Asher K. Sisneros
Western Literature to 1492
Dr. Gary North
July 30, 2024
Throughout Western civilization, poets and prose writers have created an expansive catalog of literature. That literature falls into six main historical categories: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Christian, medieval, and Renaissance. Though they all sit within the broad category of Western literature, the philosophical differences within these subcategories cannot be overstated—in fact, in many respects, they promote competing, opposite philosophies. By and large, Hebrew, Christian, and medieval literature align themselves philosophically and compete with the philosophy of Greek and Roman literature. But which philosophy does Renaissance literature emulate? By definition, a renaissance means a “rebirth.” The question is: A rebirth of what?
Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are two classics from the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, and they accurately represent the philosophical attitude of the West during that era. Following the Black Death of 1346, Europe was plagued by more deaths than they could imagine. Up to a third of the civilization in the West was killed during this bubonic plague, and that only added to the destruction caused by the Hundred Years’ War between the French and English monarchies. Culturally, the mass bloodshed and suffering caused faith in God to dwindle, and the people of the era gripped onto a cynical cry: “Where was God when I needed Him?”
The Black Death marked the beginning of the decline in the cultural assurance of God’s sovereignty over history, at least in the West. People began doubting His providence, and that manifested itself in The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Instead of describing events as providentially ordained, both writers describe a world governed by whimsical chance, without any sense of ethical causation. For example, “The Physician’s Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, describes a completely innocent boy who was murdered by Jews because of his Christian faith. He was virtuous, but he died anyway. Similarly, the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” is about a rapist who Queen Guinaviere gives mercy to, and he lives a “happily-ever-after” life marrying a beautiful and virtuous woman despite his crimes and despite his lack of repentance. Those two examples illustrate the lack of temporal sanctions (i.e., justice) in Renaissance literature, and more importantly, the lack of divine sanctions for breaking or keeping biblical moral code. There was no fear of God because destruction seemed inevitable. As a result, everyone—the proletariat and the bourgeoisie alike—adopted an “Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die”1 lifestyle.
The short-term outlook propagated during the Renaissance was a direct upheaval of the Christian tradition that captivated the West for centuries prior. Hebrew, Christian, and medieval literature all believed in a coherent triune God who brought destruction to evil-doers and blessed the righteous. In other words, they believed in a morally predictable God; a God with reliable standards. The story of Noah’s Ark is a wonderful example of this.2 According to Genesis, human ethics became so deplorable and wretched that God brought a catastrophic worldwide flood to destroy all of humanity. Noah and his family received mercy because they feared the wrath of God and lived according to biblical ethics. Thus, the biblical sanctions did not affect them. The Song of Roland was also predicated on a God with morally coherent standards. Throughout the entire book, Charlemagne’s knights continually cry, “The Muslims are in the wrong, and the Christians are in the right!” Though some may disagree with the oversimplicity of such a broad statement, it does get to the heart of the matter: Medieval writers believed in a coherent God with predictable moral standards. Although Hebrew, Christian, and early medieval literature disagree on some subjects, they agree on the presupposition that Jehovah God is sovereign, never-changing, morally consistent, and present in history, and that made them unique in the history of Western civilization.
Greek and Roman antiquity did not believe in a morally consistent deity or group of deities. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Livy’s History of Rome present quite the opposite. Zeus/Jupiter was supposedly sovereign as the de facto ruler on Mount Olympus, but Ovid recounts a tale where Jupiter uses his sovereign power to rape women in the tale “Io and Jove” in Metamorphoses. In addition to using his power for unrighteous ends, the tale describes Jupiter as scared of his wife’s wrath. Thus, the tale describes Jupiter as being immoral for raping an innocent woman and it attacks his sovereignty for being scared of his wife.
In addition to having an immoral sovereign deity, Greek and Roman literature acknowledge the chaos entailed with polytheism. For example, the Trojan War was the result of a chaotic feud between the Olympian gods, and the war continued until one side was victorious. Another example is in Aeschylus’ Oresteia Trilogy, which describes a series of tragedies befalling the royal family in Greece, repeatedly invoking the underground gods as enemies of the Olympians. All the feuds between the Roman gods created a religion and cultural philosophy based on ambiguous ethics because it is unclear whose moral mandates must be obeyed, and the sovereign deity, Jupiter, is not moral himself. Seeing virtually no correlation between ethics and historical sanctions, the Greeks and Romans naturally assumed there was no correlation and adopted a sacrifice-based religion.
In this respect, Renaissance literature emulates Greek and Roman thought. Boccaccio and Chaucer offer respect to the triune God of the Bible in their respective books, but they reject His sovereignty in ordaining historical events. Instead, Boccaccio ascribes sovereignty to “chance,” and Chaucer ascribes sovereignty to nature. Thus, they emulate the chaotic philosophy of the Greeks and Romans by rejecting moral cohesion, rejecting a belief in divine morality, and embracing short-term pleasure. Some may call it the rebirth of art, but the literature produced during the Italian Renaissance was—morally speaking—a rebirth of Roman chaos.
Asher Sisneros 
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