Petrarch

The history of the term humanism is complex but enlightening. It was first employed (as humanismus) by 19th-century German scholars to designate the Renaissance emphasis on classical studies in education. These studies were pursued and endorsed by educators known, as early as the late 15th century, as umanisti—that is, professors or students of Classical literature. The word umanisti derives from the studia humanitatis, a course of classical studies that, in the early 15th century, consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy. The studia humanitatis were held to be the equivalent of the Greek paideia. Their name was itself based on the Latin humanitas, an educational and political ideal that was the intellectual basis of the entire movement. Renaissance humanism in all its forms defined itself in its straining toward this ideal. No discussion of humanism, therefore, can have validity without an understanding of humanitas.

Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. The term thus implied not only such qualities as are associated with the modern word humanity—understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy—but also such more aggressive characteristics as fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour. Consequently, the possessor of humanitas could not be merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but was of necessity a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action was rejected as barren and imperfect. Humanitas called for a fine balance of action and contemplation, a balance born not of compromise but of complementarity. The goal of such fulfilled and balanced virtue was political, in the broadest sense of the word. The purview of Renaissance humanism included not only the education of the young but also the guidance of adults (including rulers) via philosophical poetry and strategic rhetoric. It included not only realistic social criticism but also utopian hypotheses, not only painstaking reassessments of history but also bold reshapings of the future. In short, humanism called for the comprehensive reform of culture, the transfiguration of what humanists termed the passive and ignorant society of the “dark” ages into a new order that would reflect and encourage the grandest human potentialities. Humanism had an evangelical dimension: it sought to projecthumanitas from the individual into the state at large.

The wellspring of humanitas was Classical literature. Greek and Roman thought, available in a flood of rediscovered or newly translated manuscripts, provided humanism with much of its basic structure and method. For Renaissance humanists, there was nothing dated or outworn about the writings ofPlato, Cicero, or Livy. Compared with the typical productions of medieval Christianity, these pagan works had a fresh, radical, almost avant-garde tonality. Indeed, recovering the classics was to humanism tantamount to recovering reality. Classical philosophy, rhetoric, and history were seen as models of proper method—efforts to come to terms, systematically and without preconceptions of any kind, with perceived experience. Moreover, Classical thought considered ethics qua ethics, politics qua politics: it lacked the inhibiting dualism occasioned in medieval thought by the often-conflicting demands of secularism and Christian spirituality. Classical virtue, in examples of which the literature abounded, was not an abstract essence but a quality that could be tested in the forum or on the battlefield. Finally, classical literature was rich in eloquence. In particular (since humanists were normally better at Latin than they were at Greek), Cicero was considered to be the pattern of refined and copious discourse. In eloquence humanists found far more than an exclusively aesthetic quality. As an effective means of moving leaders or fellow citizens toward one political course or another, eloquence was akin to pure power. Humanists cultivated rhetoric, consequently, as the medium through which all other virtues could be communicated and fulfilled.

Humanism, then, may be accurately defined as that Renaissance movement that had as its central focus the ideal of humanitas. The narrower definition of the Italian term umanisti notwithstanding, all the Renaissance writers who cultivated humanitas, and all their direct “descendants,” may be correctly termed humanists.

It is small wonder that a term as broadly allusive as humanism should be subject to a wide variety of applications. Of these (excepting the historical movement described above) there are three basic types: humanism as Classicism, humanism as referring to the modern concept of the humanities, and humanism as human-centredness.

Accepting the notion that Renaissance humanism was simply a return to the Classics, some historians and philologists have reasoned that Classical revivals occurring anywhere in history should be called humanistic. St. Augustine, Alcuin, and the scholars of 12th-century Chartres have thus been referred to as humanists. In this sense the term can also be used self-consciously, as in the New Humanism movement in literary criticism led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More in the early 20th century.

The word humanities, which like the word umanisti derived from the Latin studia humanitatis, is often used to designate the nonscientific scholarly disciplines: language, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, art history, and so forth. Thus, it is customary to refer to scholars in these fields as humanists and to their activities as humanistic.

