Okay, good morning. So today uh this morning we are doing the Renaissance. Specifically we are asking the question how the Renaissance how did the Renaissance start? Because the Renaissance was a re was an intellectual revolution in uh Europe that would ultimately change the fate of Europe. Okay guys, um the Renaissance was a re-imagining of classical Greece in a Christian European context.
Okay, so what the Renaissance is going to do is combine classical Greece with Christian Europe and it's going to create modernity. All right. So the ideas um the values that underpin modernity, the world we live in today starts with the Renaissance. Okay. So the question we are looking at this morning is how did the Renaissance start?
Okay. And there are lots of very different theories and what scholars today believe is it was a perfect storm of cultural historical economic trends. Okay. So let's look at the main factors. The first is the decline of consenapole.
So for um hundreds of years consenapole was the epicenter of European culture. It is the here to the Roman GO Roman legacy. But as the Ottoman Turks start to encroach on Bisantine territory um a lot of the scholars a lot of the major thinkers of bison empire they start to shift back to Europe and they bring with them Plato Aristotle okay so that's one major factor the crusades the crusades remember we discussed last class it was a time when Europeans encountered the Muslim world um at mass and as a result they absorb a lot of the culture culture and politics of the Islamic Golden Age. Then there was a fact that in Italy you had many different citystates in competition with each other and we as we discussed in many classes before when you have that you have something called open cooperative competition which leads to um innovation. Okay.
Also, what's really important for us to remember is that because these city states were always at war with each other, everyone was a participant in history. Remember, if you are a if you are in an imperial bureaucracy, if you're a bureaucrat, you can sort of stand outside of history and observe history. But if you're a participant in history, then you are fighting wars. You're a participant in politics. Okay?
you're always thinking about the relevance of your theory to reality. Um, the three major city states of Italy that will give rise to Renaissance are Florence, Venice and Genoa. Venice and Genoa are known for their slave trade. Okay? So, they're trading slaves with the Muslim world.
And through this trade they're bringing back uh the books, the ideas, the values of the Islamic world into Europe as well because of this trade and commerce. Um these three cities states become extremely wealthy and that allows them to patronize the arts. Um so you have the rise of a merchant elite in Florence. The family is called the medi. Okay.
Why this is important is um previous elites were either of the warrior class or the priest class. If you're a warrior class, you win your legitimacy by fighting the battlefield. If you're a priest, your legitimacy comes from God or the gods. But if you're a merchant elite, the question then is where does your leg legitimacy come from? And so because of this question, the medi are forced to patronize a lot of the arts.
they will patronize uh individuals including uh Dainci, Raphael, Michelangelo, basically the major artists of the Renaissance. Okay. Um at this time from 1305 to 1378 there actually two popes in Europe. There's a crisis of legitimacy and authority in the Catholic Church. Uh the pope moves to Avanon and therefore the pope doesn't really have authority over Italy.
You also have um the rise of universities and monasteries. Universities and monasteries are places of theological debate and discussion and they store the classics and this is where a lot of new ideas will um come from. And then uh the last factor uh to think about is in 1440 around then um a man named Gutenberg he will invent the printing press and the printing press allows for the rapid dissemination of literacy and knowledge. Okay. So what scholars believe is um these various factors will coalesce into the renaissance and mark an intellectual revolution in Europe.
All right. Now, the thing that you um uh will remember about my teaching in this class is I disagree with scholarship. I think there's one factor that they're missing out and it's the main factor in the creation of the Renaissance. I believe I will argue to you today that Dante, the divine comedy, is what ultimately sparked the Renaissance. without Dante the Renaissance this revolution would not have been possible.
Okay. So this class I'm going to present you the scholarly mainstream argument and then I will present my argument which is that Dante is most responsible for the Renaissance. Okay. Um some a basic fact that we need to remember. If you look at all the major figures of the Renaissance, okay, including Raphael, Galileo, um Pocachio, uh Michelangelo, okay, the person who was born the earliest is actually Dante.
Okay, in 1265. So that is a good clue to suggest that perhaps it was Dante that sparked the Renaissance that he's the uh secret sauce that made the Renaissance possible. Okay. And throughout this class I will make you uh this argument. But first let's go just go over through the scholarly mainstream argument.
Okay. So um first thing to remember that is that before the renaissance Europe was was connected with Africa uh Asia and the Middle East through these dense trade networks. As we discussed previously the three main uh city states that are involved in global trade are um Venice, okay, Genanoa and Florence. Venice and Jonoa are the ones who benefit the most from this trade because they are by the coast and they're the ones that mo that are most strategically located to benefit from this trade. Okay.
And this trade mainly slave trade actually uh so Genanoa and Venice will engage mainly in slave trade. Florence will not engage in slave trade. It will engage main in wool. Okay. Wool.
Um so this is Venice and the slave trade made Venice extremely prosperous. This is Florence in around the 15th century. Okay. So um one thing to remember about Italy at this point is that it is divided into waring city states. Okay.
And as a result they're always in competition with each other. They're always at war with each other. And as we discussed previously, this scenario will drive innovation in Europe. Okay, mainly commercial innovation. By the by about the year 1000, as we discussed last class, Europe um is now prosperous and they are engaging in commercial trade.
The problem is how do you facilitate trade, right? So, for example, if England has a lot of cotton and then France has a lot of um bananas, what if England doesn't want bananas? Well, England and France cannot trade with with each other. So, the only way to get around this is by creating a currency that everyone wants and the currency that everyone wants is gold. So, in Florence, they create something called the gold floren, which is the currency of uh Florence.
