Since I first published this article back on December 8, 2010, Christian Nationalism has gained incredible power through a potential presidency held by Donald J. Trump. The foundation of his MAGA movement is grounded in the worldview of Christian Nationalism. May the wall of separation hold fast against the assaults being made by the MAGA movement. Long live our Republic!
One thing is for certain: we all find ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, immersed in an ocean of turbulent societal anxiety. This is not the turmoil and anxiety caused by any one particular event, but more of a stalled weather pattern, a sort of cultural phantom that haunts the corridors of the body politic. We all sense that there is a “crisis,” but we fall woefully short of articulating any clear and concise understanding of its identity, its nature, or its cause. Therefore, we seem to find ourselves flailing about in a fog of uncertainty, bouncing back and forth from one election cycle to another, one football game and church barbecue to another, and from one new technological toy to another – until we’re emotionally exhausted, politically weary, economically, morally, and intellectually bankrupt.
Sure, we all hear many conservatives rightly acknowledge that ours in a moral crisis at its foundation, and we hear calls for a “return” to our “founding principles” as the path that will provide the solution to our crisis. But, the conversation stops there, always falling short of explicitly identifying what exactly is meant by “returning to founding principles.” Nor is there any attempt made at defining their source, their nature or their meaning. All of this is left floating about in a murky haze of intellectual drift and becomes overshadowed by all the petty Dancing With The Stars pop-politics, and latest public opinion polls.
All the while, hovering close above all the mindless chatter is the dark phantom that will not go away by us simply evading its existence. The deeper conversation must begin, and an active and honest search for the identity, nature, and the cause of our crisis must begin – or, we shall fall as all the great empires that came before us have fallen. Our time is short, so let us begin.
The first question we need to answer is: what exactly are our Founding Principles? This question can be further divided into three parts: clearly identifying our principles, determining their source, and extracting their meaning. What are they? What is their cause? What is their nature? I will show that there are two views of man, which form the foundations of two sets of conflicting ethics: A view of man first introduced by Aristotle and then later revitalized and expanded by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; and the view of man inflicted upon history by Christian religion. I maintain that it is in the conflict between these two opposing views of man that we will find the cause and possible solution to our “Western Moral Crisis.”
Identification
Our first step is the easiest of all – identifying our founding principles. Abraham Lincoln once said something to the effect that, the Constitution should be viewed through the lens of the Declaration of Independence. And indeed, it is here that we will find the bedrock upon which all else is built. It is the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence that have provided the Telos that lies before us, and the standard of Justice that sits above us. These are not hollow echoes from our distant past, but the potential that still yet lies before us.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
We all grew up learning these basic principles of our American founding. I remember thinking to myself when I was a boy that something wasn’t consistent with these values, the values of our founding, and an entirely different set of ethics that I was being taught at church. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I sensed that there was a major problem between these two sets of ideas concerning the nature and purpose of man.
Having now clearly identified these founding principles, let us take a closer look at their source and meaning, while also contrasting them with the ethics of Marxism and Christianity. This will clarity the source of our moral crisis that I but vaguely sensed as a young boy.
“Self-Evident Truths”
Now “why a thing is itself” is a meaningless inquiry – for to give meaning to the question “why,” the fact or the existence of the thing must already be evident. —Aristotle
What did the founders base their concept of “self-evident truths” upon? [“We hold these truths to be self-evident” – Benjamin Franklin] What did they mean? Are these truths that are unknowable to the rational mind and have to be accepted as mystical articles of faith? Or are these truths that are indeed knowable to man through the use of his reason?
The meaning of self-evident truths as Jefferson and the other intellectuals of his day understood them, can be traced back to the philosophy of Aristotle, in which reality exists and man’s mind exists. Man’s mind is able to acquire knowledge of the Nature of Reality. Knowledge of the Nature of Reality is not a forbidden fruit, poisonous to the life of man, but rather the nectar on which man’s very survival depends. Christian metaphysics, on the other hand, is designed to be an unsolvable mystery; not a self-evident truth. As the Apostle Paul allegedly wrote, “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
To the thinkers of the Enlightenment, our rights were unalienable objective Laws of Nature, ascertainable to man through his mind rather than revelation; to be found written upon the “volume of human nature” rather than upon “old parchments and musty records.” These are not articles of faith, but rather “self-evident truths.” As Locke states:
“The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
Self-evident truths are not things that fall out of the sky through divine revelation but are acquired through man’s rational faculties of mind, e.g., science and logic. Jefferson was an admirer of Locke, and much of Jefferson’s wording is taken directly from John Locke, not Deuteronomy. And, while Locke does indeed write with religious prose, and was himself a Christian, Locke’s methodology was Aristotelian.