Humanism and related terms are frequently applied to modern doctrines and techniques that are based on the centrality of human experience. In the 20th century, the pragmatic humanism of Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, the Christian humanism of Jacques Maritain, and the movement known as secular humanism, though differing from each other significantly in content, all show this anthropocentric emphasis.

Not only is such a large assortment of definitions confusing, but the definitions themselves are often redundant or impertinent. There is no reason to call all Classical revivals “humanistic” when the word Classical suffices. To say that professors in the many disciplines known as the humanities are humanists is to compound vagueness with vagueness, for these disciplines have long since ceased to have or even aspire to a common rationale. The definition of humanism as anthropocentricity or human-centredness has a firmer claim to correctness. For obvious reasons, however, it is confusing to apply this word to Classical literature.

Basic principles and attitudes

Early humanists returned to the classics less with nostalgia or awe than with a sense of deep familiarity, an impression of having been brought newly into contact with expressions of an intrinsic and permanent human reality. The Italian scholar and poet Petrarch dramatized his feeling of intimacy with the classics by writing “letters” to Cicero and Livy. Coluccio Salutati remarked with pleasure that possession of a copy of Cicero’s letters would make it possible for him to talk with Cicero. Niccolò Machiavelli would later immortalize this experience in a letter that described his own reading habits in ritualistic terms:

Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavelli’s term umanità (“humanity”) means more than kindness; it is a direct translation of the Latin humanitas. Machiavelli implies that he shared with the ancients a sovereign wisdom of human affairs. He also describes that theory of reading as an active, and even aggressive, pursuit that was common among humanists. Possessing a text and understanding its words were not enough; analytic ability and a questioning attitude were necessary before a reader could truly enter the councils of the great. These councils, moreover, were not merely serious and ennobling; they held secrets available only to the astute, secrets the knowledge of which could transform life from a chaotic miscellany into a crucially heroic experience. Classical thought offered insight into the heart of things. In addition, the classics suggested methods by which, once known, human reality could be transformed from an accident of history into an artifact of will. Antiquity was rich in examples—actual or poetic—of epic action, victorious eloquence, and applied understanding. Carefully studied and well employed, Classical rhetoric could implement enlightened policy, while Classical poetics could carry enlightenment into the very souls of men. In a manner that might seem paradoxical to more-modern minds, humanists associated Classicism with the future.

Early humanists shared in large part a realism that rejected traditional assumptions and aimed instead at the objective analysis of perceived experience. To humanism is owed the rise of modern social science, which emerged not as an academic discipline but rather as a practical instrument of social self-inquiry. Humanists avidly read history, taught it to their young, and, perhaps most important, wrote it themselves. They were confident that proper historical method, by extending across time their grasp of human reality, would enhance their active role in the present. For Machiavelli, who avowed to treat of men as they were and not as they ought to be, history would become the basis of a new political science. Similarly, direct experience took precedence over traditional wisdom. Leon Battista Alberti’s dictum that an essential form of wisdom could be found only “at the public marketplace, in the theatre, and in people’s homes” would be echoed by Francesco Guicciardini:

Renaissance realism also involved the unblinking examination of human uncertainty, folly, and immorality. Petrarch’s honest investigation of his own doubts and mixed motives is born of the same impulse that led Giovanni Boccaccio to conduct in the Decameron an encyclopaedic survey of human vices and disorders. Similarly critical treatments of society from a humanistic perspective would be produced later by Erasmus, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, andMontaigne. But it was typical of humanism that this moral criticism did not, conversely, postulate an ideal of absolute purity. Humanists asserted the dignity of normal earthly activities and even endorsed the pursuit of fame and the acquisition of wealth. The emphasis on a mature and healthy balance between mind and body, first implicit in Boccaccio, is evident in the work of Giannozzo Manetti, Francesco Filelfo, and Paracelsus; it is embodied eloquently in Montaigne’s final essay, Of Experience. Humanistic tradition, rather than revolutionary inspiration, would lead Francis Bacon to assert in the early 17th century that the passions should become objects of systematic investigation. The realism of the humanists was, finally, brought to bear on the Roman Catholic Church, which they called into question not as a theological structure but as a political institution. Here as elsewhere, however, the intention was neither radical nor destructive. Humanism did not aim to remake humanity but rather aimed to reform social order through an understanding of what was basically and inalienably human.

