Everything about Renaissance Humanism totally explained
Renaissance Humanism (often designated simply as
humanism) was a
European intellectual movement beginning in
Florence in the last decades of the
14th century. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of many
Latin and
Greek texts. Initially, a humanist was simply a teacher of Latin literature. By the mid-
15th century humanism described a curriculum — the
studia humanitatis — comprising grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry and history as studied via classical authors.
It was only later, in the
20th century, that humanism was interpreted as a new philosophical outlook -- one which encompassed human dignity and potential and the place of mankind in nature. The over-riding goal of humanists -- who valued reason and the evidence of the senses as ways of reaching the truth, over the Christian values of
humility,
introspection, and
passivity or "meekness" which had dominated European thought in the previous centuries -- was to become eloquent in rhetoric.
Beauty, a popular topic, was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God.
The humanists were opposed to the philosophers of the day, the "schoolmen," or scholastics, of the Italian universities and later Oxford and Paris. The scholastics' methodology was derived from Thomas Aquinas, and this opposition revived a classical debate which referred back to Plato and the Platonic dialogues.
History
In the 1480s,
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote a preface to the nine hundred page thesis that he submitted for public debate entitled
An Oration on the Dignity of Man. The debate never took place, but the work became a seminal text in the development of humanism. In it, he talked about how God created man and that man's greatness comes from God. He said that man was like a chameleon and could become whatever he wanted to be.
Humanists placed a heavy emphasis on the study of
primary sources rather than the study of the interpretations of others. This is reflected in their motto of
ad fontes, or "to the sources" which informed the search for texts in the monastery libraries of Europe. Humanist education, called the
studia humanista or
studia humanitatis (study of humanity), concentrated on the study of the
liberal arts: Latin and Greek
grammar,
rhetoric,
poetry, moral
philosophy or
ethics, and
history.
Early 15th-century humanists were interested in classical Latin and not in
medieval Latin, which was a different and more developed language with many
neologisms.
Petrarch, sometimes called the father of Renaissance humanism in Italy, called the Latin of the
Middle Ages "barbarous;" when he collected his "Familiar Letters" his model was
Cicero and his model for Latin was that used by
Virgil, who was emerging from the persona as a magus that had accrued in the Middle Ages. This new interest in the classical literature led to the scouring of
monastic libraries across
Europe for lost texts. One such hunt by
Poggio Bracciolini, who was credited with the discovery of the complete works of fifteen different authors, turned up
Vitruvius' work on art and architecture, allowing for the completion of the
Duomo of Florence by
Filippo Brunelleschi.
The central feature of humanism in this period was the commitment to the idea that the ancient world (defined effectively as ancient Greece and Rome, which included the entire Mediterranean basin) was the pinnacle of human achievement, especially intellectual achievement, and should be taken as a model by contemporary Europeans. According to this view of history, the fall of Rome to Germanic invaders, in the fifth century, had led to the dissolution and decline of this remarkable culture; the intellectual heritage of the ancient world had been lost—many of its most important books had been destroyed and dispersed—and a thousand years later, Europeans were still living in the getto. The only way in which Europeans could expect to pull themselves out of this intellectual catastrophe was to attempt to recover, edit, and make available these lost texts, which included, among others, almost all the works of Plato. (In the process, Greek texts had to be translated into Latin, the language of intellectuals and the learned.) This enterprise, launched through the reintroduction of Greek to Italy by
Manuel Chrysoloras, generated enormous enthusiasm, and the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were devoted to this project.
Humanism offered the necessary intellectual and philological tools for the first dispassionate analysis of texts. An early triumph of
textual criticism by
Lorenzo Valla revealed the
Donation of Constantine to be an early medieval
forgery produced in the
Curia. This textual criticism began to create real political controversy when
Erasmus began to apply it to biblical texts, in his
Novum Instrumentum.
The crisis of Renaissance humanism came with the trial of
Galileo which was centered on the choice between basing the authority of one's beliefs on one's observations, or upon religious teaching. The trial made the contradictions between humanism and traditional religion visibly apparent to all, and humanism was branded a "dangerous doctrine".
Social or civic humanism
Social or civic humanism rose out of the
republican ideology of
Florence at the beginning of the
fifteenth century. It sought to create citizens capable of participating in the civic life of their community by placing central emphasis on human .
Leonardo Bruni's
Panegyric is one expression of this philosophy. The emancipated and literate upper
bourgeoisie of the independent Italian communes adapted 14th-century
Burgundian aristocratic culture and manners to an intensely patriotic civic life centered on extended families. Humanism was a pervasive cultural mode, not merely the product of a handful of geniuses, like
Giotto or
Leon Battista Alberti.
Beliefs
Renaissance humanists believed that the liberal arts (art, music, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, using classical texts, and the studies of all of the above) should be practiced by all levels of "richness". They also approved of self, human worth and individual dignity.
This worth is found in the humanist belief that everything in life has a determinate nature, but man's privilege is to be able to
choose his own nature.
Pico della Mirandola wrote the following concerning the creation of the universe and man's place in it:
Humanists believe that such possibilities lead to the diverse ways of human development. Value is given to this uniqueness and encourages individualism.
Relationship to Christianity
As Neo-Platonism replaced the Aristotelianism of Saint Thomas Aquinas, attempts were made to join the great works of Antiquity with Christian values in a syncretic Christian humanism, such as those by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Ethics was taught independently of theology, and the authority of the Church was tacitly transferred to the reasoning logic of the educated individual. Thus humanists constantly skirted the dangers of being branded as heretics.
One example of such pagan philosophy and Christian doctrine melding is found in The Epicurean, by Erasmus, the "prince of humanists:"
» If people who live agreeably are Epicureans, none are more truly Epicurean than the righteous and godly. And if it's names that bother us, no one better deserves the name of Epicurean than the revered founder and head of the Christian philosophy Christ, for in Greek epikouros means "helper." He alone, when the law of Nature was all but blotted out by sins, when the law of Moses incited to lists rather than cured them, when Satan ruled in the world unchallenged, brought timely aid to perishing humanity. Completely mistaken, therefore, are those who talk in their foolish fashion about Christ's having been sad and gloomy in character and calling upon us to follow a dismal mode of life. On the contrary, he alone shows the most enjoyable life of all and the one most full of true pleasure. (Erasmus 549)
This passage exemplifies the way in which the humanists saw pagan classical works such as the philosophy of
Epicurus as being fundamentally in harmony with
Christianity, rather than as a nemesis to be pitted against
Christianity. Although
Renaissance humanists were more accepting of pagan philosophy than their
Scholastic contemporaries, they didn't necessarily object to the idea that
Christian understanding should be dominant over other modes of thought. Many humanists were churchmen, most notably Pope Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini
Pius II.
Humanists
The careers of individual humanists throw light on the movement as a whole. See:
Further Information
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