JANUS PANNONIUS
(1434-1472). Hungarian humanist. His vernacular name was Janus of Czezmicze. He was a nephew of János Vitéz, bishop of Oradea, an early Hungarian humanist who directed the education of his nephew and in 1447 sent him to Italy for further study. He remained in Italy for 11 years, starting in the school of Guarino Guarini. While in Italy, he began writing poetry and eventually gained recognition as a talented poet. In 1454 he began studying canon law at the University of Padua, but it is uncertain whether he completed a doctorate. When Matthias Corvinus became king of Hungary in 1458, Janus returned home and soon became an influential figure among the court humanists. He became canon of the cathedral topic of Oradea and in 1460, bishop of Pécs (German name, Fünfkirchen). He was a member of the royal council, chancellor to the queen, and influential in the king’s cultural policy. As ambassador to the curia in 1465 he sought financial aid against the Turks from Pope Paul II. In 1469-1470 he was governor of a province, but because of disagreement with the king over foreign policy he became involved in a conspiracy against the ruler and when it was discovered fled to Italy. He died of plague near Zagreb while on his way to exile. Despite their quarrel, King Matthias admired Janus’ poetry and arranged for his works to be collected. These works were printed several times during the 16th century.
JESUIT ORDER
(officially, the Society of Jesus). Roman Catholic religious order organized by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) and authorized by the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae issued by Pope Paul III in 1540. The goal of the new order was to restore the power and unity of the Catholic church, and it became one of the primary forces opposing Protestantism in Germany and elsewhere. Its first members had strong missionary ambitions, and the society later became active in efforts to introduce Christianity into India, China, and Japan. At the Council of Trent, Jesuit theologians backed the conservatives who promoted an uncompromising reaffirmation of traditional doctrines and of practices challenged by the Protestants. The order laid particular emphasis on the authority of the pope as successor to St. Peter and guarantor of unity and orthodoxy.
Loyola himself was not much attracted to humanism, and he was sharply critical of the most famous non-Italian humanist of the century, Erasmus. Yet the Jesuits became deeply involved in educational work, and their schools developed a strong tradition of humanistic studies. Their commitment to education began in 1548 with their first school at Messina in Sicily. Within little more than a decade, they recognized education as their principal activity. By the end of the century, they were in charge of a large number of schools and also had created at Rome a distinguished institute for study of theology, the Collegium Romanum. In several regions, particularly in Germany, they took control of colleges, or even the whole faculties of liberal arts, in established universities. But their most successful institutions were secondary schools designed to produce well-educated laymen, well-prepared candidates for the clergy, and candidates for university study who would have the best possible preparation for success in the higher faculties (law, medicine, and theology).
In their schools, the Jesuits developed a program of studies that fulfilled most of the aspirations of earlier humanist educational reformers. While they avoided study of authors like Erasmus who had been openly critical of the church, they developed in their graduates a fluent mastery of classical Latin, introduced a reasonably thorough study of Greek, and had their students read a considerable body of ancient Latin and Greek literature. They adopted from the best contemporary French grammar schools a sequential plan of study in which each level prepared students for the next. But they followed the lead of some earlier humanist reformers in regarding the humanistic subjects, such as grammar and rhetoric, as suitable for the lower levels of study, while the curriculum of their own schools culminated in study of Aristotelian philosophy (including natural science) that traditionally had been introduced only in the universities. The plan of study and the methods followed were closely defined in regulations that culminated in the Ratio studiorum / Plan of Studies (1599). By the 17th century, Jesuit schools were widely recognized as among the best in Europe.
JEWS
Western and central Europe had had Jewish residents since Roman times, and even though anti-Jewish prejudice had led to repeated instances of mob violence, legal discrimination, and pressure for conversion, those communities never entirely disappeared over any broad area and for any extended time, with the exception of Spain and Portugal after the expulsion of all unconverted Jews in 1492 and 1496 respectively. Wherever they lived, Jews constituted separate communities that in the eyes of the law were resident aliens theoretically under the protection of the ruler.
