All language subtitles for Civilisation.03of13.Romance.and.Reality.720p.BluRay.YIFY

(MUSIC) Virelai C'est La Fin

I'm in the Gothic world.

The world of chivalry, courtesy and romance.

A world in which serious things
were done with a sense of play.

Where even war and theology
could become a sort of game.

And when architecture reached a point of
extravagance unequalled in history.

After all the great unifying convictions
of the 12th century,

high Gothic art
can look fantastic and luxurious -

what Marxists call "conspicuous waste".

And yet, these centuries produced some of the
greatest spirits in the whole history of man,

amongst them St Francis of Assisi and Dante.

Behind all the fantasies of Gothic imagination,

there remained, on two different planes,
a sharp sense of reality.

Medieval man could see things very clearly.

But he believed that these appearances
should be considered

as nothing more than symbols
or tokens of an ideal order

which was the only true reality.

The fantasy strikes us first.

A charming example is this series of tapestries
known as the Lady With The Unicorn,

one of the last and most seductive examples
of the Gothic spirit.

It is poetical, fanciful and profane.

Its ostensible subject is the four senses,

but its real subject is the power of love,

which can enlist and subdue
all the forces of nature -

including these two emblems
of lust and ferocity,

the unicorn and the lion.

They kneel before this embodiment of chastity,

and even hold up the corners of her tent.

These fierce beasts have become
in the heraldic sense, her supporter's.

And all round this allegorical scene

is what the scholastic medieval philosophers
used to call nature naturing,

natura naturans".

Birds

trees

flowers, leaves galore.

And those rather obvious symbols
of nature naturing - rabbits.

There is even nature domesticated
sitting on a cushion.

What an image of worldly happiness
at its most refined

what the French call the "douceur de vivre"

which is often confused with civilisation.

(MUSIC) Basse Dance: Alta

We've come a long way
from the powerful convictions

that induced knights and ladies
to draw carts of stone up the hill

for the building of Chartres Cathedral.

And yet, the notion of ideal love,

and the irresistible power
of gentleness and beauty,

which is emblematically conveyed by
the homage of these fierce beasts,

can be traced back for three centuries

and we may even begin to look for it
in the north portal of Chartres.

This portal, the north portal,

was decorated about the year 1220.

It seems to have been commissioned by
that formidable lady, Blanche of Castile,

the mother of St Louis.

Perhaps, for that reason, or simply because
it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary,

many of the figures are of women.

And several of the stories on the arches
concern Old Testament heroines.

And at the corner is one of the first consciously
graceful women in Western art.

Only a very few years before,

women were thought of as like this.

And those were the women who accompanied
the Norsemen to Iceland.

Now, look at this embodiment of chastity,

lifting her mantle, raising her hand,
turning her head,

with rhythms of self-conscious refinement
that were to become mannered

but here are genuinely modest.

In fact, she represents a saint
called Saint Modeste.

But she might be Dante's Beatrice.

Of the two or three faculties

that have been added to the European mind
since the civilisation of Greece and Rome

none seems to me stranger
and more inexplicable

than the sentiment of ideal or courtly love.

This was entirely unknown in antiquity.

Passion, yes. Desire, yes, of course.

Steady affection, yes.

But this state of utter subjection to the will of
some almost unapproachable woman.

This belief that no sacrifice was too great,

that a whole lifetime might properly be spent
in paying court to a disdainful lady,

or suffering on her behalf.

This would have seemed to the Romans
or to the Vikings,

not only absurd but unbelievable.

And yet for hundreds of years
it passed unquestioned.

It inspired a vast literature,
from Chr�tien de Troyes to Shelley,

most of which l find completely unreadable.

And even up to 1945, we still retained
a number of chivalrous gestures.

We raised our hats to ladies
and let them pass first through doors,

and in America, pushed in their seats at table.

We still subscribed to the fantasy
that they were chaste and pure beings,

in whose presence we couldn't tell
certain stories or pronounce certain words.

Well, that's all over now.

But it had a long run,
and there was much to be said for it.

How did it begin?

The truth is that nobody knows.

Most people think that, like the pointed arch,
it came from the East

that pilgrims and Crusaders found in the
Muslim world a tradition of Persian literature

in which women were the subject of
extravagant compliment and devotion.

l don't know enough about Persian literature
to say if this is true.