But because it is so um prestigious because it's mainly gold everyone wants it and so the gold floren becomes the currency of European trade and the family that most benefits from uh the status of the floren is the medi medi family. Okay. So this is kasumo the basic basically the founding patriarch of the family. And so what he will do is he will pull the resources of rich people in Florence and to create a bank meaning if you're a merchant you can borrow from uh this bank and what he will do is he will set up branches all throughout Europe in order to facilitate and underwrite European trade. Okay.
And obviously he gets a cut of all this trade and as a result the Medachi family become tremendously wealthy and they create the Medi dynasty. From this family four popes will emerge. Okay, four popes will emerge. They will eventually take over Floren and create their own monarchy. As we discussed, if you're a merchant family, you have a legitimacy problem.
You didn't uh win the title. you didn't win your wealth on the battlefield. You don't represent God. All you all you have is a lot of money. So in order to legitimize themselves, they will go on a massive spending spree in order to make Florence the cultural capital of Europe.
Okay? So they will first of all fund these massive agricultural projects. Uh the most famous church in Florence is called the Santa Maria de Fore. It's still there. You guys can still visit it.
It's the fourth largest church in the world. It's absolutely stunning. Okay, here's here's another view of the church and the city of Florence and it's still there today. If you fly to Florence, you will still see this picture. Okay, it is incredibly well preserved.
This is what inside the church looks like. All right. They will also patronize um artists. the most famous artists of this time were patronized by the Medishi family. So, Michelangelo um was actually lived with the Med M Medi family for a while and of course he's most famous for a painting called the creation of Adam which we which we will discuss.
Okay, the creation of Adam is also famous for the statue of David. All right. You also have Dainci who is considered the um archetypal Renaissance man. If you when you think of the Renaissance, you think of Dainci. Okay.
Okay. So, uh these are some of his paintings. He is a remarkable genius. He is what we call a polymath, which means that he dabbles or he's interested in every single field of human knowledge. the sciences, philosophy, poetry, art, music, everything.
And he takes all these different disciplines and combines them into his art. Okay, this is one of his most famous paintings, the last supper. And this painting I will show you is a work of genius. Okay, so later on we will actually discuss the last supper, but first I introduce it to you here. Um this is the school of Athens by Raphael.
Um one one of the most famous paintings in the world. You also have uh Velli um Donatello um and again these are um the most famous artists of the Renaissance and the Meduchi pigiz every single one of them. Later on in this class, we'll actually discuss these paintings. But um as the medics are patronizing uh art and culture in Florence, the printing press is being invented by Gutenberg in Germany. And the and the printing press, it marks a revolution uh of literacy in Europe.
Okay, this is a picture of what a printing shop looks like. Okay, so um think about this. So the printing press first arrives in Venice in 1469. Uh only 30 years later there are 417 printing presses in a city. Think of these as publishing houses.
All right. Um in the first 50 years there are 20 million volumes of books that are printed in Europe. So the printing press is a uh revolution of literacy and knowledge in Europe that democratizes knowledge. Everyone now has access to Plato, Aristotle, the Bible. And what they're reading are some of the major thinkers of the Renaissance.
So in in terms of poetry, there are three major uh poets. There's Dante, there's Petro and there's Bokachio. All right. You also have uh Nicolo Makia who we still read today. Um his most famous work is called the prince and the prince is really one of the first political treatises in the world.
The question then is how do you best govern um a state? And today we we remember the prince for its strategy for its almost amoral strategy on how to rule a state. What we need to remember is that Mcaveli himself during this time he was a startant democrat. He believed that the people needed um to have a say over the fears of Florence and as a result he came into contact with the Meduchese who tortured him. Okay.
But he wrote the prince in order to raise awareness about politics. He believed that if we are to have a well functioning republic then everyone needs to understand how politics works. Okay. And then you also have from Florence uh Galileo who uh we will discuss u next week. He is the father of science.
Okay. So these are the major thinkers of the renaissance. um the philosophy, the value system that underpins all this artistic production is the idea of humanism. Okay, so what is humanism and how is it different from um Christianity? Okay, so these are the three major differences guys.
Okay, so let's let's look at them. If you're a Christian, the Catholic Church for the longest time struggled with what is the nature? What is the idea of God? Okay. And humanists concern themselves with what is the story of humans.
Okay? Do you guys understand? This is the major revolution in the intellect uh brought on by the Renaissance. a transition from a focus on ideas to a focus on stories. Second major difference is Christians always ask how do I save my soul?
How do I ensure that I go to heaven? But humanists ask how do I flourish? How do I make the most out of my talents? How do I have the best possible life on earth? Okay, so the Greek word is udimonia.
All right. So, humanism is actually a return to the values and belief systems of classical Greece. Now, last major difference is um Christians always ask how can we best serve God? How can we best obey God? But humanists ask how do we achieve goodness?
How do we make the world we live in today beautiful and truthful? Okay. So these are the three major differences that separate Christians from humanists. And what this will and what humanism will represent is a radical re rein reintor sorry reorientation of focus from the afterworld into the here and now. Okay.
Christians care about what happens in heaven. Humanists care about what happens today. How do we make the most out of today? How do we make the world a better place? Okay, does that make sense to you guys?
All right. So, having said that, let's understand concretely how this transition happened. It happened mainly through art. Okay. So the main transition transition uh to emphasize is a transition from a focus on ideas to a focus on stories.
So what do I mean by that? Okay, let's look at some classical Greek sculptures. If you look at some Greek sculptures, the thing that stands out is the motion, the tension, the emotion in the sculptures, right? There's a story being told. You can almost feel that this person is alive and thinking.
All right? You can almost go into this person's character. It's a story. This sculpture is actually even more obvious. Right?
Within the sculpture, there's a story taking place. It's almost like you're watching a movie. And what your mind does when it's looking at the sculpture, when it is in conversation with the sculpture, it is imagining what happens before and after. You are making the sculpture alive with your imagination. Okay.
