{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":" Life Hacking Tech Brief By HackerNoon","title":"The long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1371,"description":"\n This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/the-long-obscurity-of-the-dark-ages-lifted-over-italy.\n The union in Leonardo of reality to mystery has often been shared by genius in other fields. \n Check more stories related to life-hacking at: https://hackernoon.com/c/life-hacking.\n You can also check exclusive content about #art, #science, #hackernoon-books, #project-gutenberg, #books, #da-vinci-leonardo, #ebooks, #thoughts-on-art-and-life, and more.\n \n \n This story was written by: @leonardodavinci. Learn more about this writer by checking @leonardodavinci's about page,\n and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com.\n \n \n \n The long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy, awakening to a national though a divided consciousness. Already two distinct tendencies were apparent. The practical and rational, on the one hand, was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of Florence and the Lombard cities, while at Rome it had even then created the civil organization of the curia. The novella was its literary triumph. In art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. Opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in Italian life, mystical, religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval Christianity, encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its mountain cities. Umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing words of Jacopone da Todi expressed in poetry the same religious fervour which the life of Florence and Perugia bore witness to in action.\n\nItaly developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces the rational with the mystical. Their later union in the greater men was to form the art temperament of the Renaissance. The practical side gave it...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/M5qfl-vj8EULTWNkE9Tyg923clEvq89sRNsIi9VAERE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQxNDIyLzE2ODM1/ODI4NDQtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}