological criticism that had grown up among advanced humanist scholars, and he instructed the editors to present the traditional texts, modified only in cases where reliable ancient manuscripts made limited revisions unavoidable. One of Spain’s most talented younger humanists, Elio Antonio de Nebrija, who worked on the text of the New Testament, argued against this conservative mode of editing but was overruled and eventually resigned from the project. Hence the Greek New Testament prepared for the edition was extremely conservative; the editors regularly preferred readings that backed the traditional Vulgate Latin text and that also preserved wording used by traditional scholastic theologians.


Thus despite having access to a body of manuscript sources that far surpassed the manuscripts available to the Dutch humanist Erasmus, who was preparing a rival Greek edition of the New Testament, the Complutensian New Testament was based on outmoded philological standards. Even so, it was a remarkable achievement in biblical scholarship. Its printed text of the Greek New Testament was ready for publication and sale at the very beginning of 1514, more than two years earlier than Erasmus’ more famous edition, but difficulties in securing papal approval for publication caused the distribution of the Complutensian New Testament to be held up until 1520. Hence Erasmus’ more philologically sophisticated and more critical edition became the first published edition of the Greek New Testament and had a far greater long-term impact on New Testament scholarship than the Spanish publication.

CONCILIARISM

The theory that a general council (rather than the pope) is the supreme and ultimate authority in the Christian church.

This theory was rooted in the practice of the early church, especially in the role of the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries in defining the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. The growing tendency of the bishops of Rome to claim absolute supremacy eclipsed the idea of conciliar power but did not entirely destroy it. Several popes of the 12th and 13th centuries held councils, but these were carefully controlled and posed no serious challenge to papal sovereignty. Medieval canon law provided that in some special cases the Holy See could be outranked by a council. In general, such ideas of conciliar power covered only great emergencies.

The terrible crisis of the Western Schism (1378-1417), which produced two rival lines of popes, moved even moderate canonists, bishops, and secular rulers toward acceptance of Conciliarism. The abortive Council of Pisa (1409) attempted to put these theories into practice but merely added a third pope to the prevailing confusion. The Council of Constance (1414-1418), summoned by the Emperor Sigismund, was able to end the Schism. It was dominated by academic canon lawyers who wanted to use the occasion not only to restore unity but also to compel reluctant popes to undertake a thorough reform of the church and to establish a permanent role for representative councils in the constitution of the church. They attempted to achieve this end by enacting the decree Haec sancta in 1415, which declared that a general council of the whole church was superior to any part of the church, even the pope. In 1417 the council also enacted the decree Frequens, which required all future popes to summon a general council at least every 10 years. Although the pope elected at Constance, Martin V, was required to swear obedience to these decrees, neither he nor his successors accepted them as valid. Long before the end of the 15th century, papal absolutism had been restored.

Although many canon lawyers and reformers remained devoted to Conciliarism, the general acceptance of Conciliarism had been a product of the Schism, and the end of the Schism, by resolving the immediate crisis, weakened favor for conciliar ideas. Conciliarism remained influential in some northern universities, especially at Paris, and among some reformers who saw that the popes showed little enthusiasm for sweeping reforms and wanted to use a council to compel reform. The acceptability of Conciliarism was also damaged by the failure of the Council of Basel, particularly by the council’s rash attempt to dethrone and replace Pope Eugenius IV. Individuals and rulers occasionally used the threat of a council to bring pressure on popes, notably the convening of the Council of Pisa by Louis XII of France in 1511. Fear of conciliar doctrines was still powerful at Rome and does much to explain the reluctance of the popes of the Reformation era to summon a council early enough to make a credible response to the early Protestant Reformers.

CONDOTTIERI

Italian term for the mercenary captains who during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance provided most of the armed forces of the Italian states. The term is derived from the word condotta, the contract between an employing ruler and the commander. Nearly all European armies from the later Middle Ages down to the French Revolution were composed of professional soldiers who fought for hire. In Italy, these hired professionals were not citizens of the state that hired them. Their critics, such as the Florentine political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, charged that such mercenaries were interested only in their pay and plunder, that they avoided serious combat and merely made a show of anything more dangerous than skirmishing, and that they would betray their employers if that seemed advantageous.

