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00:01In the Renaissance, people started keeping track of time.
00:06In 1510, precision mechanic Peter Henlein invented the pocket watch.
00:12It became a powerful tool.
00:14Merchants earned a fortune with it, while it helped seafarers with their navigation.
00:23Shortly before, Columbus had discovered America and the known world tripled in size.
00:29People began to understand the Earth. An empire was created where the Sun never set.
00:38People owed all of this to the new portable time.
00:42Scholars were able to measure and calculate the course of the heavenly bodies.
00:47They discovered the mechanisms of planetary motion and finally placed the Sun at the heart of their system.
00:54It was a departure to the stars, at least in the mind.
00:59The invention of the pocket watch became the turbocharger of history.
01:03Florence in 1504.
01:05Leonardo da Vinci was the lead character in an era that was to become known as the Renaissance.
01:12During which the best known painting of all time was to be created.
01:17The Mona Lisa. The mysterious beauty with the inimitable smile.
01:24It's probably a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a cloth and silk merchant from Florence.
01:30It's reported that Leonardo didn't complete the painting for years.
01:35The artist was always at odds with his works. He was never happy with them and was always trying to improve them.
01:39Pope Leo X said of Leonardo, this man will never achieve anything.
01:55How wrong he was. Leonardo was a polarizing figure. He was described as foppish, as excessively vain, as a fashionista who stood by his homosexuality.
02:08At a time when gay men were being burnt at the stake. Leonardo da Vinci is considered the greatest polymath of all time.
02:27Leonardo da Vinci is considered the greatest polymath of all time.
02:31Leonardo da Vinci is considered the greatest polymath of all time.
02:32Leonardo da Vinci is considered the greatest polymath of all time.
02:33The star of the Renaissance was much more than just a painter.
02:37He was also an architect, an anatomist, a sculptor, lateral thinker, mathematician, inventor and artist.
02:48But for the brilliant creator of the Mona Lisa, painting was maybe just a necessary evil.
02:55A mere fifteen paintings are attributed to Leonardo today.
03:00Most have been lost because he was constantly experimenting with new paint mixes, many of which decomposed over time.
03:09He cared most about inventing, more than about painting.
03:14When it comes to his inner workings, Leonardo was a seeker, an explorer.
03:24Someone who was interested in new secrets, more than a painter who would have had to nurture his craft laboriously every day, brushstroke after brushstroke.
03:36We know he spent days making minor corrections to a canvas, but he wasn't in front of a canvas all the time.
03:42Maybe he just painted to make a living. His paintings were in great demand after all.
03:47They were extremely well done, at least those that were completed.
03:54Maybe he just painted to earn money, so he had the freedom to pursue his scientific research.
04:02In the 15th century Italy was ravaged by numerous local wars. In 1405 Venice defeated Padua and Florence conquered Pisa.
04:20The Neapolitans attacked Rome in 1413, and in 1440 Florence fought with Naples and Venice.
04:30The Italian cities had an insatiable appetite for each other.
04:34Their constant battles fueled progress, however. War as a driver of art.
04:41War didn't just have negative effects in the Renaissance.
04:49It ensured that huge sums of money were mobilized through the condottieri, the war contractors.
04:56They were often based in small places, from where they waged the wars of the big players for good money.
05:03Money from Florence, Milan, Naples, Venice and Rome flowed into smaller places.
05:09If you go to Italy and you take pleasure in the diverse appearances of these small towns,
05:15you get an idea of what it meant back then to turn war and iron into gold, and gold into art.
05:22In Milan, in 1485. Leonardo's employer was Ludovico Sforza, who ruled the city-state.
05:34In his application to Ludovico, Leonardo advertised himself as a military engineer and maker of weapons.
05:42He only mentioned at the end that he also knew about painting and sculpture.
05:47Ludovico was getting ready for war. He had great expansion plans.
05:51And so Leonardo built high-tech weapons for the Sforzas.
05:58Inspired by antiquity, he combined the idea of a closed chariot with the tortoise formation of the Roman legions.
06:06An armored vehicle with incredible firepower.
06:09However, it failed in practice because of a lack of energy.
06:13It was too heavy, and the steam engine hadn't been invented yet.
06:18The Codex Atlanticus contains more than a thousand pages with sketches by Leonardo.
