16 Century

th

Humanism and
Reformation
RENAISSANCE

 Inovatio as renovatio
 Rebirth of Antiquity
 Historical awareness (Petrarch)- 14th century Italy:
Antiquity (= model, golden age) > Middle Age (=
dark/barbarian)> the Modern Age (= Renaissance
–now called Early modern age) (see details- Courses
1-2)
HUMANISM AND THE RENAISSANCE

 Secular interests and concerns valorized positively -> IMMANENTISM (a

philosophical position maintaining that human experience is the only ultimate
source of verification). >>> MAN= the measure of all things- VITALITY AND
ENERGY
 MAN – the conqueror, the master of the world (geographical discoveries , conquest
of America)
 => development of knowledge.
 Economic development:
 Cities- crafts, industry, banking, public sphere
 Trade - new trade routes-Mediterranean, round Africa, across the Atlantic; spices and silk,
English trade with the Ottoman Empire and America (“plantations” >> colonization)
 ARTS- sculpture, painting, literature
 Golden ratio/mean/section Divine proportion – mathematical concept (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio) -- ideal proportions
The Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490)
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (1483-85)
HUMANISTS

 Name invented later

 Philologists- classical texts (re)discovered, interpreted,
cleansed and edited, translated.
 => AD FONTES (back to the sources)- classical texts=
truth and model
 Position: teachers, secretaries, public figures
 Humanistic education :2ndary schools and colleges and
then universities- > humanistic revolution
 Contemplatio versus Negotium=> involvement in the
public sphere >>> philology and political action
In Renaissance Italy, the desire to know and to match the excellence
of the ancients often engendered passionate endeavor. The
Florentine author Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, described his
nightly retreats into his library in these memorable words:

“At the door I take off my muddy everyday clothes. I dress myself
as though I were about to appear before a royal court as a
Florentine envoy. Then decently attired I enter the antique courts
of the great men of antiquity. They receive me with friendship;
from them I derive the nourishment which alone is mine and for
which I was born. Without false shame I talk with them and ask
them the causes of the actions; and their humanity is so great they
answer me. For four long and happy hours I lose myself in them. I
forget all my troubles; I am not afraid of poverty or death. I
transform myself entirely in their likeness.”
(Machiavelli, Excerpt from a letter dated 10 December 1513)
HUMANIST EDUCATION

 New institutions (colleges, grammar schools, then universities : Italy

[Bologna, Padova then all over Italy])
 New subject matter : a variety of texts from the Roman and Greek antiquity
plus their contexts.
 new subjects: history, literature, moral philosophy, geography, rhetoric
(Cicero)
- disputations (debates) =major activity, but also dancing and theatre => the birth
of the humanities;
 2nd important field : natural philosophy – to train doctors, development of
science
 The importance of RHETORIC AND ELOQUENCE– outlet for the new education:
civil service, at court, in the public sphere => a new model of accomplishment
: “the courtier” (Castiglione)
 a new norm : civilitas (Erasmus)- civility at the personal and communal level,
or courtesy coupled with good will the quality that allows people to avoid the
pitfalls of extremism. (Dahrendorf)
 Co-existing worldviews

1. MAN = God’s rival- to be admired but also hyped as a demiurge ( as a poet, as a

scholar) >>> TITANISM (defiance of and revolt against social or artistic conventions.)
MAN= PEFECTIBLE (Erasmus), FREEDOM OF CHOICE (Pico della Mirandolla)

2. MAN – wretched, fallen- particularly a REFORMATION view

SCEPTICISM - old values questioned, traditional relations of man to God, to one’s

fellow human being, to nature undergo radical changes.

 social mobility => desire for riches, for self-assertion and for power, -valorized
both positively and negatively (see Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus)
Michelangelo’s Adam
Adam and god are almost on the same level , of equal size and similar built
Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam (1508-12)
The Elizabethan World Picture (Tillyard)
http://davo11s.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/context-tillyard-and-the-elizabethan-world-picture/

 The order of the world – God’s great plan

 rational, CONTINUOUS, coherent and harmonious (no gaps),
purposeful/teleological – see medieval cycles
 The Chain of Being/hierarchy;
 Expressed in terms of analogical thinking
 Correspondences : micro-macro - body politic, the God-the sun-
the crown- the lion-
 Insistence on ORDER, DEGREE, STASIS- disruption and
pride/ambition = demonized,
 THIS VIEW OF ORDER AND DEGREE ~ the TUDOR MYTH,
PROPAGANDA MATERIAL- not to be taken as the views
actually embraced by the population, but contested,
questioned, partially accepted.