But l do think that the Crusades
had another, less-direct influence

on the concept of courtly love.

The lady of a castle must always
have had a peculiar position.

Cooped up with so many
unoccupied young men,

who couldn't spend all their time fighting.

And when the lord was away for a year or two,

the lady was left in charge.

She took on his functions

and received the kind of homage
that was accepted in a feudal society.

And the wandering knight who visited her,

did so with the mixture of deference and hope
that one gets in the troubadour poems.

(MUSIC) Retrovenge: Pour Mon Coeur

In support of this theory is the subject
of the siege of the Castle of Love,

which appears on mirror cases and caskets

and other domestic objects of the 14th century.

l ought perhaps to add that the idea of marriage
doesn't come into the question at all.

Medieval marriages
were entirely a matter of property.

Well, as everybody knows,

marriage without love means
Love without marriage.

And then, l suppose, one must admit that the
cult of the Virgin had something to do with it.

In this context, it sounds rather blasphemous.

But the fact remains

that one often hardly knows if a medieval love
lyric is addressed to the poet's mistress

or to the Virgin Mary.

The greatest of all writings about ideal love,
Dante's Vita Nuova - the New Life -

is a quasi-religious work.

And in the end, it is Beatrice
who introduces Dante to paradise.

So, for all these reasons

l think one can associate the cult of ideal love
with the ravishing beauty and delicacy

that one finds in the madonnas
of the late-13th century.

Courtly love was not only the subject of lyrics,

but of long - very long - stories
in prose and verse.

And this reminds me of something else

that the Gothic centuries added
to the European consciousness.

That cluster of ideas and sentiments

which surrounds the words
"romantic" and "romance".

One can't really say that romance
was a Gothic invention.

l suppose that, as the word suggests,
it was Romanesque,

and grew up in those
southern districts of France

where the memories of Roman civilisation
had not been quite obliterated

when they were overlaid by the more fantastic
imagery of the Saracens.

But the chivalrous romance of the Gothic time

from Chr�tien de Troyes of the 13th century
to Mallory in the 15th,

with their allegories and personifications,

their endless journeys and night-long vigils,
their spells and mysteries,

had a special appeal to the medieval mind.

For two hundred years,

the Roman De La Rose was probably
the most read book in Europe...

..except for Boethius and the Bible.

Well, it's not much read today,
except in order to pass examinations.

But, of course, the effect of these romances
on 19th-century literature was decisive,

whether as a quarry or as an imaginative
escape, especially in England.

The Eve Of St Agnes, the Belle Dame
Sans Merci, The Idylls Of The King,

to say nothing of that crucial masterpiece
of the late-19th century,

Wagner's Tristan And Isolde.

One can't say that Gothic romance
hasn't played a part in our experience,

if only at second-hand.

(MUSIC) Ja Nun Hons Pris

The summit of court civilisation was reached
in the late-14th century in France,

under the patronage of the Duc de Berry.

He built a series of fabulous filigree castles,

of which the painter de Limbourg has left us
an apparently accurate record.

He filled them with jewels
and jewelled contraptions,

paintings and tapestries.

This warlike scene is only a tapestry.

The Duke wasn't fond of war.

The Duke's artists have given us
a vivid account of his court.

Here he is giving a grand dinner
to celebrate the New Year.

There are no ladies present, which is curious,

because the Duke
who was an amiably self-indulgent man,

is reported to have said of women,

"The more the merrier, and never tell the truth."

But we can see some of his famous collection
of fifteen hundred dogs.

Which is too many even for me.

They seem to have had the run of the table.

Behind him is his chamberlain
saying to some bashful suitor,

"Approache, approche."

And his courtiers, including a cardinal,

are raising their hands in astonishment
at such condescension.

The castles, pictures, tapestries
have vanished with the dogs.

But a few of the treasures remain.

This gold cup is one, which seems
to have been owned by the Duke,

and one of the few objects
from which can still catch

the flavour of this fanciful, luxurious world.

And this, nominally a reliquary,

but actually an extravagant, but charming, toy.

It's supposed to have held a thorn
from Christ's crown at the Crucifixion.

There were many patrons of art
and collectors at that time

but the Duke was peculiar
in that the arts were his whole life.