06:26He designed a perpetual motion machine, a gearbox, and vehicles powered by springs.
06:33Like Heinlein's pocket watch. But many of his imagination still causes headaches today.
06:46Some consider his cog device to be a calculating machine. Critics say that interpretation goes much too far.
06:55In the Renaissance, there was no way of actually constructing this mechanical gear train.
07:01Leonardo knew that, and so he elevated himself onto a theoretical plane. And that was new.
07:08In 1495, Leonardo also showed himself to be a brilliant entertainer and master of ceremonies for the parties of the nobility.
07:21He presented a further invention at these parties, one that centuries later would be counted as one of his most spectacular.
07:29An automatic knight that could walk under its own power. Allegedly, it could even lift its elbows and move its shoulders and wrists.
07:39A construction that generated great excitement at the court in Milan. But how did it work?
07:46The knight was moved by a complicated system of 13 pulleys, all hidden by the suit of armour.
08:04Did the brilliant Leonardo invent a robot 600 years ago?
08:09Professor Ove Schwiegelshorn runs the Robotics Research Institute in Dortmund in Germany.
08:17He specializes in autonomous robots that work without external control.
08:22They can take their own decisions, so to speak. He's familiar with Leonardo's prototype.
08:28Leonardo da Vinci recognized the mechanics of motion, maybe from his anatomical studies, and he tried to give artificial devices motion using pulleys.
08:46He didn't have the propulsion options we have today with electric motors. Mechanics wasn't developed in his day.
08:52It only truly flourished following Newton. And the materials Leonardo had available were quite rudimentary.
09:04Leonardo had no screws, no crankshafts or metal cog wheels. Nor did he have a power unit.
09:11But he recognized the principle of the mechanical man.
09:15Attack of the now devils. Robocup world champion in 2016.
09:22These robotic footballers, roughly 50 centimetres tall, act autonomously.
09:27They size up their opponent and the ball. They plan their moves and sometimes they even score goals.
09:34Football is a complex game and well suited as an experimental environment for the development of a new generation of robots.
09:43Research today requires a team, not an individual, never mind how brilliant.
09:48Modern success strategies are fundamentally different from how Leonardo worked.
09:55Leonardo had a university in his head. He wrote down the entire knowledge of his day.
10:06That's not possible with today's knowledge anymore. If we want technological and scientific progress today,
10:13we're dependent on a number of people from different fields cooperating closely and working together to produce new results.
10:21But in order to collaborate with members of other faculties, it's necessary to at least understand the basics of the other fields.
10:34In order to build robots, it takes programmers, engineers, electronics engineers and also experts in human anatomy and movement sequences.
10:44The robotic footballers are among the most advanced robotic developments, but the robotics field is still very far from creating a real R2D2.
10:55Leonardo amazed those around him, but he scared people too.
11:00His superiority threw up questions like, how did he do that? How can these people create something so outstanding?
11:08What made the greats of the Renaissance tick?
11:12Joachim Funke is a psychology professor from Heidelberg.
11:16He doesn't believe that the brains of the Renaissance geniuses were any different.
11:21He isn't looking for an answer in the function and anatomy of the brain, but in the strategies of the scholarly artists.
11:29Funke is an expert in problem solving and creativity.
11:34Without knowledge, creativity wouldn't be conceivable.
11:43Add to that a broad spectrum of interests.
11:46His curiosity spanned many fields.
11:49He also paid close attention.
11:52From a psychological perspective, that's very important.
11:55Another factor would have been his competitiveness.
11:59Those around him accepted that he crossed boundaries.
12:03That was the spirit of the Renaissance.
12:06People weren't forced to believe anything anymore.
12:09They were able to find out how something works.
12:12That was a huge driving force.
12:15Creativity is a new arrangement of knowledge.
12:22Knowledge that must already exist in the brain.
12:25The creative spark can ignite something that's already there.
12:30But a high degree of education alone isn't enough.
12:34Da Vinci was a lateral thinker who explored new avenues.
12:40Don't just always accept the same ideas and be around the same people.
12:50Listen to other opinions and world views.
12:53Take a different perspective.
12:55In the past, you had a court jester to tell you different opinions.
13:00That's still very helpful because you need a corrective and you should be challenged.
