Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

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Subject: History
Paper: Rise of Modern West
Lesson: Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction
Author: Dr Richa Raj
College/ Department: Jesus And Mary College
National Coordinator: Professor R.C Thakran, Department of
History, University of Delhi
Reviewer: Dr Amrit Kaur Basra, Associate Professor,Academic
Secretaty, ILLL, Deputy Dean, FSR,Uinversity of Delhi
Language Editor: Dr Shashi Khurana,Associate
Professor,Department of English, Satyawati College, University of
Delhi
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Origins
3. The Italian Humanists Page | 2

4. Women humanists
5. Christian humanism
6. Historiography
7. Summary
8. Did you know?

9. Exercise/Practice Questions

10. Glossary

11. Suggested Readings

12. Answers to ‘Check your Progress’

 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Introduction

This chapter introduces the undergraduate student to the meaning, origins and the spread of
the intellectual undercurrents of Renaissance Europe. Renaissance Humanism was the Page | 3
phenomenon that linked political, intellectual, literary and artistic developments of the time
and has been described as ‘the movement that brought modern Europe into being.’ Apart
from a discussion on the origins of the movement and the contributions made by many
humanists to it, this chapter will particularly discuss its equation with modernity and the
consequent implications as brought forth by various historians.

Humanism essentially meant an engagement with the studia humanitatis (the humanities),
that is grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy, a key phenomenon that
formed the basis of the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. During
this period, humanism also involved the culture and institutions of classical antiquity and a
desire to restore them in the contemporary world. It indicated the wish to communicate new
and revived knowledge by reformed educational practices, improved texts and learned
discourse in academies, universities and informal gatherings. These subjects were approached
in a spirit of enquiry with little respect for the intellectual authority traditionally exercised by
the Roman Catholic Church. From early fourteenth century onwards, a number of Italian
scholars, poets, ecclesiastics, lawyers and officials can be claimed as humanists if we follow
the above definition of their calling.

The word ‘humanism’ itself was not used by the Renaissance humanists; it is a coinage of the
nineteenth century by the German secondary school teacher, F.J. Niethammer, who used it as
a synonym for Greek and Latin classical studies then coming into vogue in schools. But
etymologically, it can be traced back to classical times when ancient authors such as Roman
philosopher, Cicero, used such expressions as studia humanitatis and litterae humaniores to
describe a liberal education centred on authoritative texts in Greek and Latin that taught
grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, when the urge to revive ancient culture as a model for contemporary life
quickened, the humanists studied and taught Latin, and eventually Greek texts in those
subjects. The prominent ancient authors that were read were Cicero, Horace, Homer,
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Sophocles, Thucydides, and so on. Naturally, a curriculum grounded in such writers was
concerned more with linguistic, literary and historical issues than with philosophical
problems, least of all with those questions that fell outside the area of moral philosophy.

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Source:
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Origins
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Jacob Burckhardt (1860) has asserted that the onset of Italian Renaissance signified the end
of the medieval political world. The dissolution of feudalism in Italy ushered in the age of the
independent state (usually in the form of the city-state) which was characterised by its
rejection of feudal relations based on custom, privilege and tradition. He postulated the idea
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that ‘modern’ Italian city-state was founded upon ‘reflection and calculation.’ Unlike their
predecessors, the rulers of these new, independent city-states felt no compulsion to refer to
medieval law, custom or religion, in order to justify their actions. And this frequently resulted
in outrageous, unrestrained and sometimes spectacular acts of single-mindedness. Thus, for
Burckhardt, the rejection of feudalism in Italy marked a major turning point in European
history. Related to this was his espousal of the idea that the Italian Renaissance saw the birth
of modern man: an individual rather than a product of the medieval, corporate identity. Thus,
Burckhardt’s idea of l’uomo universale, the multi-talented individual, was perhaps the
defining feature of Italian Renaissance.

Most humanists, according to Burckhardt, formed a wholly new element in society, holding
‘free views of life’ and exhibiting ‘pagan tendencies,’ promoting a new civilization which
competed with the culture of the Middle Ages and modelling their thought and work on
classical antiquity. Most humanists, in late medieval society, occupied conventional
situations as priests, lawyers, cultivated gentlemen, officials, princes and so on. Their ‘free
views of life,’ associated with a spirit of enquiry and criticism, were often repudiated by
contemporaries as irreligious or heretical opinions. However, the claim made by Burckhardt,
that the humanists sought to promote a new civilization in competition with that of the
Middle Ages is at odds with the many continuities between the former and the latter, as
identified by Paul O. Kristeller (see section on historiography). While the emulation of
classical antiquity is the basis of all major accounts of humanism, Burckhardt claims that
humanists made a distinct break with traditional culture and beliefs questioning, therefore, the
possibility of continuity with the past.

Most Renaissance scholars agree that humanism, whatever its starting point, involved the
study of rhetoric and grammar and in so doing lead to advances in other fields, such as
philology, textual criticism and historical writing. While medieval writers treated language in
a haphazard way, Renaissance humanists introduced the notion of the study of language in
context and of historical continuity. The latter’s emphasis on rhetoric forced them to carefully
examine texts, to critique and understand language in its context. Georg Voigt (d. 1891)
contrasted the movement to its intellectual predecessor, Scholasticism, which, since the
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

thirteenth century dominated university curricula and was representative of medieval thought.
Scholasticism meant a study of the classics, but with a Christian agenda, with the intention to
better understand the faith in terms of the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Francis
Petrarch, the father of humanism, condemned scholasticism in his writings with subsequent
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humanists following his lead. It has been pointed out by Erika Rummel (1995) that
antagonisms reached an apex when in many Northern European universities in the sixteenth
century, the humanist professors denounced their scholastic colleagues as ‘barbarian
thickheads’ and scholastic professors condemned humanists as ‘speechifiers’ and
‘Greeklings.’

The Italian schools were important means of transmitting humanism, making it a more
widespread movement, as they attracted young scholars from throughout Europe. The papacy
too played an important role as it became a source of jobs for humanists. The papal
bureaucracy required literate men to run it and as clerics travelled throughout Europe, these
new ideas were disseminated through them. The movement was further aided by the
invention of the printing press in mid-fifteenth century. With the invention of mechanical
movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg in around 1439 in Germany and the
development of printing press thereon, print shops became important vehicles of cultural
exchange. Classical and humanist texts were brought directly to readers – the educated people
– who formed the intellectual audience for the new ideas. Consequently, the classical revival
was allowed to transcend the Mediterranean and become a truly European phenomenon.

