‘Renaissance’ and ‘fossilization’: Michelet, Burckhardt, and Huizinga

From its very first use, the term ‘Renaissance’ indicated change and renewal. Michelet, in his lectures at the Collège de France in 1840–1841, represented the Renaissance as ‘the formation of the modern world’. Burckhardt enshrined the term in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) as a term which focused on a turning point in history. However, as a result, the term also immediately required a conceptual counterpart. This was found in the term ‘fossilisation’. The most detailed vision of the ‘fossilisation’ which allegedly preceded the new civilization of the Renaissance was provided by the Dutch historian Huizinga. In The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919) he presented Burgundian civilization as a civilization in turmoil, where the old continued its insidious spread, with no meaning and no future. This dual conceptual device –‘Renaissance’ and ‘Fossilisation’– caused two problems. The first was related to the transition between the old and the new world: how could change and renewal emerge from a ‘fossilised’ civilisation? The second problem concerned the status of the terms ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Fossilisation’. After all, it rapidly became evident that the concept of ‘fossilisation’ had its roots in cultural criticism, rather than in cultural history. Did something similar not apply to the term, a word which referred to a turning point which historians like Michelet, Burckhardt and Huizinga desired chiefly in the present?