My Perspective on the Story of the Northern Renaissance

 Introduction

In this module, we learned about the Northern Renaissance. This version of Renaissance took us out of Italy, and brought us to the greater Europe with a entirely different situation. The Northern Renaaissance, in difference to Italian Renaissance, is focused on religious problems, but within these religious problems, hidden were the political shadows, just like the text of Chapter 14 described, "The spread of Italian Renaissance ideas to the north was in many respects political rather than cultural."(Cunningham 325) Speaking of this spread, was the Italian art influence to the countries like Germany and Netherlands, the development of music, and of course, The Protestant Reformation. That is the main element which raised the Northern Renaissance into a complete version of what we see today.

My Selected Question

Portrait of Martin Luther(1529),
 by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The Protestant Reformation, without doubt, was the important part throughout Northern Renaissance. It's very interesting to me that from a historical perspective, whenever we imagine the Renaissance, it is this very grand celebration with all the spreading of new ideas, but with Protestant Reformation, it becomes complicative, because this event is not really a celebration. With this idea forward, I would choose to look into the question 2 from Chapter 14, "What were the principal causes of the Reformation? What was its impact on the development of the arts?"(Cunningham 353)

Surely the causes, if we could take a moment and think, we'll get a pretty close answer, which were the Catholic corruption, but deeper, as well as other elements such as political conflicts like we mentioned before, "In short, many related economic and political factors fed the impulses of the Reformation."(Cunningham 329) The step of the Reformation is also possible because of one man's ideas—Martin Luther, and his challenge to the Catholic authority. The spread of the Reformation caused art in the Northern Renaissance to have a different theme. Arts started to have angle toward religion, which were addressing the occurring Reformation.

Impact of Reformation

One of the representing movements of the Reformation, was the conflict between Protestants and the Catholics. In short, the core was that the Protestants did not agree to the old rules set by the Catholics. My selected JSTOR article "The 450th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation: A Catholic Celebration?" also proposed the same, "Primary to Luther's religious view is the fundamental truth that man's justification, man's salvation, is a free gift of God's grace, received by man through faith; it is not the human works of man which make him just in the eyes of God, he insists, but the acceptance through faith of God's gracious act in Christ by which he has justified us."(Anniversary 9)

In this direction, I also want to use lines from the famous film, Kindom of Heaven. In the scene of Baldwin IV's last moments, his bishop asked him to confess, "Your confession, my lord."(Baldwin IV's Confession, 0:20-0:23) Baldwin responded right back, "I shall confess to God when I see him, not to you."(Baldwin IV's Confession, 0:24-0:31) Director Ridley Scott cleverly used these few lines to reflect Catholic rules and Protestant ideas, in which he also used Baldwin to represent Protestant spirit. Baldwin, who was not at all a Protestant in 12th century, but still he carried free ideas nonetheless. After all, in address to the main theme, "What is the role of religion?" I would say after this lesson that the role of religion is to expand opinion, reflect on flaws, and question the bound set by authority.

Baldwin IV's Confession: Cut scene from Kingdom of Heaven. - Youtube - By capequod

Works Cited

“Baldwin IV’s Confession: Cut Scene from Kingdom of Heaven.” Www.youtube.com, 7 Jul. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2IOKO4BKk. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

Reich, John J, and Cunningham, Lawrence. “Culture and Values. Volume 2.” Belmont, Calif., Wadsworth; Andover, 2013. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

SCHUMACHER, JOHN N. “The 450th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation: A Catholic Celebration?” Philippine Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, 1967, pp. 592–608. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42720242. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

Wikipedia Contributors. “Martin Luther.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.