So that's classical Greece. By the time we hit medieval Christianity, the very concept of art changes. It becomes more of an idea. Okay. So this is this is from the Carol Legian Renaissance.
Okay. So, basically the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire. And as you can see, the artwork, it's much more static. Okay. There's not really a story here.
What's being conveyed to you is an idea. You don't really have to imagine what's going on because there's really no space for you to imagine what's going on. Okay. So the main artwork during the medieval uh Christian period are stained glass windows. So you go inside a church and you see pictures on the windows and what these are are almost like visual aids.
So when the priest is talking about the stories of the Bible, he's using these um pictures to illustrate his point because remember at this point most people are illiterate because of these stained glass windows. The effect that is created um in the observer is blinding and awesome. Remember these are windows and they're high up in the church. So the light is coming through. It makes the pictures wholly illuminated with light.
It's awesome. You're forced to send back, but it's also blinding. Blinding just means that it's hard for you to imagine what's going on. The purpose of these um of this artwork is to make you submit before the power of God for you to understand the awesomeness of God. Okay?
Does that make sense? You're not here to participate. You're here to submit. All right. So, as you can see, this is a church.
You can see how the light comes in and it blinds you, right? And it's hard for you to really participate in the artwork. So, this is the idea of medieval Christianity. The idea that you through artwork you are trying to represent the eternity, the awesomeness, the mystery that is God. All right.
By the time we hit the Renaissance, the attitude is completely different. Okay. This is Da Vinci's The Last Supper. And from blinding and awesome, we go to compelling and curious. What this means is compelling means that you are drawn into the picture.
All right? Why? Because of death. Okay? Meaning the picture moves backwards and it moves forwards.
And because of this motion, you are drawn into the picture. Look at this table, right? Look at this table. It's not a complete table. It's too much too small for 13 people to eat.
It's much too thin. Right? So what your eye believes is this table is expanding outwards and so you are part of this picture. Does that make sense? Okay.
And also it's curious because clearly within this picture there's a lot of tension. You see how these different groups are in discussion. Okay? And they're all focused on Jesus. So this is the picture the artwork of the last supper.
In the last supper which appears in the Bible Jesus reveals that someone has betrayed them. There's someone uh his name is Judas Escarid. He has betrayed them to and um the next day Jesus will be arrested and he will be crucified. And once Jesus announces this, everyone um becomes anxious. Is it me?
Is it me? Am I the betrayer? Okay, there's a lot of tension in this uh picture. And as you can see, it's a radical departure. This very painting is a radical departure from medieval Christian art.
If you look at previous medieval Christian art, okay, below, um first of all, it's much more static. It's much more organized. There's not that much tension in the picture. And what's most important is the idea of holiness. You see this hollow surrounding each person in the picture, right?
It shows you that these are divine figures. What le Leono Dvanchi has done which is very important is he's taking really he's really taken out of the hum he's really taken out the humanity in the picture. There are no hallows. What's left is the humanity. Okay.
These are first and foremost humans not divine figures. Okay. So this is another picture previously. So there's much more detail but as you again as you can see not as much tension, not as much uh drama as in the vin da Vinci. All right.
And this is the most recent. Okay. This is the most recent. Now in uh this uh artwork, Judas Escarid stands out from the rest and so that signals him as the betrayer. But in Da Vinci's work, it's not obvious who is the betrayer.
Everyone is um afraid that he or she is the betrayer. Okay? And then this and what this does is it forces you to investigate. It forces you the observer to observe the details in in order to figure out who is who. All right.
What's amazing about this picture is the focus on human anatomy, facial expressions, right? You see the tensions in the neck, you see the hand gestures. So what um Da Vinci believed is that the hands the hand motions they are a window into the soul of a person. Okay. You want to understand how a person thinks you see how he or she uses the hands.
Okay. And you can see how the hands are all in different motions which signifies different personalities, different thoughts inside that person. And again you're forced to investigate. All right. You can see the anxiety, the stress, the drama in each of the faces.
Da Vinci was first and foremost an astute observer of emotions. Okay? How emotions are expressed through the face, through body tension, through breathing, through the eyes. Um the man who is who will ultimately responsible for the betrayal is Judas Escarat and you can see how Dante subliminally sorry sub with subtlety emphasizes his betrayal right okay so you can see how he's darker than the other individuals so he's turning away from the light he's betrayed God by turning away from the light okay also um in his hand he's clutching some civil coins. Okay?
And you can see his neck. His neck is being empas emphasized. Why? Because all the tension in his neck. Okay?
He can't breathe. Everyone else is anxious. You're talking. But he cannot bring himself to talk. So all the tension is captured in his neck.
Okay. All right. So you see all the subtlety here. Right. Okay, something really fun about um the the Last Supper is it becomes the basis for a very famous book called the Da Vinci Code.
And then and the Da Vinci Code is a very popular book, no scholarship, it's just made for entertainment. What it argues is that Jesus did not die um um sorry Jesus died but before he died he married his lover who is Mary uh Mad Mageline. Okay. And so this picture becomes one of the sources for the book. So um previously scholars have believed that this person is one of the apostles but when you look at him okay it turns out she's it's almost a she right okay and if you look at how Jesus and this person is stationed it creates an M shape right an M can mean but it stands for their closeness together so Um people speculate that these two are married and by doing this what Dante is really emphasizing is the humanity of Jesus.
Jesus is first and foremost a human. Okay. So this is this is interesting guys. Okay. Scholars don't really agree with this analysis but it becomes the basis of the Da Vinci Code which is a really fun book.
All right. Something that um scholars do believe is the mathematics. So if you look at where the hands and the bread are and you map it onto a music sheet, you can actually play the music. Okay? It's designed to be musical.