Jews were excluded from occupations that required membership in guilds (most of which had a religious element) and also in most regions from ownership of agricultural land. Hence the only occupations open to them were marginal ones, including mercantile activity and moneylending, since trade was regarded as ethically questionable and canon law forbade Christians to lend money at interest. Wealthy Jewish merchants with good business connections and liquid assets were useful to rulers, who relied on them for loans and financial services and hence granted them some protection while in many cases also exploiting the threat of popular violence to extort gifts and favorable terms on loans. Local Jewish communities generally regulated their own religious and family matters.
The larger communities often contained learned scholars, usually specialists in biblical interpretation, philosophy, medicine, and such occult arts as astrology and magic. From the second half of the 15th century, beginning in Italy, some Christian humanists became interested in Hebrew language and in several fields of Jewish learning. Prominent examples were Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in Italy and Johann Reuchlin in Germany. In return, Jewish scholars like Yohanan Alemanno of Florence, who had assisted Pico’s study of Jewish learning, became interested in the revived Platonism found in the translations and original treatises of Marsilio Ficino. Another prominent Jewish scholar, exiled from Portugal, was Leone Ebreo, whose Dialoghi d’amore /Dialogues on Love explored the Platonic idea of love and tried to relate Renaissance Neoplatonic thought to the Jewish mystical writings known as Cabala.
As the large Jewish populations of Spain and Portugal were dismantled by persecution, conversion, and exile, Italy became the principal center of Jewish life in western and central Europe. Rome in particular had a large and highly cultivated Jewish population since the popes, although imposing many limitations, rejected a policy of forced conversion. At Venice, Rome, and other places Jews were permitted to live only in an officially defined ghetto. The pressures of living separate from the rest of society and of constantly facing the threat of having their privileges further restricted may explain the intense mystical developments and the many Messianic prophecies that arose within Jewish communities, especially from the late 16 th century.
JOAN OF ARC
(d. 1431). Peasant girl who, in 1429, arrived at the court of the French king VII (1422-1461), claiming to have been divinely commissioned by the voices of saints to maintain the king’s cause against his rival, King Henry V of England. Although both Joan and the Hundred Years’ War that she played a major role in bringing to an end are conventionally regarded as belonging to medieval history, her role in stimulating the French ruler to action did much to rally French support behind King. Although Joan herself was captured in battle by the Burgundian allies of England, sold to the English, and condemned and executed as a witch by a church court, the renewed French consciousness that she both expressed and stimulated created the foundation for emergence of French Renaissance culture. Up to the French Revolution, the monarchy avoided acknowledging her share in French recovery, but in the 19th century, French nationalists transformed her into a national hero, the church reversed her condemnation, and in 1920 she was canonized as Saint Joan.
JONES, INIGO
(1573-1652). English architect. He began his artistic career as a painter for aristocratic patrons and as a maker of ecclesiastical furnishings. He toured Italy in 1598, visited Denmark in 1603, and collaborated with the playwright Ben Jonson in designing court masques for Anne, queen of King James I. In 1613 he accompanied an English embassy to celebrate the marriage of the king’s daughter to the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg and then made a second trip to Italy. Guided by the writings of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, he studied ancient monuments. Back in England in 1615, he became surveyor of the king’s works and produced a number of designs for buildings (most of them never built) intended to transform London into a magnificent royal capital. His most famous surviving building is the Banqueting House (1619-1622) at Whitehall, designed in a classicizing style inspired by Palladio.