Italian humanists

Humanism first emerged in the secular world of Northern Italy. Lay notaries who rose in the
ranks of town and chancery and law teachers who organized new universities were important
advocates of early humanism. In surveying the greatest accomplishments of scholars and
writers of the Renaissance, it is natural to begin with the work of the earliest of the
humanists, Francis Petrarch (1304-74). A deeply committed Christian, Petrarch believed
that Scholasticism was misguided because of its emphasis on abstract speculation rather than
teaching people how to behave properly and attain salvation. He stressed that a Christian
writer must cultivate literary eloquence so that he could inspire people to do good. For him,
the best examples of eloquence could be found in the ancient literary classics which he
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

thought were filled with ethical wisdom. Petrarch dedicated himself to searching for ancient
Latin texts and writing his own moral treatises in which he imitated classical styles and
quoted classical phrases, thereby initiating a program of ‘humanist’ studies that was to be
influential for centuries. Because of his poetry, Petrarch also has a place in purely literary
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history. His Italian sonnets – later called Petrarchan Sonnets – were widely initiated in form
and content throughout the Renaissance period.

Source: Statue of Petrarch at the Uffizi Palace, Florence;

[Link]

For Petrarch, a traditional Christian, the ultimate ideal for human conduct was the solitary life
of contemplation and asceticism. But subsequent generation of Italian thinkers and scholars
from about 1400 to 1450, located mainly in Florence, developed the concept of ‘civic
humanism’ as an alternative to Petrarch’s ideas. While agreeing with Petrarch on the need for
eloquence and the study of classical literature, civic humanists like Leonardo Bruni (1370-
1444) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), went far beyond him in the study of ancient
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

literary heritage. They discovered important new Latin texts and also opened up the field of
classical Greek studies. In the latter, they were aided by several Byzantine scholars who had
migrated to Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century. These men while giving instruction
in the Greek language, taught about the achievements of their ancient forebears and in so
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doing inspired Italian scholars to make trips to Constantinople and other cities in the Near
East in search of Greek manuscripts.

The term ‘civic humanism’ was coined by the German-American historian Hans Baron to
denote the new type of politically-committed humanism that emerged in Florence in the wake
of the Milanese wars (1390-1402). In his seminal work, The Crisis of the Early Italian
Renaissance (1955), Baron described Quattrocento Florentine republicanism as a happy
marriage between, on the one hand, the civic tradition of the late medieval commune, and on
the other, Petrarchan humanism and classical learning. Civic humanism places a great
emphasis on Man as actively engaged in the world as the centre of power. In their writings
and speeches, civic humanists like Leonardo Bruni and Leon Battista Alberti formulated an
ideology for the Florentine citizenry, which, while derived from classical sources, was also
firmly rooted in the realities of the city's experience. They saw the ancient Roman Republic,
rather than the later Empire, as the model state. They acclaimed Cicero's political activity in
defence of Republican ideals and civic spirit and used these ideals as models. This ideology
thus exalted civic virtues of participation in public affairs, the concept of the 'active life'
pursued by merchants and statesmen, as opposed to the contemplative life of ascetics and
scholars. Furthermore, it viewed the acquisition of wealth as a resource to be used in the
promotion of learning and morality and not as an impediment to knowledge and salvation.
Rational activity as opposed to divine contemplation was given value. The civic orientation
was further intensified by the political and military crisis resulting from Gian Galeazzo
Visconti's expansion over northern Italy, which threatened to exterminate Florentine liberties.

A central concept in civic humanism was the idea of virtù. According to Alistair Crombie
(1986), Leon Battista Alberti used the Italian term virtù, in the fifteenth century to describe
‘those excelling gifts which God gave to the soul of man, greatest and preeminent above all
other earthly animals.’ A man of virtù in Renaissance Italy, thus, was a man with active
intellectual power to command any situation, to do as he intended; by contrast with someone
at the mercy of fortuna, of chance or luck, of the accidents of fortuitous circumstance,
unforeseen and hence out of control. The conception of the man
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

of virtù, the virtuouso, aiming at reasoned and examined control of his own thoughts,
intentions, and actions, and also of his surroundings, points to the essence of ‘civic
humanism,’ congruent with the ideology of the ‘new men’ of Florence.

The admiration for classical historians such as Sallust and Livy combined with communal Page | 9
patriotism, such as the kind discussed above, produced the writing of ‘new’ history of which
Leonardo Bruni is a leading exponent. Bruni began the History of Florence in about 1415 and
it was not finished at the time of his death; he had in the meantime become chancellor (the
chief servant) of Florence. He decided to undertake the History because of the impressive
achievements of the Florentines in peace and war, knowledge of which, he felt, would be of
great profit to both private citizens and public servants and the consequent wisdom would
lead to virtue. The ‘virtue’ referred to connotes the classical conception of good citizenship.
Twentieth century historians such as Hans Baron and Paul Oskar Kristeller discern Leonardo
Bruni as the leading of the ‘new’ history which was promoted by ‘civic humanism.’
However, Burckhardt did not identify the strong theme of civic consciousness in the works of
Bruni and his followers. For him, such work was not produced until the sixteenth century
when Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini started to write in the vernacular (see
later in this article). Critics of the Baron thesis of ‘civic humanism,’ such as Jerrold Seigel
(1966), have queried whether it really provided the principal motivation for Bruni’s writings.
Seigel asserted that civic sentiment and direct political involvement were not the determining
elements in early humanism. Rather Bruni’s writings, according to him, like the programme
of Renaissance humanism in general, must be approached as the products of a particular kind
of culture: a culture which centred on rhetoric and eloquence.

A good example of the rapid dissemination of the humanist Latin history is to be found in the
work of Antonio Bonfini (1427-1502), a minor north Italian writer. In 1491, the queen of
Hungary, formerly an Italian princess, advised her husband, Matthias Corvinus, to offer him a
post as royal historian. He spent the rest of his life working on the History of Hungary, which
according to Shayne Mitchell (1995) is heavily reliant in its rhetorical style and classical
imagery on the work of his Florentine, Roman and Venetian predecessors as well as
dependent on contemporary Hungarian chronicles, state papers, inscriptions and coins.

Humanists in Northern Europe experienced greater problems in absorbing the new approach
to history than was the case in other branches of humanities. While their Italian counterparts
could claim that they were the moral and intellectual counterparts to Rome (which itself had
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

inherited much from classical Greece), no such prestigious tradition was available to English,
German and French writers. Northern writers who emulated humanist history, therefore, soon
diverged from their models in their attitude towards the Middle Ages. Paradoxically, it was
the Roman writer Tacitus, whose works only became widely known in the course of the
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fifteenth century, who provided an excellent justification from their gradual emancipation
from the domination of classical antiquity. He had compared the Germans of his favourable
with the Romans, who he thought had become corrupt and effeminate. Consequently, Conrad
Celtis (1459-1508), professor of rhetoric at the university of Vienna and belonging to a group
of scholars at the court of the Emperor Maximilian anxious to promote the national pride and
identity of Germany brought out an edition of the Germania of Tacitus. Similarly, William
Camden (1551-1623) in England felt no need to rely on foundation myths which linked their
countries to ancient Greece or Rome, and combine rather in Britannia (1586), what he
perceived to be the best aspects of the humanist approach to history with his own particular
mission: the glorification of Britain) as an empire, owing no allegiance to an external power.