Also, look at the configuration. It's a 3 three one 33 configuration. Okay? It turns out if you look at the Bible and you look for the passage 33133 you get this quotation in Lamentations, okay, in the Bible it says, "For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone." And so the idea here is that God will always love you. God is love. God is incapable of hating you. Okay? He will always find a way to forgive you.
And if you remember from last semester, this is the very idea of the divine comedy. Okay? Leonardo da Vinci is getting this idea from Dante. And this idea is the backbone of the last supper. Jesus knows he's been betrayed by Judas Escariat.
But look at him. Okay, let's go back and look at him. He's calm. He's reassured. He's already forgiven Judas Escariat.
All right, there's no hatred in him. There's no anger. The anger and the hatred um is everyone else. All right, so that's the last supper. And as you can see, it is heavily influenced by uh Dante.
All right. This is the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa. Um, it has captured the imagination of millions of people. Millions of people every year will go to France, the Lou to stand in line just so they can spend 10 seconds to look at this picture. Okay.
What makes this picture remarkable is it's secretly alive. When you Donnie spent 16 years crafting this in a way that by just talking with it by moving around in conversation with it, it becomes alive. So when you just look at it directly, Mona Lisa isn't really doing anything. She's just smiling. Sorry.
So this she's she's she's neutral in her expression, right? But if you turn away from her, what happens is this. What happens is she starts off a smile. Okay. She starts have a smile.
So your eyes play tricks on you. When you move away from the picture, what happens is your prefer perfume revision still picks up the picture but the expression is different. Okay. So this is the central version. We just look at her directly.
But as you move further away from her, she smiles. Okay. So what what is this saying? What this is saying is the art is alive if you engage with it. Okay?
Art is not meant to be blinding and awesome. It's meant to be here and now. Only if you participate in the art does it become alive. Only when it becomes alive does it it does it achieve its true meaning. Okay.
So this is the Mona Lisa. All right. Let's look at the school of Athens by Raphael. Um the the actual name for this painting is actually not school of Athens. It's actually called philosophy.
And the reason why is it was commissioned by Pope Julius II of the Vatican in order to decorate his papal apartments. So if you go inside his apartment paper apartments today, there are four major fresco paintings. The first is called philosophy and then right beside philosophy is called religion. Okay. So religion and philosophy balance each other out.
They are dependent on each other. And then across the wall are two more paintings. Poetry and law. All right. So that's the very ideal of um the Renaissance.
Open-mindedness exploration and holistic learning. All right. So let's look at this painting. First of all, at the very center are two figures, Plato and Aristotle. How do we know?
Because you're holding two books. This is a Timus by Plato where he discusses um the realm of the forms. Remember before in class we discussed Platonic philosophy, right? And how um Plato conceptualizes heaven. God is a form of the good and then from the good will will will emanate um concepts truth beauty justice which will then give rise to perfect forms okay and so this is um argued in his book Timus Aristotle his most famous book is called ethics how to lead a good life what's amazing about this picture is you can see that these two are having a debate so uh first thing is Plato is pointing upwards Okay, he's what he's saying is the real world what matters is heaven and what Aristotle is saying no what matters is down here on earth.
Okay, Aristotle is concerned about um earthly matters. Also look at their uh colors. So Plato is wearing white and red. White symbolizes air. Red symbolizes fire.
Right? These are spiritual colors. But Aristotle is wearing blue which signifies water. And then he's also wearing brown which signifies the earth. Okay.
So they're having this debate and this debate is as we discussed previously it is what underpins the debate within western philosophy even today. Okay. Now, what's amazing is that as the two are walking, all right, they're splitting the world into two, right? There are there are those philosophers who support Aristotle and they focus on earthly matters and then there are people who support Plato who focus on spiritual matters on discovering the secrets of the universe. All right.
Aristotle is concerned about um everyday science on uncovering the secrets of a reality. Okay, so they're split into two and as you can see there is depth to this painting. Okay, there's a sky to the back. There are these arches and so it's extending forward and so we're being drawn into the picture. That's the power of depth and perception.
Um this is Pythagoras. Uh you will know him from from Py Pythagoras uh theorem. But he's first and foremost a spiritualist. He's concerned about mysticism. He's concerned about um God.
Uh this is Uklid, okay? Who is the one of the inventors of geometry, right? And here he's focused on using science, using logic, using deduction to teach his students. You also have in the picture many different personalities. You have Zorastaster who is the founder of Zoroastronism.
Okay, the religion of Persia. You have Tammy who uh investigated how uh the planets move. All right. And as you can see uh Zoraster, can you see this picture clearly? Okay.
This is more clear. Zoroaster is concerned with the heavens, with spiritual matters. Tommy is concerned with the earth, with all reality. All right? So, this is Raf acknowledging that there are two different realities.
There's the material reality, but then there's also a spiritual reality, and they're both important. All right? Now, what's amazing here is that Raphael, this is Raphael, actually. This is a self-portrait of Raphael. He will actually engage in the conversation he will listen in.
He will insert himself in the painting. Okay. Now remember that Christianity focuses on the idea of humility on self- negation or removing himself from the world. But Raphael is reinserting himself into the world and celebrating his curiosity, celebrating his humanity. Okay.
And where does he get this idea from? From Dante, right? Because Dante makes himself the hero of the divine comedy. He makes himself the focus of the divine comedy. And to go back to the conversation between Plato and Aristotle, look at this.
Okay, this is a visual repres representation of the divine comedy because remember in the divine comedy, Virgil and Dante are engaged in a vigorous debate about the nature of love, of the nature of sin, right? Okay. So, this is representing the divine comedy. The structure is the same as divine comedy. They're al also as they walk from purgatory uh from from infernal to purgatory they're also talking to other historical figures as well right so this is directly inspired by Dante does it make sense to you guys okay so this is Raphael okay so not only does Raphael insert himself into the picture he also inserts his friend Michelangelo.