“Endowed by their Creator” – The Crack in Our Foundation
Athenian Stranger: Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?
Cleinias: A God, Stranger; in very truth a God. –Plato
This is where the conversation gets going. Because our founders used the words “Creator” and “God,” Christians take the opportunity to posit their god, and therefore their view of man, into every crack. While the Enlightenment thinkers were influenced by Christianity, it was more by cultural proxy rather than conviction. The Christian view of man, and the founding principles reflective thereof, i.e., altruism, are not to be found in our founding; only falsely posited in the cracks.
The concepts of Law and Rights have a long and fascinating history, leading back through time long before the Israelites and their Moses. There were Babylonian and Hittite forms of Constitutional Law that were established prior to the military campaigns that led to the conquering of the land of Cannon by the Jewish tribal desert bandits. Our founders were well aware of the long history and slow evolution of the concepts of Law and Rights, including their own epic contribution that was taking place. From the God-King Pharaohs of Egypt through the majority rule democracy of Athens and the age of the Divine Rights of Kings – they knew all too well the mistakes of the past. Their revolutionary solution was to establish a society based on the rights of the individual. What our founders had done in their declaration, for the first time in human history, was to subordinate collectivism to the moral law of the individual – man was to be his natural self as an end in himself.
It is often said, as if it were a good thing, that our American political philosophy is a mixture of Hellenism and Judeo–Christian principles, and that it was the mixing of these two that constitutes the great contribution of our founders. Yet, suspiciously, we hear seldom a faint whisper of the Aristotelian and Enlightenment influences. This popular description of our founding is most often presented in a way as if the Hellenistic and Enlightenment influence merely served as handmaidens to the Christian religious influences – our Hellenism, we are told, serves merely as a historical prop.
Political propagandists, such as Glenn Beck, have gone so far as to claim that the book of Deuteronomy was the most influential source material for the structure of our political philosophy, while not a word has he ever mentioned of Aristotle, the Romans, Thomas Paine, or the Enlightenment. I assure you, these other non-Christian sources were hardly mere footnotes, or fogy thoughts lingering in the back of the founders’ minds. Unfortunately for Mr. Beck and his disciples, the view of man and the ethics found within the book of Deuteronomy are the direct opposite of our view of man and our founding principles.
While there is no doubt that during the time of our founding, as well as today, most Americans identified themselves as Christians; to say that our founding principles are Christian is simply disingenuous. Standing in a garage does not make someone a car, and Christians living in a society based upon Enlightenment principles do not magically transform them into Christian principles. That idea is a product of historical and philosophical alchemy – and, is the source of our crisis.
Thomas Jefferson, the original draftsman of the Declaration of Independence, was not a Christian. Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Christ, or in the divinely guided authorship of Christian scripture, or in the dogmatic blind faith of organized religion. Jefferson believed in god, and he was an admirer of the Sermon on the Mount, but he was not a Christian, nor an admirer of organized religion. A few thoughts from Jefferson on John Calvin:
“I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I can never be: or his religion was daemonism. If ever a man worshiped a false God, he did.” Jefferson to John Adams, 1823
Similar sentiments were held by both John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, the two other primary authors of the Declaration of Independence. The best description of these men and their worldview could be described as Enlightenment thinkers, men of science, and men of reason; not as men of religious faith.
While our founders were men of reason and well-versed in the theory of law, they were not outside the cultural influences of Christianity. Jefferson, for example, was influenced by Christian thinkers such as John Locke and William Blackstone. Blackstone was an English judge and professor who, in his Commentaries, attempted to explain that because our reason is full of error, the most certain way to ascertain the law of nature is through direct revelation. Jefferson however, did not follow Blackstone down the path of mystical revelation.
Blackstone:
Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker’s will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature. This law of nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man’s felicity. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation depend on all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should suffer to contradict these.