13:05And a jester can do that.
13:06You have to get up from your comfortable sofa and head out into new areas and try new things.
13:13If you want to be creative, you need to have courage.
13:18If you have a good choice, you need to have a good choice.
13:19It's not a good choice.
13:20You have to have a good choice.
13:21You can do that.
13:22Let's look at the clock mode.
13:23Leonardo's preference for mechanics was in line with the spirit of the time.
13:25Many multi-talented people like him were looking for the engines that set humans, the earth and the universe in motion.
13:33Clockwork was, mechanically, the most elaborate thing on offer in Leonardo's time.
13:39In around 1505, Peter Hinlein invented a portable watch.
13:46People started treating time as if they owned it.
13:49But those who earned money with time by loaning money for periods of time
13:54while charging interest were committing a mortal sin.
13:58Time belonged to God alone.
14:09The prohibition on charging interest is in the Bible
14:12and is one of the really important biblical prohibitions,
14:16almost as important as thou shalt not kill.
14:20That's because people believe that humans shouldn't profit from time,
14:24because time belonged to God.
14:27But in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
14:29the economy played a quite different role.
14:32Money must circulate in the economy.
14:35And if the availability of money and time is an advantage,
14:39then you can remunerate their worth.
14:42As a result, there were more and more ways in practice
14:45of avoiding this ban on charging interest.
14:52The imperial decrees of the 16th century
14:55now also allowed Christian moneylenders to charge interest on money loaned.
15:00The maximum was 5%.
15:03Up until then, the credit industry had been solely in the hands of Jewish moneylenders.
15:09This now changed.
15:11While Martin Luther denounced the practice of charging interest,
15:15the Swiss reformer John Calvin had quite a different opinion.
15:19by the purpose of the Philippians to the government.
15:21The most important thing is that they had been doing.
15:23This was the one who is working on the Chinese trade.
15:25The second one was the one who was having a chance
15:26of helping people in the United States.
15:27The second one was the one who had been doing.
15:29The third one was the one who made a decision.
15:31The second one was the one who made a decision.
15:32One was the one who had been doing.
15:33One was the one who made a decision,
15:34one could see from one's economic success,
15:35whether one was predestined
15:36to salvation or damnation.
15:38That meant people didn't just sit around
15:40to see whether they would be chosen.
15:42hard. The great sociologist Max Weber said that Calvinism was the father of capitalism.
15:50We know that other religious movements of the 16th and 17th centuries did just as much for
15:55the economy. It's a pretty theory, but it was the general forces of society at the time,
16:02along with technical developments, that led to the incredible economic boom.
16:12The city of Zurich started setting up official currency exchanges in 1419. The money changers
16:19tended to be goldsmiths or master coiners, because they had to be able to tell the value of the coins.
16:26Changed currencies, but they also issued loans. Later, with its Zwinglian and Calvinist tradition,
16:34Switzerland became a banking pioneer, and affluence became a symbol of divine favor.
16:41Measuring time is still inseparably tied to exploring the heavens. The mind of Renaissance
16:47man left the small world behind and reached out for the stars. Many medieval clocks were astronomical
16:55clocks. The exact measurements of time is a necessary requirement for studying the movements of the sun,
17:02moon and planets. It was the start of an age in which scholars for the first time bravely proclaimed
17:10that the church's worldview was incorrect. The sun didn't revolve around the earth, and the earth was
17:17not the center of the universe. From Borg in Poland in around 1540. Nicholas Copernicus was a canon of the cathedral,
17:28as well as a high-ranking government official and a polymath. He was a physician, had a law degree,
17:35and he was a mathematician. And he was also an economist who wrote a highly regarded work on
17:41the theory of money. But his personal passion was astronomy. His astronomical observations and
17:49calculations contradicted the generally accepted model put forward by the ancient scholar Claudius
17:56Ptolemy, namely that the earth was at the center of the solar system. This geocentric worldview was also taught
18:04by the church. But Copernicus sold the sun at the center of the solar system. Even though he spent 30
18:11years working on his model, he didn't publish it. Friends and confidants, including high-ranking clerics,
18:18tried to persuade him to publish his work, but without success.