And to pay for his collections,
he taxed his subjects mercilessly,

and they wouldn't have agreed with this
miniature where St Peter admits him to heaven

without the usual formalities.

It was a colder world for peasants.

The manuscripts illustrate
another capacity of the human mind,

which had grown up in the preceding century -

the delighted observation of natural objects,
leaves and flowers, animals and birds.

Birds were a medieval obsession.

They're the subject of
one of the earliest medieval sketch books

and they fill the borders of manuscripts.

If you'd asked a 14th-century cleric
to account for all these birds

he would probably have said
that they represented souls,

because they can fly up to God.

But this doesn't really explain why artists drew
them with such obsessive accuracy.

And l think the reason is that they had become
symbols of freedom.

Under feudalism
men and animals were tied to the land.

Very few people could move about.

Only artists...

and birds.

They were cheerful,
hopeful, impudent and mobile.

And, in addition, had the kind of markings
that fitted in with medieval heraldry.

The Duke's earliest manuscripts had shown an
isolating and symbolising approach to nature.

But in the middle of his career
he discovered an artist

or a group of artists called de Limbourg,

who by some stroke of original genius
saw nature as we see it -

as part of a complete visual experience.

No doubt much of their work's been lost.

But one book remains

The Very Rich Hours,

which is one of the miracles of art history.

Here are men and women cultivating the fields,

harrowing, sowing -
there's a scarecrow in the background -

haymaking and harvesting.

And suddenly we realise
that all this had been going on

in the same places, more or less unchanged,

all through the Dark Ages.

And went on in the same way
right up to the last war.

In the foreground,

a party of nobles out hawking
indulge in a little mild courtship.

So called because it was only in courts that one
had time for these agreeable preliminaries,

instead of getting down to business immediately.

Then, in May, everyone puts on crowns
of leaves and goes out riding.

What a dream.

No society has ever been more elegant,
more debonair, more dainty.

Those French and Burgundian courts were
the model of fashion and good manners

all over Europe.

Many people, when you mention to them
the word civilisation

think of something like this.

Well, it isn't to be sneezed at.

But it isn't enough to keep a civilisation alive.

Because it depends on a small static society

that never looks outside or beyond.

And we know from many examples

that such societies become petrified,

anxious only to hold on
to their own social order.

The great, indeed the unique,
merit of European civilisation

has been that it has never ceased to develop.

Even the idea of courtesy
could take on an unexpected form.

In the years when the north portal of Chartres
was being decorated,

a rich young dandy named Francesco
Bernadone suffered a change of heart.

He was, and always remained,
the most courteous of men.

He was deeply influenced
by French ideals of chivalry.

And one day, when he had fitted himself up
in his best clothes

in preparation for some chivalrous campaign,

he met a poor gentleman whose needs
seemed to be greater than his own,

and gave him his cloak.

That night he dreamed that
he should rebuild the Celestial City.

Later, he gave away his possessions so liberally

that his father, who was a rich businessman
in the Italian town of Assisi

decided to disown him.

Whereupon Francesco
took off his remaining clothes

and said that he would possess nothing,
absolutely nothing.

The Bishop of Assisi hid his nakedness,

and afterwards gave him a cloak,

and Francesco went off into the woods
singing a French song.

The next three years he spent in abject poverty,

looking after lepers, who were very much
in evidence in the Middle Ages

and rebuilding with his own hands
abandoned churches.

In all his actions
he took the words of the Gospels literally.

And he translated them
into the language of chivalric poetry.

He said that he had taken poverty for his lady.

And when he achieved
some still more drastic act of self-denial

he said that it was to do her a courtesy.

It was partly because he saw that
wealth corrupts and is the cause of war,

but partly because
he felt that it was discourteous

to be in the company
of anyone poorer than oneself.

I've so far illustrated the story of St Francis
by the work of the Sienese painter Sassetta,

because although he painted so much later,

the chivalric Gothic tradition lingered on in Siena
as nowhere else in Italy,

and gave to Sassetta's sprightly images
a lyric, even a visionary quality

more Franciscan than
the ponderous images of Giotto.

But l must now change to Giotto.

Not only because he lived 150 years earlier
than Sassetta

that's to say much nearer
the time of St Francis

but because he was chosen to decorate
the great church where I'm now standing,

the Church of St Francis

built very shortly after his death.

