RENAIX 



ruins. Even a special claim to 

 revelation came to be made. 

 Herod's temple, it was said, was 

 built in classical architecture ; 

 therefore, it was argued, it had a 

 perfect nature. It was the one true 

 architecture. The conception that 

 there were absolutely perfect 

 building forms and proportions was 

 confirmed to them by the study of 

 Vitruvius, an old Roman architect, 

 who wrote in a rhetorical manner 

 about the beginning of our era. 

 Predominating Italian Influence 



It was thus part of the theory 

 to work within precedents, but 

 very remarkable and splendid re- 

 sults were attained, and while en- 

 thusiasm was fully alive the works 

 were very interesting. Many diffi- 

 culties, however, appeared when 

 this unvarying standard was ap- 

 plied to varying materials and in 

 different climates. What in Italy 

 had been a national movement 

 became in France, England, and 

 Germany anti-national, and the 

 native arts decayed when it be- 

 came fashionable to esteem only 

 the forms and methods imported 

 from Italy, and characteristic of 

 the movement in that country. 



To England small objects and 

 pictures were brought from Italy 

 in increasing numbers during the 

 14th and 15th centuries, and at the 

 beginning of the 16th several able 

 Italian artists themselves arrived 

 to work for Henry VIII. One of 

 these was Tonigiano, who made 

 the noble tomb of Henry VII in 

 Westminster Abbey, for which he 

 signed a contract in 1512. For a 

 century English craftsmen imita- 

 ted as best they might the new 

 kind of work which they called 

 antic or antique, and it is interest- 

 ing to note that our word antics for 

 grotesque behaviour originated in 

 this way. Towards the end of the 

 16th century Inigo Jones went to 

 Italy to study painting ; he re- 

 turned in 1603, and then designed 

 stage scenery and buildings. Some 

 years later he went again to Italy 

 and acquired a scholarly knowledge 

 of Roman and Renaissance archi- 

 tecture, being the first English- 

 man to do so. He made a special 

 study of the works of Palladio, and 

 after his return built the Banquet- 

 ing House at Whitehall, the details 

 of which are closely imitated from 

 the works of Palladio. Jones was 

 followed by an able pupil, John 

 Webb, who built Ashburnham 

 House, now forming part of West- 

 minster School, and several fine 

 country houses. 



Christopher Wren came into 

 notice soon after the Restoration, 

 and continued to work nearly until 

 the time of his death in 1723. 

 Wren was an experimenter and an 



6558 



inventor. Although he acquired a 

 competent knowledge of the gram- 

 mar of the style in which he worked, 

 his writings show that he looked 

 on this as more or less incidental, 

 and that his interest was in con- 



Aflcr Bonnal 



structive problems and in the 

 larger questions of civic order and 

 dignity, to which he saw a worthy 

 form of architecture was essential. 

 In the next century the fashion of 

 copying Italian works gave way in 

 part to a vain attempt to bring 

 back the Gothic tradition, and 

 English architects entered on 

 another era of copying. 



W. K. Lethaby 



Bibliography. Architecture: 

 Gothic and Renaissance, T. Roger 

 Smith, 1880 ; Architecture of the 

 Renaissance in England, 2 vols., J. 

 A. Gotch, 1894 ; History of Renais- 

 sance Architecture in England, Sir 

 R. Blomfield, 1897; Character of 

 Renaissance Architecture, C. H. 

 Moore, 1905 ; Architecture of the 

 Renaissance in Italy, W. J. Ander- 

 son, 4th ed. 1909. 



Renaix (Flemish Ronse). Town 

 of Belgium, in the prov. of E. 

 Flanders. It lies in hilly country, 

 26 m. by rly. S. of Ghent, and is a 

 rly. junction of importance. There 

 are industries in cottons, woollens, 

 bootmaking, brewing, and trade in 

 local agricultural produce. The 

 town is pleasantly situated and is 

 a summer resort. The llth century 

 church of S. Hermes, built in the 

 Romanesque style, has a fine 

 crypt. Pop. 22,000. 



Renan, JOSEPH ERNEST (1823- 

 92). French philosopher and philo- 

 logist. Born at Tr6guier, Brittany, 

 Feb. 27, 1823, and educated for the 

 priesthood, he left the seminary of 

 S. Sulpice in 1845, diverted from 

 theology by the scholastic methods 



RENAN 



of the time, and devoted himself, 

 with the assistance of his sister 

 Henriette, to the study of letters, 

 and especially to the study of 

 Oriental languages. For a time he 

 was assistant master ' in a boys' 

 school. In 1850 he secured an ap- 

 pointment at the Bibliotheque 

 Nationale, Paris, and visited Italy. 

 In 1852 came his work on Arabian 

 philosophy, Averroes et 1'Aver- 

 rolsme, followed by his Histoire 

 Gen6rale des Langues Semitiqucs, 

 1854, Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse, 

 1856, and Essais de Morale et de 

 Critique, 1859. 



One of a commission sent by the 

 French government hi 1860 to 

 Phoenicia and Palestine, his ap- 

 pointment, 1861, to the professor- 

 ship of Hebrew at the College de 

 France, owing to clerical opposition, 

 was not ratified until 1870. In the 

 meantime he lost by death his sis- 

 ter, Henriette, whose devotion he 

 commemorated in Ma Soeur Henri- 

 ette, 1895 (Eng. trans. Brother and 

 Sister, 1896), and published his 

 best-known work, Vie de Jesus, 

 1863. This work, which formed 

 the initial volume of his Histoire 

 des Origines du Christianisme, was 

 written mainly during his visit to 

 Syria. The other volumes of the 

 series deal with Christianity down 

 to the time of Marcus Aurelius. 

 Later Publications 



Renan's other works are L'His- 

 toire du Peuple d'Israel, 1888-94 ; 

 Dialogues Philosophiques, 1876 ; 

 Drames Philosophiques, 1888 ; and 

 L'Avenir de la Science, a work of 

 1878 first issued in 1890. In 1878 he 

 was elected to the Academy; in 1880 

 he delivered in London the Hibbert 

 lectures on The Influence of Rome 

 on Christianity. He married in 

 1856 a daughter of Ary Scheffer, 

 who died in 1894. Given the cross 

 of the Legion of Honour in 1880, 

 he was made a grand officier in 

 1888. He died Oct. 2, 1892, and was 

 buried at Montmartre. A statue 

 to his memory, by Boucher, was 

 erected by the French government 

 at Tr^guier, in 1903, much against 

 the wishes of the orthodox Roman 

 Catholics of the town. 



An emotional romantic, who 

 repudiated the charge of atheism, 

 whose Life of Jesus pained the 

 orthodox believer, and whose 

 L'Abbesse de Jouarre was de- 

 scribed as an attempt to raise 

 sensuality to the rank of religion. 

 Renan was the greatest French 

 prose writer of his time, and a 

 scholar whose sympathies were as 

 universal as his knowledge was 

 extraordinarily wide, if somewhat 

 lacking in depth. As a philosopher, 

 he took up an attitude of some- 

 what superior, even ironical, de- 

 tachment, slurred over rather than 