JONSON, BEN
(1572-1637). English dramatist. Born in Westminster and educated at Westminster School, after a period of soldiering in Flanders he became an actor and playwright in 1597. Imprisoned for killng another actor in a duel, he was converted to Roman Catholicism in prison but 12 years later returned to the Church of England. His most highly regarded plays, all comedies, were Volpone, or The Fox (1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fayre (1614). Also influential were two tragedies inspired by classical models, Se-janus (1603) and Catiline (1611). Jonson was a learned and prolific author, not only of plays but also of of poetry and literary criticism. Although his published works were sometimes critical of his contemporary William Shakespeare, he also wrote a number of passages acknowledging the greatness of his older friend. Many of his plays and several masques were published in a folio edition dated 1616. In later life his works fell out of fashion, and he died in poverty, but he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
JULIUS II, POPE
(Giuliano della Rovere, ca. 1445-1513; pope from 1503). Giuliano’s uncle Francesco provided for his education and upon being elected pope (Sixtus IV) in 1471 made Giuliano a cardinal and soon conferred on him many valuable benefices. He acted as papal ambassador on several occasions, but his most obvious talent was as an administrator and military commander, beginning with his service as legate in the province of Umbria in the Papal States. Giuliano had considerable influence over his uncle’s successor, Pope Innocent VIII. With the next pope, Alexander VI (1492-1503), he had a poor relationship and eventually withdrew to France. He was one of those who encouraged King VIII to undertake the invasion of Naples in 1494 that precipitated a series of political crises and wars in Italy that lasted for more than half a century. His strong personality and reputation for aggressive defense of the papacy’s political claims was the basis for his own election as pope in 1503, and he even exceeded the expectations of the cardinals who supported him.
Julius is known as "the warrior pope," engaging in a complex set of diplomatic and military adventures that threw most of Italy into turmoil but generally advanced the temporal power of the papacy. His assertive personality and militarism were sharply criticized in the famous satire Julius exclusus, published anonymously but usually attributed to the Dutch humanist Erasmus. Julius called the last general council of the Latin church to meet before the Reformation, the Fifth Lateran Council, which met in Rome and continued under Julius’s successor, Leo X. Although his private life was far more respectable than that of his predecessor Alexander VI, and his warlike actions were aimed at extending the political authority of the papacy in Italy rather than at exploiting papal power in the interests of his own kin, Julius did continue the tendency of Renaissance popes to function as secular leaders at the expense of their pastoral responsibilities.
Julius’ historical significance probably rests more on his actions as a patron of the arts at the peak of the Renaissance than on his work as a spiritual or even a political leader. His major commissions were the construction of the Belvedere courtyard in the Vatican, designed by Donato Bramante; the paintings by Raphael in the papal apartments, notably The School of Athens; and the work that may well be the high point of Renaissance painting, the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted at the pope’s insistence by a reluctant Michelangelo. The Sistine ceiling was completed in 1512. Michelangelo’s sculptural project for the pope’s tomb was never finished on account of the great cost, and only one of the parts completed, the statue Moses, was finished by Michelangelo’s own hand. Julius also made the decision to tear down the ancient basilica of St. Peter and to replace it with a gigantic church built in the Renaissance central-dome style, designed by Bramante and begun in 1506, though not completed until the following century and considerably modified by several later architects. The famous portrait of the pope by Raphael (1511-1512) captures the personality of the elderly but still energetic and strong-willed pontiff.
KEPLER, JOHANNES
(1571-1630). German mathematician and astronomer. His family relocated to the Protestant state of Württemberg while he was still a small child. This principality had developed a strong educational system, and young Kepler benefitted from a scholarship to an excellent Latin grammar school. He then entered the University of Tübingen intending to become a minister, but he studied there with a mathematician who accepted the new heliocentric astronomical system of Copernicus. Kepler had not intended to focus on mathematics, but the university recommended him as a teacher of mathematics in a Protestant seminary in Graz, a predominantly Catholic city. His added duties as district mathematician required him to draw up astrological calendars.
Kepler’s first mathematical publication, Mysterium cosmograph-icum / Secret of the Universe (1596), suggested that the truth of Copernicus’ system of astronomy was confirmed by his conclusion that the orbits of each of the planets in the Copernican system could be inscribed as tangents to one of the five geometrical solids of Euclidean geometry. The book attracted attention, and Kepler was invited to become an assistant to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Although Brahe opposed Copernicus’ heliocentric theory and supported a compromise between it and the old Ptolemaic system, Kepler knew that Brahe had amassed a vast treasure of precise astronomical observations in his observatory and was eager to gain access to these important new data.
