Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance PDF
Preview Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance
MEN AND IDEAS History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance MEN AND IDEAS History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance Essays by Johan Huizinga Translated by James S. Holmes and Hans van Marie Meridian Books, Inc., New York JOHAN HUIZINGA Johan Huizinga was born in Groningen, Holland, on December 7, 1872. After taking his doctorate at the University of Groningen he taught history in Haarlem, then at his alma mater, and finally—from 1915 to 1942—at the University of Leiden. Huizinga was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp; owing to Swedish intervention he was released but exiled from his books and students in the small town De Steeg near Arnhem. He died there on February 1,1945, a few weeks before the total liberation of his country. He has been known in English-speaking countries for four books—In the Shadow of Tomorrow, Homo Ludens, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and The Waning of the Middle Ages. Men and Ideas is the first of a series of Meridian Books editions of further translations from the large body of Huizingcts work. 1VI First published 1959 First printing 1959 Second printing April 1960 © Copyright 1959 by The Free Press, A Corporation. Introduction by Bert F. Hoselitz © copyright 1959 by Meridian Books, Inc. Translation © Copyright 1959 by Meridian Books, Inc. Translated from texts in verzamelde werken (1948- 53), H. D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-7177 Manufactured in the United States of America. Contents INTRODUCTION BY BERT F. HOSELITZ 9 L HISTORY The Task of Cultural History 17 Historical Ideals of Life 77 Patriotism and Nationalism in European History 97 n. THE MIDDLE AGES John of Salisbury: A Pre-Gothic Mind 159 Abelard 178 The Political and Military Significance of Chivalric Ideas in the Late Middle Ages 196 Bernard Shaw’s Saint 207 m. THE RENAISSANCE The Problem of the Renaissance 243 Renaissance and Realism 288 In Commemoration of Erasmus 310 Grotius and His Time 327 notes 343 371 INDEX OF NAMES MEN AND IDEAS History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance INTRODUCTION by Bert F. Hoselitz A look at a portrait of Johan Huizinga might lead one to think that he had been a successful Dutch lawyer or business man rather than one of the foremost innovators in history which this century has produced. His face is placid and open and has an air of ease and serenity. There is nothing intense about his features and though his expression reflects a thoughtful mind and moral force, it does not appear to be that of a man of quite uncommon creativity and imagination. Huizinga’s life was almost as commonplace as his outward appearance. He comes from a long line of steadfast Mennonite preachers. He was bom on December 7, 1872, in Groningen, where his father was professor at the university. Huizinga obtained his doctor’s degree there in May 1897, his studies having been mainly in the field of Indo-Aryan philology. After graduation from the university he secured a teaching position in history at a high school in Haarlem, where he remained eight years. Then he was called as professor of history to his alma mater and in 1915 he was appointed to the chair of general history and historical geography at the University of Leiden, the leading institution of higher learning in the Nether lands. He held this position until 1942, when the university was closed by the occupying authorities of Nazi Germany. Throughout the first period of the German occupation Huizinga had maintained an intransigent attitude in favor of academic freedom and the rights of his fellow countrymen. He was therefore arrested and imprisoned in the concentra tion camp at St. Michielsgestel. Huizinga was then nearly seventy, suffering from poor eyesight, and as a consequence of the deprivations of German rule, from poor health in general 9 10 MEN AND IDEAS Owing to a Swedish intervention on his behalf he was released from the concentration camp in October 1942, but he was not permitted to return to his home in Leiden. He was exiled to the small village De Steeg near Arnhem, where he produced his last works separated from his friends and pupils and d*e prived of his books. The last winter of the war, 1944-5, was especially hard. Holland suffered from an acute shortage of food, and De Steeg became for a time a spot in the front line. Early in 1945 Huizinga became ill, and died on February 1, without having lived to see what he had wished and worked for so intensely: the liberation of his beloved country. The outline of Huizinga’s life betrays nothing about the peculiar quality of his work or the nature of his contribution to history and social science. And even if we had included the many honors that he received in his lifetime and appended a list of his main works, they would have given only very scant indication of the flavor of his writings. In 1933, two days before Hitler’s ascent to power, Huizinga delivered a lecture in Berlin in which he discussed the position of the Netherlands as a cultural mediator between Central and Western Europe. In this lecture he tried to explain this intermediary position of Holland by its participation in two and perhaps three national cultures. Linguistically—and for a long time politically—Holland was a part of the Germanies. Its economic ties with the Hansa towns was strong, and in more recent times it formed a bridge between the industry of the Rhineland and overseas. But Holland also has close ties with France. Its membership in the Burgundian state, which was an offshoot of France, established close political ties with the French monarchy. In the sixteenth century Holland re ceived many Huguenot refugees who settled there permanently. In the last decades of the old regime it was often visited by poets, artists, statesmen, philosophers, and scientists from France. Holland’s ties with Britain were more tenuous, but despite several wars between the two countries in the seventeenth century, Britons were prominent in Amsterdam as traders, visitors, and often residents. The Dutch were thus in an ex cellent position to absorb and integrate elements of several national cultures to fashion a civilization into which many of the best foreign elements—from Germany, France, Britain, and even Holland’s former enemy, Spain—could find a place.
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