Humanistic realism bespoke a comprehensively critical attitude. Indeed, the productions of early humanism constituted a manifesto of independence, at least in the secular world, from all preconceptions and all inherited programs. The same critical self-reliance shown by Coluccio Salutati in his textual emendations and Boccaccio in his interpretations of myth was evident in almost the whole range of humanistic endeavour. It was cognate with a new specificity, a profound concern with the precise details of perceived phenomena, that took hold across the arts and the literary and historical disciplines and would have profound effects on the rise of modern science. The increasing prominence of mathematics as an artistic principle and academic discipline was a testament to this development.

Petrarch's house

These attitudes took shape in concord with a sense of personal autonomy that first was evident in Petrarch and later came to characterize humanism as a whole. An intelligence capable of critical scrutiny and self-inquiry was by definition a free intelligence; the intellectual virtue that could analyze experience was an integral part of that more extensive virtue that could, according to many humanists, go far in conquering fortune. The emergence of Renaissance individualism was not without its darker aspects. Petrarch and Alberti were alert to the sense of estrangement that accompanies intellectual and moral autonomy, while Machiavelli would depict, in The Prince, a grim world in which the individual must exploit the weakness of the crowd or fall victim to its indignities. But happy or sad, the experience of the individual had taken on a heroic tone. Parallel with individualism arose, as a favourite humanistic theme, the idea of the dignity of man. Backed by medieval sources but more sweeping and insistent in their approach, spokesmen such as Petrarch, Manetti, Valla, and Ficino asserted man’s earthly preeminence and unique potentialities. In his noted De hominis dignitate oratio (“Oration on the Dignity of Man”), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola conveyed this notion with unprecedented vigour. Humanity, Pico asserted, had been assigned no fixed character or limit by God but instead was free to seek its own level and create its own future. No dignity, not even divinity itself, was forbidden to human aspiration. Pico’s radical affirmation of human capacity shows the influence of Ficino’s contemporary translations of the Hermetic writings—the purported works of the Egyptian god Hermes Trismegistos. Together with the even bolder 16th-century formulations of this position by Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno(1548–1600), the Oratio betrays a rejection of the early humanists’ emphasis on balance and moderation; rather it suggests the straining toward absolutes that would characterize major elements of later humanism.

The emphasis on virtuous action as the goal of learning was a founding principle of humanism and (though sometimes sharply challenged) continued to exert a strong influence throughout the course of the movement. Salutati, the learned chancellor of Florence whose words could batter cities, represented in word and deed the humanistic ideal of an armed wisdom, that combination of philosophical understanding and powerful rhetoric that alone could effect virtuous policy and reconcile the rival claims of action and contemplation. In De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis (“On the Manners of a Gentleman and Liberal Studies”), a treatise that influenced Guarino Veronese and Vittorino da Feltre, Pietro Paolo Vergerio maintained that just and beneficent action was the purpose of humanistic education; his words were echoed by Alberti in Della famiglia (“On the Family”):