When Brahe left Denmark to become court astronomer to the Emperor Rudolf II, Kepler returned to Graz but found that the Habsburg archduke was increasing pressure on local Protestants to turn Catholic. Hence he rejoined Brahe at Prague, where in 1601, following Brahe’s death, he succeeded to the position of imperial mathematician. He continued to fulfill Brahe’s official duty of compiling tables of the planetary orbits. By 1605 he had completed work on another major book, Astronomia nova / The New Astronomy, though publication was delayed until 1609. In this topic Kepler demonstrated many complex relations among the planetary orbits. Many of these had no particular usefulness but two of them stated what are now known as Kepler’s first two laws of planetary motion. In this topic for the first time he abandoned his youthful belief that the force that moved the heavens was spiritual and attempted to derive all motions from purely material, physical forces.
KRZYCKI, ANDRZEJ
(d. 1537). Polish poet, statesman, and bishop, known in Latin as Andreas Cricius. Born into a noble family but orphaned at an early age, he was educated under the direction of his maternal uncle, Bishop Piotr Tomicki, an influential royal official. He studied in Italy, probably from 1498 to 1503, and heard the lectures of two famous humanist professors at Bologna, Codro Urceo and Filippo Beroaldo the Elder. The bishop of Poznan became his patron, and he entered holy orders and received several valuable benefices. In 1512 Krzycki became secretary to Queen Barbara Zapolyai and after her death became a protégé of King Sigismund’s second wife, the Italian princess Bona Sforza. In 1523 he became bishop of Przemysl but spent nearly all of his time at the royal court in Cracow. He represented the king in negotiations that led to the secularization of the state of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, a dependency of the Polish crown. Despite this political mission, which made Prussia a Protestant duchy, he was personally opposed to the Reformation. Later he was promoted to the bishopric of Plock (1527) and still later to the archbishopric of Gniezno.
Throughout his career, Krzycki supported humanism. He was also a highly regarded Latin poet and published a number of works, some of them occasional poems for his royal patrons, others being epigrams and satiric verses directed against his political antagonists. His verses included parodies of church hymns and popular religious verse. Much of his work, especially his erotic poems, remained unpublished but circulated in manuscript. He also published two prose works against Martin Luther. He was a great admirer of the Dutch humanist Erasmus and sought to persuade him to visit Poland. He respected the Lutheran leader Philipp Melanchthon and tried to bring him to Poland in order to woo him away from Luther.
LABÉ, LOUISE
(ca. 1524-1566). The pen name of the poet Louise Charly, born into a well-to-do family of rope-makers at Lyon and given a classical education unusual for any woman of her time. Her collected poems, published in 1555, include three elegies and 24 love sonnets written in the Petrarchan style, as well as a prefatory manifesto on the rights of women and a mythological prose dialogue, Débat de Folie et d’Amour / Disputation of Folly and Love, written in the manner of the Renaissance facetia. Her work shows familiarity with Catullus and Ovid. She places herself firmly in the tradition of Renaissance lyric and satire but provides ironic commentary on the conventional language of love devised by and for men.
LABODERIE, GUY LEFÉVRE DE
(1541-1598). French poet and biblical translator. His mastery of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and Syriac brought him into touch with the older scholar and Cabal-ist Guillaume Postel, whose influence led to the selection of La-boderie and his brother Nicolas to participate in editorial work on the great polyglot Bible published by the Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin. While living in Antwerp he became associated wth the underground antinomian religious sect known as the Family of Love, but at the same period, he was also close to the Jesuit community at Louvain and dedicated several poems to them. He published French translations of the spiritual poems of the Florentine Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino (1578) and a poem on poetic and musical theory and the orgins of civilization, La galliade, as well as a French translation of the widely admired work of Pico della Mirandola commonly known by the title Oration on the Dignity of Man. Laboderie’s erudition made him an able translator, but his erudite etymological references made some of his work inaccessible to most readers.