The growth of antiquarianism and the search for new or better versions of classical texts were
part of the humanist attempt to recover as much of the learning of antiquity as possible.
Another aspect of this process was the development of philology, the critical analysis of
ancient texts in respect of both their content and the language in which they are expressed.
Related in his textual interests to the civic humanists, but by no means a full adherent of their
movement, was the Roman humanist, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57), who challenged traditional
scholastic thought by advancing the study of rhetoric and subverting the accommodation of
pagan ethics to Christianity. As a secretary in the service of the King of Naples, Valla had no
inclination to espouse the ideas of republican political engagement as the Florentine civic
humanists did. Instead he used his formidable grasp of the Latin language and expertise in
grammar and rhetoric for the practical purposes both of advancing his career and establishing
more rigorous standards of textual criticism. His composition of the treatise On the Donation
of Constantine established how a thorough study of language could discredit old verities.
Though his brilliant demonstration, Valla showed that the so-called Donation of Constantine
was a medieval forgery. Since the early thirteenth century, the papal propagandists had
pressed that the papacy possessed the right to temporal rule in Western Europe on the basis of
a charter supposedly granted to the Roman Pope Sylvester by the Emperor Constantine in the
fourth century. Valla proved beyond dispute that the document in question was full of non-
classical Latin usages and anachronistic terms concluding that the ‘Donation’ was the work
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

of a medieval forger exposed by the ‘stupidity of his language.’ Similarly, in his Notes on the
New Testament, he applied his expert knowledge of Greek to bring to light the true meaning
of St. Paul’s words, which, according to him, had been obscured by the Latin Vulgate
translation. This work was to prove an important link between Italian Renaissance
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scholarship and the subsequent Christian humanism of the north.

Source: A thirteenth-century fresco of Pope Sylvester and Constantine, showing the purported
Donation. Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome;
[Link]
[Link]

The Florentine Angelo Poliziano (1454-94) gave similar emphasis to philology in his works
with Greek texts. In a collection of critical essays called the Miscellanies (1489), he
employed close textual examination, treating the oldest manuscript as the most reliable and
checking Latin translations against Greek ones. His editions of the works of Greek classical
authors were done with much care and erudition.

Dominance in the world of Italian thought was assumed from about 1450 until about 1600 by
a school of Neoplatonists seeking to blend the thought of Pluto, Plotinus, and various strands
of ancient mysticism with Christianity. Foremost among these were Marsilio Ficino (1433-
99) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), both of whom were members of the
Platonic Academy founded by Cosimo de’ Medici, the first of the Medici political dynasty,
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. The greatest achievement
of Ficino was the translation of Plato’s works into Latin, thereby making them widely
available to western Europeans for the first time. Whether Ficino’s own philosophy may be
called humanist is highly debatable, because he moved away from ethics to metaphysics and
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believed that the individual should look primarily to the other world as the ‘immortal soul is
always miserable in its mortal body.’ Similarly, his disciple, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
was certainly not a civic humanist since he saw little worth in mundane public affairs. But he
believed that man is endowed with the capacity to achieve union with God if he so wills and
therefore, ‘there is nothing more wonderful than man.’

Source: Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), depicted in The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.
While Aristotle, holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in one hand, gestures to the earth with the
other, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, Plato holds
his Timaeus and gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in ‘the forms’;
[Link]

The greatest political philosopher of Renaissance Italy was Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-
1527). Machiavelli’s writings reflect the tumultuous condition of Italy when by the end of
fifteenth century Italy had become the arena of international struggles. Both France and Spain
had invaded the peninsula and were competing with each other for the allegiance of the
Italian states which for most part were torn by internal dissensions. Machiavelli entered the
service of the newly-found republic of Florence in 1498 as second chancellor (secretary).
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

However, in 1512, the Medicis overthrew the republic depriving Machiavelli of his position.
The latter spent the remainder of his life mainly in exile, devoting much of his time to
writing. He praised the ancient Roman republic as a model for all time in his Discourses on
Livy. In this treatise, he lauded constitutionalism, equality, liberty (in the sense of freedom
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from outside interference) and subordination of religion to the interests of the state.
Machiavelli had served the Florentine republic and yet, his most acknowledged work, The
Prince (published posthumously in 1532), explained how an absolute ruler could take over
such a state. In this work, he expressed admiration for the brutal tactics which were required
to establish and safeguard the authority of a prince and many have seen this as deliberately
advocating a policy of immorality. The Prince, therefore, presented a sharp contrast to
previous books of advice which had recommended that successful rulers should practice the
Christian virtues. Instead Machiavelli advised that rulers must adapt their conduct to different
circumstances rather than following the guidance of set moral criteria: ‘reasons of state’ must
be their supreme justification. Cynical in his views of human nature, Machiavelli maintained
that all men are prompted by motives of self-interest, particularly by desires for personal
power and material prosperity. The head of the state, therefore, should not take for granted
the loyalty or affection of his subjects.

Scholars such as Allan Gilbert (1968) and Quentin Skinner (1988) have traced continuities
between The Prince and earlier writing in the genre. There was a long tradition of such
writing going back to classical Greek writers like Plato and Aristotle and their Roman
followers. A new spirit of realism and scepticism about formerly authoritative precepts
informed the thinking and writing of scholars like Giovanni Pontano in late fifteenth century.
Yet, these writers were careful to couch their ideas in circumspect language, while
Machiavelli firmly and openly stated that he was going to deal with forms of government as
they really existed, not as they should be in an ideal world. Thus, as Skinner observes, there
remain features of The Prince which were truly innovative as they hinged on Machiavelli’s
analysis of virtù. For him, it consisted in putting the good of the state above all preconceived
systems of morality, and thus, by implication, above Christian doctrine as well. The best
strategy for a new prince was to be free of any such preconceptions: ideally he would act in
accordance with conventional virtue; but, if necessary, he should be prepared to be ruthless
and amoral.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

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Source: Title page of a 1550 edition of The Prince;

[Link]

Check your Progress: I

(Find the correct answers at the end of the chapter)

1.1. The people of the Renaissance referred to the

prevailing intellectual phenomenon as ‘humanism’.
a. True
b. False

1.2. Humanism meant the revival of antiquity through an

engagement with the humanities, i.e. grammar,
rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.
a. True
b. False

1.3. Civic humanism centred on the idea of virtue.

a. True
b. False
Women humanists

Humanists were generally members of profession with access to education, resources and
scholarship. These were, however, not accessible to women at large leading to enormous
difficulties faced by those who wanted to pursue humanist studies. Even educated women
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

with financial resources who could study the classics under humanist tradition were
absolutely excluded from all the professions through which they could communicate their
knowledge and contribute to further advances in scholarship. They could not teach in the
schools for older boys or the universities, where the reform of education had to be achieved,
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even though a few of them were members of academies and informal bodies. According to
Lucille Kekewich (2000), a certain number of nuns were learned women who corresponded
with humanists, but their influence was slight and there is little evidence that the teaching
they offered was much affected by humanist studies.

