The world at first light

The world at first light A new history of the Renaissance

Bernd Roeck

Book - 2025

"A new and ambitious history of the Renaissance as a global event which, the author argues, was much more revolutionary and profoundly influential than we currently appreciate. This is nothing less than a new history of the origins, development and legacy of the Renaissance in a global and comparative context. Presented as a panorama of what the author characterises as a restless and dramatic epoch, the book is an exploration of how a distinct concentration of ideas, discoveries, and tumultuous political circumstance should have coalesced in Europe in such a way and at a particular time as to bring about the modern world as we know it. Drawing on a multidisciplinary awareness of history, art, philology, literature, philosophy, science ...and medicine, and exploiting both traditional accounts and post-colonial approaches, the author seeks to explain how the Renaissance came about and how it was, for better or worse, both the dawn of the modern world and the dawning of modern worldliness. After highlighting the distinctive and advantageous geographical position of Europe and establishing the absolutely crucial heritage of dialogue, criticism and communication from the classical world, the author recounts the various cultural 'rebirths' throughout the first millennium, from the Islamic empire to the Carolingians and late Byzantium, as well as the ongoing 'struggles for order' which marked much of the uneven development of the medieval period. By the very late Middle Ages, then, Europe was a propitious collection advanced states engaged in acrimonious but productive rivalry, wherein populated urban areas offered ideal venues for the exploitation of two phenomena: the importation of moveable type and a widespread adoption of the classical discourse of criticism and exchange. In situating Europe in the context of political and cultural conditions in central and south Asia as well as the Far East, Roeck argues that the explosion in learning and expression which we associate with the Renaissance was a combination of new ideas and material conditions, and of innovations as well as serendipitous political realities; it was also as much the culmination of a long and slow evolution of ancient tendencies as any sudden rediscovery. The consequences in any case have been profound: much that we take for granted in politics, scientific enquiry and intellectual life is a consequence of the Renaissance"--

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2nd Floor New Shelf 940.21/Roeck (NEW SHELF) Due Nov 7, 2025
Subjects
Renaissance.
HISTORY / Europe / Renaissance.
Renaissance
HIS037020.
Translations
Genres
HIS037020
Translations
Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press 2025
Language
English
German
Main Author
Bernd Roeck (author)
Other Authors
Patrick Baker, 1976- (translator)
Edition
English edition
Item Description
Original title: Der Morgen der Welt: Geschichte Der Renaissance.
Physical Description
xxii, 1144 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 1017-1095) and index.
ISBN
9780691183831
  • Preface to the English Edition
  • 1. Europe's Grand Dialogue
  • The Portrait of the World
  • History of a Possibility
  • The Deep History of an Epochal Emergence: The Seven Pillars of Modernity
  • Part I. Foundations: From the First Beginnings to the Turn of the Millennium
  • Eurasia and the Greco-Roman Legacy
  • 2. The Luck of Geography
  • The Phoenix Takes Flight
  • Europe Learns to Spell
  • 3. Greek Thought: Creativity and Critique
  • In the Beginning Was the Polis
  • Presocratic Fragments: The Cosmos, the Gods, and Human Beings
  • Dialogue and Critique
  • Sages for the Ages: Plato and Aristotle
  • The Garden of Epicurus and the Stoa
  • Alexandria
  • 4. Rome: Empire and Myth
  • The Phoenix Flies Westward
  • Rome's Hellenic Yearning
  • An Empire without Borders
  • The Greek Christ
  • Collapse
  • 5. The Roman Legacy
  • Empire and Republic
  • Cities, Statues, and Statutes
  • Honey and Poison: The Christian Inheritance
  • Transmission and Translation
  • 6. New Powers, Scribal Monks
  • The Origins of a Kaleidoscopic Continent
  • The Last Romans
  • Broken Traditions
  • Writing So That Posterity May Learn
  • The Islamic Empire
  • Byzantium on the Brink and the Rise of the Franks
  • 7. First Rebirths and the Striving for a New Order
  • The Phoenix in Francia: The Carolingian Renaissance
  • Blueprint for a Europe of States
  • Yearning for Rome: The Renaissance of an Idea
  • Christ in the Forests: State Formation and Christianization in the East and the North
  • Resuscitation of a Superlanguage
  • 8. Arab Spring, Byzantine Autumn
  • The Cities of the Prophet
  • In the House of Wisdom
  • Students of the World, Teachers of Europe
  • First Contacts
  • Macedonian Renaissance?
