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| Humanism (Renaissance) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Humanism (Renaissance) |
| Period | Renaissance |
| Region | Italy; Europe |
| Notable people | Petrarch; Boccaccio; Erasmus; Ficino; Valla; Pico della Mirandola; Lorenzo de' Medici; Castiglione; Machiavelli; More; Alberti; Brunelleschi; Leonardo da Vinci; Michelangelo; Botticelli; Guicciardini; Vittorino da Feltre; Guarino da Verona; Cola di Rienzo |
Humanism (Renaissance) Humanism (Renaissance) was an intellectual movement originating in early 14th-century Petrarch's Italy that emphasized a return to classical sources, philological rigor, and the dignified capacities of individuals. It influenced literature, Marsilio Ficino's translations, Erasmus's critiques, and the curricula of schools such as Vittorino da Feltre's and Guarino da Verona's, reshaping courts from Florence to London and affecting art patrons like Lorenzo de' Medici.
Humanist origins trace to the rediscovery of texts by Cicero, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, and Sallust preserved in libraries of Constantinople and monastic collections like Monte Cassino. Scholars such as Petrarch and Boccaccio combed manuscripts, while diplomatic exchange after the fall of Constantinople (1453) brought émigré scholars to Florence and Venice. The interaction of Byzantine humanists like Manuel Chrysoloras with Italian patrons accelerated study of Greek language and fostered networks connecting Padua, Pisa, Rome, and Naples.
Major figures included Petrarch, Boccaccio, Poggio Bracciolini, Coluccio Salutati, and Niccolò Machiavelli in civic life; Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Lorenzo Valla in philosophy and philology; and northern leaders such as Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and John Colet in England and Philip Melanchthon in the Holy Roman Empire. Important institutions and schools were the Platonic Academy of Florence under Ficino, the humanist chancery of Pope Nicholas V, the studia of Padua and Bologna, and court academies in Ferrara and Urbino patronized by families like the Medici and the Montefeltro.
Humanists prioritized classical rhetoric and poetic models—Cicero's letters, Quintilian's oratory, and Horace's odes—producing vernacular works by Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarca that conversed with Ovid and Lucan. Philologists such as Lorenzo Valla applied linguistic analysis to texts like the Donation of Constantine, exposing forgeries and refining Latin; Erasmus compiled critical editions of the New Testament and corresponded with Syrus of Emesa-era scholarship. Educational reformers—Vittorino da Feltre, Guarino da Verona, Erasmus, and Juan Luis Vives—reorganized curricula in schools and universities at Padua, Paris, and Oxford around studia humanitatis including grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.
Humanist ideals shaped visual arts, architecture, and anatomy through patrons and practitioners such as Lorenzo de' Medici, Isabella d'Este, Federico da Montefeltro, and artists Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sandro Botticelli, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Alberti. Classical proportion and perspective drew on treatises by Leon Battista Alberti and antiquities excavated in Rome and Herculaneum. Humanist inquiry influenced scientific thinking in figures like Galileo Galilei and Andreas Vesalius, who married empirical observation to humanist textual critique, while patrons such as Pope Julius II funded commissions blending antiquity with contemporary ambition.
Humanism produced civic theory exemplified by Civic humanism advocates in Florence like Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo Bruni, who engaged classical models from Polybius and Livy to address republican governance. The Medici court, the republican episodes of Florence (e.g., the politics around Girolamo Savonarola), and the writings of Guicciardini and Poggio interrogated virtue, Fortuna, and virtù in statecraft. Northern figures such as Thomas More and Erasmus extended humanist ethics into critiques of legal institutions and social reform in England and Flanders.
Christian humanists including Erasmus, Thomas More, Juan Luis Vives, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Philip Melanchthon sought to harmonize patristic sources with classical learning, editing Augustine and Jerome and advocating moral renewal in Rome and Wittenberg. Humanist textual criticism, notably Lorenzo Valla's exposure of the Donation of Constantine, undermined medieval juridical claims and fed debates that intersected with the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther and the Catholic reforms of Pope Paul III and the Council of Trent. Figures like Girolamo Savonarola and Erasmus differed on ecclesiastical reform tactics, reflecting tensions between devotional renewal and institutional change.
Humanism's legacy includes the rise of critical philology, the modern human sciences in Germany and England, and secularized conceptions of agency influencing Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. The humanist emphasis on sources and education shaped universities in Cambridge and Leiden and informed legal-humanist trends in Spain and the Habsburg realms. Artistic canons established by Renaissance patrons endured in collections like the Uffizi and the Vatican Museums, while humanist political and religious debates set the stage for modern historiography and the development of individual rights in documents influenced by thinkers connected to More and Machiavelli.