18:22Copernicus was scared of publishing his theory, because he was frightened he would make himself
18:32a laughingstock. Educated people knew that the earth wasn't flat, that it was a sphere. With
18:38Copernicus's worldview, this sphere was also moving. It spun on its own axis, and it also traveled around
18:46the sun at high speed. People thought this would produce certain consequences, such as strong headwinds
18:57and objects falling over and things like that. And then there was the theological aspect that Martin
19:02Luther threw into the mix. He said to Copernicus that it was written in the Bible that the sun moved
19:08around the earth. And that scared Copernicus out of publishing.
19:16Martin Luther called him a fool. Copernicus's model was dismissed not so much as heretical,
19:23but more as fantastical. It wasn't until 70 years after his death that Galileo's observations
19:30provided convincing arguments. But the physical proof had to wait for another 300 years.
19:39Nicholas Copernicus supplied the astronomical model for our solar system, refuting the ancient
19:46scholar Ptolemy. And that in itself was revolutionary.
19:50The earth was removed from the center of the universe and classed as a simple planet,
19:59that orbited the sun along with others.
20:06Copernicus saw how the stars moved in the night sky. He realized that this impression was the result of
20:13the earth's own rotation. All the orbits went around the sun. Consequently, the actual center of the world
20:21had to be near the sun. Almost no other discovery has had such a great significance on our time.
20:29Our departure to the stars started 500 years ago in a scholar's study. Without Copernicus, without space
20:36flight, without satellite-supported communication, our lives today would be very different.
20:45The calculations performed by Copernicus have real impacts on us today. We sent our spaceships into
20:51space knowing where the planets were. Had Ptolemy's worldview been correct, we would have reached none
20:57of those planets and it would all have been a waste. It wasn't until the Jacob staff came along that it
21:06became possible to determine latitude at sea using astronomical calculations. A breakthrough in seafaring,
21:14it made it possible to navigate on the high seas without landmarks.
21:22A further achievement came in the form of the Ephemerides, astronomical tables, calculations by the
21:30German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Müller, known as Regiomontanus. For the years 1475 to 1506,
21:40his table set out the location of the celestial bodies. Together with the Jacob staff, they guided sailors on their journeys.
21:48Regiomontanus made people aware of trigonometry. He published his own work,
22:03taking advantage of the new invention of printing. Trigonometric solutions occur constantly in every
22:11receiver in a billion receivers. Without trigonometry, there would be no satellite navigation, no GPS.
22:26Europe is currently developing its own satellite-supported navigation system, called Galileo.
22:32But countries outside of Europe are also involved, China for example.
22:44The navigation system is intended to work independently of the American GPS,
22:50but to be more precise, down to the nearest centimetre.
23:03Be it the Jacob staff or Galileo, the trigonometrical approach is the key to new routes.
23:10The search for new trade routes also drove explorers to new goals.
23:14Put in modern terms, they wanted to maximise their profits.
23:19The people of the Renaissance started thinking about completely new questions.
23:25What lies beyond the known world, and how can I get there?
23:32Europe's merchants recognised that it was cheaper to bring large quantities of pepper,
23:37cinnamon and silk to Europe via the Portuguese shipping routes than to transport them in smaller
23:44units on the overland route controlled by Venice. And with that, the Venetian spice monopoly collapsed.
23:52Many trading establishments of the Renaissance invested in shipping.
23:56Portugal and Spain became leading trading nations.
24:08Merchants wanted to get their hands on interesting, luxurious and beautiful things,
24:13and sell them for as much profit as possible.
24:17These things existed in the Mediterranean, but even more so in the Far East.
24:22And so merchants, along with Marco Polo, set off to search for silk and incense and other luxurious
24:29fabrics. They travelled the world. They were followed by warriors and missionaries,
24:36and sometimes by artists, thinkers and explorers. So they all fuelled each other,
24:41hoping to get beyond their own horizons.
24:49Lisbon in 1484. Maybe he was just hours away from his life's dream coming true.
24:56The 33-year-old Christopher Columbus had an audience with the Portuguese king John II.
25:03The professional seafarer from Genoa had profound knowledge of mathematics and cartography,
25:10and was a passionate defender of the idea of the ancient philosopher Aristotle,
25:15who claimed that Asia could be reached in just a few days by a western route.
25:24The ancient scholars estimated that Europe and Asia made up roughly half of the Earth's width.
