Did a Swiss professor invent the Renaissance?

Not alone, but his version became the most influential. Giorgio Vasari first used the term rinascita, rebirth, in his Lives of the Artists in 1550. Jules Michelet defined "The Renaissance" as an entire historical period in 1855. Then, in 1860, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, a professor at Basel, published The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, defined the period as running from Giotto to Michelangelo, and saw in it the emergence of the modern spirit of individuality, which the Middle Ages had stifled. It was the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance in the 19th century and is still widely read.

Burckhardt's picture was vivid. He compared the Middle Ages to a veil over human consciousness, so that both its inner and outer sides lay dreaming or half awake. He understood the Renaissance as drawing together art, philosophy and politics, and made the case that it created "modern man". He was also ambivalent, praising new forms of cultural and religious freedom but worrying about the alienation modern men might feel.

The criticism came from several directions. Johan Huizinga accepted that the Renaissance existed but argued that it was a decline from the High Middle Ages, destroying much that was important. Charles Haskins made the case for a Renaissance of the 12th century, with the first European universities and the revival of Latin classics. Rodney Stark plays down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier Italian city-states, and others point out that persecution and warfare seem to have worsened.

Where does that leave the idea? Randolph Starn suggests a network of diverse, sometimes conflicting cultures rather than a single culture of its time. Most political and economic historians now prefer the term "early modern". Yet the people of the Renaissance themselves believed they were living in a new era.