In 2011 the European Union published a report on the process of making Europe's cultural heritage easily accessible on internet. It was written by the 'Comité des Sages', a 'high-level reflection group' of the European Commission. The title of the report is: 'The New Renaissance', with an unambiguous reference towards the input of information about Antiquity which fired-off the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century.
With the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, many scholars living in the capital of the Byzantine Empire fled to Italy, taking with them a wealth of manuscripts which held the collected writings of Roman and Greek Antiquity, which quickly spread among the Italian intelligentia and created the intellectual movement of 'humanism', which in its turn fertilized the imagination of artists and architects and their patrons, keen on emulating and, if possible, surpassing the achievements of a glorious past. It was the accessibility of those ancient sources which was the deciding moment of the Italian Renaissance which was soon to spread all over the continent.
https://op.europa.eu/nl/publication-detail/-/publication/79a38a23-e7d9-4452-b9b0-1f84502e68c5
It is quite appropriate that for the cover design, Raphael's 'School of Athens' has been chosen, the symbolic fresco of the gathering of great thinkers and artists as painted in the stanza of the vatican, expressing the spirit of cultural renewal and stunning wave of artistic inspiration and achievement which still inspires stunned crowds in our own, debased times. The authors of the report knew exactly what they were talking about.
With the regrouping of geopolitical interests, in which Europe tries to regain important components of its identity both politically and culturally, it looks as if the times begin to be ready for a renewal of its spirit. Thanks to the barbarians in the East.
Also the recent remarkable groundbreaking book by German cultural philosopher and composer Wolfgang-Andreas Schultz: 'Europas Zweite Renaissance' (Europa Verlag, 2022) fits into this new mood - the times of 'rejecting the past' for being irrelevant for an utopian future seem to come to an end. The questions of 'who are we? and if so, why?' have gained an urgency which they never had, as has the matter of what 'we' absolutely don't want to be, with an eye on primitive societies where the voice of violence, as a remnant of ancient failures, still reigns supreme.
https://www.amazon.de/Europas-zweite-Renaissance-Mensch-Anthropoz%C3%A4n/dp/3958904122
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