25:31Columbus believed that Eurasia was much bigger than that even.
25:36In fact, Eurasia only makes up around a third of the Earth's circumference.
25:43Columbus imagined the Earth to be very much smaller than it really is, namely, half its size.
25:50He believed that the western route to China and India was 4,500 kilometres – a challenge for him
25:57and his crew, but doable. In actual fact, it's a journey of 20,000 kilometres – that went far beyond the capabilities of his time.
26:10Columbus, therefore, was taking on not only a risk, but one that he had miscalculated.
26:16King John's experts believed that he was mistaken and refused to give him financial support.
26:21He only got that eight years later from the Spanish king, Ferdinand II.
26:30After six weeks at sea, on 12 October 1492, Columbus reached the Bahamas, then Cuba and Hispaniola.
26:40He believed he had found the western route to Asia.
26:43He thought Hispaniola was the Chinese coast. In his report, he promised the Spanish crown
26:51as much gold as it needed and as many slaves as it asked for.
26:57Columbus discovered the new world and plunged it into catastrophe.
27:02Columbus was good at navigating ships through difficult waters, but he was a very poor manager.
27:16He wasn't able to keep his own men together, and ultimately, the Spanish crown took away his powers.
27:25America was already populated when he discovered it, so it wasn't a real discovery in that sense.
27:32But his arrival opened the door to unprecedented disasters.
27:39Millions of indigenous people died at the hands of the germs that the Europeans brought with them.
27:45They were interested in gold and yet more gold, a little bit in God, but more so in spices.
27:52His travels opened up the newly discovered lands, and that robbed the indigenous population
27:58of its good fortunes for a good long time.
28:06During his second trip to Hispaniola in 1493, Columbus found the fort he had built had been
28:13destroyed by the indigenous people. He immediately embarked on his revenge and never stopped.
28:19Bartolome de las Casas, who later became the defender of the rights of the indigenous population in
28:27the new world, described the inconceivable cruelty of the conquerors. On his arrival,
28:34there were between 400,000 and a million people living on Hispaniola. By 1542, that figure had dropped to
28:42less than 200. It was the systematic extermination of the indigenous population, genocide.
28:49The only justification for colonization and for the slavery that was legitimized by the papal court
29:02came through missionary work. Unbelievers could be converted to Christianity. The problem was,
29:09when they had converted, when they had been baptized, they couldn't be enslaved anymore. But the slave trade
29:17was profitable. Their only justification was that they led people to the correct faith, thereby opening
29:24up paradise for them. Columbus believed until the day he died that he had found the sea route to the
29:33Chinese mainland. His discovery changed the world. The threshold nations Spain and Portugal became imperial
29:41superpowers. But he was also the first in a line of cruel conquerors. What drove him? A lust for adventure?
29:50The promise of power, wealth or fame?
29:53Columbus was definitely someone who wanted fame and fortune. But he was also a very devout person.
30:11He thought he helped countless individuals by bringing their souls to the Christian faith.
30:17At least, there are many indications that he believed this. As was so often the case, the desire for profit
30:28and fame was mixed with medieval motivations. The Renaissance had two sides to it, and so too did Columbus.
30:47Emperor Charles V. Thanks to the discoveries and discoverers, the sun never set on his empire.
30:55Besides large parts of Europe, it included colonial territories in North and South America
31:02and in Asia. When the sun set in Mexico City, it was already day in Manila in the Philippines.
31:09In 1530 he was crowned by the Pope. Already King Charles I of Spain, he now became Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
31:24He saw himself as a universal monarch, defender of the faith appointed by God. He issued several decrees
31:32in an attempt to counteract the enslavement of the indigenous population.
31:36In 1540 he even ordered their liberation. But the colonies were far away, and in the end,
31:45Charles's need for gold was too great. He failed.
31:49Charles V. The last thing he might have seen is a painting by Titian that hung near his deathbed,
32:04where you can see him in the white gown of a confessor, barefoot. He has put down the crown and the
32:12insignia of the emperor, and he's praying to the Holy Trinity. Maybe that's how he saw himself at the end of his life.
32:21In amongst that, the attempt to create a universal monarchy, not in the sense of a cruel dictatorship,
32:27but in the sense of supreme rule over all the Christian rulers. He failed across the board.