Unfortunately, Mr. Blackstone himself invoked Aristotle’s law of contradictions, which, as we shall see, places the death-nail in the idea that the Christian view of man acquired through “revelation” is our founding morality. There is a stark contrast between the laws of nature and the rights of man that are understood by reason and those of Mr. Blackstone’s law of revelation.
Blackstone is not original in his thinking, and most of what he says can be found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (e.g., Summa Theologica – Treatise on Law, Questions 90-96). And, Aquinas is basing his analysis on the little man whose name keeps popping up –Aristotle (e.g., Physics, Book II, Ethics Book VII Chapter II ect.).
The sentiments of the Enlightenment thinkers concerning the idea of “revelation” and ‘Divine Law,” can best be demonstrated in the writings of Thomas Paine, the most fundamentally inspirational and motivational force behind the revolution; as well as an impassioned defender of Enlightenment principles. In his Age of Reason, Paine states the following:
“Every National Church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians have their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks Their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came from divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their word of God was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
The rights of man are rational concepts derived from the “Laws of Nature,” or if you so choose, “Nature’s God.” Therefore, there is no need, nor is it accurate to posit Christianity into Jefferson’s head, or into our founding documents. What little room was first allowed for Christian ethics to seep in, was a mistake and the original crack in our foundation. While many of our founders were in fact Christians, many were not. Regardless of their individual personal religious beliefs, our founding principles, and the view of man that they represent, can be most accurately attributed to the Enlightenment and Aristotle with his celebration of man and his capacity for rational thinking, rather than to the mysticism of the Dark Ages and Moses. Whatever remnants of Dark Age thinking that did remain in our founders was by cultural proxy, and was the only weakness in what they had accomplished. We are all having to contend with that mistake right now.
The primary historical sources for our founding principles can be traced from our founders, through John Locke and the Enlightenment, Cicero, and the Romans, and directly to Aristotle and the Greeks rather than through Jesus and his cross, Moses and his tablet of thou shalts, and Noah with his Ark. It is this that has been falsely injected into our political arteries. I have yet to see Glenn Beck attempt to revitalize our founding philosophy of man by busting out his blackboard and explaining to his disciples the enormous contribution men like Aristotle, and Thomas Paine gave to our culture and our Republic.
Our Historical Landscape
When we look across the vast landscape of history, one name continually appears during times of prosperity and advancement – Aristotle. Whenever man has embraced Aristotle, mankind has prospered. Whenever man has abandoned Aristotle, he has forfeited his society. It was the foundation laid by Aristotle that brought about the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and finally America; his ideas brought man all the way to the moon. It was not because of Christian ethics that Western man achieved his greatness but in spite of them. One single outburst of Man’s Natural Rights and the Liberty to exercise his strength of Reason lasted for over 150 years. But it has now been sucked dry. The ethics of altruism held by Christianity and Marxism have picked the carcass of our Enlightenment foundation to the bone.
This is not the first time that the Christian view of man has brought down Western culture and society. There was a view of man that existed prior to Christianity; a view of man that, once Christianity took hold, was forbidden to exist, and all further cultivation of it died with the arrival of Paul’s “good news.” This “good news” lasted until the Renaissance, when man shook off the priest and regained his Aristotle. Just think, what if Classical Western Man had not been interrupted, if we did not take a thousand-year time-out from all that was best in man; where would mankind be today?
St. Augustine, in his City of God, made an attempt to show that it was Rome’s disobedience and rejection of Paul’s “glad tidings,” rather than the acceptance of them, that was the cause of the decay and final collapse of Rome. Many conservatives make the exact argument today, and say that a return to our founding “Christian principles” is our only cure. Augustine was arguing with the critics of his time who had witnessed for themselves the corrosive nature of Christian ethics. Today we hear the same charge: that our crisis is not caused by adherence to Christian philosophy, but by the rejection of it. I disagree with both Augustine and my contemporary disciples of death.
Modern man has the advantage of time and hindsight to get a fuller view of the matter. We can now clearly see that it was the introduction of Christianity into history that played a large part in temporarily bringing an end to what was best in man, and thus to Rome. And unlike Augustine, we moderns have the luxury of looking back and clearly seeing, oddly enough, that Western man was somehow magically revitalized once he was able to escape the spell of Augustine and his disciples of death. The fire that inspired his escape was the rediscovery of his lost Aristotle. With the rebirth of Aristotle came the rebirth of the Classical view of man and his place in the world.