  • Part II. The Development of Possibilities: 1000-1400
  • Turning Points
  • 9. The Centers of the World: India, Japan, China
  • Asia's Mediterranean and Its Inhabitants
  • The Center of the Center: China
  • Chinese Renaissance
  • 10. Takeoff under the Sun
  • Europe Begins to Fly
  • Deep History: Bridled Passion
  • Urbanization
  • 11. Latin Europe Falls Apart
  • The Struggle for Purity
  • Monastic Reform
  • Earthquake: The Investiture Controversy
  • Age of Crusades: The Origins of Occidentalism
  • Fledgling Europe
  • Magna Carta
  • 12. Vertical Power, Horizontal Power
  • Feudalism
  • Guilds, Communes, Confederations
  • Political Representation
  • Universities and the Law of Rome
  • Triumph of the Ink State
  • 13. Origins of the "Great Divergence"
  • Mongol Invasions
  • China: Walled-In Freedom
  • A Muslim in the Vatican
  • The Byzantine Empire: Learning in the Haze of Incense
  • 14. First "Renaissances"
  • A Revolution of Speaking, Reading, and Writing
  • The Secular World in Ancient Dress: The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
  • Reason, Faith, and Novelty
  • A Millefleur Tapestry of Piety
  • Sicily's Renaissance
  • The Power of Philosophy and Divine Omnipotence
  • 15. New Horizons, New Things
  • Individuality and Freedom
  • Italy after the Demise of the Hohenstaufen
  • The Holy Roman Empire and Its Neighbors
  • Kings under the Midnight Sun and a Prince on the Moskva
  • The World Gets Bigger: Of to Asia!
  • Paper, Eyeglasses, and Earthly Existence: Taking Stock
  • First Lights, Cold Weather, and Death: The Fourteenth Century
  • 16. Italian Overture
  • Rise of the Notaries
  • The First Humanists
  • Epochal Interlude: The Divine Comedy
  • Dante's Emperor, Popes in Avignon, and an Exile in Munich
  • The Most Modern City in the World
  • Europe Enters the Age of Art
  • Intellectual Ascent: Petrarca
  • 17. A World(view) Falls Apart
  • The Triumph of Death
  • Division Everywhere
  • An Emperor in Prague
  • The English Serpent, Feverish Florence, and a Two-Headed Papacy
  • West, East, and North in the Late Fourteenth Century
  • Moscow, Mongols, Ottomans
  • 18. Before the Great Renaissance
  • Decameron Canterbury Tales
  • On the Eve of the New Science
  • Gunpowder and Capital
  • Dawn of the Mechanical Age
  • In the Millennium of Odysseus
  • Europe's Diversity and the Boundaries of Belief
  • Strong Women
  • 19. The Sun Sets in the East
  • The Birth of Ming China
  • The Decline of Arabic Science
  • Part III. The Realization of Possibilities: 1400-1600
  • Artists and Humanists, Wars and Councils: 1400-1450
  • 20. Florence at First Light
  • Origins of the Monumental Renaissance
  • Republican Values, Romantic Classicism
  • The Rotten Republic
  • 21. From Constance to Constantinople
  • Constance
  • Postponed Reforms
  • The Hundred Years' War: Reversals and Resolution
  • Midsummer in Burgundy: The Play of Realism
  • Resetting the Italian Chessboard
  • 22. Children of the Discursive Revolution
  • Humanist Education, the Rhetorical Revolution, and Textual Criticism
  • Greco-Italian Networks
  • Archaeology of Wisdom
  • The Truth Cries Out in the Streets: Cusanus's Concordances
  • Understanding the Causes of Things: The Return of Epicurus
  • Alberti: Window on the World
  • A Knight Tilting at Modernity
  • Beyond Italy: The Origins of European Humanism
  • The First Academies, Poets in the Cities
  • Competition and Creativity: 1450-1500
  • 23. Le tens revient
  • Constantinople's Last Stand
  • After 1453
  • The Italian Mobile
  • The European Framework
  • Italy, Land of Patronage
  • In Plato's Heaven
  • At the Close of Fair Days
  • 24. Media Revolution
