Burckhardt y la forja de un imaginarioEspaña, la nación sin Renacimiento

Resumo

Since 1860 when Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien was published, Jacob Burckhard has been considered the founder of studies on Humanism and Italian culture of Trecento through Cinquecento. From that privileged position, Burckhardt has guided several generations of historians and has passed on to them his prejudices, in particular those referring to Spain andSpaniards. Regretfully, nobody tried (either from Spain or from abroad) to prove him wrong, or to show that he went too far. Burckhardt’s hatred of Spain was later reinforced by that of John Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy (1875-1886) and Benedetto Croce’s La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la Rinascenza (1917). Using firm documentation, a balanced appraisal and intelligence that shows in every page, Mario Schiff came to defend the opposite position. That was the main goal of his La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane (1905), a book used as reference by several generations of scholars from Spain and abroad. This article deals with this long process, describes the present of humanistic studies and proposes some hypotheses about the future