Most of these charges are untrue. As long as their salaries were paid regularly, most mercenaries gave loyal service. The states made their contracts with established commanders (condottieri) who already had a private military force. In the late 13th and 14th centuries, many of the condottieri and their troops were foreigners from regions such as the Balkan peninsula, Germany, or France. Discharged English and French soldiers seeking work during the frequent truces in the Hundred Years’ War were especially common in the later 14th century, and the most respected condottiere of that period was an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood. By the 15th century, most of the troops and their commanders were Italians.

Although these mercenary captains came from all ranks of society, most of them were nobles. A number of the most important were rulers of small Italian states who not only earned money but also safeguarded their independence by making themselves useful to larger neighbors: the rulers of Urbino, Ferrara, and Mantua were the most important of these. Small mercenary bands were most dangerous to society when they were unemployed and might turn into brigands. The one major mercenary force of Renaissance Italy not usually called condottieri were the Swiss soldiers who constituted the backbone of papal armies and also provided infantry to the kings of France. Although the Swiss fought on foot, most mercenary armies were predominantly cavalry.

CONSTANCE, COUNCIL OF

(1414-1418). General council of the Roman Catholic Church, assembled in order to end the Western Schism that had divided Latin Christendom since 1378. The disputed papal election of 1378 had produced two rival popes whose successors competed for the loyalty of a divided Christendom. Many attempts had been made to settle the division by negotiation or compromise, but all had failed. A growing number of leading clerics and rulers eventually concluded that only a general council representing the whole church would have the authority needed to depose the rival popes and restore unity.

Since there was no generally recognized pope to summon a council, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the highest-ranking secular ruler in Christendom, brought the council together, with the reluctant co-operation of a third pope, John XXIII, who traced his title to the abortive Council of Pisa. Sigismund’s council was dominated by university-trained doctors of theology and canon law, who attended in great numbers and established their right to vote. Most of these academic intellectuals supported the theory of Conciliarism. This group intended to depose all three rival popes and reunify the church, but they also had additional goals. They intended to enact legislation mandating a sweeping reform of church abuses. The more radical of them were determined to use the council to make the teachings of Conciliarism a permanent part of the church’s constitution.

In 1415 the council enacted the decree Haec sancta (sometimes called Sacrosancta), which declared that a general council received its authority directly from Christ and that "all men, of every rank and condition, including the pope himself, are bound to obey it." In 1417, realizing that future popes would resist calling such a powerful institutional rival into session, the council enacted a second decree, Fre-quens, that required future popes to summon a general council at least every 10 years. The council also was eager to suppress the new Hussite heresy in Bohemia, and its first major achievement was to arrest and execute the Bohemian reformer John Huss. The council succeeded in deposing Pope John XXIII when he attempted to dissolve it. Legislation to enact significant reform of the church proved far more difficult to enact, for each interest group present wanted reform to begin at the expense of somebody else. The struggle over reform was so sharp that in 1417, fearing that the council might split apart before it had ended the Schism, the members accepted the voluntary abdication of the Roman pope and acted to depose the Avignonese pope; then it elected a new pope, Martin V, who gained general acceptance. This election meant that the Schism was finally at an end.

The council’s successes consisted of its execution of Huss, the removal of all three rival popes and the election of a new one, and the two constitutional decrees Haec sancta and Frequens. The success of the decrees was illusory since Martin V, despite his pledge to uphold Haec sancta, never truly accepted it as valid. Although he and his successor did summon additional councils as required by Frequens, they did so with great reluctance. Once the crisis of the Schism was past, most moderate Catholics abandoned any serious commitment to conciliar ideas. The only unqualified success of the council was the end of the Schism. As for the issue of church reform, the council had been unable to agree on a workable program, and the new pope informed the council that he would take charge of reform, a promise that he did little or nothing to fulfill after the council adjourned.

CONSTANTINOPLE, FALL OF

In the year 330, the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great (306-337), dedicated a new capital of the Roman Empire on the site of the Greek town of Byzantium. After his death, it came to be known as Constantinople, "the city of Constantine." By the sixth century, though the western empire at Rome had ceased to exist, his successors had reorganized the eastern provinces into a powerful and fervently Christian state that became a bulwark of Christendom against the expansion of the Muslim Arabs and Turks into Europe. This empire always referred to itself as "Roman," but modern scholars generally call it "Byzantine."