How many of these frescoes are really
by Giotto's own hand is an open question.

Modern English scholars
have taken it into their heads to say

that Giotto practically never went to Assisi at all.

Italian scholars think
that he painted nearly all of them.

I'm inclined to think that Giotto
was one of those artists, like Raphael,

who attached much more importance
to invention than to execution.

He was quite prepared to let his pupils -

there must have been a small army of pupils -

carry out his ideas.

The ones here above my head
l am pretty sure he painted himself,

because they have all his weight
and dramatic power.

Where he seems to me to fall short

is in his actual image of the saint.

It's too grave and commanding.

It has none of that sprightliness, almost -

that sense of joy which St Francis valued
almost as much as courtesy itself.

Incidentally, we don't know
what St Francis looked like.

The best known early painting
is attributed to Cimabue.

It looks quite convincing,

but I'm afraid that it's entirely repainted

and only shows us what the 19th century
thought St Francis ought to have looked like.

From the first, everyone recognised
that St Francis was a religious genius,

the greatest, l believe,
that Europe has ever produced.

Although he was only a layman,

the Pope gave him permission
to found an order, here at Assisi.

St Francis died in 1226 at the age of 43,

worn out by his austerities.

On his deathbed, he had asked forgiveness
of "poor brother donkey, my body"

for the hardships he had made it suffer.

He had seen his order go from
a group of humble companions

and become a great institution,

a power in church politics.

And at a certain point, he had quite naturally
and simply relinquished control.

He knew that he was no administrator.

Within two years, only two years of his death,

he was canonised

and his companions began to build
this great church to his memory.

A masterpiece of Gothic architecture,
also an incredible piece of engineering.

Two churches, one on top of the other,

a huge monastery, all built on arcades,

and of such hard stone
that it's almost impossible to believe

that it's original 13th-century work.

l think it must have been built
by a castle architect.

It was decorated by all the chief Italian,painters
of the 13th and 14th centuries

from Cimabue onwards

so that it has become the richest
and most evocative church in Italy.

(Plainsong)

A strange memorial to the little poor man
whose favourite saying was,

"Foxes have holes
and the birds of the air have nests

but the Son of Man hath
not where to lay his head."

Of course, St Francis's cult of poverty
couldn't survive him.

It didn't even last his lifetime.

It was officially rejected by the Church

because the Church had already become
part of the international banking system

that originated in the 13th century.

Those of St Francis's disciples who clung
to his doctrine of poverty, called fraticelli,

were denounced as heretics
and burnt at the stake.

And for 700 years, capitalism has continued
to grow to its present monstrous proportions.

It may seem that St Francis
has had no influence at all.

Even those humane reformers of the
19th century who sometimes invoked him,

didn't wish to exalt or sanctify poverty
but to abolish it.

And yet, his belief that in order to free the spirit
we must shed our earthly possessions

is the belief that all great religions
have in common - East and West.

Almost without exception.

And by enacting that truth,
with such simplicity and grace,

he made it a part of European consciousness.

An ideal to which, however impossible
it may be in practice,

the finest spirits will always return.

And, by freeing himself
from the pull of possessions,

St Francis achieved a state of mind
which has been of great value to us'.

l mean his belief in the unity of creation

and the possibility of universal love.

It was only because he possessed nothing

that St Francis could feel sincerely
a brotherhood with all created things.

Not only living creatures, like Brother Pig,

but Brother Fire and Sister Wind.

This philosophy inspired his hymn
to the unity of creation,

known as the Canticle Of The Sun.

It's expressed with irresistible naivety

in a collection of legends known as the Fioretti -
the little flowers.

Not many people can make their way through
the polemics of Abelard

or the definitions of St Thomas Aquinas,

but everyone can enjoy these holy folk tales,

which, after all, may not be completely untrue.

They are, in contemporary jargon, amongst
the first examples of popular communication.

At any rate, since the Sermon on the Mount.

And they tell us, for instance,
how St Francis persuaded a fierce wolf

that terrified the people of Gubbio,
to make a pact

by which, in return for regular meals,
he will leave the citizens alone.

"Give me your paw, " said St Francis.

And the wolf gave his paw.

Most famous of all, of course
is the sermon to the birds.