32:34In the end, he abdicated. But I think deep down, we'll find a very devout person.
32:46Charles's empire was greedy for silver and gold. Between 1541 and 1560, 67 tons of gold and 480 tons of silver
32:58reached Spain, triggering an economic crisis. Gold and silver were currencies that stored value,
33:11the only sensible medium of exchange. Then suddenly the whole system was flooded. There were distortions
33:19in production, and suddenly your currency, gold and silver, dramatically declined in value.
33:28Expectations had to find their new level. That always happens when you have a shock to the system from
33:35the outside. In the Middle Ages, the Jews were the only people in Europe who were able to issue loans and
33:48charge interest. Jewish businessmen controlled the international financial world. For that reason,
33:54some of them saw them as profiteers and cursed them for it. Brutal pogroms took place in the Iberian
34:01peninsula. The Jewish population was persecuted, killed or expelled. The Jewish financial system
34:08collapsed and the European money market reoriented itself. In the middle of this development stood the
34:15small German town of Augsburg. It became the financial capital of the known world, the headquarters of
34:21the Fugger empire. The Fugger family business, which grew to be a European-wide company in just a few
34:28decades, went back to Jakob Fugger, Europe's most significant merchant, mining entrepreneur and banker
34:35between 1495 and 1525.
34:42Jakob Fugger funded the state.
34:48The state gave him unique opportunities to use or exploit the land. On the other hand, Fugger himself
34:58didn't do anything by halves. He invested a lot of money in estates that are still at the heart of the
35:05Fugger foundations. He used calculable risks to make money and he worked with those in power. But he also
35:16always invested in safe real estate. He always diversified its investments and he had a good eye
35:23for what was doable. So he was very successful.
35:38Fugger, pious and one of the most powerful men of his day, wanted an aristocratic title.
35:45With one foot still in the middle ages, Fugger was nevertheless a manager with a modern spirit.
35:53Fugger's famous portrait of Jakob Fugger, put this man into a grey suit and take the gold cap off his
36:12head and you've got a modern CEO. He was a tough and incredibly efficient manager, that's undoubtedly
36:20true. But he was also a contrite Christian. The best evidence for that is that he built a whole estate
36:29for the poor in his hometown of Augsburg, the Fuggerai of 1516. That's a rich, successful businessman balancing
36:38his books with God. So he's investing in the well-being of his soul. And that plays a big role here too.
36:46Fugger was active around the world. He gave loans to princes and the church and in return
36:57he negotiated mining rights, trading privileges and estates. The income he received was much higher
37:04than the borrowing costs, another product of the Renaissance, a type of global player.
37:12But Fugger combined his entrepreneurial spirit with social commitment. In 1521 he paid for the Fuggerai,
37:21a Renaissance time capsule in the middle of Augsburg. The Fuggerai is the oldest social housing project in
37:29history and it's still used as such. The 67 houses are now home to 150 Catholic residents of Augsburg.
37:38The entry conditions are still the same as they were in the 16th century. Anyone wanting to live
37:45in the Fuggerai has to be from Augsburg, a Catholic and of good reputation. And it's still maintained by the
37:53fortune managed by the Fugger Foundation, a financial instrument set up in the Renaissance and still in
38:00effect today. The annual rent also remains unchanged, one Rhenish Gilda or 88 euro cents. Compared with the
38:10living standards of most people of the Renaissance, the houses in the Fuggerai are positively luxurious.
38:17A home for an entire family with around 60 square meters, generous and bright, at least by Renaissance standards.
38:36In addition to the symbolic rent, Jakob Fugger placed another condition on the residence of the Fuggerai,
38:43regular prayer. Every day they were to say one Our Father, one Creed and one Hail Mary for Fuggerai,
38:52the founder and his family.
39:01The prayers for him and his family paved his way to paradise. That's what people believed in the
39:07Middle Ages. Another investment in the salvation of his soul was the construction of the Fugger Chapel,
39:14a burial place for a dynasty and an unmissable statement of its social significance. Jakob Fugger
39:22hired important artists, first and foremost Albrecht Dürer, who designed the tombstones for his brothers
39:29as Georg and Ulrich Fugger. The Fugger Chapel in St. Anna was the first church interior in Germany to be
39:41built in the Renaissance style. This is where Jakob and his brothers found their final resting place.