Okay, this is Michelangelo. Michelangelo is known for being reclusive. He's known for not enjoying the company of others. And Michelangelo here is conflated with another historical figure, a philosopher named Heracitis, who is also known for not enjoying the company of of others. Okay.
So, this picture just shows you the immense diversity of human thought and human personality. It's a sub celebration of what it means to be human. Okay. So these paintings leave us with a fundamental question. All right.
We can now see the radical differences between Christian art and Renaissance art. So now the question then is how did Dante spark the confident self-exloration and triumphant self-expression of the Renaissance? If you look at the art, it is confident. uh it is triumphant. Okay, it's celebrating what it means to be human.
And what I will show you now is what he will do is he will re-imagine our relationship with God which is a fundamental question of Europe at this time. Okay. So most people they're grappling with three major questions especially intellectuals. The first question is what is God? Okay.
What is the idea? What is the nature of God? Second question is what is the nature of the relationship between God and humans? What did God create us? What is our responsibility to God?
Okay. And the last question is how can we best worship God? Meaning how can we best ensure our divinity? How can we best ensure that we will rise to heaven? All right.
So these are three fundamental questions underlying Christian society at this point. All right. So um you can take these three questions and just ask one question really which is why did Jesus had to die? Why was Jesus crucified? Okay, this is the crucification.
Okay, why is it that the son of god, the messiah had to die? And this idea was first um understood and discussed by Paul. Okay. And Paul's idea is this. God created us and gave us paradise.
Okay, this is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But because we were arrogant, because we were proud, we wanted to become God. We wanted to eat that fruit from the tree of knowledge, which would which would make us like God. And because we disobeyed God, God had no choice but to banish us from the Garden of Eden. Okay?
And so why did Jesus have to come to earth and sacrifice himself? Because um without God, we humans can only commit more and more sin. So to redeem us and to beg for forgiveness from God, Jesus came down and sacrificed himself. Okay? And the sacrifice um made God relent and forgive us.
And so now we are cleansed of our sins and now we can begin a new. Right? That's the idea that Paul is presenting. Why Jesus is the Messiah and why he had to kill himself. The problem though is as Christianity grows and grows, the divinity of Christ, the divinity of Jesus expands.
Before he was just a human who was favored by God, then became a son of God. But by the time of a man named Totilian who lived about the second century, he argued for the holy trinity which is that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are separate but equal. Jesus is God. Okay. Now you have a problem.
Now if Jesus is truly God then why did God have to kill himself? We can understand if Jesus is the son of God. Jesus kills himself to um beg for his father's forgiveness. That makes sense. All right.
But if Jesus is God, then why did he have to kill himself? Okay, this this this is now causing a lot of confusion. So another Christian theologian by the name of origin um origin. Okay, so this is the trinity, right? By the name of origin, he his explanation is something called the ransom theory.
All right. And the theory goes like this. When we were cast off from the garden of Eden, we became uh subject to Satan, the devil. We became slaves to the devil. Remember, it was it was Satan, the devil who tempted Eve to eat that food, right?
And when she ate that food, she now swears allegiance to devil. We are now slaves to the devil. We are now his property. So the only way for God to redeem us is by ransoming ransoming us from Satan by offering something so valuable that Satan is willing to make a trade. Right?
So what did God offer? God offered his life. The trick though is that God cannot be killed because God is eternal and perfect. So God tricked Satan. But what's really important to understand is this.
Before we were slaves to Satan, but by because God made this trade, we are now slaves to God. Okay? We are now slaves to God. And this very idea will be expanded and elaborated by Augustine in order to create the industrial blueprint for the Catholic Church. All right, this idea of the ransom theory.
All right. So remember the city of God um Augustine will say certain things and it's really important for us to remember what he said in the city of God. Okay. The main idea is that we because God ransomed us we are now his slaves and therefore we must obey him. We must submit.
All right. So let's go over what he says. Augustine first thing he says is when man lives by the standard of man when we trust ourselves when we use our imagination when we use our intuition and not by the standard of God. The son of God is to submit to him to obey him. He is like the devil.
Okay, you understand? When we when we use our imagination, when we use our intuition, we are like Satan at our core is the essence of Satan. It is only by submitting ourselves to God that we are freed from the influence of Satan. Okay? Could anything but pride happen the start of the evil will?
Why did we disobey God? Why did we eat that fruit? Because we want to become God. So there's an arrogance. There's a there's a pride to us that is the essence of Satan.
Okay? Satan fell from heaven because of his pride. We if if we just trust our nature, we will also fall like Satan. His was a venial transgression when he refused to desert his life's companion even though the refusal to entail companionship in sin. Eve was tempted by the devil.
But Adam ate the fruit because of his love for Eve. Therefore, love can only misguide you. Love can only trick you. Love can only lead you to an evil path. Okay?
Do not trust your intuition. Do not trust your imagination. But most importantly, do not trust your love of others, especially woman. Okay. The will derives its existence as a nature from its creation by God.
It's falling away from its true being is due to its creation out of nothing. Okay. So, why are we like the why are we like um the devil? Why can't we trust ourselves? Because we were created out of dust.
We were created out of nothing. All right? If we're an angel, we're created by God and therefore we are perfect. But because we're created out of dust, we are inherently flawed. Okay?
So, we must not trust ourselves. We must refuse who we are. We must deny who we are and submit ourselves to the glory that is God. All right? We see the two cities were created by two kinds of love.
The earthly city was created by self-love, reaching the point of contempt for God. When we love ourselves, we disobey God. And that's what explains the world we live in today. This world is evil because of our pride, because of our self-love, because of love for others. But the heavenly city by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self.
