Jacob Burckhardt was born in 1818 in Basel, Switzerland. He studied history at the University of Berlin and taught art history and the Italian Renaissance in Berlin and Basel. His essay, as he called The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, was first published in 1860. Rich in its detailed account of the arts, fashions, manners, and thought of one of the most innovative eras in human history, this brilliant panorama of Renaissance life is also a thorough examination of the nature of civilization and of our place within it. Burckhardt's encyclopedic knowledge, his mastery of style, and his genius for synthesis make this one of the few classics of history and the prototype for cultural history. Burckhardt's The Age of Constantine the Great and Cicerone were published in his lifetime, and The History of Greek Civilization and Reflections on World History after his death in 1897.

"The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" from 1860 is a work on the Italian Renaissance by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. Together with his "History of the Renaissance in Italy," it is counted among the classics of Renaissance historiography.

Published in 1860, Burckhardt's great work redefined our sense of the European past, wholly reinterpreting what has since been known simply as the Italian Renaissance. With unsurpassed erudition, Burckhardt illuminates a world of artistic and cultural ferment, innovation, and discovery; of revived humanism; of fierce tensions between church and empire; and of the birth of both the modern state and the modern individual. "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy remains the single most important and influential account of this crucial moment in the history of the West. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Burckhardt's 1860 magnum opus on the development of the Italian Renaissance, here reissued in the two-volume English translation of 1878.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... arrives, and after giving him the explanation quoted above of the opinion of St. Thomas Aquinas on tyrannicide, exhorts him to bear death manfully. Boscoli makes answer: ' Father, waste no time on this; the philosophers have taught it me already; help me to bear death out of love to Christ.' What follows--the communion, the leave-taking and the execution-- is very touchingly described, one point deserves special mention. When Boscoli laid his head on the block, he begged the executioner to delay the stroke for a moment: ' During the whole time since the announcement of the sentence he had been striving after a close union with God, without attaining it as he wished, and now in this supreme moment he thought that by a strong effort he could give himself wholly to God.' It is clearly some half-understood expression of Savonarola which was troubling him. If we had more confessions of this character the spiritual picture of the time would be the richer by many important features which no poem or treatise has preserved for us. We should see more clearly how strong the inborn religious instinct was, how subjective and how variable the relation of the individual to religion, and what powerful enemies and competitors religion had. That men whose inward condition is of this nature, are not the men to found a new church, is evident; but the history of the Western spirit would be imperfect without a view of that fermenting period among the Italians, while other nations, who have had no share in the evolution of thought, may be passed over without loss. But we must return to the question of immortality. If unbelief in this respect made such progress among the more highly cultivated natures, the reason lay partly in the fact that the great earthly...