Margaret King (1991) has established that only a few women were sufficiently notable to
have left records, while others may have existed whose identities have not survived. Those
that are known were all drawn from the governing classes and most lived in the princely
states of northern Italy or in Venice. Their career as humanists often came to be end if they
chose to marry, though those who remained celibate or entered convents sometimes
continued with their studies.

In his book on the French Renaissance, Franco Simone (1969) mentioned the Italian scholar,
courtier and poetess Christine de Pizan (1363-1431) while not specifically including her
among the French humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An accomplished
writer in French and Latin and acquainted with classical literature, she is known to have
argued with a group of misogynist male writers on behalf of the moral and intellectual
qualities of women in a literary dispute called ‘the Debate of the Rose.’ In her famous work,
The Book of the City of the Ladies (1405), Christine argued the lack of education in women
was the root cause of their inferiority. Women humanists in Italy sometimes encountered a
negative and harsh response from their male contemporaries. Isotta Nogarola of Verona
(1418-66) was slighted by her compatriot, the great teacher Guarino, despite possessing great
literary skill. In her best-known work, Of the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve, Isotta
conceded that ‘women’s natures were weaker than males,’ but this made Adam more
blameworthy for the Fall since God had endowed him with superior merits. In this work, she
apologized for being a women and writing of such matters. This apologetic and automatic
acceptance of an inferior status to male humanists runs through nearly all transactions
involving learned women in fifteenth-century Italy.

In England, the interest of the Tudor monarchs of the sixteenth century in humanist learning
lead to some impact on their womenfolk too. Henry VIII allowed his first wife, Catherine of
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Aragon, to employ a Spaniard Juan Luis Vives to tutor their daughter Mary. His other
daughter, Elizabeth, was tutored by the humanist Roger Ascham. Both Mary and Elizabeth
were adept at reading, writing and translating Latin and Greek. Retha Warnicke (1991) has
shown that the household of Thomas More was akin to a small humanist academy whose
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influence extended to the education of several women in their circle including his daughter,
the learned Margaret Roper. But, generally, the impact of the English Renaissance was
mostly confined to those who could afford a tutor competent in new learning.

In France, a succession of learned queens, including Catherine de Medici, not only assisted
in the process of the dissemination of humanist studies, but sometimes also helped determine
their direction. For instance, the sister of King Francis I, Marguerite of Navarre (1492-
1549), extended her patronage to many scholars and clerics, including Jacques Lefèvre
d’Étaples who was critical of certain aspects of the Catholic church. Her humanism was not
limited only to patronage but was expressed by her composition of a number of works, the
best known being the Heptameron, where she criticized the traditional institution of marriage.
But she did not demand better social status for them, focussing instead on the cause of
religious reforms in her writings.

Source: Queen consort of Navarre, c. 1527;

[Link]
varre#mediaviewer/File:Marguerite_d%27Ang
oul%C3%[Link]

This brings us to the question of whether women as a whole were active participants in the
Renaissance humanist movement. Were they influenced by it and were in return able to
contribute to contemporary humanist learning? Burckhardt, while writing about the
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Renaissance, attempted to establish that during this time women could have strong
personalities, as part of his thesis about the development of the individual, than in their
humanist activities. However, Joan Kelly (1984), in her seminal article, ‘Did Women have a
Renaissance?’ critiques Burckhardt’s positive account of the possibilities for well-to-do
Page | 17
women in Italy. While accepting that some became highly educated, she suggests that their
intellectual integrity declined from the high courtly prestige they had enjoyed in the Middle
Ages. She does believe that humanism brought Latin literacy and classical learning to
daughters as well as sons of the nobility, but this very development (usually taken as a
marker for equality among Renaissance noble women and men) brought about further decline
in the lady’s influence over courtly society as it placed her as well as her brothers under
‘male cultural authority.’ Unlike her medieval predecessors, she could no longer shape a
culture responsive to her own interests. The works the humanist noblewomen commissioned,
bought, or had dedicated to them do not show any consistent correspondence to their
concerns as women.

The impact of Renaissance humanism was thus limited to a few elite women but it
transformed learning and education so that, by the time of the Enlightenment, bourgeois as
well as noble women could benefit from it, and from the nineteenth century onwards it was
gradually extended to the common people.

Check your Progress: II

(Find the correct answers at the end of the chapter)

2.1 Women, at large, became important agents for

spreading humanist ideas during the Renaissance period.
a. True
b. False

2.2 The impact of humanism was limited to few elite

women.
a. True
Christian b. False
humanism

The humanist spirit travelled to different European cities through the trade routes originating
from Italy. For Georg Voigt, the diffusion of humanism came about as a result of the traffic
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

in men and ideas to and from Italy through the familiar routes: commerce, church council and
papal service. Italian scholars journeyed north while northern scholars and students went
south to Italy. Similar to Italy, the first generation mastered Latin and the next acquired
Greek, which became an essential component of northern humanism.
Page | 18
However, northern humanism had its own distinct features: a greater ‘national’ dimension,
emphasis on Christian reform and a large role played by the universities. In many places in
the north, the same articulated system of secondary schools did not exist as in Italy and the
boys went to university at thirteen or fourteen years of age, and gained their first exposure to
learning in that context. Italian students on the other hand received basic secondary education
first and then went to advanced study in law and medicine. Humanist curricula in northern
universities were encouraged by monarchs as a means of extending their authority by training
officials for the royal bureaucracies. University centres were also often publishing centres.
For instance, the humanistic college in the Dutch city of Louvain, the Collegium Trilingue
(The Trilingual College) dedicated to the study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew was also the
home of an active printing press that published translations of Aristotle and Plato as well as
the work of contemporary humanist writers and books on Hebrew and Oriental languages.
The humanists, thus, often collaborated with printers. The printing press played an important
role in the spread of new learning with the rise of a ‘print culture’ in Europe from the 1450s
onwards.

The decisive period for northern humanism has been placed by recent scholars in the late
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, thus separating it from events in Italy, for which the
fourteenth century remains important. However, one cannot rule out direct Italian influences.
Peter Burke (1990) as ably demonstrated that the largest migrations of Italian humanists to
the north occurred in the second half of the fifteenth century. But the diffusion of ideas was
slow, allowing native characteristics to grow. There existed, as in Italy, ‘pre’ or ‘proto’
movements that did not constitute full-fledged humanism.

