This article is about the study of the humanities during the Renaissance. It is not to be confused with the broader human-centered philosophy, Humanism.
Medieval and Renaissance Italian writers portrayed by Giorgio Vasari in Six Tuscan Poets (1544). From left to right: Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri, and Guido Cavalcanti.[1]
Renaissance humanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first began in Italy and then spread across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist (Italian: umanista) referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included the study of Latin and Ancient Greek literatures, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments.[2] During the Renaissance period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes ("to the sources") to the simplicity of the Gospels and of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval Christian theology.[3]
Under the influence and inspiration of the classics, Renaissance humanists developed a new rhetoric and new learning. Some scholars also argue that humanism articulated new moral and civic perspectives, and values offering guidance in life to all citizens. Renaissance humanism was a response to what came to be depicted by later whig historians as the "narrow pedantry" associated with medieval scholasticism.[4]
Renaissance humanists sought to create a citizenry able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity, and thus capable of engaging in the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. Humanism, while set up by a small elite who had access to books and education, was intended as a cultural movement to influence all of society. It was a program to revive the cultural heritage, literary legacy, and moral philosophy of the Greco-Roman civilization. There were important centres of Renaissance humanism in Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, Livorno, Mantua, Padua, Pisa, Naples, Rome, Siena, Venice, Vicenza, and Urbino.
^"Six Tuscan Poets, Giorgio Vasari". collections.artsmia.org. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minneapolis Institute of Art. 2023. Archived from the original on 17 June 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
^The term la rinascita (rebirth) first appeared, however, in its broad sense in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani (The Lives of the Artists, 1550, revised 1568) Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, New York: Harper and Row, 1960.
"The term umanista was used in fifteenth-century Italian academic slang to describe a teacher or student of classical literature and the arts associated with it, including that of rhetoric. The English equivalent 'humanist' makes its appearance in the late sixteenth century with a similar meaning. Only in the nineteenth century, however, and probably for the first time in Germany in 1809, is the attribute transformed into a substantive: humanism, standing for devotion to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and the humane values that may be derived from them" Nicholas Mann "The Origins of Humanism", Cambridge Companion to Humanism, Jill Kraye, editor [Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 1–2). The term "Middle Ages" for the preceding period separating classical antiquity from its "rebirth" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas. For humanities as the original term for Renaissance humanism, see James Fieser, Samuel Enoch Stumpf "Philosophy during the Renaissance", Philosophy: A Historical Survey with Essential Readings (9th ed.) [McGraw-Hill Education, 2014]
^McGrath, Alister (2011). Christian Theology: An Introduction (5th ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-4443-3514-9.
^Craig W. Kallendorf, introduction to Humanist Educational Treatises, edited and translated by Craig W. Kallendorf (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London England: The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2002) p. vii.
and 29 Related for: Renaissance humanism information
Renaissancehumanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first...
the term "humanism" has changed according to successive intellectual movements that have identified with it. During the Italian Renaissance, ancient works...
accounting. The Renaissance period started during the crisis of the Late Middle Ages and conventionally ends by the 1600s with the waning of humanism, and the...
trace the concept to the Renaissance or patristic period, linking their beliefs to the scholarly movement also called 'humanism'. Theologians such as Jens...
Renaissancehumanism came much later to Germany and Northern Europe in general than to Italy, and when it did, it encountered some resistance from the...
knowledge to solve specific problems. Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissancehumanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the...
scholarly interest hitherto unknown in Christendom, a tendency referred to as humanism. Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists...
Among the most significant of these, Renaissancehumanism would lay the philosophical grounds for much of Renaissance art, music, science and technology...
the revival of Greek studies that led to the development of the Renaissancehumanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively...
developed from the Italian Renaissance. Many areas of the arts and sciences were influenced, notably by the spread of Renaissancehumanism to the various German...
and Central Italy in the early 15th century as an expression of Renaissancehumanism; they also included styles that can be identified as Mannerist or...
Renaissance of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, particularly by the Renaissancehumanism movement. This style of Latin is regarded as the first phase of the...
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system, or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while...
English Renaissance philosophy French Renaissance philosophy German Renaissance philosophy Italian Renaissance philosophy RenaissancehumanismRenaissance humanism...
known as Renaissancehumanism, this program was so broadly and profoundly influential that it is one of the chief reasons why the Renaissance is viewed...
English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642...
were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion. At the same time, Renaissancehumanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation...
Years' War between France and England, the intellectual currents of Renaissancehumanism began to spread. In 1464, Raoul Lefèvre composed for the Duke of...
the United States was the heir to Greek democracy, Roman law, and Renaissancehumanism. The era spans the period between the Centennial Exposition (celebrating...
School became notable for being the first style in standard Italian. Renaissancehumanism developed during the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries...
and humanism that spurred from the Renaissance. Italian Renaissance garden Italian Renaissance interior design Renaissance illumination "Renaissance Historians...
programme for the relief of the poor. Catherine was a patron of Renaissancehumanism and a friend of the great scholars Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas...
century), is preserved in 91 hexameters. Due to its proximity to Italy, humanism had already reached the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea by the early...
Renaissance magic was a resurgence in Hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of the magical arts which arose along with Renaissancehumanism in the 15th...
Enlightenment Hermeticism RenaissancehumanismRenaissance magic Platonism in the Renaissance Second scholasticism "Renaissance philosophy - Routledge Encyclopedia...
the time. The Book of the Governor is evidence of the impact that Renaissancehumanism had on prose writing. Thomas Elyot was born before 1490 and died...
day become clergymen. Latin schools began to develop to reflect Renaissancehumanism around the 1450s. In some countries, but not England, they later...
Renaissancehumanism was an emphasis of the anatomy of nature, in particular the human form, a science first studied by the Ancient Greeks. Humanism made...
Global Information