39:49This donation says a lot about Jakob, his commercial foresight and his attitude in general.
39:56He must have believed that there was a financial solution to the salvation of the soul and the afterlife.
40:04Jakob Fugger, a pious Christian and a financial genius, and one of the richest men of his time.
40:15Fugger was incredibly rich. The gap was immense. If you think of the sum that Fugger and a consortium
40:22stumped up to fund the imperial election of Charles V, it was more than 800 000 guilders. A craftsman would
40:30have had to work 32 000 years to earn that. Fugger also made money with the fear of hell. Its terrible
40:41torments were everywhere in Fugger's time. The church preached that punishments in hell could be lessened or
40:48even avoided entirely because it had been granted the divine powers to remit them. But this indulgence,
40:56as it was called, didn't come for free.
41:03The sales slogan of the Dominican friar Johan Tetzel, one of the most notorious sellers of indulgences,
41:10was, as soon as a coin in the box does ring, the soul from purgatory does spring. He even sold indulgences
41:19for blasphemy and murder. In the autumn of 1511, the 28-year-old Augustinian friar Martin Luther was in
41:28Rome. He too was seeking indulgence. He climbed the holy stairs of the Lateran on his knees to achieve
41:35forgiveness for his sins and free his deceased relatives from purgatory. The Lateran Palace,
41:43the official seat of the popes, a 16th-century Renaissance building built by Pope Sixtus V.
41:51The money spinner of the Renaissance popes was the sale of indulgences. Between 1470 and 1530,
41:59six popes ruled Rome, who were later to go down collectively in history as the Renaissance popes.
42:06Their papacies were characterized by a previously unseen level of corruption, immorality, greed,
42:14and calamitous power politics, or so their critics say. Pope Alexander VI was particularly notorious.
42:22He celebrated orgies with well-known whores in the Vatican. Martin Luther labeled the Roman Church
42:28as the Whore of Babylon and the Holy City as a hotbed of sin.
42:36When we talk about the Renaissance popes, then we often hear terrible stories, and you get the
42:41impression that they triggered the Reformation with their immoral behavior. But that's a very
42:46one-sided story. They were modernizers. They were Renaissance men. They were princes who held court in
42:53line with the European standards of the time. In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned the 33-year-old
43:05Michelangelo Bunarotti to cover the interior of the Sistine Chapel in frescoes. But Michelangelo didn't
43:13want the job. Painting wasn't his strength. He primarily saw himself as a sculptor, he said. But
43:20Julius, more a warrior than a man of God, asserted himself. Michelangelo asked for artistic freedom.
43:27Do what you want, Julius replied. 520 square meters of frescoes to be painted overhead. A
43:35torturous work of epic proportions. The frescoes in the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and
43:48Leonardo's Mona Lisa are indisputably the most famous paintings of the Renaissance, if not the
43:56whole of art history. And the interpretation of the creation of Adam is the most reproduced work of
44:03art in the world. A god who overcomes people like a thunderstorm. And a last judgment that depicts
44:20the heavenly host naked like the gods of Mount Olympus. The brave work of a great man only made
44:27possible thanks to his papal patron. We wouldn't have St. Peter's. We wouldn't have all this wonderful
44:37art in Rome. We wouldn't have many pieces of music if these Renaissance popes hadn't existed.
44:43Renaissance popes are ambivalent, like the whole of modernity. They have admirably good traits,
44:49and they also behave like princes, like Machiavelli, free and confident. And sometimes they put their
44:56church brief on the back burner, or even forgot about it altogether. Pope Julius II, Il Terribili.
45:07That's what the Romans called him. The architect by his side, Donato Bramanti, called Maestro Rovinanti,
45:15Master of Destruction. This duo put their stamp on Rome. Julius had buildings torn down, squares enlarged,
45:24and roads rebuilt. Donato Bramanti asserted himself as a hip architect in Rome with the cloister at Santa
45:33Maria de la Pace, the Chiostro di Bramanti. The client was Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, an influential prince of the church.
45:48Bramanti came to fame with the Tempieto di Bramanti, the little temple inspired by Roman round temples.
