Renaissance and

theology in a manner entirely coherent with the way come to power in Milan in 1450. Basing the necessity to
Piero treats the Resurrection and other great themes launch the "Platonic revolution" on the exigencies of
from the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ. For the neo- the "diplomatic revolution," and steering the difficult
Platonists of this period, Christ's redemption saved course of the "d!plomatic revolution" with the
the universe together with man, just as the San- scientific authority of neo-Platonic epistemology,
sepolcro landscape is transformed by the Easter Cosimo de' Medici acted against linear "logic" to
dawn. When man becomes conscious of his own create the conditions for the next historical phase of
divinity (creativity), he overcomes his difference development: the actual emergence of capitalism in
towards his own nature, and then his diffidence the l6thcentury.
towards the world also vanishes. Epistemology and
psychology are thus the indispensable bases for the Medicean Florence
development of natural science.
As "political cartoon," the Sansepolcro Resur- As the hegemonic European center of banking and
rection, which was made as the city emblem, unde- commerce up through the end.of the 15th century,
niablycelebrates this smalltown's becominga partof Florence under Cosimo and his descendants
the most advanced city-state in the world and, on a necessarily became the crossroads for commodities
larger scale, represents the change in conception of and ideas. Particularly after the fall of Constantinople
what one man can do which was catalyzed by the suc- to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and the contemporaneous
cesses of Cosimo de' Medici. The tomb -- the Holy invention of printing in Germany, the Florentines'
Sepulchre, Sansepolcro in Italian -- is the fixed ref- ability to deliberately foster this cross-penetration, to
erence point around which the painting proclaims the constantly submit new predicates to the rigor of
triumph of life over death. Simultaneously in Flor- inquiry from the standpoint of the universal, conence,
Cosimo was revolutionizing the content of what tributed to the "Florentine genius." In art, each
had been previously conceived of as foreign policy and significant advance was marked by the introduction of
What had previously passed for "Humanism." In the new contingencies -- coming from Venice, from
former sphere, he immediately began taking steps Flanders, from Germany and more far-flung trading
after the Anghiari victory to lay the basis for an al- partners -- which often arrived on the scene through
liance with Milan (the Peace of Lodi, 1454) which Medici banking associates who sent paintings home
would guarantee peace and expanding economic from distant branches of the establishment. It was as
markets on the Italian peninsula for the next 50 years the acknowledged intellectual center of Europe that
-- but which went against the grain of the early 15th landlocked Florence throughout much of the 15th
century's stubborn "republican" battle by the century was the home of the greatest theoretical
Florentines against Milanese despotism. In the latter, advances in geography and navigation, as Portuguese
the hard-headed banker Cosimo brought to Florence specialists sent their manuscripts there for
Gemisthos Plethon, the most famous Greek of his publication in Latin and came themselves for hightime,
and through his influence determined to finance level consultations.
the education of his physician's son, Marsilio Ficino, It should be emphasized that the pre-eminence of
to bring all of Plato's works to the Latin West. Medicean Florence in the Renaissance generally, like
The overwhelming reality which determined the the great formal achievements of Leonardo da Vinci
diplomatic revolution, however, is not to be located and his contemporaries, did not emerge as a bolt from
within the Italian peninsula at all. Cosimo was keenly the blue but arose from historical conditions which
aware that Constantinople was on the verge of falling made Florence unique. Florence was one of the last of
to the Ottoman Turks, and that the West could -- and the great Italian medieval communes to flourish in the
would -- do nothing to stop this calamity. His strategy 13th century -- much later than Milan and the other
involved seizing the valuable markets of the East, great communes of the Lombard plain. But where
about to come under Moslem rule, away from what Milan, for example, had developed in a number of
had been Venetian domination. This required, in turn, areas of craft manufacture and retail trade, none of
legitimizing a world-outlook under which Islam could which ever went beyond the 'scale of the small
be tolerated. The connection between this necessity workshop, Florence almost from the beginning
and Cosimo's crash program in reviving Greek benefited from the communes which had preceded it
philosophy -- the positive core of both Christian and to operate on the scale of a world market.
Islamic theology--canhardlyhavebeenaccidental. The key step in this process was Florence's
Cosimo simultaneously used the "new learning" he hubristic creation in 1252 of its own gold coinage for
Sponsored in Florence to win intellectual hegemony international trade, the gold florin -- an act officially
over the condottiere Francesca Sforza, whom he forbidden by the Holy Roman Emperor who, ho.wever,
transformed into a Renaissance prince and helped to. lacked the political power to enforce his displeasure.
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