LAUSR

t goes without saying that the interpretation of the Italian Renaissance from the midnineteenth to the mid-twentieth century was dominated by the specter of Jacob Burckhardt. The star of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) was man. In the middle ages, he scarcely existed: society was directed by groups (church, communes, guilds, fraternities, etc.); individuals hardly figured. The secular world of antiquity had vanished. Politics were subjected to rigid legalism. The Italian Renaissance, in contrast, signaled the rebirth of the individual; society was secularized; religious faith and morality declined; the shackles of legitimacy were broken. For Burckhardt “the essence of the phenomena” was political, social, and moral; learning—the revival of Latin and Greek letters—was secondary (although he conceded that the rebirth of antiquity colored innumerable facets of culture). Accordingly, humanism assumed an anthropological dimension. The humanists were liberated individuals, paying scant regard to social, moral, or religious norms. They were characterized by “malicious self-conceit,” “abom-