48 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen GreenblattThe Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Suppression of Ancient Ways
The main theme of the book has two parts: (1) that the Catholic church suppresses ancient beliefs, which prevents old knowledge from helping to improve things during the Middle Ages; and (2) that the rediscovery of classical texts, especially the brilliant didactic poem On the Nature of Things, finally lifts Europe out of its quagmire and into the Renaissance and the modern world that lies beyond.
The first part, suppression, begins with the proclamation in 391 CE by Emperor Theodosius that Christianity is the official religion of the empire and that the old pagan ways are unlawful. This opens the door to active and violent repression of pagan rituals, destruction of old temples, and removal of texts that do not accord with Christian belief.
To its credit, the church makes a careful inventory of the old manuscripts, copying and storing them in monasteries throughout Europe. However, this has the practical effect of causing these texts to disappear from public view, stored away as they are in hard-to-access libraries. Over the centuries, and despite the monks’ commitment to their care, the books are forgotten and, sometimes, erased, their costly parchment pages re-used for Christian litanies, prayer books, and the like.
Medieval Christian tenets hold that the faithful must cleanse their sinful natures through penitence, especially with self-inflicted pain. The point of a Christian life becomes, not happiness in this world, but prayerful and self-abnegating preparation for the next world. These beliefs fly in the face of the old Roman ways, which, though pious in their own right, have room for pleasure and personal happiness. The old beliefs, then, are considered distractions for seekers of God’s grace; as such, they must be banished.
A side effect is the suppression of curiosity and innovation as distractions from piety. This prevents the faithful—basically, all Europeans—from applying classical Greco-Roman knowledge in the arts and sciences to problems people face during the Middle Ages.
The Rediscovery of Epicureanism and the Threat to the Church
Much of The Swerve is devoted to the story of how one man, Poggio Bracciolini, searches for and rediscovers ancient manuscripts long sequestered in European monastic libraries, especially the brilliant and alluring long poem On the Nature of Things by the classical Roman writer Lucretius. This book—or set of six books, as the poem contains 7,400 lines of verse—describes in detail the scientific and religious viewpoints of the ancient Greek Epicurus, whose philosophy is popular with many citizens of the Roman Empire.
Lucretius’ poem describes Epicurus’ belief that the gods, if they exist, are too advanced and too far removed to care at all about mere human undertakings. Thus, to fear gods and propitiate them with offerings and sacrifices is basically a waste of time. Furthermore, Epicureans hold that the soul is part and parcel of the body, made of the same essential atomic stuff, and that the soul dissolves with the body at death. Therefore, the only appropriate purpose for humans is to seek happiness in this lifetime.
True, the Epicureans promote kindness and being helpful to others, which comports with Christian beliefs about charity and good works. However, the idea that there is no God who bothers to intervene in human affairs is anathema to the church, and the belief that souls do not survive death threatens the church’s work preparing people for the Christian afterlife. People who do not fear hellfire are people who cannot be instructed or controlled by clerics.
Lucretius’ poem exits its own monastic purgatory when Poggio finds and releases it to the world. This sets in motion a series of events that pit the church fathers against those who would preach happiness instead of saintliness. If the church cannot fully instill a fear of hellfire in its followers, at least it can use worldly fire to destroy heretics who dare to preach Epicurean ways.
Lucretius’ lovely words prove too attractive to suppress; some ideas from the poem even take hold within the Vatican, which finds itself of two minds about the manuscript’s subversive notions. This hesitancy, on top of the relentless copying and recopying of the manuscript, allows the text to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of European artists and thinkers. As the Renaissance begins to blossom under the effect of the verses, Epicurean beliefs no longer can be put back into the libraries. Their influence becomes unstoppable.
Lucretius’ Influence on the Renaissance and Modernity
Can one book of poetry cause the Renaissance? Author Stephen Greenblatt insists that no single text, on its own, can do all the heavy lifting. Still, On the Nature of Things sets in motion a pattern of growth that continues unabated to this day.
Philosophers, liberated by Lucretius’ attitudes, begin systematically to indulge their curiosity about the natural world, and modern science is born. Epicurean notions about the physical universe seem remarkably modern. The idea that all things are made of atoms, that they obey laws of motion and collision quite free from divine intervention, and that they “swerve” slightly on their paths to form surprising new patterns, have been confirmed, in one form or another, by science during the past 600 years. Lucretius describes how plants and animals evolve traits that permit them better to survive their environments; this, too, is verified with the development of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Within the arts, Epicurean attitudes begin to hold sway as artists and writers include the beauties and pleasures of life in their works. Botticelli’s painterly masterpieces, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, bring back the mythical gods of the ancients in all their beatific glory. Philosopher Montaigne lavishly praises Lucretius’ poem and its ideas; Shakespeare, smitten by Montaigne’s essays, includes Epicurean ideas in his plays.
It can be argued that Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, which shifts emphasis from obedience to church authority to the individual’s relationship to God, has a strong hand in moving the West toward a more innovative culture that soon makes world powers of several European nations. Without the subversive influence of On the Nature of Things, however, much of the 15th-century agitation against churchly authority and corruption might never have happened, and Luther’s rebellion might not have come to pass.
The Catholic church itself finally acquiesces to the changes, adopts many Epicurean attitudes, and today de-emphasizes self-flagellation and instead points up its belief in the beauties of Heaven and the virtues of caring for others. In this way, Christianity and the classic Greco-Roman beliefs are, to some degree at least, reconciled.
In short, a remarkable ancient poem, rediscovered, does indeed spark a cultural rebirth that leads directly to the modern age.