When we deny who we are, when we submit fully to God, we can create a perfect world. We can achieve heaven. Okay. So again this is the very idea um for the Catholic church self-denial self negation. Okay now you can think about this and understand now why the Islamic world raced ahead of Europe because in Europe people were paralyzed.
People were afraid to do anything because they couldn't really trust themselves. Okay. And but the eventually the contrast between the Islamic world and the European Christian world was so great that even the Catholic Church had to admit there were problems with the theology of Augustine. Okay. If you ask people to deny who they are and to com submit themselves completely to the power of the church, it leads to corruption, stagnation and inequality.
Okay. So there are some major reforms undertaken by the church in response to this. Uh one major reform are the creation of the university system. So this is the University of Paris which is chartered in 1200. This this today is called the Saborn.
Okay. Which is the most famous um university in France and in Europe basically. Um one of the most famous professors of theology at the University of Paris is Thomas Aquinus. And the Thomas Aquinus, he's a saint in the Catholic Church. His importance is he's trying to revise Augustine for um a Europe in conflict with Islam.
Okay. What what he's really trying to do is he's trying to take the pure Platonic world of Augustine and combine it with Aristotleian science and logic and reason. He's trying to combine faith and reason. Okay? And um so he's trying to update the Catholic Church, but ultimately he doesn't succeed.
And the reason why is people don't really understand what he's trying to do. Also, Augustine has been in power for like centuries. And so he's really become part of the culture, the male of Europe. Okay? He's in the air, you breathe.
That's the power of culture. The man who will ultimately free Europe from the grass of Augustine is actually Dante. And Dante will do so by for through his poetry. For his poetry, he's going to reimagine the human relationship with God. Okay.
So in divine comedy, he will make certain assertions. The first major assertion is this. Okay guys, let's read together. The greatest gift to to the magnimity of God as he created gave the gift most suited to his goodness gift that he most prizes was the freedom of the will. Okay.
So what this is saying is this when God created us to show his generosity to show that he's perfect to show his goodness he gave us the gift that only God can give us the gift that he most prizes which is the freedom from him. Right? You are of God but now you are free of God. You can do whatever you want. All right.
So that's one of the central ideas of the divine comedy that what makes us fundamentally human is freedom of the will that we can choose the life we lead. Right? All right. So let's let's study the divine comedy. Uh this is this is going to be KTO 7 of paradise.
And in this conto, Beatrice, remember they're both in heaven. Beatrice and Dante are engaged in a intellectual discussion. The question that they're trying to figure out is why did Jesus have to kill himself? Okay, remember before Paul suggested it was to redeem us from the original sin and then origin and then uh or um um origin suggested the idea of the ransom theory. Okay.
Um God had to redeem us. ransom us from Satan. Now, what's it what what DA is going to do is he's gonna propose a new theory and this new theory is going to radically reimagine our relationship with God. Okay. So, so let's look at this very closely.
You say, this is Beatress talking to Dante. What I've heard is clear to me, but this is hidden from me. Why God wield precisely this pathway for redemption? Okay. Okay.
God wants to save us. But why did God have to kill himself? That's a question here. That makes no sense. Okay?
If you're not if you're non-Christian, it's almost impossible to explain to someone else who is not a Christian why Jesus had to die. Right? It makes no sense. Brother, this ordinance is buried from the eyes of everyone whose intellect has not matured within the flame of love. Okay?
This and Petus is making this argument which is like you can only understand this if you truly love someone. It's only through love that you can acquire wisdom. You can acquire empathy and imagination. Right? The godly goodness that has banished every envy from its own self burns in itself and sparkling so it shows eternal beauties.
Remember last semester we discussed the nature of God. God is love itself. There can be no hate. There can be no envy. There can be no blemishes within the nature of God.
Okay? All that derives directly from this goodness is everlasting. Since the seal of goodness impresses an imprint that never alters. So God when God creates, what he creates is also perfect. Only man's sin man's liberty makes him unlike the highest good.
So that in him the brightness of his light is dimmed. Okay. So God is in us. God is the light that burns in us and allows us to love others. When we love others, the bright the brightness burns brighter.
The light burns brighter. Okay, that's how we celebrate God by loving others. We also have the freedom of the will. Okay, so these are the two things that God has given us. freedom to choose, freedom, freedom to lead the lives we want to to to live and as well as the power to love and to imagine.
But these things come in conflict when we choose to do bad. When we choose to disobey, when we choose to commit sin, we are turning away from God and therefore dampening the brightness in us. Okay? We are purposely stuffing out the flame in us. And man cannot regain his dignity unless where sin left emptiness man fills that void with just amends for evil pleasure.
Okay. So when you commit sin you must make amends. You must force yourself. You must choose to go on the proper path and make amends. But for when your nature sins so totally within its seed then from these dignities just as from paradise that nature parted.
Okay. Sometimes you could commit a sin that's so terrible the light leaves you. And that's when we disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. That sin, the original sin was so terrible that Adam doomed all his progeny to darkness. Okay?
And they could never be regained if you consider carefully by any way that did not pass across one of these two fords. Okay? So how do we forgive? How do we ask for for forgiveness? Okay, there are two possibilities.
Either through nothing other than his mercy, God had to pardon man or of himself, man had to offer payment for his father. Okay? So there are two ways for us to get that light back in us to redeem ourselves in the eyes of God. The first way is if God just forgives us. If God says, "I'm total I'm perfect.
I'm total perfectness. I forgive you because that's what I do. I forgive you to show mercy. That's one possibility. But when he does that, the problem is we've learned nothing.
We haven't grown. Okay. Another possibility is if we figure out a way to redeem ourselves, if we make amends, if we give God all the gold in the world, okay? But because our crime was so great, because we denied the love of God, nothing we do, nothing, there's nothing we could give God that would redeem us from our sin. Okay, that's a conflict here.