45:55It's considered a paradigm of high Renaissance architecture. Pope Julius II asserted himself
46:04against all the protests of his cardinals and had the venerable Basilica of Constantine demolished.
46:11He wanted to build the biggest church of Christendom in its place, St. Peter's.
46:16Julius was a gigantomaniac. His basilica was also to house his monumental tomb, bigger than anything the
46:29world had ever seen, St. Peter's as the mausoleum for Julius II. Donato Bramanti got the commission,
46:38construction started in 1506. Forty years were to pass before sculptor, painter, poet and scientist
46:47Michelangelo became the architect and site manager of St. Peter's.
46:57In 1547 the 72-year-old Michelangelo Buonarroti took over the supervision of Europe's largest building site.
47:06The dome of St. Peter's, the largest self-supporting masonry structure in the world.
47:14The dome with its ribs was his idea. Its construction was the pinnacle of his artistic career.
47:22His creative life lasted 70 years. He considered himself a sculptor, but he created epoch-making works
47:31as a painter and architect. He spent years in quarries, always searching for material.
47:38He literally moved mountains. Michelangelo lived through nine popes and worked until his final breath.
47:46He died at 89, a biblical age in his day. He was the last among the great scholarly artists of the
47:54Renaissance. The year of his death is considered by many art historians as the end of this era.
48:01Michelangelo died on the 18th of February 1564.
48:12But even this masterpiece of the Renaissance was funded by the fear Christians had of facing punishment
48:19in hell. It was Pope Leo X who supported the sale of indulgences to fund the new building.
48:32Martin Luther was appalled by the moral decline he encountered in Rome. His trip to Rome is seen
48:38as his key experience. Luther himself mentioned it regularly in later writings and speeches.
48:44He fulminated against the trade in indulgences, a trade which became synonymous with this moral decline,
48:51with the greed of the church and its popes, and with the triggering of an event that would go down in
48:57history as the Reformation.
49:05A simple friar defied the emperor and the pope and split the church. Not a revolutionary but a reformer.
49:12Just two generations after Luther, Europe was shaken by a conflict more gruesome than any that had gone
49:18before – the Thirty Years' War. The fighting between Catholics and Protestants devastated the empire.
49:25Martin Luther castigated the practice of selling indulgences very publicly in 95 theses. In just a few
49:33months Luther published more than 80 individual treatises and collections. There were more than 600
49:40editions. Luther became a media star. Printing became the first mass medium of humankind.
49:53There wouldn't have been a Reformation without the mass media of the 16th century.
49:59Martin Luther wrote theses about a relatively abstruse theological problem – indulgences.
50:05But these theses spread all over southern Germany in just a few weeks. It was printing. It was flysheets
50:14and pamphlets that spread all across the empire and mobilized people. People read, and they read to
50:21others, and the issues were discussed with people who couldn't read.
50:25Martin Luther, who couldn't read, talked about the reading.
50:31How do people work? What drives us? Questions that scholars were now able to discuss publicly,
50:38thanks to the new mass medium. Global communication started in the Renaissance. For the first time it was
50:45possible for thousands of people to refer to the same contents at the same time. It was the first time the future
50:53could be depicted and planned in a realistic fashion. People understood what moved them. They copied
51:00themselves. The first machine men were created. An anticipation of a future in which robots play football.
51:07Within just a few generations, the known world tripled in size. Global transport and global trade
51:15became a reality for the first time in the Renaissance. The people didn't just travel their own planet.
51:21They also laid the groundwork for trips to distant worlds and the exploration of the universe.
51:32The legacy of the Renaissance has never died. It has remained alive. I think we can say that the
51:37Industrial Revolution and therefore our modern world wouldn't have been possible without all the
51:42things that were invented in the Renaissance. At no other time in its history has humankind experienced a
51:50comparable boost in development. The Renaissance even beats our current fast-changing age.
51:58Never before was so much developed, invented, moved, changed, revolutionized and rejected in such a short
52:06space of time. A development driven by people who mastered what was seemingly impossible because they
52:14understood their world. The Renaissance is a plea against closed minds and a cult of experts for
52:22intellectual curiosity and the courage to take unusual paths. It's a story about people who didn't have
52:30faith but wanted to know and wouldn't accept limits. The Renaissance is our past and our future.
52:47never before was so much what's left, the Renaissance is a
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