Rowland: Cultural Introduction to Renaissance Rome

To visit Rome, is akin to looking at "striations in an ancient rock."  Rome had it's birth and it's rebirth with the underlying theme of  Roma Caput Mundi, "Rome, head of the world."  (Lucan)  The writer Petrarch wrote in 1367, "Although when I first...went to Rome, almost nothing was left of that old Rome but an outline or an image, and only the ruins bore witness to its bygone greatness..."  The papacy, humanist philosophy, and Renaissance Rome changed all of that.

What gave new Rome the inspiration to rise out of the ruins described by Petrarch were the humanists serving the Curia as its clerical staff.  The re-builders of Rome believed that their work answered a higher calling, that of God.  They felt the scattered ruins had their own mystical powers.  The humanists, theologians, and artists who worked to rebuild Rome as the caput mundi carefully investigated the "divine order in all its forms, a revelation of Gods plan.  With the papacy returning to Rome, inspiration was drawn, in all aspects, from the ancient Roman Empire, from which examples could be found throughout the city.  "As these stories of papal imperium and republican revolution prove repeatedly, the brooding presence of the ancient ruins gave Renaissance Rome's sense of its distant past an urgent physical immediacy."  (Rowland)  Romes ancient past met with a creative present.

By the end of the sixteenth century, construction had become Rome's chief industry, luring architects, painters, sculptors, and other craftsman to it borders.  The humanists turned language into a powerful, persuasive form of speech - rhetoric.  Its goal was to persuade and included techniques for presenting a viable case.  "Only the beauty and emotional charge of ancient rhetoric paid adequate tribute to the beauty of Christian theology."  (Cortesi)  It seems that a refined language and refined building would demonstrate to the world the Christian truth.

Nicholas V undertook the task of creating the Vatican Library.  This would have been supported by the humanists.  It stood as a memorial to ancient Roe and as a testament to Rome's rebirth.  It was organized in humanist fashion:  philosophy, law, poetry, and theology.    Sixtus IV completed the plans and commissioned the Ghirlandaio brothers from Florence to decorate it.  The library lived up to it's intent - an "apostolic institution, an explicit instrument of Christian mission"  (Rowland)