Earlier in the twentieth century, the historians of German and Dutch humanism place strong
emphasis on non-Italian roots. They stressed on the local characteristics such as the German
tradition of mysticism and the ‘basic inwardness’ of the German people and, above all, on the
activities of the Brethren of the Common Life, a lay religious community, founded in the
fourteenth century by the Dutch preacher Gerard Groote (1340-84). The Brethren were
popular in Northern Europe and in the Low Countries as they devoted themselves to simple
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

piety, the ‘Devotio Moderna,’ based on imitation of Christ and became advocates of
education. Their ‘schools’ rejected scholasticism in favour of humanist stud, particularly at
Deventer, where the humanist headmaster Alexander Hegius (1433-1498) taught Greek and
inspired future humanists including Erasmus.
Page | 19
The indigenous theory, however, was critiqued by historians like Lewis Spitz who pointed
out that the Brethren did not operate full-scale schools, nor were they a teaching order. It was
the local governments and the church that control Brethren academies including the one at
Deventer. Thus the real inspiration for humanist study came from civic leaders.

German humanism is now seen as inspired by a combination of forces, external and internal.
Germany possessed some of the same economic, political and social preconditions as Italy.
Educated merchant elites lived in German urban centres such as Nuremberg and Augsburg.
Rulers such as Maximilian I (1493-1519) patronized humanists as court. For instance, he
established a chair for Latin poetry and rhetoric at the University of Vienna. As in Italy,
monasteries provided a locus of humanist activity. German humanism, however, is seen as
being progressively independent from Italy. The major early German humanists studied on
the peninsula, as did their patrons which included government officials, jurists and prelates.
There was an initial wave of ‘wandering poets’ who travelled to Italy and focused primarily
on acquiring classical skills. Rudolf Agricola (1444-85), recognised as father of German
humanism by many scholars, studied law at Pavia and acquired outstanding skill in Latin and
Greek, which he sought to transplant to the north. A second generation of humanists moved
in original directions, being more secure in their abilities. The ‘arch-humanist’ Conrad Celtis
(1459-1508) returned home after spending two years in Italy with distaste for Italian
intellectual snobbery. With the desire to seize cultural leadership from them, he founded a
network of indigenous northern ‘sodalities,’ extending as far as Hungary and Poland, to
promote indigenous humanistic study. Celtis advocated cultural nationalism, which became
an important theme among German humanists. He published distinctly ‘German’ works,
including an edition of the Roman historian Tacitus’ history of Germanic tribes, Germania.

Similar trends can be seen in the Low Countries, where humanism gained wide popularity in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Universities, such as the one at Leiden, and the
printing press established by 1500 at Utrecht, Deventer, Antwerp, Leiden, and so on, played
important roles. Dutch humanism had its own features: it possessed lesser national dimension
than its German counterparts and involved greater participation of secondary schools for
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Latin and Greek, becoming popular with a rising urban merchant class in cities. Dutch
developments were less connected to Italy and more influenced by trends in Germany, Spain,
France and England. The celebrated Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
learnt Greek at Paris from the French humanist Robert Gaguin (1423-1501) and maintained
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close contact throughout his career with humanists at the Tudor court in England, including
John Colet and Thomas More. According to William Caferro (2011), Erasmus’s career
makes clear the international character of Dutch humanism. He considered himself ‘a citizen
of the world,’ and his calculated use of the press allowed him an intellectual career as an
international figure. Yet, his career is marked by the many basic features of northern
humanism in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: mastery of the Greek language,
exploitation of the printing press, and the use of linguistic and classical skills to study the
Bible and patristic texts in their own languages. His interest in theological texts furthered the
idea of classical study intended to better understand the faith, a phenomenon known as
‘Christian humanism’, by several historians. He developed the notion of ‘philosophia
Christi,’ a simple heartfelt piety based on scripture, in his work Enchiridion on Christian
Knight (1503). But the idea of simple piety along with a close study of scripture led him to
critique contemporary religious practices, often in the form of satire. In this sense, he is often
seen as paving the way for Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, who though not a
humanist, was nevertheless influenced by the movement. But Erasmus was not in agreement
with Luther over many ideological issues, and openly distanced himself from him, marking
the point of separation between humanism and the Reformation.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Page | 21

Source: Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus by Albrecht Dürer, 1526, engraved in Nuremberg, Germany;
[Link]

‘Christian humanism’ was also an important aspect of the French humanism. Jacques
Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455-1536), a contemporary of Erasmus’s, studied the Bible and patristic
texts in their original languages, translating the Psalms and writing commentaries on the
Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul. There has been a historical debate over the origins of
French humanism. Henri Hauser emphasized the Italian origins of humanism, brought back
by French soldiers from Italy after the French invasion of the peninsula in 1494 and
concluded that the movement gained strength on French soil and acquired its own
characteristics, becoming tied up with religious reform. The years 1480 to 1540 have been
pointed out as centrally important to French humanism. The period includes the careers of
key individuals such as Erasmus’s mentor Robert Gaguin who maintained a circle of
humanists that included members of faculty of the University of Paris as well as royal and
local government officials, the establishment of humanist university curricula and printing
presses and the royal patronage of King Francis I. Perhaps the most renowned humanist of
the period was Guillaume Budé (1468-1540), King Francis I’s personal secretary,
distinguished as a writer of history and legal studies. With Francis’s support, Budé founded
the Royal College for humanist studies. This timeline is problematic, however, as it leaves
out the role of Francis Petrarch, the Italian humanist who grew up in Avignon, France, and
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

gained his first love of classics there (1326-53). Though Franco Simone (see section on
historiography) has argued for continuity noting that French humanism retained Petrarch’s
sense of historical relativism, disagreement among historians persists over the role of Italy.
While American historian Eugene Rice (1988) argues that French humanism was
Page | 22
‘transplanted’ from Italy, and that the French altered it to suit their own needs, French
historian Jean Claude Margolin (1981) sees French humanism as possessing its own
‘peculiar’ traits and argued for continuity with France’s rich medieval past, in hostile
opposition to Italian developments. Marc Fumaroli (1980) has posited the emergence of
distinct French ‘aulic’ humanism, a political-centred humanism that developed at the court of
Francis I. In this approach, the Italian tradition of oratory based on Cicero is eschewed in
favour of Seneca and Tacitus and their focus on prudence and stoic fortitude.

The study of English humanism has focussed on the activities of the court of the Tudor King,
Henry VIII, who maintained about him a circle of humanists including Thomas Linacre
(1460-1524), royal physician and tutor to his children, William Grocyn (d. 1519), the first to
teach Greek regularly at Oxford, John Colet (1466-1519), dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in
London and Thomas More (1478-1535), most accomplished of the group, who died a
martyr’s death after opposing Henry’s decision to divorce. All men were accomplished at the
Greek language and Lanacre and Grocyn had studied in Florence. After the More’s death,
humanism is seen as largely disappearing in England.

