Part One

'Masterpieces of Renaissance Painting'; 'The Italian Renaissance'; 'The High Renaissance and Mannerism'; 'History of Italian Renaissance Art' (Frederick Hartt, 703 pages); 'The Flowering of the Renaissance'. All are lined up proudly on my bookshelf. All are interesting. Some have beautiful reproductions of magnificent paintings. Some are learned. Some are very learned. But all treat 'the Renaissance' as a given, as something written in stone. It is an assumed part of the fabric of reality, no questions asked. It is as much an unquestioned fact as day following night. But in a recent post, Blog#90, I explained why this assumption was just that, an assumption and nothing more. And how it can be regarded as erroneous.

The topic continues. I shall call considerably on the work of Howdie Mickoski, which is detective-like, forensic, visionary, imaginative, and highly speculative, all rolled together. I am pretty sure that he sometimes gets things wrong, and sometimes hits the nail on the head.  Some of what I shall present here is influenced by his writings and videos. It is bits and pieces, intuitions and ideas, without too much personal judgement and without too much needless effort to tie it all together into a neat coherent bundle.

 

Let's begin in Florence, typically considered the heart of the Renaissance. Let's talk 'Florence Syndrome', also known as 'Stendhal Syndrome' after the author who allegedly experienced the condition.

You get Florence Syndrome from being in Florence. It consists of palpitations, sweating, confusion, dizziness, and a variety of other disquieting physical and psychological symptoms. The main cause of the syndrome appears to be intense exposure to works of great beauty. Too much beauty and you begin falling to pieces.

Though other cities may be associated with particular syndromes - Venice Syndrome, for example, when people visit the city in order to die - there are two others, aside from Florence, that more commonly give rise to these specific phenomena. There is Jerusalem Syndrome and Paris Syndrome.

Jerusalem Syndrome manifests when a person - often a 'normal' person with no past background of religious mania or psychological flipping out - suddenly becomes overwhelmed with intense religious feelings. They may become spontaneously messianic, and go through the streets of the city proclaiming themselves God or Jesus or indeed any religious figure regardless of their religious affiliations.

Paris Syndrome, in contrast, shows itself in the form of sadness, loss, and especially disappointment. Paris does not live up to the expectations of the visitor, and the result is some kind of mental/emotional crisis and collapse. The syndrome is particularly common among Japanese, who come from a culture that idealises Paris and all things Parisian. However, they arrive, and are confronted with a city which, in comparison to most in Japan, is dirty, chaotic, strewn with litter, not very welcoming, and sometimes not very safe. It's not just Japanese who feel this way. The two most recent visits I made to Paris, around seven years ago, were predominantly horrible experiences, more like visits to a war zone than to one of the planet's great centres of culture and beauty.

In Mickoski's view, it is not an accident that it is these three cities which demonstrate these specific psychological syndromes. They are, he insists, the three foci of the greatest deceptions to have been imposed on humanity's view of the world in the west. The places whence arise the biggest mind-warps of western civilisation, the greatest perception deceptions, to borrow a term from David Icke.

 

Part Two 

Howdie has an entire full-length series of videos on Not-For-You Tube about the south of France, where he goes into this stuff. He examines Rennes-le-Chateau in greater detail than I find personally interesting, but for the rest it's super fascinating. He also presents a summary of some of his main points near the end of 'Exit the Cave'.

Howdie suggests that the locations and events purported to have taken place and reported in the Christian New Testament did not occur in the Near East, but actually in France, especially southern France. 

This may all sound very Da Vinci code, but he does not reference this text. Rather he presents plenty of his own circumstantial evidence which, taken as a whole, makes a case worth taking seriously.

The New Testament, its people and places, are all presented in disguise, in code. Things from the south of France appear as if they took place elsewhere. Jesus of Gaul becomes Jesus of Galilee; Parisees become Pharisees: you get the idea.

Then you have the question as to why so many New Testament figures are reckoned to have visited and to be buried in southern France? Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Magdalene of course. Jesus's grandfather, Joachim, is said to have met and married Anne, a French girl from Normandy. Come on, guys, give me a break. How did they all end up in France? Easyjet didn't exist, most people were born and died in the same place, and France wasn't exactly just around the corner from the east Mediterranean coast.

Then there is the matter of timelines. It has been suggested by a number of researchers over the decades that the timelines and chronology of western history have been seriously messed around with. In this case we are talking about a telescoping of events so that, for example, those which took place simultaneously or close together now appear to be quite separate. 

The notion is floated that no less than 1000 years was added to the historical 'record' some time around the 16th century (this is partly where Florence comes in, as a centre for the re-writing of history). Sounds far-fetched, but evidence exists. For example, dating on walls, murals, plaques, gravestones, and so forth. Look closely enough and you will see that '1525', may not be quite that. It may be J525 or I525, denoting 525 years after the time of Jesus. Thus it is not difficult to falsify a date by 1000 years.

These do exist: you can probably find some for yourself in churches, cathedrals, and the like. I found one myself on the floor of Durham Cathedral while visiting there a couple of months ago. It was on a burial stone of some ancient worthy. 1759 I believe is the date supposedly inscribed on it. "When did this person die?" I asked my wife, who was ignorant of this particular theory. "1759" she replied categorically. "Are you sure about that?" She looked closely. "Or that" she said, covering up the 'J' which started the date with her foot. It was not 1759 at all, but J759, easy enough to spot if you only looked properly, rather than wandering around in the usual daydream with its bucketload of assumptions.

 

Part Three

So why would you want to fabricate dates and chronology? A decent question.     

Let's say the Cathars were correct in their claim to be the direct spiritual descendants of Jesus, the Magdalene, and the rest of the crew. If they are placed 1000 years apart, as orthodox history does, plus located in southern France and northern Italy while Jesus lived in the Middle East this waters down the idea except in the most metaphorical sense.