After a disastrous military defeat by the Seljuk Turks in 1087 cost the empire control over the Anatolian peninsula, the empire became increasingly weak. The Western crusades from the 11th through the 14th centuries never tilted the balance of power back in favor of the Byzantines, and the misdirected Fourth Crusade (1203-1204) ended by attacking and plundering Constantinople itself. From 1204 to 1261, a puppet regime installed by the crusaders ruled at Constantinople. This foreign domination was overthrown in 1261, but the enfeebled empire gradually lost control of its Balkan, Greek, and island territories, some to the Turks and some to Italian cities like Venice.

By mid-15th century the emperors controlled only the immediate environs of the capital city and a few scattered outposts in Greece and the islands. In 1453 the Turkish sultan Muhammad II (1451-1481) made a final attack on the city, which fell to the Turks on 29 May 1453 and, renamed Istanbul, became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 has sometimes been misinterpreted as the cause of the Renaissance, which supposedly was begun by Greek scholars who fled with their books and their knowledge to western Europe. It would be more accurate to say that the fall of Constantinople marks the beginning of the end for direct influence of Byzantine scholars on the development of Renaissance civilization. The establishment of Greek studies by the teaching of Manuel Chrysoloras at Florence from 1397, followed by a flow of scholars, diplomats, churchmen, and teachers, had by 1453 made the Westerners largely self-sustaining in terms of access to Greek literature.

CONTRAPPOSTO

Italian term for a technique developed by ancient Greek sculptors to represent the human figure standing at ease in a relaxed and natural stance. It was based on an intentional assymetry of stance, with one leg carrying most of the body’s weight and the other leg free. Although based on depiction of the body at rest, the technique was also fundamental to realistic representation of the body in motion. This technique first appeared in early Greek classical sculpture (early fifth century b.c.) and was widely used throughout the classical period but fell out of use in medieval sculpture. Its rediscovery in the early 15th century is attributed to the Florentine sculptor Donatello. At least, it first appears in his work, notably his bronze David, executed about 1425, which is reminiscent of classical statuary in its contrapposto stance. In painting, the use of contrapposto first appears in the work of Masaccio, most strikingly in The Tribute Money (ca. 1427) but also in the nude figures of Adam and Eve in his Expulsion from Paradise.

CONVERSO

In medieval and Renaissance Spain, a Jew who had converted to Christianity. Under the relatively tolerant rule of the Muslim conquerors of Spain, a large Jewish community played an important part in Spanish life. This tolerance and prosperity continued for several centuries in regions reconquered by the Christians. During the 13th and 14th centuries, however, pressure from the clergy for conversion and incidents of persecution became more frequent. In 1391 a series of riots and massacres swept through the peninsula. Often, conversion was the price paid to stay alive. Pressure for conversion grew throughout the 15th century and achieved great success. Thousands of Jews became conversos, and they began to prosper within the Christian society, rising to high office in government service, education, medicine, business, and even the clergy. The most successful even married into the aristocracy. Yet the "old Christians" realized that many of those converted had changed religion only out of fear. While many conversos did become true converts to their new religion, some secretly continued to practice their ancestral faith.

Concern about backsliding conversos culminated in the founding of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. Since experience suggested that the continued presence of Jews in the country encouraged conversos to relapse secretly, in 1492 the rulers ordered the expulsion of all unconverted Jews. Large numbers went into exile in Portugal and especially in Muslim North Africa, but the majority converted, either sincerely or out of fear. Despite (or probably because of) the success of many conversos in gaining wealth, political influence, and high office in church and state, Spanish society watched them closely. The Inquisition was the institution created to detect and punish those who relapsed into Jewish religious practices. During the 16th century, conversos suffered both covert and open discrimination, including exclusion from an increasing number of high offices in church and state and from the most prestigious colleges in the Spanish universities, the ones that controlled access to the highest offices in the country.