Thomas More gained his knowledge of the Greek language from Linacre and Grocyn; he did
not study in Italy. His friendship with Erasmus led scholars such as Alistair Fox (1982) to
treat his humanism in terms of that of his Dutch counterpart. However, later studies
deemphasised the connection between the two and, instead, pointing to the impact on More of
the Platonic studies of Italian scholars, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, who had influenced
Linacre, Grocyn and Colet. More’s most famous work, Utopia (1515-16), being a description
of an ideal society largely drew on Plato.

English humanism gained institutional status in universities, with Italian humanists lecturing
at Cambridge and Oxford in the mid-fifteenth century and later, as Tudor rulers encouraged
humanist curricula at universities as means to train public servants for the royal bureaucracy.
Thus, English humanism became aligned with state building.

In Spain and Central Europe too, royal courts and universities served as focal points of
humanist activity. The monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, encouraged humanist
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

learning as a tool of centralization with the intention to create educate public officials loyal
directly to the monarchy. A trilingual college was founded at Alcalà in 1508 for the
promotion of study of the Bible in its original languages. Similarly, the Hungarian ruler
Matthias Corvinus patronized humanists at court, as did the Polish King Casimir. A
Page | 23
university offering humanist courses was established at Cracow as an off-shoot of an earlier
sodality set up there by Conrad Celtis.

Humanism in northern Europe was different from that in Italy because of the different
politico-social contexts. Unlike the cities of Florence and Venice, the cities of northern
Europe, although considerable rich and prosperous and involved in foreign trade were not
autonomous entities. Being subordinate to state authority, they were marked by the dominant
feudal structures of northern states with an increasing role of the church in social life. The
church being the centre and patron of education with tolerance only for specific reforms led
to the inclination of northern humanism towards specializing in theological and scriptural
studies. Thus, moral and religious reforms formed the core of the movement as the humanists
here were interested in building educational institutions and promoting learning in
accordance with local customs and history. Italian humanism, on the other hand, portrayed
the secular spirit of its urban society with a more favourable environment for the promotion
of art and literature. Therefore, in terms of humanist activities, Italian humanism was much
broader in range and scope.

Check your Progress: III

(Find the correct answers at the end of the chapter)

3.1. Humanism in northern Europe had its own unique features with
an emphasis on Christian reform.
a. True
b. False

3.2. German humanism had distinct ‘national’ features and stressed

on non-Italian roots.
a. True
b. False

3.3. The works of Desiderius Erasmus can be seen as paving the way
for the sixteenth-century Reformation.
a. True
b. False
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Historiography

Any serious study of the Renaissance is incomplete without the mention of Jacob
Page | 24
Burckhardt’s phenomenal work, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) in which
he postulated the idea that Renaissance humanism represented a new philosophy of man. It
was a new philosophy of the Renaissance that arose in opposition to scholasticism, the old
philosophy of the Middle Ages. Unlike more recent generations of Renaissance scholars, he
pointed out that respect for and appreciation of the classical past was not the chief ingredient
of the new cultural movement. Instead he firmly placed emphasis on the spirit and genius of
the Italians, which he saw as primarily responsible for the ‘conquest of the western world,’ as
the seminal source of Renaissance culture. Humanism, for him, was merely a convenient
vehicle for the subtle genius of Italian scholars, poets and artists. Italian society is perceived
by him as characteristically ‘modern’ in that it places talent and education above birth as the
major determinant of cultural, political and social status. Hinting at the gradual disintegration
of class boundaries in Italy, he even suggests that ‘women stood on a footing of perfect
equality with men.’ In rejecting medieval constraints of the Church, the Italian spirit had
fostered a secular approach to the things of this world, the outcome of which was the creation
of a modern, secular society in which individuals were free to act and speculate in whichever
way they saw fit.

Burckhardt’s views on Renaissance humanism led to the articulation of various fundamental

problems that have ever since preoccupied scholarship. Was humanism essentially concerned
with reviving the culture of classical antiquity, or did it represent, as Burckhardt suggested, a
new philosophy of man, a change in the very nature or his view of himself? Further, what
was the relationship of humanism to the preceding historical period, to the Middle Ages? Did
humanism mark a decisive break from previous cultural traditions, or is it more appropriate to
speak of continuity and evolution rather than revolution?

There has been a growing acceptance among many scholars that the Renaissance was not the
first period in which the cultural development of Europe received a stimulus from the revived
knowledge and use of classical texts and images. The concept of the Carolingian and twelfth-
century ‘Renaissances’ enabled humanism to be explained in terms of a far greater continuity
of cultural experience than had been possible for Burckhardt and his contemporaries. This
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

approach has also been supported by a greater understanding of late medieval scholarship and
education, often described by the umbrella term ‘scholasticism’ (which derives from the
‘schools,’ including the universities, all dominated by the Catholic Church). It is now
recognised that scholastics such as Peter Abelard (1079-1142) and Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92)
Page | 25
relied extensively on classical learning, and that they were capable of daring and innovative
thought. Even those humanists who condemned the methods of these scholars were, to some
extent, reliant on their legacy.

Paul Oskar Kristeller (1988) repudiated Burckhardt’s thesis by focussing on precisely what
the latter had rejected: the revival of antiquity, thus bringing about fundamental changes in
the study and interpretation of Renaissance humanism in the second half of the twentieth
century. He saw Renaissance humanism as a literary movement, focussing on grammatical
and rhetorical studies. For him, humanism was not a philosophical movement, it could not,
therefore, represent a new vision of man. Whatever excursions were made by the humanists
into the realm of philosophy were superficial and amateurish. Thus, humanism could not
have replaced Scholasticism (the dominant philosophy of the Middle Ages) and Aristotelian
philosophy continued to thrive in Italy until the mid-seventeenth century.

Stressing on continuities rather than change, Kristeller emphasised humanism’s debt to the
Middle Ages: to the French medieval grammatical tradition of classical studies, to the
Byzantine heritage of Greek scholarship, and above all, to the Italian medieval rhetorical
heritage of ars dictaminis. The return to antique rhetoric was the fundamental goal of
Renaissance humanism. Even in this subject, however, the humanists were unable to put the
medieval heritage fully behind them. As in the Middle Ages, the Rhetorica ad Herennium
remained the most widely used textbook. Most significantly, the humanists were unable to
revive classical rhetoric as it had been practiced in the days of Cicero. The ancient treatises
had divided rhetoric into three genres: judicial, deliberative and epideictic. But in later
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the first two genres representing the oratory of the law courts
and of public debate, had fallen into disuse, leaving only the rhetoric of praise and blame, as
practiced, for example, in speeches at weddings and funerals, university functions or on
formal civic occasions. Although the humanists continued to give theoretical attention to
judicial and deliberative oratory, the social functions of rhetoric remained unchanged from
the early days of the Italian communes in the thirteenth century.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Thus, Kristeller pointed to the continuity and development of traditional Aristotelian studies
throughout the Renaissance and emphasised humanism’s literary rather than philosophical
focus. His conclusion is in the negative stating that humanism’s success could not have been
due to its alleged appeal as the new philosophy of the Renaissance, because, in fact, it offered
Page | 26
no genuine philosophical alternative to scholasticism. However, he does not answer the
question: if humanism shared so much in common with medieval learning, why was it so
successful as a cultural movement not only in Italy but eventually throughout Europe?