Those creatures which, as I've said
seemed to the Gothic mind singularly privileged.

Seven centuries haven't impaired
the naive beauty of that episode.

(Bell tolls)

St Francis is a figure of the pure Gothic time.

The age of Crusades and castles
and the great cathedrals.

Although he put it to strange
and barbarous uses

he belonged to the age of chivalry.

Well, however much one loves that world

l think it remains for us infinitely strange
and remote.

It's as enchanting, as luminous,
as transcendental

as the stained glass that is its glory.

And in the ordinary meaning of the word,
as unreal.

But already, during the lifetime of St Francis,
another world was growing up,

which, for better or worse
is the ancestor of our own'.

The world of trade, of banking, of cities.

Full of hard-headed men whose aim in life
was to grow rich

without ceasing to be respectable.

Cities, citizens, civilians, civic, civic life.

l suppose all this ought to have a direct bearing
on what we mean by civilisation.

Behind me is the town hall of Siena
looking very much as it did in the 14th century.

In fact, the city architect told me

that the population is two less
than it was in the 13th century.

Historians sometimes maintain

that civilisation began
in these Italian republics of the 14th century.

Civilisation, as l understand it
can be created in a monastery or a' court

just as well as in a city -
perhaps rather better.

All the same, the social and economic system
that grew up in the 13th century had a point.

It was a manageable human unit.

As opposed to the system -
if you can call it a system - of chivalry,

it was realistic.

And the proof is that it has survived.

Of course, Siena remained to some extent
medieval, compared with Florence.

There industrial and banking conditions
in the time of Dante

were surprising similar
to those that exist in Lombard Street today.

Except that double entry wasn't invented
till the 14th century, in Genoa, l believe.

Of course, the Italian republics
weren't in the least democratic.

As those pre-Marxist innocents,
the liberal historians, used to think they were.

Exploitation was in the hands
of a few powerful families,

who managed to operate
within the framework of a guild system

in which the workers had no say at all.

The Italian merchant of the 14th century
isn't a sympathetic figure.

Less so, really, than that old reprobate
Jean de Berry.

The stories of Florentine thrift are like the stories
that Jews used to tell about each other.

But - and here the parallel with Lombard Street
is not so close -

the new merchant classes
as patrons of the art of their own time,

were at least as intelligent as the aristocracy.

And just as their economic system was capable
of expansion, it has lasted till today,

so the painting they commissioned
had a kind of solid reality

that was to be the dominant aim of art
up to the time of C�zanne.

The first, and in some ways the greatest,
painter of this new reality was Giotto.

This is one of Giotto's frescos
in the Arena Chapel in Padua.

As l look at it l realise that to anyone whose eye
has been conditioned by realism

as it has existed in European art
from the Renaissance to the Cubists

this will not look very realistic.

Perhaps no more so than Gothic tapestry.

But this much is clear.

Instead of a decorative jumble, it concentrates
on a few simple, solid-looking forms

arranged in space.

Giotto had, more than any artist before him,
the ability to make his figures look solid.

He manages to simplify them into large,
comprehensible, apprehensible shapes,

and it gives one a profound satisfaction

to feel that one can grasp his figures
so completely.

He needs to make his figures
more vividly credible

because he wishes us to feel more intensely
the human drama in which they are involved.

Once we have learnt Giotto's language

we can recognise him as one of the greatest
masters of painted drama that has ever lived.

How did Giotto evolve this very personal
and original style?

When he was a young man -
he was born in Tuscany in about 1265 -

Florentine painting was really only
a less polished form of Byzantine painting.

It was flat, flowing, linear,

based on traditional concepts,
which had changed very little for 500 years.

For Giotto to break away from it
and evolve this solid space-conscious style

was one of those feats of original creation

that have occurred only two or three times
in the history of art.

When such drastic changes do take place
one can usually find certain points of departure -

models, predecessors...

But not with Giotto.

We know absolutely nothing about him
till the year 1305

when he decorated a small, plain building
in Padua known as the Arena Chapel,

and made it, to anyone who cares for painting,

one of the holy places of the world.

It was commissioned by a moneylender
named Enrico Scrovegni,

whose father had actually been in prison
for usury,

that is to say, for charging
an extortionate rate of interest

because moderate rates of interest
were unofficially countenanced.