LA BOÉTIE, ETIENNE DE
(1530-1563). French humanist, author, and translator. He was educated in law and had a public career in the Parlement of Bordeaux. He translated classical texts by Plutarch and Xenophon into French. His Mémoire sur la pacification des troubles / On the Pacification of the Civil Wars, though not published until the 20th century, took a conservative stance on the problems of the French Wars of Religion, insisting that since two rival religious could not coexist peacefully in the same society, only Catholicism should be legally permitted despite his repugnance to the use of force to suppress intellectual disagreements. His best-known work, Discours de la servitude volontaire / On Voluntary Servitude (1574), denounces tyranny and was used by the Huguenot party in the civil wars to justify their cause, even though it also maintained that individuals are obligated to submit to the traditional laws of their country. La Boetie is best known in French literary history as an intimate friend of Michel de Montaigne, who devoted one of his most famous essays, "On Friendship," to the memory of their friendship.
LANDINO, CRISTOFORO
(1424-1498). Humanist, professor of poetry at the University of Florence, and prominent member of the Platonic Academy of Florence, an informal association of scholars led by the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Landino’s dialogue Disputationes Camaldulenses /Disputations at Camaldoli (ca. 1472), dealing with the relative merits of the active and the contemplative life, is perhaps the earliest Platonic dialogue written in the Italian Renaissance. He also published works in Italian, including a translation of the Natural History of Pliny the Elder and an edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy with commentary. His commentaries on several classical Latin poets circulated among his associates but were not published.
LANYER, AEMILIA
(1569-1645). English poet, the daughter of an Italian musician employed at the court of Queen Elizabeth I and his English wife. She was left alone at age 18 when her mother died. She became pregnant by a cousin of the queen, Lord Hunsdon, and in 1592 was married off to a court musician, Alfonso Lanyer, who acted as father to her son. Early in the new century, she lived for a time in the household of Margaret Clifford, dowager countess of Cumberland, and produced a much-admired book of poems, Salve deus rex Judaeorum/Hail God, King of the Jews (1611). It contains several dedications, all addressed to women. The title-poem deals with the passion of Christ from the viewpoint of the women who followed him, and it contrasts their loyalty and piety with the wickeness of men in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. For a time Lanyer supported herself by teaching school.
LASKI, JAN I and JAN II
Uncle and nephew, members of an influential family of Polish nobility who were leaders in the church and also in encouraging Renaissance learning in their country. Jan I (1455-1531) entered the service of the Polish king in 1496 and rose to high position in the church. In 1510 he became archbishop of Gniezno and as such, primate (senior prelate) of the Polish church. He attended the Fifth Lateran Council, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and played a prominent role in domestic politics and European diplomacy. After the Reformation began in eastern Germany, Bishop Laski opposed the spread of Lutheran ideas in Poland. He also educated his nephews and supported their careers in royal service and in the church.
Of the nephews, Jan II (1499-1560) was the most important in the cultural and religious history of his time. He accompanied his uncle to Rome for the Lateran Council, studied in Vienna, Bologna, and Padua, and became an enthusiastic supporter of humanistic studies, particularly the Christian humanism of Erasmus. On his second visit to Erasmus at Basel in 1525, he lived in Erasmus’ house for six months, paying his own expenses and arranging to purchase most of Erasmus’personal library. The books were to remain in Erasmus’ possession during his lifetime. Aided by his uncle’s influence, young Jan obtained a number of valuable benefices in the Polish church. Although critical (like Erasmus) of Martin Luther’s rashness, he found Luther’s more moderate and more humanistic colleague Philipp Melanchthon very appealing. In 1539 he moved to Louvain, attracted by the philosophia Christi of reform-minded Dutch Catholics. While at Louvain, he married the daughter of a merchant, a step that forced him to forfeit his ecclesiastical offices in Poland. He then moved to Emden in northwestern Germany, working to improve local education. Laski returned to Poland in 1541, affirming on oath that he was an orthodox Catholic. But when he returned to Emden, he openly broke with Catholicism and became superintendent (Protestant bishop) of the churches of East Friesland. He opposed the pro-Catholic religious settlement (the Augsburg Interim) imposed on Germany in 1548 by the Emperor V and accepted the invitation of the Anglican Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury to settle in England. There he became superintendent of the congregations of foreign Protestants (mostly German and Dutch) settled in London. After Queen Mary I restored Catholicism in England (1553), he returned to Emden. In 1556 he went back Poland, where he attempted to unify the growing but disunited Protestant groups with a religious system based largely on the theology of John Calvin. Laski’s influence had much to do with the Calvinist theology of most Polish Protestants, who remained an influential minority, especially among the aristocracy, until the 17 th century.