  • Innovation in Mainz
  • The Gutenberg Continent
  • 25. New Worlds
  • Nanjing, Ceuta: World History Shifts Course
  • Birth of a Catholic Empire
  • Columbus: Westward to the East
  • 1492
  • Spain: A Pure Country
  • 26. Witches, High Finance, and the Authority of the State
  • Hellfire
  • Hammer of Witches
  • Turnaround: Population, Economy
  • Silver, Iron, Paper: The Consolidation of the Ink State
  • Father of an Empire: Maximilian I
  • Big Business: The Fugger Family
  • High Renaissance
  • 27. Raison d'État Is Born
  • The Triumph of Hierarchy: Renaissance Popes
  • Machiavelli
  • 28. Travels to Utopia, Art Worlds
  • Beautiful Cities
  • Arcadian Dreams
  • Nowhere Lands
  • The Utopia of Urbino: Castiglione and the Civilizing Process
  • The Art Market
  • The Ungodly: Leonardo
  • The Divine: Michelangelo and Raphael
  • Italy, Capital of Culture
  • 29. South Wind: The Renaissance Conquers Europe
  • Paths of Art and Ideas: Western Europe, Eastern Europe
  • O tempora, o mores! Humanism in the Holy Roman Empire
  • The Apogee of Humanism: Erasmus of Rotterdam
  • New Empires, New Knowledge, Religious Schism
  • 30. Empires and Emperors
  • The Ottoman Empire at Its Zenith
  • Moscow: On the Path to Empire
  • Conquistadors
  • Beyond the Cape of Good Hope
  • The Habsburg World Empire
  • 31. Religious Revolution
  • Luther
  • A German Realm of Possibility
  • Shadows of the Apocalypse: Peasant Revolution
  • Roman Graffiti and the Nightingale's Song
  • Splintering of the Splinters: Wittenberg, Zurich, Munster
  • Divorce English Style: Henry VJII's Reformation
  • Stunted Reformations
  • God's Sheepdog: Calvin
  • War and Council
  • Luther's Legacy, Humanism, and Renaissance
  • 32. Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres
  • Prometheus
  • Paradigm Shift
  • The Music of the Spheres: The Premodern Sky
  • Copernicus
  • The Books of God
  • 33. The Great Chain of Being
  • Renaissance Magic: The Power of Words and Things
  • The Power of Stones and Stars: Alchemists and Astrologers
  • Scholars, Charlatans, Science
  • 34. The Dissection of Man
  • The Rise of the Medicus
  • Vital Spirits, Holistic Medicine: Fernel, Paracelsus
  • Anatomical Revolution: Vesalius
  • Icy Times
  • 35. European Tableau I: Western Europe-Confessions, Wars, Countries of the Future
  • Climate Change, Starvation, Witchcraft Craze
  • From Augsburg to Trent
  • Catholic Renaissance
  • Darkness Descends: The French Wars of Religion
  • Night Falls on Spain
  • Dutch Daybreak
  • A Woman on the Throne: Elizabeth I
  • 36. European Tableau II: The North, the East, the Center, and Italy
  • Patriots
  • The Baltic Region and Siberia
  • The Holy Roman Empire
  • History of a Mythology: Italy
  • 37. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules
  • The Wrath of God
  • Latin American Renaissance, Tristes Tropiques
  • Spain Grasps for East Asia
  • The Magic of the Capes
  • History and Truth
  • 38. Autumn of the Renaissance
  • Gardens of Melancholy
  • The Painting of the Self: Montaigne
  • Mannerism: The Arts in the World
  • The Abundance and Order of Knowledge
  • Fall of the Titans
  • Winter Journey to Infinity: Giordano Bruno
  • Winter's Tale: Shakespeare
  • Scientific Revolution
  • 39. Observation, Experimentation, Calculation
  • 1600: In the Shadow of the Volcano
  • Experimental Science, Systematic Research
  • Turning against Galen
  • 40. The Sun Rises in the West
  • Tycho Brake: The Luck of Patronage
  • Kepler Conquers Mars
  • God as a Mathematician
  • The Invention of the Telescope
  • Galileo's New Physics
  • The Trial
  • The Phoenix in Europe
  • On The Cusp of Modernity