That's a paradox. God cannot forgive us because if he did so, we would not grow and learn. And there's nothing we can do to uh redeem ourselves in the eyes of God because our crime was so great. So that's the paradox. man his limits could not recompensate for no obedience, no humility he offered later could have been so deep that it could match the heights he meant to reach through disobedience.
Men lack the power to offer satisfaction by himself. We want to kill God. That was the original sin. We wanted to eat that fruit, become God, and then kill God and become God itself. That's the greatest crime.
So, how can you redeem yourself? How can you ask for forgiveness if the crime is to kill God? Right? For God showed greater generosity in giving his own self that men might be able to rise than if he simply pardoned. Okay?
So for thousands of years, God had to think of a way to redeem us, to forgive us, but at the same time ensure we would not do anything like this ever again. Okay? And the path he chose was to sacrifice itself. For every other means fell short of justice except the way whereby the son of God humbled himself when he became incarnate. Okay.
So I'm going to use a metaphor to explain this idea. It it's a very it's not a great metaphor, but I think this will illustrate what Beatric is saying here about God. Let's just have a daughter named Eve. I have a f favorite dog named Johnny. I love Johnny and I love Eve.
I love both. Okay. And I say to Eve, "Johnny is my favorite um dog. You're my favorite favorite daughter. I love you both." Eve, because she's young and she's stupid, she decides, I only want my father to love me.
So Eve purposefully kills my dog, Johnny. All right. Now, what do I do? I'm Eve's father. If I just say, "Eve, don't worry about it.
You're young. It was a mistake." Eve is probably going to go hurt someone else, right? I have to teach her a lesson. But if I hit her or I punish her, then that might suggest to Eve I don't really love her. It doesn't make sense.
That's a paradox here. That's that's a conflict. And so what I choose to do after many weeks of intense thinking is I choose to punish myself on behalf of Eve. Okay? I take a bat and I hit myself or I take a whip and I hit myself and my hand is bleeding and Eve watches this and you can see that when Eve sees this, she has to cry.
She has to cry and feel remorse for what she uh did and she also cries because she knows I truly love her. Okay, so that's what Peter is saying here. God loves us so much that he's willing to do everything in order to teach us to be better human beings. Okay. That's the power of God.
All right. All right. So, the conversation continues and this story makes sense, but it's also going to create a lot of problems. Okay. One major problem is if God created us and God loves us, why are we making mistakes?
Why are we dying? Why are we in pain? Okay. And this is what Peter says. You say, I see that water, see that fire and air and earth and all that they compose come to corruption and endure so briefly.
Okay. So in this world, there is death, there's dying, there's pain, there's suffering. Why is that? And yet these two were things created. If what has been said above is true, then these things never should be subject to corruption.
If whatever if whatever God creates is perfect, then things shouldn't die. Right, brother? The angels in the pure country where you are now, these may be said to be created as they are in all their being. Okay? Yes, it is true that God created everything in this world.
But there's a problem. There's a difference. Whereas the elements that you have mentioned as well as those things that are made from them received their form from accredited power, the matter they contained had been created. Just as within the stars that wheel around them, the power to give form had been created. The rays and motion of the holy light draw forth the soul of every animal and plant from matter able to take form.
Okay. So what this is saying is this. God did not create animals and plants. God created the laws of the universe. He c the atoms the essence that would give rise to animals and plants.
And so they're not perfect. Okay. The laws are perfect. The holy light is perfect but not the creation from the holy light. And this creation was meant to die so that new creations can come out.
Okay? Right? When a animal uh dies, the atoms break away and then a new form comes into being. Okay? That's the law of the universe.
So that's perfect, but not the animals and plants are perfect. But your life is breathed forth immediately by the chief good who so ammers it of his own self that it desires him always. Okay. So now the question then is if animals and plants aren't perfect what are humans then right? So okay and this is what she says.
So reasoning you can also can deduce your resurrection you need but remember the way in which your human flesh was fashioned when both of the first parents were created. Okay so this is the trick you have to remember this animals and plants are created from the laws of the universe which God created. Angels are created by God uh himself and therefore the angels are perfect. We humans have a dual nature. We are both created from the laws of the universe and we are both created by God itself.
All right? Because when God created Adam, God created him from out of dust. Okay? But then what God did was breathe life into him. So the essence of God is within Adam and therefore us.
Our bodies are mortal but our souls are immortal. Our souls have the essence of God which is love. The more we love, the more the light burns in us. And as light burns in us, it will allow for our resurrection. Okay?
because the matter will regenerate. The soul is eternal. Okay. So that's what Dante is saying here. The best way to celebrate God is by loving others.
When you love others, you are activating your imagination. You are learning wisdom. You are gaining experience and that will only cause the light to grow. Okay. So even though going back to the story of Eve and my dog, even though I'm hurting myself, okay, I am using my tremendous imagination in order to come up with this plan in order to redeem my daughter.
And because of this imagination, I'm developing wisdom and this light in me grows stronger. Right? So that's the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to celebrate God by celebrating God in you. By loving someone else so wholeheartedly that your imagination, your wisdom grows and grows so that your soul becomes eternal.
When it becomes eternal, it will always be resurrected in the world and your soul will remember the love inside you and it will continue to grow and grow. Okay, this is why God created us because if God if you are perfect, okay, if you are perfect, you are incapable of imagination by definition, right? Because you can make you can make no mistakes because we are we are the dual nature. We are both body and soul. We can make mistakes.
We can ear. And in this process, we develop we develop experience and wisdom which allows us to love and to have imagination and to have wisdom. Right? All right. So, let me use an everyday example that you've experienced in order to illustrate this point.
