There is dispute about Leonardo da Vinci’s beliefs, whether he was a spiritual man or religious. What thoughts do you have on this and can you give documented evidence for his beliefs or lack of?
By all accounts, he was a not particularly devout Catholic, who did most of his work for the Catholic church, and who, upon his death, received last rites, and arranged for masses to be said on his behalf at a few Florentine churches.
Welcome to the SDMB, saffire.
A link to the Staff Report you’re commenting on is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, being sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: Was Leonardo da Vinci religious? - The Straight Dope
These arguments whether certain historical people were Christians or not are just plain silly.
Until late in the 18th century, there really wasn’t an alternative. Sure, you could have been a Jew, but those were such rare creatures, and even if you believed in only half of the rumors about them, they seemed far from human. There were Muslims, but your main thoughts about Muslims wasn’t theological in nature as much as their propensity to seize and invade Europe.
At that time, Christianity was what everyone was. Maybe you weren’t that religious. Maybe you disagreed with certain established church teachings. Heck, maybe you even had doubts about this whole God thing, but if asked, especially by the local Inquisition, of course you were a true Christian! Might as well ask if you breathed air.
And for a person like di Vinci whom depended upon the Church for commissions, there was never any doubt. He might not be a regular attender to the Sunday service (even though it was probably required by local law). He may have his doubts about specific Church doctrine. Heck, he may have frequently committed many deeds that the Church would have frowned upon, but unless he wanted to completely separate himself from intellectual society, he certain considered himself a Christian.
We live in a much different world today where people are exposed to more alternatives and power is held much more diversely. Not a believer? No longer a problem. Unless you live in rural Utah, you’re going to find a community of like minded people. No one is going to burn you at the stake. No one is going to deny you a living. No one is going to deny you an education. Things were a bit different in Renaissance Italy. And, compared to other places in Europe, Italy was a bin of freethinkers and heretics.
You might be surprised what you’ll find in rural Utah, thank you. We DO have TV and the internet there.
Not quite as straightforward as that. Freethinkers and even atheists were often given protection by dukes and great lords who enjoyed their spirited conversation. This is especially true of Leonardo’s time when Italy was a hotbed of new ideas inspired by the revival of Greek learning.
One thinks of people lke Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno (the latter of whom the papal authorities actually got in the end and burned him at the stake for atheism). But often the churchmen had no power to interfere if such people were patronised by one of the powerful Italian ducal families.
Until the Council of Trent there were really the Eastern Church, the Western Church and a small Asian-African Church. There were persecutions but mostly the Papacy was too corrupt to bother anything that did not bother it. Notably the Cathars were put down and for a few years after liberal Muslim Spain became intolerant Catholic Spain, the Inquisition went mad rooting out suspected Jews and Muslims. But a lot went on in religious orders pretty much closed to inspection from outside. You needed kings and popes to collaborate against something like the Knights Templar and even then the process was so slow and erratic that many had probably got away to England and Scotland where they were not persecuted and made arrangements elsewhere for incorporation into other Orders (mainly Knights of Malta).
As long as you kept your head down and were seen to do the right things and not buck the system, the system mostly left you alone. Kings warred on Popes and vice-versa regularly. There were alternate Popes and any amount of ‘magical’ and ‘occult’ interest. As long as it did not question certain fundamentals and did not set itself up as a challenge it was mostly safe. Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei did extrapolate that if they had shown some church truths wrong that brought all church truths into question. That undermined the Pope’s authority and the whole basis of western civilisation.
Unitarianism.
And Aretino didn’t really have any hetrodox religious views, as far as I know. He was just a satirist who enjoyed being offensive. Besides, he lived most of his life in Venice (after fleeing Rome). There was nowhere on the Italian peninsula more anti-Papal than Venice
Assuming that by “small Asian-African Church” you mean the Monophysites, you have left out the Nestorians. And, since you specifically mention Trent, you’ve also omitted the nascent Protestants that Trent was called to deal with.
The Monophysites and Nestorians have some sort of deal together. There were probably latent Arians and all sorts of others still lurking in the background too. The reason I ignored Protestants is that until Trent they were not seen as necessarily constituting a separate church (or churches). You can especially say that Henry VIII considered his church to be Catholic but not Roman and definitely never Lutheran! Had things played out differently there might have been a situation more like the various national Orthodox churches.
The sad thing about Protestantism is that once they had rejected the Pope’s authority they put their own in its place so that instead of one Pope of a broad church you get a thousand Popes each of their own narrow church and the Roman church closed ranks as well. The single church was a long way from tolerant but I think it was more so than many of the Puritans and than it became later. It’s all a matter of power. If it had happened earlier when the Papacy was weaker the outcome might have been that he reverted to his original position of chairman of the board but nowhere near imperial dictator of it.
On the contrary, they are mirror images; each of the two accuses the mainstream churches of being too like the other one.
Luther and Calvin had already dismantled the entire Episcopal structure.
Very true of England under Henry. But things were very different on the Continent.
Not by 1545.
True enough. If French inheritance customs in 814 had been different, or if Theodoric the Great had chosen to call himself “Imperator” instead of “Rex”, the world might be very different.
Calvin did, but Lutheranism is episcopal.
Qazwart - You’re forgetting that Leonardo da Vinci means Leonardo from Vinci. He had come from the area round Vinci , and it helped to distinguish him from all the other Leonardos, who came from Roma, from Pisa, from Varese, etc.
Calling him da Vinci, is like calling me “of Lucan”.
Of course, that’s why we all knew Dan Brown’s idiot book was horse s##t from the first few pages. It was obvious at once that Brown thought it was like a modern surname.
Not in the classical sense, except in Sweden.
And the rest of Scandinavia. It’s also likely that some of the Lutheran administrators of the German dioceses would have been bishops if the Emperor had let them.
The last I heard, the Lutheran Church of Sweden is unique in having maintained (though not in the judgment of Rome) the Apostolic Succession.
Most of the Danish Lutheran bishops at the time of the Danish Reformation were chosen by Johannes Bugenhagen. So, the Danish church had and has an episcopal structure but it didn’t preserve the apostolic succession.