Hanna Gray (1963) further questions why the humanists failed to recognise and sometimes
disclaimed continuity with medieval practice. Her answer to this was the humanists’
‘subjective consciousness of novelty.’ According to her, the humanists succeeded because
they were convinced, and were able to convince the world at large, that their studies –
particularly the pursuit of eloquence – offered a surer path than scholasticism to virtue and
the good life. Ernst H. Gombrich (1969) similarly stressed the subjective appeal of
humanism, its one-upmanship: like a fashion, it succeeded by giving its adherents a sense of
superiority.

Robert Black (2001) appreciated the above approach, yet he was not satisfied with it being
the answer to the question of humanism’s overwhelming success in both Italy and Europe. He
pointed out how it became impossible to get a job as a schoolmaster, private tutor or public
servant without humanist credentials. Many Florentine businessmen paid large sums of
money to humanist teachers to educate their children, to booksellers to fill their libraries with
classical and humanist texts, to dealers and agents to furnish their palaces with enormously
expensive antiquities. Surely, there was more to it than being just fashion.

According to Black, humanism succeeded because it persuaded Italian and ultimately

European society that without its lessons no one was fit to rule or lead. Italian society, since
the rise of the communes, was always in flux: it was based on an economy where wealth and
prominence depended not just on land but also so much on commercial and industrial
fortunes, on local as well as far-flung international and overseas trading adventures. Where
families and individuals rose and fell with amazing rapidity, the society was always on the
look-out for better definitions of social and political acceptability. This was particularly true
in communal Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when traditional definitions
of nobility had been devalued by association with mercenaries and with politically ostracised
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

groups such as the Florentine magnates. Humanism’s particular definition, according to

Black, had the best of all possible seals of approval – it was endorsed by the ancients.

Regarding the significance of humanism in the intellectual and cultural landscape of early
modern Europe, Eugenio Garin (1965) stressed the importance of humanism to its Page | 27
development of an awareness of the historical background to classical texts. He distinguished
between the knowledge of antiquity which was retained in the Middle Ages and the capacity
of the humanists to take a detached analytical view of it. He suggested that the value these
texts placed on human work and responsibility encouraged many humanists to participate in
an active public life.

One of the main achievements of the Renaissance, as claimed by Burckhardt, was the
‘discovery of the individual.’ This concept of ‘self-fashioning’ received renewed attention by
scholars like Stephen Greenblatt (1980) who associated this process of self-fashioning with
the idea of the self as it was portrayed in sixteenth-century literature. He postulated a need to
respond to social, religious and economic pressures by projecting an identity which would be
acceptable to peers and superiors. This approach represents a modified view of Burckhardt’s
thesis, as it supports his idea that the Renaissance emancipated people from the constraints of
traditional learning, religion and social pressures of the Middle Ages where the notion of
personality/individuality hardly existed.

Hans Baron (1988) saw the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in northern Italy as a
time when ‘civic humanism’ was found in the works of public servants, lawyers and
historians like Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444). By ‘civic humanism’ is meant a new
consciousness of the uniqueness of republican institutions in states like Florence. Baron also
identified a humanist belief that it was their destiny to restore to Italy the greatness it had
enjoyed in Roman times.

Much has been written about the reasons and the processes involving the spread of humanism
to the rest of Europe. The nineteenth century Romantic historiography views the Italian wars
as important arena for the French reception of Italian humanism and art. For example, Jules
Michelet (1855) described how the troops of Charles VIII, the French king who invaded Italy
in 1494, barbarians in dress and behaviour suddenly transformed into perfect Renaissance
men upon contact with Italian civilization.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Franco Simone (1969) has taken exception to this kind of approach. He suggested that Italian
humanism had been admired in France since the time of Petrarch (i.e. fourteenth century); his
residence in Avignon and visits to Paris facilitated the transfer of his ideas and methods.
Later, the work of Lorenzo Valla proved equally influential. According to Simone, a group of
Page | 28
French humanists, such as Jean Gerson and Nicholas de Clamanges, were achieving
standards of eloquence and literary ability in Latin which made them comparable to Italian
contemporaries. Often they exhibited independent attitudes. For example, Budé pointed out
the errors in grammar and spelling that he found in Italian humanist authorities.

Peter Burke (1990) demonstrated how from the Middle Ages Italian scholars travelled,
studied and taught throughout Europe and that northerners were drawn to Italy. Early
reformers such as Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
concentrated on establishing the most accurate texts of the scriptures and on attempting to
remedy perceived shortcomings in personnel and organization from within the Catholic
Church. From the time of Martin Luther (1483-1546), the intensity of the intellectual and
ideological debate led to a schism between those who remained within the Church and the
Protestants who broke away from it and formed separate churches. According to Burke, this
led to changes not only in the fabric and teaching of the Catholic Church, but also in the
character of the states which supported or rejected the Reformation.

Lisa Jardine (1998) offers economic as well as intellectual factors to explain how humanism
began to penetrate northern Europe. According to this thesis, while Italian humanists from
Petrarch onwards were attempting to retrieve their cultural ‘roots,’ commercial interests were
a prime motivator for northern entrepreneurs. The attractions of Venice, an accessible centre
of excellence for the new technology of printing and for the scholarly expertise which went
with it, the status conferred by the new learning and the key it provided to the study of the
scriptures, are all presented as factors in the growing northern involvement in the
Renaissance. Jardine’s approach is, thus, characterised by her presentation of knowledge as a
commodity.

Summary

Renaissance humanism meant an emphasis on education and on expanding knowledge

(especially of classical antiquity bringing about renewed interest in classic Greece and
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Rome), the exploration of individual potential and a desire to excel, along with a commitment
to civic responsibility and moral duty. The belief that man was the measure of all things and
that humanity could achieve perfection through education provoked interest and value in the
individual. It stressed man’s superiority over nature and valued a balance between faith and
Page | 29
reason. Its influence on the intellectual and cultural thought of early modern Europe can be
gauged from the fact that whereas in the Middle Ages, the arts glorified god, during the early
modern era, mankind was celebrated. Unlike the Middle Ages, man was seen as flawed and
monastic escape from society was viewed as an ideal life, during the time of the Renaissance,
man was glorified with his flaws intact and full participation in rich and varied experience
began to be considered as the ideal life.

