MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE

Chapter Forty Two

The Renaissance : A Return to Classical White Measures

The word renaissance literally means "rebirth" - and the period of White history to which this refers, beginning in 14th century Italy and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th and 17th centuries - was just that.

It is no coincidence that this "rebirth" accompanied the end of the Church imposed Dark Ages: that the reformation in religious life not only accompanied the rebirth, but in many cases was its active cause. The rebirth that is referred to is not the Christian concept of rebirth: it in fact refers to the rebirth of study in and appreciation of the pre-Christian culture of the great classical world - that of pagan White Rome and pagan White Greece. Although some classical works such as those by Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and Seneca had been preserved by cloistered monks during the Dark Ages, the thoughts, designs and concepts were not allowed to spread out into the hands of the masses.

The Christians had a well justified fear of an anti-Christian undercurrent emerging if the knowledge of great works of art and academia predating the advent of the Bible were allowed into circulation.

Italy

The Renaissance began in the cities of northern Italy - significantly in those regions which had been occupied by the Indo-European Lombards, who moved into the area well after the original Romans had been extinguished through integration with the hundreds of Nonwhite nationalities who had filled Rome prior to the fall of that empire.

It was the presence of these Indo-European Lombards which gave northern Italy its pre-eminent position in the renaissance, and not the left over mixed race populations from southern Italy. The Lombards produced all of the famous Italian renaissance figures: Leonardo Da Vinci, Dante and Michelangelo, to name but a few.

Possibly the most famous and influential Lombard was however Christopher Columbus, who sailed under the flag of Spain, and who in 1492, was to precipitate the colonization of North America by the White race.

The role of the wealthy families of these north Italian cities in patronizing scholars and artists who pursued this rebirth of classical civilization must be acknowledged: without the financial backing of the Medicis of Florence, the Estes of Ferrara, the Sforzas of Milan, the Gonzagas of Mantua, and the dukes of Urbino, the doges of Venice, the Renaissance might not have been as widespread as it ultimately turned out to be.

Left to right: A Nordic nobleman from Verona, a sponsor of the Renaissance artists; Leonardo Da Vinci, a Nordic racial type, from a self portrait; and right, Nicholas Copernicus, another great scientist whose ideas were suppressed by the Christians.

Literature

One of the most significant changes brought about by the lifting of the iron death grip of the Christian church, was a realization that there had been life before Christianity. This was reflected nowhere better than in the sudden outpouring of historical literature, which for the first time since the supremacy of Christianity, did not take on the form of a branch of the discipline of theology.

A secular, or non-religious, world view, inspired the most famous history books of the time: The Twelve Books of Florentine Histories by Leonardo Bruin (1420); the Florentine History by Niccola Machiavelli (1525) and the Introduction to the Study of History by Jean Bodin (1566) exemplified this shift. These Renaissance historians rejected the Christian interpretation that history had started with the creation, followed by the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the anticipated last judgment. Renaissance historians started with antiquity, followed by the Middle Ages and then the golden age of rebirth in the time that they wrote.

This only became possible with the collapse of the power of life and death which the Church wielded: before the time of the reformation any historian committing this point of view to paper could quite easily have ended up being burned at the stake along with his or her writings.

Classical works were studied as great pieces of literature in their own right, and not just to justify Christian civilization. The interest in classical works caused a determined and ultimately successful search for classical manuscripts: the dialogues of Plato, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and the works of the Greek dramatists, poets were rediscovered and reached wide audiences once again.

Greek was even introduced as a subject at schools in northern Italy. In addition, the study of political science was started by Niccola Machiavelli (1469-1527), another a northern Italian historian, statesman, and political philosopher, whose most famous work, The Prince (written in 1513 but published in 1532) established him as the father of political science.

Great Artists of the Renaissance

The renaissance spread to all parts of Europe as the Dark Ages lifted. While it is impossible to do justice to all the great thinkers of that time, a partial listing of some the most prominent artists is well worthwhile:

• Giotto (1267-1337) was the most important Italian painter of the 14th century, whose conception of the human figure in broad, rounded terms, rather than in the flat, two-dimensional terms, was a milestone in the development of Western art.
• Michelangelo (1475-1564), was possibly one of the most inspired creators in the history of art. His most famous works included the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which he painted whilst lying on his back (a task which took him four years between 1508 and 1512 to complete). He was also the chief architect of the Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, where he altered an original design by Donato Bramante to redo the exterior and the final form of its dome. His large free standing nude, David (1504), is another icon of renaissance art, the largest marble statue sculptured since Roman times.
• Donatello, whose real name was Donato di Niccola di Betto Bardi (1386-1466), was a painter and sculptor who set the standards for all of his contemporaries, is considered one of the greatest sculptors of all time and the founder of modern sculpture. Donatello created the first free standing nude statue since Roman times, David, in 1435 in Florence. This statue was later to serve as the inspiration for Michelangelo's David. The other image for which Donatello is most remembered is the painting of the Singing Gallery (1448) in the Florence Cathedral - the images of the naked cherubim have become synonymous with cupids since then.
• Sandro Botticelli, whose real name was Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi (1445-1510), was one of the leading painters of the Florentine Renaissance. Botticelli, who was sponsored by the Medici family in Florence, was responsible for one of the most widely recognizable paintings of the renaissance: the Birth of Venus (1482). The heavily pagan undertones of this great painting speaks volumes about the non-Christian spirit of the Renaissance.
• Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1476), was an architect who broke with medieval tradition in Florence around 1420 with the invention of linear style by which enabled three dimensional images to be projected on a flat surface. Brunelleschi was an also won fame as the first Renaissance builder, designing the enormous dome of Florence Cathedral, which was built in 1436 - without any doubt the most impressive engineering feat since Roman times.

