BURCKHARDT, JACOB. - Protestant historian, b. in Basel on 25 May 1818, d. there on 8 Aug. 1897. After completing his gymnasium studies, he enrolled in the faculty of Theology of his native city, from which after two years he moved to Berlin, attending there in the faculty of Philosophy above all the courses of Ranke (history), of Boeckh (classical antiquity) and of Kugler (art history).

In 1853 he published a work on the age of Constantine (Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen), a work that is notable not because it constitutes a fundamental study of that Roman emperor, but for the approach given to the historiographical problem regarding the transitional age, in which the progressive decadence of the classical age is balanced by the new dawn of rising Christianity, which announces the Middle Ages of the «res publica christiana». Once the medieval unity was broken, B. dreamed (and this is the inspiring motive that presided over the genesis of the book) of a reconstitution of that unity on spiritual bases different from the directives of the Catholic Church and of the Papacy, believing that he could thus coordinate the particular needs of individuals and of society, while the continuous flow of the historical process remained firm, whereby the age of Constantine, for example, would present, more than a preponderant influence of Christianity on dying paganism, an «inner development within paganism itself». The political situation did not, however, encourage the ideal of a united and solidary humanity, and B., with his fine sensibility, moved ever further away from the historical vision of Ranke and his followers. After publishing in 1855 the Cicerone, an artistic guide to Italy, convinced that only the creative activity of the spirit, and therefore works of art, give the exact measure of human value, B. gave life to that historiographical tendency that goes under the name of Kulturgeschichte, and of which his Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) is the model. B.'s intention of elevating the Renaissance to the prototype of civilization, apart from the disputability of the assertion, has led (and any other research inspired by an analogous dictate arrives at the same results) to a monotonous and uniform leveling that excludes, in the various practical and spiritual activities of Renaissance man, an ethical and moral evaluation of the individual and of society, and therefore makes it impossible to formulate a true historical judgment.

Bibliography

BIBL.: The most important works of B. have been republished in the J. B. Gesamtausgabe, 14 vols., Berlin-Leipzig 1930-33. For the letters see J. B., Briefe zur Erkenntnis seiner geistigen Gestalt, edited by F. Kaphahn, Leipzig 1935 (the biography prefaced to it is excellent). Among the biographies of B. one should remember that of C. Neumann, J. B., Munich 1927, and the very recent one of W. Kaegi, J. B., Basel 1947, of which the first volume has so far appeared. On B.'s historiographical conception and on its divergences from and convergences with that of Ranke cf. R. Stadelmann, J. B. und das Mittelalter, in Historische Zeitschrift, 142 (1930), p. 457 ff., and F. Meinecke, Ranke und B., in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8, 15-16 Sept. 1947. On the limits of B.'s historiography see B. Croce, La storiografia senza problema storico. II. Il B., in La Critica, 35 (1937), pp. 425-33.

Silvio Furlani

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

Burckhardt, Jacob

About this entry