Let's think of think about two teachers. A teacher who loves his or her students and a teacher who does not love his or her students. Okay, what's the difference? All right, so there are three major differences. The teacher who loves students or is asking himself or herself, are my students learning in my class?
Are they growing as people? Whereas another teacher might be like, "Are my students getting good grades?" All he or she cares about are test scores. Right? That's the first major difference. The first teacher who loves you cares about what what is happening inside you.
What the teacher who doesn't love you only cares about pleasing parents. Okay. Second difference is this. The teacher who loves you are asking are my students working hard? Okay.
because only by working hard can you learn. The second teacher is asking students do students like me? Okay. The teacher wants you to write a good good evaluation at the end of semester. Okay.
Right. And then if you write a good uh evaluation the teacher might get a raise or some reward. Right? And then the last difference and this is the most important difference is this. A good teacher who loves you is always asking am I growing personally and professionally?
Am I growing as a person? All right? Because if you're growing, then I'm growing. And if I'm growing, then you're growing. That's the power of love.
Okay? When you love others, you're actually loving yourself. And that's how God designed it. But if you're a teacher who does not love, then you always asking how much money am I making? That's how you measure your success in life.
Am I making a lot of money? If if I'm making millions of dollars a year, then that means I'm the I'm the best teacher in China. Okay? But a really good teacher who's capable of love, who loves teaching and who loves his or her students is always asking, "Am I growing?" Because if I'm growing, then I know my students are growing. Okay.
So that's so that's what Dante is saying here about love. Meaning that we have the intuition, we have the power to know true for ourselves because God made us made us this way. Okay. So, um, something I want you to remember from this class is the Italian Renaissance was really just another it's it's reimagining the Greek civilization. Okay.
And as and these are the two major periods of tremendous creativity in Western Europe. Right? So let's look at the similarities to understand how creativity happens in civilization. Okay. So the first similarity is um classical Greece had open cooperative competition.
Okay. So ideas could flow freely. That's the first major similarity. Second major similarity is in classical Greece they transition from linear B which is very complicated um idographic language to the alphabet. Okay.
The alphabet just transcribes the written the spoken word into the written word. This allows for massive literacy and the transfusion of knowledge in Greece. And the idea here is if you're truly to be a creative society, you must be egalitarian. You must allow anyone to learn, everyone to express his or her um ideas, which is what the Renaissance did. Okay.
Um the Italian Renaissance was supported by the fact that they transitioned from Latin to the vernacular to spoken language. It was Dante who allowed this transition to happen. Okay. Dante purposefully chose not to write in Latin even though Latin was the official language of the intellectual class in Europe at this time. He purposely chose to write in Tuskin which is a local language.
And because he did that he made Tuskin first of all the official language of Italy. They still speak it today. But it also makes divine comedy accessible to common people which was the intention. Okay. And the third similarity and this is most important is the perfect storm of factors don't really matter unless you have a great poet, a great thinker, a great intellectual to create the spark to ignite your civilization.
Okay. So in Greece they had Homer and we we today we can think of Homer as the father of civilization. In in the Italian Renaissance you had Dante. You can think of him as the father of modernity. The values that he creates, the values that he expresses in divine comedy will become the basis for modernity.
Especially the idea of individuality of humanism. Right? What is individual? An individual is someone who celebrates himself and pursues his or her curiosity to explore the world and in this process create goodness in the world to create truth and beauty. This is the idea that will underpin the renaissance and which still underpins western modernity uh today.
Okay. So that is my argument to you. Okay. Great. So um the ultimate message, the ultimate secret of the universe that I want you to remember, okay?
And both Homer and Dante express this in the poetry is this. Love is the unifying force of the universe. Okay? Love is God. God is love.
It's what unites everyone. Okay? By loving someone else, you can become that person. That that person can become you. And the imagination is the animating force.
Okay. What gives life to the world is not God but our imagination. By imagining the world, the world becomes alive. So the greater our imagination, the more alive our imagination becomes. And this idea is most visually expressed in the painting the creation of Adam by Michelangelo.
Okay, this is Michelangelo um the creation of Adam. And so this goes back to the story of how God created Adam. Uh God created um Adam out of dust and he breathed the essence of life into Adam. Okay. Now there are two ways of looking at this painting.
Okay. There are two ways of understanding the title the creation of Adam. You can first understand it in the typical way which is that God created Adam and that they are equals. Okay. You can see that these two worlds the Adam and God they're almost equal.
We are equal to God. But then you can change perspective and you can say the creation of Adam really means God is Adam's creation. God is what we created from our imagination. All right? Now you can see God um is surrounded by his angels.
Okay? But you take them away and what do you have behind them guys? This is a picture of the human brain. Right? Do you see this?
Okay. This is a stem. Okay. And this is the human brain. Okay.
You take them away and hidden behind is the human brain. Right? Which means what? Which means that God is an emanation from our imagination. Okay?
Not the true God. The true God is like light itself, right? Love itself. Okay? But this God has given us the capacity to imagine.
So we've imagined another god to um take place of the real god. Okay, do you understand? So the real god is the human imagination, the human brain, the human mind. That's what gives life to the universe. Okay, so this if you think about it, it is a radical revolution in human intellectual history.
Do you know where this painting is? This painting is on the top of something called the Cine Chapel in the Vatican. It's at the very heart of the Catholic Church. So what Dunning has been able to do is destroy an empire peacefully through the power of poetry, through subtlety, through the power of love. Don was able to influence Michelangelo who was able to take his ideas and then plant his ideas within the very heart of the Catholic Church and thus reinvent the Catholic Church.
That is the power of love. That is the power of the imagination. Right. Great. Okay.
Any questions? Okay. So think of some questions. Um next class we will do the Protestant Reformation. Okay.