第三章：文艺复兴中的宗教与政治

原书及其作者：Jerry Brotton 的 “The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction”，大主题，小开本。文艺复兴对于欧洲，是从不假思索的中世纪世界中出离的年代，它就和现代性本身一样复杂。

系列上一篇：The humanist script｜文化

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Chp3 Church and state

p59 The rise of political organizations like the sovereign state created the need for new intellectual and administrative skills to organize political structures and successfully challenge the authority of institutions like the church. …… It also shows how politically strategic humanists like Valla were prepared to be when new opportunities beckoned. …… From the late 15th century political organizations increasingly came to control the everyday lives of many people. The wealth and administrative innovation that accompanied the uneven commercial and urban expansion of the 15th century created the conditions for significant political upheaval and expansion.

• 前文提到过，一系列战争的结束以及贸易的发展交汇，使得时代的财富开始（不平衡的）空前累积，这也同时使得各路不同的政治势力开始兴起（sovereign state）。它们要寻求控制居民的生活和财富，这就不可避免的要与教会的控制力量产生争夺，同时它们也需要大量新的理论知识、新的管理技术，来论证自己的定位和实现自己的政治控制。

p59 This story helps us to understand the complex interrelation of the religion and politics of the Renaissance. Between 1400 and 1600 religious belief was an integral part of everyday life. It was also impossible to separate religion from the practice of political authority, the world of international finance, and the achievements of art and learning. As the Catholic Church struggled to assert its temporal and spiritual power throughout this period, it faced perpetual conflict, dissent, and division.

• 在文艺复兴（14-16世纪）以前的中世纪欧洲（5-15世纪），宗教始终都是极其重要的社会角色，宗教即身份，宗教即政治，宗教即知识与艺术——社会与政治均无法与宗教分离。“世俗事务”和“宗教事务”的区分要等到宗教改革年代（16-17世纪）才开始出现。
• 在比文艺复兴更早的11世纪（1054年），基督教经历东西大分裂（the Great Schism）产生了东正教和天主教两个分支和它们之间几百年的分合恩怨，宗教对社会的强大一元控制已经开始崩解，到了文艺复兴年代就不稳定更甚，直到宗教改革（the Protestant Reformation）（1517年）横扫欧洲，形成了今日的天主教、东正教、新教格局和政教分离、信仰宽容等等重要原则。

An orthodox marriage

• 在东正教和天主教彼此敌视的几百年里，弥合分歧、重新统一的努力始终都在，但这一节的重点不在这里，在于宗教的东西分治某种意义上反而促进了东西方（欧洲和中东）诸多政治、文化，与商业交流上的努力。而文艺复兴的繁荣，很大程度上就源于交融。

The masses

p65 In practice, the most enthusiastic public interest in religious observance revolved around what one historian has called a passionate ‘appetite for the divine’. The ‘miracles’ of the sacraments were often interpreted as magical acts, and led to the adoption of a range of popular practices, from the fervent worship of relics, saints, and images to the superstitious use of holy water, the Eucharist, and holy oil. Although such magical practices went against religious orthodoxy, the church often turned a blind eye to such transgressions, eager to sustain the mystical power of the church and its authority.

For most people, the church provided a ritual method of living day to day, rather than a set of rigid theological beliefs. The sacraments of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and extreme unction provided rites of passage through crucial moments in an individual’s life. As a consequence, many people only went to church once or twice a year, and court records reveal remarkably low attendances, as well as profound ignorance on basic points of religion.

• 虽然一直强调宗教在中世纪的社会生活中有着多么重要的角色地位，但是真正着眼普通人的精神生活，其实与现代的差别也没那么大。教会给人们提供廉价可及的心理安慰，愉快有趣的故事，统一的生活仪式、社交规范、道德框架。在VSI专门介绍宗教改革的那本书里也提过这一话题，就是要说普通民众对于高层次的宗教理念完全麻木也不合适，但确实这些和社会组织息息相关的方面才是普通人最关注的基本盘。

Building the Reformation

• 宗教改革的冲动从中世纪长久以来的教会体制中脱胎，它的直接引爆点正是已经在僵化腐坏的路上滑行了很久的中世纪教会为了筹资修建圣彼得大教堂而发行赎罪券（Indulgence），导致一位普通路过的修士，马丁・路德（Martin Luther），愤而贴出了他平平无奇的95条论纲（95 theses），就此拉开宗教改革的大幕。

Printing the Word

p71 Humanism and printing lay at the heart of the rise and spread of Luther’s ideas. Luther and his followers utilized humanist training in philology, rhetoric, and translation to produce a theology based on ‘the Word’ and ‘Scripture alone’. …… Earlier challengers to papal authority had little ability to circulate their ideas to a wider audience, but the technology of the printing press allowed Luther to disseminate his ideas in thousands of printed books, broadsides, and pamphlets.

• 文艺复兴学者奉行的人文主义训练给了路德扎实的理论构建和辩论技巧，而路德本人也抓住了印刷术这一与文艺复兴紧密关联的新技术的无穷潜力。他的神学理论和译制的白话圣经风行欧洲。

p74-75 These conflicts also changed the shape of Renaissance art. As the papacy in Rome sensed the erosion of its political power, it responded with even more lavish displays of art and architecture in an attempt to reaffirm its authority. …… The frescos in the Salon of Constantine, with their towering popes, warring factions, and dramatic scenes of papal authority are aggressive, mannered, and anxious responses to religious and political change. The printed ‘word’ from the north was triumphing over the towering monuments and glorious frescos of the south.

• 新教的强势兴起对罗马教廷的势力版图造成了巨大的影响，宗教版图的变动也更复杂化了当时，经济变化导致许多势力此消彼长的政治版图。很多文艺复兴时期的作品就产生于这些冲突之中，比如感到威胁的罗马教廷就委托艺术家创作了很多凸显他们神学教诲的作品，《创造亚当》就是一例。

The empire strikes back

p78 By 1600, Europe had changed beyond all recognition from the illdefined collection of city states and principalities that made little reference to the entity of ‘Europa’ in 1400. Nation states and emerging global empires set the political agenda, and the fluidity of religious encounters and exchanges between east and west had hardened into the programmatic belief systems of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. This signalled the birth of the modern institution of the state and the concomitant rise of nationalism. The great imperial powers of Europe would go on to claim most of the newly discovered globe over the next three centuries. But the legacy of the period was also a series of seemingly irresolvable religious and political conflicts in regions as diverse as Ireland, the Balkans, and the Middle East, whose origins lay in the collision of church and state that first took place in the Renaissance.

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原书信息：Brotton, Jerry, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Sept. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192801630.001.0001