Did you know?

Christine de Pizan (c. 1363-1431) was an accomplished writer in

French and Latin and well-acquainted in classical literature. In a
literary dispute called the ‘Debate of the Rose’ (which arose after
some derogatory remarks were made about women in a poem, The
Romance of the Rose), she argued with a group of misogynist male
writers on behalf of the moral and intellectual qualities of women
thus:
As in ancient times the Romans in their triumphal marches allowed no praise or
honor to such things as did not serve the good of the republic, let us look to their
example in determining whether or not this romance is deserving of a crown …
despite your [Jean de Montreuil, one of her adversaries] proclaiming it a ‘mirror for
right conduct, a model for all walks of life in public affairs or in living religiously or
prudently’, I hold on the contrary that it is, with all due respect, an exhortation to
vice, giving comfort to dissolute ways, an indoctrination in deceit, a road to
damnation … And it may not be laid to folly, arrogance, or presumption that I, a
woman, do upbraid and refute so difficult an author, diminishing the good fame of
his work, when he, a sole and solitary man, dared to take it upon himself to defame
and condemn without exception an entire sex?

C.C. Willard (ed.), The Writings of Christine de Pizan, 1993, pp. 158-9
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Exercise/Practice Questions

1. What do you understand by Renaissance humanism? Give reasons for the emergence
Page | 30
and spread of the movement in Europe?

2. How was Christian humanism different from humanism in Italy? Elaborate.

3. Did women play an important role in the propagation of humanist ideas?

4. Was the introduction of printing advantageous to the sixteenth-century humanists?

Give examples to elucidate your answer.

5. What is meant by ‘civic humanism’? Who were its exponents?

6. How was humanism received ‘across the Alps’? Explain with special reference to
Germany, France and England.

7. Did humanism represent a break from the past? Discuss with reference to the
historiographical debates.

Glossary

ars dictaminis: It was the medieval description of the art of prose composition, and more
specifically, of the writing of letters (dictamen).

Carolingian period: eight to ninth centuries, when France and Part of Germany were ruled
by the dynasty of Charlemagne (Charles, the Great).

classical: pertaining to the era of the ancient Greeks and Romans

epideictic: It is one of the three branches of rhetoric as outlined in Aristotles’s Rhetoric. It is

udes to praise or blame during ceremonies.

Middle Ages: conventionally, the period in western Europe between the collapse of the
Roman Empire (mid fifth century CE) and the onset of the Renaissance (fifteenth century).
The usefulness of the term, however, is much disputed and the period is frequently divided
into categories such as ‘Dark Ages’, ‘low’ and ‘high’ Middle Ages, and so on.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

philology: Critical analysis of texts both in respect of their content and the language in which
they were expressed.

rhetoric: Art of public speaking as it developed in classical antiquity.

Page | 31
scholasticism: The term refers to the doctrine and method of teaching in medieval European
schools. It involved a detailed reading of a particular book recognised as an authoritative
work such as Euclid in geometry, Cicero in rhetoric, Avicenna and Galen in medicine and the
Bible in theology and an open discussion in strict logical form of a relevant question arising
from the text. The most important disciplines were arts (philosophy) and theology, and it is in
the context of these disciplines that the term scholasticism is usually understood.

Vulgate: Latin version of the Bible attributed to St Jerome.

Suggested Readings

Baron, Hans, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from
Medieval to Modern Thought, Princeton University Press, 1988
Black, Robert (ed.), Renaissance Thought, Routledge, London and New York, 2001

Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S.G.C.

Middlemore, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990; first published 1858
Burke, Peter, ‘The Spread of Italian Humanism’ in Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay,
The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe, Addison-Wesley Longman Limited, 1990

Burke, Peter, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries, Blackwell Publishers,
Massachusetts, 1998

Burke, Peter, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy, Polity Press, Cambridge,
2014

Caferro, William, Contesting the Renaissance, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, 2011

Gilbert, Allan, Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners, Barnes and Noble, New York,
1968
Goodman, Anthony and Angus MacKay, The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe,
Addison-Wesley Longman Limited, 1990
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

Jardine, Lisa, Worldly Goods, Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, 1996

Kekewich, Lucille (ed.), The Renaissance in Europe: A Cultural Enquiry, Yale University
Press in association with The Open University, Oxford, 2000
Kelly, Joan, Women, History and Theory: Essays, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and
Page | 32
London, 1984
Kristeller, P.O., ‘Humanism’ in C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1988
Nauert Jr., Charles G., Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1995
Simone, Franco, The French Renaissance: Medieval Tradition and Italian Influence in
shaping the Renaissance in France, translated by H. Gaston Hall, Macmillan, London, 1969
Skinner, Quentin, ‘Political Philosophy’ in C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye
(eds), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1988
Warnicke, R.M., ‘Women and Humanism in England’ in A. Rabil (ed.), Renaissance
Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, ‘Humanism beyond Italy’, University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1991
Woolfson, Jonathan (ed.), Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography, Palgrave
Macmillan, New York, 2005

Answers to ‘Check your Progress’

1.1. False. The word ‘humanism’ was coined in the nineteenth century by the German
secondary school teacher, F.J. Niethammer, who used it as a synonym for Greek and
Latin classical studies then coming into vogue in schools.
1.2. True. Humanism essentially meant an engagement with the studia humanitatis (the
humanities), that is grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy, a curriculum
different from that of the Middle Ages.
1.3. True. The concept of the man of virtù, with a reasoned and examined control of his
own thoughts, intentions, and actions, and also of his surroundings, was the essence of
‘civic humanism.’
2.1. False. Even though a few elite women gained access to humanist education, women
at large could not participate in the dissemination of ‘new ideas’ as they were excluded
from professions through which they could communicate their knowledge and contribute
to further advances in scholarship.
 Renaissance Humanism: An Introduction

2.2. True. Only elite women with adequate financial resources and, in most cases, with
support from the male members of the family could gain access to humanist education.
3.1. True. The cities of northern Europe being subordinate to state authority were marked by
the dominant feudal structures of northern states with an increasing role of the church in
social life. The church being the centre and patron of education with tolerance only for
specific reforms led to the inclination of northern humanism towards specializing in Page | 33
theological and scriptural studies.
3.2. True. Conrad Celtis, an important German humanist, advocated cultural nationalism,
which became an important theme among German humanists. He published distinctly
‘German’ works, including an edition of the Roman historian Tacitus’ history of Germanic
tribes, Germania.
3.3. True. The idea of simple piety, as espoused by Erasmus, along with a close study of
scripture led him to critique contemporary religious practices, often in the form of satire. In
this sense, he is often seen as paving the way for Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, who
though not a humanist, was nevertheless influenced by the movement.