It's one of the first instances of the new rich

commissioning works of art
as a kind of atonement.

A practice that has benefited the world
almost as much as vanity and self-indulgence.

Here he is. Perhaps the earliest painted portrait
that is obviously a genuine likeness,

presenting a model of his chapel
to three angels,

and for that reason placed among the blessed
in the Last Judgement.

Giotto is the supreme dramatist of human life
in all its diversity.

He can depict a scene like this,
the marriage at Cana,

which is almost Chaucerian.

(MUSIC) Medieval music

Behind the pots stands the pot-bellied host

who tastes with astonishment the wine
that has been created out of water.

But Giotto is greatest
when the human drama is greatest.

As in this scene of the betrayal
in the Garden of Gethsemane.

What a marvellous invention -
that Judas should put his cloak round our Lord.

Everything - heads, gestures,
the explosive pattern of the spears

is a crescendo of feeling, tension and violence.

But he can also achieve the lyrical beauty
of the Virgin's wedding procession.

(MUSIC) Early Medieval music

The tenderness of the noli me tangere

with its marvellously subtle relationship
between the figures.

And finally, the lamentation
over Christ's dead body.

It's a masterpiece of pictorial construction,

a sort of model for high academic painting
for 500 years.

But this technical aspect is soon forgotten.

Look at the gestures
and the heads of the mourning women.

They need no words from me.

Although l think that Giotto
was one of the supreme painters of the world,

he has equals.

But in the year of his birth
and in the same district

was born a man who is unequalled.

The greatest philosophical poet
that has ever lived: Dante.

Since they were contemporaries
and compatriots,

one feels that it should be possible
to illustrate Dante by Giotto.

They seem to have known each other
and Giotto may have painted Dante's portrait.

In fact, their imaginations
moved on very different planes.

Giotto was, above all, interested in humanity.

He sympathised with human beings,

and his figures, by their very solidity,
remain on Earth.

Of course, there is humanity in Dante.

He lived in the thick of Florentine politics.

All the characters he had pitied or hated
or admired appear in his poem,

not only as representatives of good and evil,
but with the vividness of real people.

But Giotto lacked Dante's philosophic power
and moral indignation.

That heroic contempt for baseness,

that was to come again in Michelangelo.

Above all, that vision of a heavenly order

and the intellectual power
to make it comprehensible.

In a way, the poet and the painter
stand at the junction of two worlds.

Giotto belonged to the new world
of solid realities.

The world created by the bankers
and merchants for whom he worked.

Dante - as has often been observed -
belonged to the earlier Gothic world,

to the world of St Thomas Aquinas
and the great cathedrals.

One isn't as close to Dante in the Arena Chapel

as one is here
in the Romanesque Baptistry at Pisa.

The pulpit by Nicola Pisano was executed
five years before Dante was born,

yet it has all his sense of horror,

even some of the elements of the grotesque
that come into The Inferno.

Combined with much
that is derived from antiquity.

It has the same keen eye for truthful details.

Although, of course, we can no longer believe
in these rather ridiculous monsters.

Nicola's son Giovanni
about fifteen years older than Dante and Giotto,

and deeply influenced by
the Gothic art of the North

seems to me perfectly to reflect
the Dantesque spirit.

Giovanni Pisano was one of the great
tragic dramatists of sculpture.

The pulpits he carved at Pisa
and nearby Pistoia

depict a terrible world.

Here is the grief-filled suffering
of the Massacre of the Innocents.

(MUSIC) Worldes Blis

But Giovanni Pisano's
feeling of tragic indignation

was only one side of Dante.

In the second half of his great poem,

from the middle of the Purgatorio onwards,

there are moments of disembodied bliss
to which no artist of the time did justice.

Nor were the painters of the 14th century
ready to reflect Dante's feeling for light.

Like all the heroes of this series

Dante thought of light
as the symbol of civilised life.

And in his poem he describes
accurately and economically

light in all its varying effects.

The light of dawn, light on the sea,

light on leaves in spring...

But all these beautiful descriptions,
which are the part of Dante that we like best,

are only similes.

They're introduced by the words "as when".

They're intended to illustrate and make
comprehensible to our Earthbound senses

the vision of divine order and heavenly beauty.

(MUSIC) Early Medieval music