COPERNICUS, NICOLAUS

(1473-1543). Polish astronomer, best known for his theory of the universe that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of the system. Born in the Polish city of Torun and orphaned at an early age, Copernicus was supported by an uncle who became a bishop. The uncle sent him in 1491 to the University of Cracow. Through his uncle’s influence, he secured a lifetime appointment as one of the canons of the cathedral topic at Frauenburg (Frombork). In 1496 the topic sent him to the University of Bologna to study canon law, but he was also able to study astronomy there, and his first recorded astronomical observation was made there in 1497. After returning home to Frauenburg in 1501, he received permission to return to Italy in order to study medicine at Padua. He received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara in 1503 and also was qualified to practice medicine before returning to spend the rest of his life at Frauenburg.

Copernicus became widely known as an expert astronomer and made a number of important astronomical discoveries, though his major achievement was not in discovering new data but in rethinking the theoretical foundations of astronomy. His Italian education gave him the competence in Greek that allowed him to publish Latin translations of Greek books and to consult the Greek text of Ptolemy’s major astronomical work, the Almagest, a work not yet available in Latin.

Copernicus’ later fame rests on his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium / On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1543), but he had worked for much of his life seeking to discover a view of the universe that challenged the complicated and self-contradictory system of the Hellenistic astronomer Ptolemy, the universally acknowledged authority in astronomy. As early as 1513 he wrote a short work, Commentariolus / Little Commentary, that put forward many of the ideas elaborated in De revolutionibus. His new system made a rather simple suggestion—that if one reversed the positions that Ptolemy and nearly all subsequent astronomers assigned to the earth and the sun, putting the sun instead of the earth at the center, many of the troublesome complications of astronomy were resolved.

Yet since his proposal would challenge many philosophical and religious ideas associated with the idea that the earth was the center of the universe, Copernicus hesitated to publish his new system. His pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus, who had published a summary of his ideas under the title Narratio prima / Preliminary Account, finally persuaded Copernicus to publish his major treatise. The work was dedicated to Pope Paul III, and publication was arranged by a Lutheran minister, Andreas Osiander, who added a preface presenting Copernicus’ new theory not as literally true but as a hypothesis useful in simplifying astronomical calculations.

Although his book attracted considerable attention, most astronomers rejected it not just because it flew in the face of traditional learning but also because its theories raised certain objections that Copernicus himself could not explain. In particular, Copernicus’ continued adherence to the Ptolemaic belief that the orbits of the planets must be perfectly circular prevented his system from providing the greater accuracy in the calculation of orbits that he anticipated. Though well known to professional astronomers, his ideas were rejected by most of them. In the long run, the importance of De revo-lutionibus is that it defined the problems that astronomers of the next four or five generations —Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton—would resolve as they developed a new science of astronomy based on his heliocentric theory.

CORNARO, CATERINA

(1454-1510). Venetian-born queen of Cyprus. Descended from one of the most ancient Venetian noble families and also from the Comnenus dynasty that ruled Trebizond on the Black Sea, in 1472 she married James II, king of Cyprus. Her husband died not long after the wedding, and their infant son died a year later. Since her husband was the last representative of the Lusignan dynasty, Caterina then ruled the island as queen. Several of the powers active in the eastern Mediterranean longed to annex this strategic island. In 1489 Venice browbeat her into ceding the island and accepting the Italian town of Asolo in exchange. As ruler of Asolo, she introduced a number of reforms, commissioned palaces and works of art, and gathered a court circle noted for its poets. The humanist Pietro Bembo made this court the setting for his dialogues on love, Gli Asolani / The Asolans.

CORREGGIO

(1489/94-1534). Professional name of the painter Antonio Allegri, born in the small Lombard town of Correggio. Probably trained by an uncle and influenced by the works of Andrea Man-tegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, he spent most of his career at Parma and developed a style notable for its emotional sensuality and the use of colors offset by the technique of chiaroscuro. His work is often interpreted as a precursor of the baroque style, and though his paintings were not especially influential in his own century, about 1600, as baroque style matured, they began to be highly regarded. His fresco The Assumption of the Virgin on the dome of Parma cathedral is a striking example of his religious painting, but his later work, done for the duke of Mantua, was erotic in spirit and was dominated by pagan mythology.

