The Portable Renaissance Reader

Description

Essential passages form the works of more than 100 fifteenth-and sixteenth-century thinkers and writers, including Erasmus, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Bodin, Dürer, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Rabelais, Leonardo, Cellini, Copernicus, Galileo, Savonarola, Luther, and Calvin.Introduction
Suggestions for Further Reading (Revised, 1967)
Biographical List of Authors
Chronological TablePart One: An Age of GoldThis Our AgeWar and the Golden Age
Jean de Montreuil
The Turkish Menace
Cardinal Bessarion
A Bleak Prospect
Pope Pius II
The Golden Age in Florence
Marsilio Ficino
An Age of Gold
Erasmus of Rotterdam
The Restoration of the Gospel
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples
The Necessary Evils
Richard Eden
The Golden Age
Toquato Tasso
The Excellence of This Age
Loys Le Roy
The Evils of the Times
Justus Lipsius
Don Quixote and the Golden Age
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Return of the MusesThe Man of Letters
Francesco Petrarca
The Return of the Muses
Giovanni Bocaccio
Petrarca and the Art of Poetry
Leonardo Bruni
The Glory of the Latin Language
Lorenzo Valla
Germany Invokes the Muses
Joachim von Watt
The Arts Reborn
Giorgio Vasari
The New-Found WorldThe Golden World
Pietro Martire d’Anghiera
Joyful News from the New-Found World
Nicolas Monardes
Avarice
Luis de León
The Old World and the New
Michel de Montaigne
Tobacco, Tobacco
Anonymous
Part Two: The City of Man

The Pursuit of ProfitThe Prosperity of Florence
Benedetto Dei
Venice, Mistress of the Seas
Arnold von Harff
The Hapsburgs and the Fuggers
Maximilian I and Jakob Fugger
Jack of Newberie, an English Clothier
Thomas Deloney
Antwerp, the Great Market
Ludovico Guicciardini
The Dearness of Things
Jean Bodin
The Manner of the WorldLife in Vienna
Pope Pius II
The Plight of the French Poor
Cahier of the Estates General
Life among the English
Venetian Relazione
The Manner of the World Nowadayes
John Skelton (?)
A Painter’s Travels
Albrecht Dürer
The Peasants’ War in Tyrol
George Kirchmair and Michael Geismayr
A House in Venice
Pietro Aretino
Observations on the Turks
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq
The Judgment of a Witch
Fugger Newsletter
The Edifice of PowerThe Circle of Governments
Niccoló Machiavelli
A Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici
Francesco Guicciardini
The Balance of Power in Italy
Francesco Guicciardini
Henry VII, A New Monarch
Francis Bacon
Charles V and Philip His Son
Marino Cavalli
The Strength and Weakness of France
Michele Suriano
The Search for ProtectionOn Virtù and Fortune
Leon Battista Alberti
The Perfect Country House
Leon Battista Alberti
The Perfect Gentleman
Giovanni della Casa
The Relief of the Poor
Juan Luis Vives
The Reform of the Commonwealth
Thomas Starkey
War and the Law of Nations
Francisco de Vitoria
The Concord of the World
Guillaume Postel
Part Three: The Study of ManLearning of the Best SortThe Ruins of Rome
Poggio Bracciolini
The Restoration of Rome
Bartolommeo Platina
The Soul of Man
Marsilio Ficino
The Immortality of the Soul
Pietro Pomponnazi
The Life of a Scholar-Printer
Aldus Manutius
On the New Testament
Erasmus of Rotterdam
Pythagoras Reborn
Johann Reuchlin
Gargantua’s Advice to Pantagruel
François Rabelais
The Orphic LyreIn Praise of Poetry
Giovanni Boccaccio
Music and the Courtier
Baldassare Castiglione
A Complaint by Night of the Lover Not Beloved
Francesco Petrarca
On the Death of the Lady Laura
Francesco Petrarca
A Ballata
Angelo Poliziano
A Carnival Song
Lorenzo de’ Medici
Astolpho’s Journey to the Moon
Ludovico Ariosto
Love’s Justification
Michelangelo Buonarroti
To Vittoria Colonna: The Model and the Statue
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Mass of Love: A Spanish Ballad
Anonymous
A Sonnet
Luis Vaz de Camõ
Night of Stars
Luis de León
To the Moon
Pierre de Ronsard
Of His Lady’s Old Age
Pierre de Ronsard
Happy Who Like Ulysses
Joachim du Bellay
A Sonnet to Heavenly Beauty
Joachim du Bellay
Poor Loving Soul
Louise Labé
My Lute Awake
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Thou Blind Man’s Mark
Sir Philip Sidney
Weep You No More, Sad Fountains
Anonymous
The Theater of LifeOrfeo
Angelo Poliziano
A Theatrical Performance
Baldassare Castiglione
Lazarillo de Tormes
Anonymous
The Dignity of ManThe Dignity of Man
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Self-Portrait of a Universal Man
Leon Battista Alberti
St. Thomas More
Nicholas Harpsfield
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Ascanio Condivi
On Himself and His Life
Girolamo Cardano
Part Four: The Book of NatureThe Arts and NatureThe Art of Building
Leon Battista Alberti
Nature, Art, and Science
Leonardo da Vinci
The Casting of the “Perseus”
Benvenuto Cellini
On Landscape Painting
Karel van Mander
The Art of Paracelsus
Paracelsus
A Surgeon in the Field
Ambroise Paré
Anatomy and the Art of Medicine
Andreas Vesalius
The Health of the Mind
Girolamo Fracastoro
On Nature and Experience
Bernard Palissy
Revolutions of the SpheresThe Diurnal Rotation of the Earth
Nicole Oresme
The Nature of the Universe
Nicholas of Cusa
The Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
Nicholas Copernicus
The New Star
Tycho Brahe
Comrades in the Pursuit of Truth
Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler
The Starry Herald
Galileo Galilei
Part Five: The Kingdom of GodThe Congregation of the FaithfulThe Trial of Jerome of Prague
Poggio Bracciolini
The Unity of the Church
Nicholas of Cusa
The Election of a Pope
Pope Pius II
A Preacher of Reform
Girolamo Savonarola
Savonarola, A Portrait
Francesco Guicciardini
The Lutheran Revolt
Alfonso de Valdés
An Anabaptist View of the Church
Peter Rideman
An Appeal to the Council of Trent
Reginald Pole
The True Kirk and Its Signs
John Knox
Freedom of the WillOn Free Will
Erasmus of Rotterdam
The Bondage of the Will
Martin Luther
Free Will and Predestination
John Calvin
True Christian PietyThe Brethren of the Common Life
Thomas a Kempis
Members of One Body
Erasmus of Rotterdam
The Faith of a Christian
Martin Luther
The Self-Knowledge of a Christian
Juan de Valdés
The Fervent Spirits
Pietro Paolo Vergerio
The Livery of Christ
Hugh Latimer
Good Christian Discipline
John Calvin
The Lord’s Labour
St. Teresa of Avila
The Obscure Night of the Soul
St. John of the Cross

Acknowledgments

James Bruce Ross was a medieval scholar who contributed to The Portable Medieval Reader and The Portable Renaissance Reader.

Mary Martin McLaughlin (1919-2006) was a medieval scholar whose work focused on often overlooked subjects of the period, such as the roles of families. She attended the University of Nebraska and Columbia University, and also taught at both Wellesley and Vassar. Most notably, she contributed to The Portable Medieval Reader and The Portable Renaissance Reader.US

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