Two modern authors come to mind, who give a historical account of Christianity’s impact on Rome, that are not taught in our public schools, homes, or churches. The first account is from Edward Gibbon, who in his monumental epic seven-volume history, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, places the blame squarely on the doorstep of Christianity. In the following, Gibbon describes the scene of how Christianity first cunningly slipped into the body politic of Rome, and reversed the world order:
“That the new sect of Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves that last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they belonged. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds whom their age, their sex, or their education has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors.”
Indeed, Christianity slipped in like a dark phantom, being sure to avoid detection from the men of reason – the philosophers.
The second author that comes to mind is Friedrich Nietzsche, the often-reviled German philosopher who made the official proclamation that God was dead in his infamous, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche went on to further illustrate the magnitude of the crisis caused by the death of god, and what this realization has wrought upon the Western psyche in his later writings. In Nietzsche’s, Gay Science, his Madman enters the Marketplace in search of god, only to find his murderers who have not yet realized the magnitude of their deed, or the dark cloud that lingers above. In his last work, The Anti-Christian, Nietzsche agonizingly laments over the tremendous loss Christianity left in its wake after conquering the ancient world:
“The whole labor of the ancient world in vain: I have no words to express my feelings at something so dreadful.”
He continues by expressing his feelings:
“All in vain! Overnight merely a memory! – Greeks! Romans! Nobility of instinct, of taste, methodical investigation, genius for organization and government, the faith in, the will to a future for mankind, the great yes to all things, visibly present to all the senses as the Imperium Romanum, not overwhelmed overnight by a natural event! Not trampled down by Teutons and other such clodhoppers! But ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered – only sucked dry!”
And, sucked dry she was; and when she fell, Western man plunged into the Dark Ages where the vampires ruled the minds of man through fear, shame, and guilt. It would be close to 700 years before Western man would awake from his self-induced slumber and finally regain his bearings once again. One of the funniest things when looking back through all this is the fact that we originally reclaimed our Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas! The Church authorities at first did not approve of Aquinas digging up that old “pagan philosopher,” but, when he showed them what use Aristotle could be put to, they crowned Aquinas as the Angelic Doctor of the Church. Turns out the priests were right to worry; for they let the fox in the henhouse when they let Aristotle in the gate. Within a few hundred years, the Renaissance was full-blown – the Renaissance; the rebirth of all that was once lost, a rebirth of what was best in man; a rebirth of art, a rebirth of architecture, a rebirth of literature, a rebirth of science, and most importantly, a rebirth of man’s rational mind as his greatest resource, and his own life as his greatest value.
Our Historical Horizon and the Two Views of Man
”Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you need is not a return to morality – but to discover it.” -John Galt
So, here we all are; arrived once again at the crossroads of collapse, exhausted and unable to ride upon the smoke of Aristotle’s or our founders’ burnings any longer. Unable to warm ourselves around the last remaining dying ember of what was once held to be best in man; and, no longer able to evade the phantom that has haunted the corridors of our body politic for far too long.
We stand at the crossroads of history once again. What view of man we choose to place before and above us, will determine our horizon. The choice is the same today as it was in the past. We can look forward at what our founders had cast into the future; that it is self-evident to the rational mind that man has Natural, and therefore Unalienable Rights. Man has the right to his own Life, to his own Liberty, and to the Pursuit of his own happiness. The meaning behind these ideas, when properly integrated, gives a complete “View of Man.” This view of man is the essence of Enlightenment thinking and is the view our Republic was founded upon.
This is the view of man as hero, who lives his life for his own sake, who is capable and entitled to act as a free and rational sovereign agent, and that man’s creative work is a necessity to his own self-esteem, and that man is entitled to the happiness his creative work produces. Happiness then, is a state of consciousness resulting from the pride one achieves through creative work in this life, and upon this earth. Happiness is understood not as an undeserved gift parted out by an invisible and unknowable, but as the attainable fruit of one’s own garden.