However, if the Cathars did not live around 1200 AD, but 1000 years earlier, just a few short generations following the time of Jesus; and if the landscapes they wandered through (in male/female pairs) in southern France were the same as those inhabited by Jesus and his followers: then everything begins to look very different.

Let's say you were the Roman church, and you wished to develop your own counterfeit version of Christianity to further your own ends, then this is precisely the audacious kind of move that you might try. And, as we know only too well, the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to fall for it.....

The official version of Christianity was only properly set in stone in AD 325. It is more logical to consider this taking place after the opposition had been removed, the real original Christians, the Cathars, than before.

This is a ridiculously skeletal outline of a few basic points, or pointers. Nevertheless it provides the germ of an idea.

 

Part Four

Howdie Mickoski suggests that the re-writing of history took place around the 16th century. This is where Florence enters the scene; it makes some sense to me.  

Ever since I returned my attention to the period about a year ago, I've felt there is something fishy about the myth of the Renaissance. I dunno. I can't say exactly what, and I may be wrong. But just looking at some of those Quattrocento Florentine paintings is a bit weird. You get all those Christian holy scenes being played out in the streets and piazzas of Florence, Siena, and elsewhere. It all looks remarkably direct, very fresh, very real, and very 'now'. Are these truly depictions of stories from apparently 1500 years ago? Or are they speaking of a far more recent time? Just asking.

I have the sense that some kind of Reset took place during the 16th century, in 'Renaissance Italy' at least. An old world was hung out to dry and a new one ushered in.

What we nowadays call northern Italy was, during the Quattrocento (15th C) a cluster of independent city-states. Some were republics, others such as Milan, under religious authority. It was a set-up which helped to spawn the creativity of the time, despite coming to be dominated by a small number of prominent families. The Medici in Florence are best-known, but similar dynasties held court in Mantua, Urbino, Ferrara, and so on.

These Italian families are a fascinating bunch, and I find it somewhat difficult to really get inside their heads from my present-day perspective. While trading in the same horrors of violence, treachery, torture etc as other leaders of the time, they seem to have had something else going for them as well. Their lavish patronage of artists, philosophers, and the rest, was not purely vain-glory or bulking up an impressive CV. That 'higher element' in their minds was by and large genuine; another dimension to their existence that was beyond the mean, the calculated and Machiavellian. The Medici were genuinely close to Michelangelo and genuinely moved by his sculptures. Lorenzo de Medici was exalted by pondering the truths of neo-Platonic thought with Marsilio Ficino.  

Come the 16th century, this dalliance with the higher life had to come to an end. The mood of the change is excellently captured by Linda Murray's writing about Cesare Borgia. Some writers seem to let this guy off lightly; Murray shoots from the hip:

"..... the adventurer Cesare Borgia, who sought to carve a private princedom for himself out of the papal states, and who through his violence and cruelty changed the character of Italian internecine strife from a chessboard type of careful move and countermove by mercenary armies into wars of a new brutality and horror, of sacks, massacres, treacheries and murders." ('The High Renaissance and Mannerism' chapter one).

The Era of the Brute is born. Gone are the contemplations about the nature of God; gone the love of goodness and beauty, the studies of perspective and so on, amongst the rulers of the land. Instead, we have Brute World, pure and simple.

 

Part Five

Then in 1527 came the Sack of Rome. We tend to think of Rome, or the Vatican, as some kind of impregnable fortress. It was not always so. Sometimes it was little more than just one power among many, beating the shit out of the neighbours in the relentless fight for survival.

Stability was not the name of the game for Rome. All the same, the wholesale sack of the place, involving looting, etc etc, was something. What better expression of the end of an age than to invade and pull it to pieces?

What was gone was the Rome of the Medici popes - at least the Medici popes proper. Not necessarily the guys you'd want to come for lunch, but still versed in the same kind of love and reverence for art, for philosophy, for beauty of mind and form as their predecessors. 

The fun and games were gone. The sense of fineness, of civilisation, of the higher life, was consigned to the rubbish bin. The world fell into the Realm of the Brutes and the bastards.

Your ballroom days are over, baby. Yes, well and truly over.

Today we live in Brute World pure and simple. Take a look at any of the so-called 'world leaders'. Brutes through and through. Nothing else to them, it would seem. Do Keir Starlin and Windfarm Ed sit around over morning coffee, mulling over the subtleties of neo-Platonic thought? Does their soul depend on the outcome? And if the answer is 'no', more people could ask why not, if they truly wish for leaders who may deliver them into a better world. As it is, they seem stuck and static at the very bottom of the tree of consciousness.

The lowest denominator turned up big-time in the 16th century, and has not relinquished centre-stage. Welcome to our brave new world.

We may also consider the artistic long-lifers of the Italian 16th century. Titian and Michelangelo. The changes in their artwork over their lifetime are remarkable. While this is in part due to the passing of youthful exuberance in favour of the shadows of old age; and while they bear testament to the undying spirit of creativity throughout a long life. Still, this fails to account for the transformation of mood, outlook, energetic quality. Old agers from other periods continued to be creative, but did not manifest such dramatic change. Renoir, for example; Picasso.

It's turned into a bit of a marathon. That's what comes from being ill. Normal daily life is severely curtailed, and few activities are possible. You stagger from your bed, sit in front of the computer for ten minutes and write a few sentences. Then you retire to your dark little hole again, to emerge later in the day for a cup of tea and another couple of paragraphs. Do this for a few days, and things begin to build up.      

 

Images: Annunciation, Fra Angelico, Florence, c1445; Montsegur, Cathar centre, southern France; Annunciation, Titian, Venice, 1519; Annunciation, Titian, Venice, 1564.