CORVINUS, MATTHIAS

(1440-1490). A younger son of Janos Hun-yadi, king of Hungary, he successfully contended for the succession against the Habsburg Emperor Frederick III and ruled as king from 1458 to 1490. In 1469 he also became king of Bohemia. Given a humanist education and influenced by Italian conceptions of a ruler as well as by his family’s military tradition, he made his capital at Buda a center for humanists from many parts of Europe and assembled the famous Corviniana library. His marriage to a Neapolitan princess in 1476 was linked to an expansionist foreign policy that extended his lands westward but led to neglect of the threat from the Ottoman Turks on his southern border that contributed to the Turkish conquest of most of Hungary in 1526.

COUNCIL OF TEN

The most notorious of the group of councils that governed the republic of Venice. Founded in 1310 as a reaction to an unsuccessful uprising against the power of the city’s noble families and the exclusion of non-noble citizens from any voice in government, the Council was a guarantor of political stability, always on the lookout for conspiracies aimed against the domination of the political system by the nobility. It was notorious for its use of spies, secret diplomacy, and the assassination of those who endangered the interests of Venice. For most of its existence, members were selected by the Great Council for one-year terms and were not allowed to serve consecutive terms. Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the council in 1797 after his army gained control of Venice.

CRANACH, LUCAS

(the Elder, 1472-1553). German painter, print-maker, and illustrator of books. He was born at Kronach in Bavaria and trained by his father but came under the influence of the greatest German Renaissance artist, Albrecht Dürer. He lived for about two years in Vienna, where he absorbed the influence of the humanist circle dominated by Conrad Celtis and began producing religious paintings and landscapes. His well-known Flight into Egypt (1504) combines a religious theme and a landscape in a way that attracted attention from other German artists. About 1504 he settled in Wittenberg, where he became court painter to Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony. Cranach was strongly attracted to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. He painted several portraits of Luther and made illustrations for Luther’s German Bible and for Lutheran religious tracts. Luther did not approve the iconoclastic policies of many other Protestant leaders. He endorsed Cranach’s work and encouraged him to create a style appropriate for Evangelical religious sentiment.

Cranach became a successful artistic entrepreneur, employing his sons Hans and Lucas the Younger as well as a number of apprentices in a large and productive workshop. Later in life he also painted allegories that incorporated mythological and secular elements such as female nudes that show the influence of Italian art, but without capturing the cultural and iconographic sensibility of his Italian predecessors. In the best-known of these allegories, The Judgment of Paris (1530), the theme and the gently erotic female nudes express Italian influence, but Paris appears as a German knight in modern armor; and the three nude damsels are naked Northern women, not classical nudes, while the background is a clearly German landscape.

CROMWELL, THOMAS

(ca. 1485-1540). English politician who rose from humble origins to become a trusted servant of King Henry VIII’s most powerful government minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. After Wolsey’s fall from power in 1529, Cromwell replaced him and became even more powerful. His efficiency and decisive personality soon made him the dominant person in political life. He arranged the divorce of the king from Queen Catherine of Aragon; the acquiescence of both Parliament and the clergy in declaring Henry head of the English church and abolishing papal authority; the suppression of the monasteries and the confiscation of their properties by the crown; and the publication of the first English-language Bible to appear with the approval of the government and clergy. Modern historians have often regarded the administrative agencies that he created to administer the former monastic lands and establish royal control over the church as a decisive step away from the personal administrative structure of the medieval monarchy to a more impersonal and institutionalized administration that foreshadows modern English government.

Cromwell’s own religious views leaned toward Protestantism, but as a servant of a king who continued to favor Catholic doctrine even after his break with Rome, he had to move slowly and cautiously. He collaborated with the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cran-mer, to authorize the official English Bible, to modify some of the doctrines of the medieval church, and gradually to introduce the doctrines of Continental Protestantism. In these efforts, Cromwell employed the services of a number of writers with humanist backgrounds and arranged for the publication of English translations of works of Erasmus and other humanists who had favored reform of the church and had sharply criticized ecclesiastical corruption.

Cromwell was raised to the peerage as earl of Essex, but his foreign policy of close relations with the German Protestant princes, culminating in the marriage of the king to the German princess Anne of Cleves, whom the king found unacceptable, led to his sudden fall from power in 1540. He was arrested, attainted by act of Parliament, and executed. Yet both his administrative reforms and his transformation of the English church into a national institution under the control of the monarch endured.

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