LASSUS, ROLAND DE
Also Orlando di Lasso (ca. 1530-1594). Composer and musical performer. Born at Mons in the southern Netherlands, he studied music there. His beautiful voice was so admired that he was kidnapped three times by patrons who wanted his services as a singer. In 1544 he travelled to Italy in the service of the Spanish viceroy of Sicily. In 1552 he became choirmaster in the church of St. John Lateran at Rome. Called home by the illness of his parents, he remained in the North after their death and settled in Antwerp. Eventually Lassus became a chapel singer in the service of Duke Albert V of Bavaria at Munich and remained there for the rest of his life. More than a thousand of his compositions survive, covering every contemporary genre except instrumental music. This number includes more than 500 motets and 60 masses and other liturgical music. He also composed musical settings for Italian-language madrigals and for poems by several contemporary French poets. The diffusion of his compositions in printed form enhanced his reputation as the greatest composer of his time.
LATERAN COUNCIL, FIFTH
(1512-1517). The last general council of the Western church before the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation. It was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II in order to eclipse a schismatic council convened at Pisa (also in 1512) by King Louis XII of France, the Emperor Maximilian I, and a number of dissident cardinals. The goals of the Lateran Council were to restore the unity of the church, to end warfare among Christian powers, to organize a crusade against the Turks, to extirpate heresy (the Hussite heresy in Bohemia), and to reform church and society. After the death of Pope Julius in 1513, the new pope, Leo X, continued the council.
It was a splendid gathering, marked by sermons delivered by famous humanist preachers and advocates for moderate reform of the church, and it was well attended, though the overwhelming majority of the bishops attending were Italians, who in general backed papal authority. Under the even-tempered Pope Leo, the dispute with the French king that had caused the convocation of the rival body at Pisa was settled by the Concordat of Bologna (1516). Although the Lateran Council endorsed the Concordat, no French delegates came to take part in its final sessions. The ordinary diocesan bishops hoped to secure greater authority within their dioceses, to restrict the special exemptions granted by the papacy to the mendicant orders, and to create a college of bishops sitting permanently at Rome to look after their interests, but they made very few gains.
As for reform of worship, the council advocated preaching of the Gospel guided by the interpretations of the ancient Church Fathers and the medieval doctors of theology—that is, pretty much the status quo. It noted that the new art of printing created a potential danger to orthodox faith and morals and commanded local bishops to supervise the press in their dioceses. University professors of philosophy were required to uphold the church’s traditions on topics such as the immortality and unity of the soul, the unity of truth (that is, that truths taught by reason must conform to the truths taught by religion), and the creation of the world.
These latter requirements in effect made the doctrine of the soul’s immortality and the creation of the world by God dogmas of the Catholic faith rather than just the doctrine traditionally held by the faithful. They were directed against the secular, non-religious interpretation of Aristotle and his ancient and medieval commentators by professors in Italian universities, such as Pietro Pomponazzi at Bologna. Although later defenders of the record of the pre-Reformation church have rightly pointed out a number of conciliar measures encouraging reforms of doctrine and practice, the council failed to prepare the church to face the Protestant Reformation, which broke out little more than six months after the council’s adjournment.