There is also another view of man that exists. This is a view that has set man against man. Man as an enemy to himself – man’s reason; corrupted. Man’s body- evil. Man’s work; a drudge and a duty. Man’s happiness – unworthy of it, and unattainable to him in this life. It is this view of man that has sneakily slid in the cracks and laid claim to the title of the Enlightenment principles of our founding. But when this phantom is dragged from the corridors out into the clear light of day, we find that Christian principles, and the view of man that they are derived from, no matter how well cloaked in the guise of humility, are the direct opposite of our founding ideals and view of man – just as I had vaguely sensed as a young boy.
To have the right to Life through the lens of the Enlightenment means that Man exists for his own sake. The articles of faith that hold sacrifice as its greatest value means that Man ultimately sacrifices his life to another – be it a god, government, the environment, or his fellow man. Individualism and Altruism are incompatible ideas.
Liberty means that man is entitled, and capable of living as a free and sovereign rational agent. Sin means Man is bound to the corruption of his rational faculties; as if his rational faculties were a corruption! – Not man’s greatest resource, but his greatest liability. These two ideas cannot exist in the same head or in the same culture at the same time.
Happiness means that it is good that man finds pleasure in his life and in his creative work. The Divine Revelation of the Last Judgment is an accounting of how much happiness and pleasure one denies himself. It is founded on the idea that man can do no good thing apart from god; left to his own rational devices, man can only do evil.
Each set of ideas forms a total View of Man. These two conflicting ideas of man, one as hero the other as servant of sacrifice, are and always have been in direct opposition to one other. Today when we look out upon our political landscape we see three choices: on one side we have the collectivism of the left, on the other side we have the collectivism of the Christian right. One requires a sacrifice to the state, the other to the Church. Both require that you sacrifice your mind. Between these two collectivist forces stand a few individualists, holding small dying embers from a fire Aristotle started long ago – tattered, tired, and weary. That is our moral crisis in a nutshell.
I have shown that while the cultural overtone was predominantly Christian at our founding, the principles that established our Republic were not. I have shown that this same crossroads has occurred in the past, with Rome, and with the Renaissance. I have also shown that if any one person should receive credit for influencing what is best in Western man, it is not Moses or Christ; but Aristotle.
Essay rebuttals are welcome. Any republication of any segment of this essay requires full credit to the author and a link back to the original source. This essay may not be published in its entirety without the express written consent of the author.
Source and Additional Quotes
• Essay Concerning Civil Government – John Locke
• Laws – Book I; Plato
• Metaphysics – Book VII; Part 17, Aristotle
• Thomas Jefferson on Democracy – Letter to John Adams; Page 120, Saul K. Padover
• Commentaries – Of the Nature of Laws in General; William Blackstone
• Summa Theologica – Treatise on Law; Questions 90-96, St. Thomas Aquinas
• Age of Reason – Chapter II; Thomas Paine
• Bible – Corinthians XII; Paul the Apostle
• City of God – Augustine
• Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Chapter XV, Gibbon
• The Gay Science – Book III; Part 125, Friedrich Nietzsche
• Thus Spake Zarathustra – Prologue; Part II, Friedrich Nietzsche
• For The New Intellectual – Galts’ Speech; Ayn Rand
“Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” -James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance
“My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan]way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.]It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist”-Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” -John Adams Letter to Abigail Adams (12 May 1780)
“The acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of our reason… were rejected with abhorrence by the severity of the fathers, who despised all knowledge that was not useful to salvation, and who considered all levity of discourse as a criminal abuse of the gift of speech.” -Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Book I Chapter XV, -Gibbon
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” -Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
“I have now gone through the bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.- I now pass on to the books of the New Testament…” -The Age of Reason, Part Two Chapter One, Thomas Paine
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
From ItalyGuides.com.
The building of the dome on Florence cathedral, by Filippo Brunelleschi, can be considered one of the Renaissance’s main building enterprises. The highest expression of a new attitude, placing man and his abilities at the centre of the world and finding in classic antiquity the premises for cultural rebirth after the dark Middle Ages. Renaissance society was based on completely different values to the medieval ones of chivalry and nobility. The new ideals were self-sufficiency, civic virtue, intelligence and almost unlimited trust in man’s abilities.” Even though the Middle Ages weren’t that far away and nor could they be considered the backward world depicted for so long, Renaissance men were aware they were different: in less than twenty years, starting from the building of the Brunelleschi Cupola, a small group of artists in just one city, Florence, brought about one of the most important revolutions in cultural history, and not just Italian.