  • 41. In the Age of Leviathan
  • Between Renaissance and Baroque
  • The Demystification of Politics
  • Power Play for the World
  • Leviathan's Triumph
  • The Dawn of Civil Society
  • 42. The Mechanical Universe
  • Inventive Passion
  • Lost Center
  • 43. The Archaeology of Modernity
  • The Great Divergence
  • Screws and Inventors: The Completion of an Alexandrian Project
  • The Butterfly Effect
  • Part IV. Conclusions: The "West" and the Rest
  • 44. Vertical Power, Sky High
  • Russia: Tsars and Patriarchs
  • The Sick Man on the Bosporus
  • 45. Pastoral Power: State, Society, Religion
  • Painful Separations, Crippling Connections
  • Words of Wax
  • Kant Stopped before Bagdad
  • No Middle Class in Sight
  • Apollo Stopped at Gandhara: Religion, Art, Anatomy
  • 46. Lost Civilizations, Stubborn States
  • Beyond the Realm of Leviathan
  • Parallels, Divergences: Central Asia, Southeast Asia
  • India
  • Japan: Tokugawa Renaissance?
  • 47. Why Not China?
  • Dreams of Tranquility, Bustling Trade
  • An Arrogant Giant
  • Stoic, Not Dramatic
  • 48. Deep History: Soundings
  • The Benefits of Religious Conflict
  • Demographic Regimes: Life, Survival, Death
  • Middle Class Power
  • The Long Grasp of History
  • 49. Epilogue
  • On the Shoulders of Giants
  • The Uniqueness of the European Renaissance
  • Twilight of a Faun
  • The World a Dream
  • Postscript to the First German Edition
  • Postscript to the New German Edition
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Bibliography
  • List of Images
  • Color Plate Credits
  • Index of Names
  • Color plates follow pages 360 and 824
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A sprawling, rich narrative of a climacteric in world history. Why did the Renaissance take hold in Italy, but not in China? University of Zurich historian Roeck ventures a long--at more than 1,100 pages--response, beginning at the very beginning of what we call the "West." One necessary condition for the development of a society in the "Latin part of Europe" in which the Renaissance was possible, he holds, was the competition offered by multiple small states, a competition that gave rise to the middle class while "mustering culture and science for the fray and financing scholars and inventors." Another was proximity to the Arabic world, which preserved so much of the Greek tradition that underlies the Renaissance: "Without Greek thought," he writes, "the -Renaissance and European modernity would be unthinkable. For it is, above all, Greek thought that was 'reborn' and led to the creation of new -things." Although the Renaissance began in Italy when the papacy held great power and heretics were still being burned at the stake, Roeck observes, the fact that religion was "contained" and that the "worldly" was an object of attention, giving rise to modern sciences, is also material. Roeck ranges widely across time and space: He writes here of the early medieval German invasions of Rome ("it has always been more attractive to pillage high cultures than to clear forests"), there of the role of trade routes in cultural exchange, of Jan Van Eyck and other artists outside of Italy proper, and, meaningfully, of Leonardo da Vinci as a true, well, Renaissance man, "a strange mix of nervous tinkerer and genius, perfectionist and experimenter." And as for China? By Roeck's lights, "in the long term, it is liberal democracies and not authoritarian states that promote scientific, technological, and economic success." Beautifully argued, an essential addition to the history and historiography of the Renaissance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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