Left: David, by Michelangelo, 1504, Florence, Italy. Right: Donatello, Equestrian Monument to Gattamelata, Padua, 1450.

Great Scientists of the Renaissance

In medicine and anatomy, the ancient works of Hippocrates and Galen were finally translated in 15th and 16th centuries. These works were seized upon by the budding Renaissance era intellectuals, and advances based on these basic works allowed scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler to make real advances in their fields - the first in hundreds of years.

The study of geography was transformed when the maps of the Romanized Greek cartographer, Ptolemy, were unearthed - this led directly to the first great wave of White explorers who eventually went to the four corners of the earth.

The invention of printing in the 15th century revolutionized the accessibility of knowledge to those wishing to acquire it: the appearance of printed books not only served to broaden the circle of knowledge, but also changed the solitude of academic life in the previous era into joint effort which very often spanned countries.

The invention of gunpowder transformed warfare after 1450. For the first time city walls could be smashed down with cannons instead of besieging armies having to rely on catapults and boulders to do the job. The army of horses, knights, swords and bows and arrows was quickly outdated by soldiers with firearms: one of the most striking campaigns where this inequality became apparent was during a military campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The Nonwhite Ottomans had failed to keep up with the technological developments of the White nations, and with an old style army had attempted to ward off a newly armed White army - with predictable results.

The Ottomans also did not pick up on the advantages of the printing press: they only acquired one in the 1800's, three centuries after the technology had been developed in Germany.

Famous Renaissance scientists included:

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), was a Florentine artist who achieved fame as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His scientific studies in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics, anticipated many of the developments of modern science. His theories were often recorded in reverse mirror script out of fear of Christian persecution. In anatomy he studied the circulation of the blood and the action of the eye. He made discoveries in meteorology and geology, learned the effect of the moon on the tides, foreshadowed modern conceptions of continent formation, and surmised the nature of fossil shells. He was among the originators of the science of hydraulics and devised the hydrometer. He invented a large number of machines, including an underwater diving suit, the military tank (finally built during the First World War in 1917), the glider, the ball bearing and many others.
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), was a Polish astronomer, best known for his astronomical theory that the sun is at rest near the center of the universe, and that the earth, spinning on its axis once daily, revolves annually around the sun. This is called the heliocentric, or sun-centered, system. His theory was suppressed by the church at the trial of Galileo in 1633.
• Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), was a Danish astronomer, who made precise, comprehensive astronomical measurements of the solar system and more than 700 stars.

The astronomer Tycho Brahe pictured plotting the positions of the planets.

• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), was a German astronomer and natural philosopher, noted for formulating and verifying the three laws of planetary motion. These laws are now known as Kepler's laws.
• Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), was an English mathematician and physicist, considered one of the greatest scientists in history, whose discoveries and theories laid the foundation for much of the progress in science since his time. Newton was one of the inventors of the branch of mathematics called calculus (the other was German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). He also solved the mysteries of light and optics, formulated the three laws of motion, and derived from them the law of universal gravitation.

Galileo Galilei and Christian Anti-Science

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), was an Italian physicist and astronomer, who, with the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, initiated the scientific revolution that preceded the work of the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

Galileo developed the telescope, an early model of which he presented to the rulers of Venice: its value for naval and maritime operations resulted in the doubling of his salary and his assurance of lifelong tenure as a professor. In 1609, he built a powerful telescope with which he became the first person to see mountains and craters on the moon; the stars of the Milky Way and the four largest satellites of Jupiter. He published these findings in March 1610, in a book called "The Starry Messenger ".

By 1614, his work had been denounced as heretical by the church. In response, he wrote an open letter on the irrelevance of biblical passages in scientific arguments, stating that the Bible should be adapted to increasing knowledge and that no scientific position should ever be made an article of Christian faith.

This resulted in his books being seized by the church in 1661 and burnt. Undeterred, in 1632, he published his most famous work, The Dialogues, dealing with the fact that the earth revolves around the sun: the church put him on trial and under threat of torture compelled him to retract his views. In addition, the Christians sentenced him to lifelong imprisonment, later changed to permanent house arrest.

All copies of The Dialogues were burned, and the sentence against him was read publicly at every Christian university.

Religion

The Catholic Church at first tired to suppress the outpouring of interest in the pagan civilizations, with one of the Popes appointing a special Inquisition to try and crush the revival in pagan works. However, the irresistible tide turned even the majority of the most fanatical Catholics, and society at large became more secular.

With this, the repression of classical thought died away, and the Church instead tried to adjust to the new interests by positioning itself as the original champion of classical thought, pointing to the origins of Rome rather than the Christian religion. The writings of the Church fathers were then produced and added to the line up of works to be studied along with the pagan works: from this time the humanist approach to society had its origins, one that was to lay the basis for modern Christianity.

Turning Point

The Renaissance, along with the reformation, marked a turning point in the direction of European culture. It was the driving force behind the quest for new and better knowledge: a quest which led directly to the period of exploration, of sea voyages to far off lands and new lands, which in turn saw the Whites colonize North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, huge parts of Asia and parts of Africa.

Chapter 43

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