Western Civ Since 1600

History 107 at the College of Wooster

Galileo’s Middle Finger

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Galileo's Middle FingerIf you find yourself studying abroad in Tuscany in the near future, be sure to wander through the renovated (and newly named) Museo Galileo, the museum of science in Florence, Italy, where you can check out instruments and ideas of the scientific revolution. From the comfort of your own dorm room you can take a virtual visit here. Be sure to stop by to see Galileo’s middle finger. Look for yourself at Galileo’s telescope. Take a look at a short video on Galileo’s trial.

To be sure, Galileo wasn’t flawless. He discounted Kepler’s theory that the planets move in elliptical orbits, for example. But his scientific work opened up new vistas that would be explored in the century to follow him.

Stephen Hawking wrote that “Galileo, perhaps more than any other person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.” Well, modern science didn’t follow from any one individual. It was the product of an entire revolution in thinking about the world, a revolution — as we have seen — that was soon applied to the political and the social world by men like Descartes, Hobbes, Locke.

Louis XIV and the Taming of the Nobility

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I also wanted to share this clip from a film on Louis XIV by Roberto Rossellini, the great Italian director. In his youth, the monarchy was beset by challenges — from provincial nobles, from the urban law courts, and from the popular classes. These were known as the Fronde. It was the work of his mother and her advisor, Mazarin, to suppress these rebellions and challenges. Louis XIV himself worked to make sure that they wouldn’t reappear.

He did this through new administrators and institutions, but also through a concerted effort to “tame” the nobility. He attracted them to Versailles where they would spend their time and their money in an effort to keep up with the king.

By most accounts it was a patently dull existence at course. Many who were there describe how boring the life of Versailles could be, wathing the king eat, following him around, maneuvering to get close to him, and slavishly following the fashions and protocols of court.

The Web on History – Versailles and More

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The kinds of resources available on the web — some scholarly, some entertaining, some put together by academics, some by amateurs — is overwhelming. I’ll try to point out a few interesting sites as we go along.

For lots of pictures and a nice historical overview, take a look at the Official Site of the Chateau of Versailles. To learn more about the Sun King, Louis XIV, you’ll get a lot out of this website.

And there are great images and chronologies and texts devoted to the English Civil Wars of the 17th c. See this on on the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Calvin and Hobbes

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You can’t understand the 16th c. and the Protestant Reformation without understanding a thing or two about John Calvin (1509-1564). Born in France, trained as a lawyer, rooted in European humanism, Calvin made a profound mark on western religion (and by extension, on western culture and society) as a religious reformer. Like Luther and Zwingli, Calvin preached the primacy of the bible — “For anyone to arrive at God the Creator he needs Scripture as his Guide and Teacher” — and rejected papal authority. He put his ideas in practice, constructing a new Church in Geneva and enforcing a strict moral code for the city.

We haven’t gotten to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) yet — but we will hear about him next week. The English philosopher, a materialist through and through, is best known for his work in political philosophy. In Leviathan (1651), he set out the basis for legitimate government in a theory of the social contract and argued for the necessity of a strong central authority as the bulwark against moral and social disorder. How else to escape “the war of all against all,” an anarchic society in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”? Hobbes’ thought provided a foundation for much of western political thinking to come — a liberal tradition that emphasized the importance of the individual and the social contract, the need for power to be legitimized, as well as a conservative tradition that took a dim view of human nature and put its trust in central authorities to keep human disorder in check.

Despite their distance in time — and the vast differences in their views of the spiritual and material worlds — the two speak to each other in powerful ways.

Week 2 – History on Film

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A few generations of scholars have now demonstrated just how loose the relationship between history and history on film usually is. Grand historical dramas are meant, first of all, to entertain. But a good historical film has a lot of power: to bring the past to life, to give us as sense for the texture of the past, to raise important questions of fact and interpretation.

Take a look at Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I considering the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots. It does reveal the challenge to authority that Elizabeth endured. And why not a quick look at Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth for a dramatic picture of the Spanish-English conflict of the early 17th c.

For a portrait of the religious wars that tore France apart in the 1560s and 70s, see this trailer from “Queen Margot,” based upon the very fictionalized 19th c. novel of Alexandre Dumas. The imagery is stunning.

I held up Michel de Montaigne as a heroic figure of the 16th c, the literary pioneer of the “Essay,” a man who questioned human pretense and certainty before he questioned the ways of others. Kenneth Clark gives a nice portrait of the man and his ideas in his BBC series “Civilisation.”

Finally, for a portrait of Spanish obscurantism, you might take a look at the Spanish Inquisition. The Emperor of Spain – from the 15th c. – used the special power granted by the Pope to root out heresy in Spain. You’ll see an account of the principal features of the Spanish Inquisition here and here.