ABSTRACT
The idea of renaissance, which Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy implanted so securely in European historiography, appeared to have condemned the medieval period to languish forever in the dungeon of 'the Dark Ages'. This chapter discusses several problems: Were twelfth-century people, or anyway the most distinguished twelfth-century scholars, conscious of living in an age of renewal? What was the nature of this renaissance? Was it a rediscovery of classical Antiquity, a return to Antiquity, or was it a creative movement, a birth rather than a re-birth? Was it limited to the realm of intellectual high culture, that is, to philosophy, theology, science and art? Or was it associated with more general creative impulses that were also economic, social and political? Was it an aspect or a consequence of those wider impulses? Accepting the idea and the label, when did this Renaissance begin and end?.
