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Comment by n1b0m | Hacker News Reader

He was one interesting dude. He could speak Italian which was a really exceptional thing to do. England is on the edge of Europe, quite provincial, not in great power. To go to Italy was to put yourself right in the centre of European culture. Especially Florence, where Cromwell ended up, was the epicentre of civilisation and culture.

So he learned Italian and came back to England in his twenties; extremely well educated, not just speaking Italian but a bit of German a bit of Spanish, fluent French and also reading Latin, which was crucial at that period. But Italian ended up being his passport into the eventual public life.

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The way Wolf Hall tells the story, he also learned about bookkeeping/banking in Italy which combined with his (later?) legal training let him run rings around the other powerful public figures of the time.

Wolf Hall is worth reading for many reasons but one of the interesting/unusual aspects of the novel is that its kindof answering 'what would happen if a smart fairly ruthless person with fairly modern legal/administative/finance skills was sent back in time 500 years'

That’s the origin of the famous quote where Thomas More said of Cromwell that he was so clever and resourceful that if you locked him in prison and came back a few weeks later he’d be living like a king and all his jailers would owe him money.

none of which is especially unusual for clergymen or aristocracy of the period.

I think you are way overestimating 1600s florence and underestimating 1600s england.

> England is on the edge of Europe, quite provincial, not in great power.

We are talking 1600s england, not 600s england. During Cromwell's time, england was easily a major european power settling colonies in the new world. Far more powerful and far more important that italian city-states like florence.

> To go to Italy was to put yourself right in the centre of European culture

By the time cromwell was born, the italian renaissance was a distant memory. Shakespeare was the one advancing european culture, not dante.

> Especially Florence, where Cromwell ended up, was the epicentre of civilisation and culture.

No. The epicenter of civilization and culture moved west and north of florence by cromwell's time. Spain, France, Netherlands, England, etc were the new drivers of european civilization. Not florence, not italy.

> not just speaking Italian but a bit of German a bit of Spanish, fluent French and also reading Latin,

Pretty much what most educated europeans could do.

Thomas Cromwell was active in English high politics during the 1530's to 1540's. I believe England was just beginning to become a European power at that time. Maybe you are thinking of Oliver Cromwell?

I think they are. Though while being a bit strong, they’re not entirely wrong.

Henry VIII’s England was a major world power, not as huge as it would become under his daughter Elizabeth, but in the list of world powers.

Italy… was not, tho it still held significant cultural sway. It was midway through the renaissance at that time. That is likely what the original poster was referring to (and is right, if a bit over enthusiastic).

The big guns were really Spain & France, and then England & the Netherlands challenging from behind.

It wouldn’t be until Elizabeth that the “British Empire” would really start to be a dominant power, and she laid the foundation for the expansion to come.

the English Wikipedia article is not shy about some of those "Italian" influences ! He was eventually executed for political reasons, as the article says.

What would the modern day's equivalent of Florence be?

The internet it has eliminated the notion of location.

That sounds good but it is not true. The distribution of income is not uniform on the face of Earth and that is not due to sheer choice. The places where people with lower incomes live are not always the places where they would prefer to live.

Location still matters for many reasons, infrastructure, safety, public health, climate, and industry-specific agglomeration effects being among them.

None of those are culture or intellectual pursuits all of those are local societal issues. I thought the question was regarding cultural developmet. Renaissance type things not code of Hamarabi type things.

If on can find infrastructure, safety, public health, climate, industry, and the internet one can be in a Renaissance environment.

Florence was a financial and trading center of Europe during the Renaissance when Thomas Cromwell travelled there. That economic power and probably that cosmopolitan atmosphere were what lay the ground for cultural development, specifically for the resurgence in arts and in scientific thinking.

Even with the internet we see that artistic and scientific output is uneven across the world. There are places where ideas thrive more than in others. For example, if you contribute to the research frontier in physics, chemistry, or computer science, you are very likely to be located in one of the few centers of thinking in your field.

I don’t see anything that obviates the internet as the leading cultural development exchange of our time. These centers use to be located along trade routes. This is no longer the case. Any group of people can gather anywhere in the world and create whatever.

The idea of a renaissance period happening in Europe in the 1400s-1500s only came about starting in the 19th century, so to find a modern equivalent we’ll have to wait a few hundred years for future historians to judge. Who knows what pop culture from today will stand the test of time.

The SF Bay Area

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