Matteo Palmieri wrote that

Palmieri’s philosophical poem, La città di vita (“The City of Life”), developed the idea that the world was divinely ordained to test human virtue in action. Later humanism would broaden and diversify the theme of active virtue. Machiavelli saw action not only as the goal of virtue but also (via historical understanding of great deeds of the past) as the basis for wisdom. Baldassare Castiglione, in his highly influential Il cortegiano (The Courtier), developed in his ideal courtier a psychological model for active virtue, stressing moral awareness as a key element in just action. François Rabelais used the idea of active virtue as the basis for anticlerical satire. In his profusely humanistic Gargantua, he has the active hero Friar John save a monastery from enemy attack while the monks sit uselessly in the church choir, chanting meaningless Latin syllables. John later asserts that, had he been present, he would have used his manly strength to save Jesus from crucifixion, and he castigates the Apostles for betraying Christ “after a good meal.” Endorsements of active virtue, as will be shown, would also characterize the work of English humanists from Sir Thomas Elyot to John Milton. They typify the sense of social responsibility—the instinctive association of learning with politics and morality—that stood at the heart of the movement. As Salutati put it, “One must stand in the line of battle, engage in close combat, struggle for justice, for truth, for honour.”

Early history

The 14th century

The 15th century

Leon Battista

The achievement of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) testifies to the formative power and exhaustive scope of earlier Italian humanism. He owed his boyhood education to Gasparino da Barzizza (1359–1431), the noted teacher who, with Vergerio, was influential in the development of humanism at Padua. Alberti attended the University of Bologna from 1421 until 1428, by which time he was expert in law and mathematics and so adept at humanistic literary skills that his comedy Philodoxeos was accepted as the newly discovered work of an ancient author. In 1428 he became secretary to Cardinal Albergati, bishop of Bologna, and in 1432 he accepted a similar position in the papal chancery at Rome. His service to the church soon brought him incomes that permanently secured his livelihood, and he spent the remainder of his life at a variety of literary, philosophical, and artistic pursuits so dazzling as to challenge belief. He was a poet, an essayist, and a biographer. His moral and philosophical works, especially Della famiglia, De iciarchia(“On the Man of Excellence and Ruler of His Family”), and Momus, contain fresh reappraisals of traditional topics. He wrote a rhetorical handbook and a grammatical treatise, the Regule lingue Florentine, which bespeaks his strong influence on the rise of literary expression in the vernacular. He contributed an important text on cartography and was instrumental in the development of ciphers. A prominent architect (e.g., the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini and the facade of Sta. Maria Novella in Florence), he was also an eminent student of all artistic ideas and practices. His three studies—De pictura (On Painting), De statua (On Sculpture), and De re aedificatoria (Ten Books on Architecture)—were landmarks in art theory, powerful in developing the theory of perspective and the idea of “human” space. His theoretical and practical reliance on mathematics (which he considered to be the basic, unifying element of all science) was an important step in the early development of modern scientific method.

Behind these achievements was a man of startling physical prowess and inexhaustible sanguinity. Alberti said outright that an individual could encompass whatever project he truly willed, and his own life bore witness to this radical thesis. In the 19th century, Jacob Burckhardt would write of him as a “universal man” of the Renaissance, while his own contemporary Politian described him with wonderment: “It is better to be silent about him than not to say enough.” Alberti’s theory and practice bore an undeniably humanistic stamp. His passion for mathematics was in all likelihood an outgrowth of the educational program at Padua (Vittorino, himself an avid mathematician, was also a student of Barzizza). His omnivorous pursuit of knowledge recalls Barzizza’s conviction that humanitas was the unifying principle of many arts. An advocate of Classical erudition in art and architecture as well as in literary activity, he extended into his artistic studies the same sense of precision and specificity that earlier humanists had applied to philology. His sense of human dignity, evident in all his works, was supported, and indeed justified, by a strenuous realism. His advocacy of the vernacular disturbed a number of more-doctrinaire humanists, who favoured total Latinity. But this predisposition, rather than a divergence from humanistic principle, was a direct outgrowth of its evangelistic thrust. In short, Alberti uniquely fulfilled the humanistic aspiration for a learning that would comprehend all experience and for a philosophical heroism that would renew society.

The 15th century saw the rise of the Platonic Academy of Florence and the great humanistic courts. Close ties between Poggio and the Medici helped make that ruling family of Florence the new custodians of the humanistic heritage. Cosimo de’ Medici (Cosimo the Elder, 1389–1464), who had personally lured the great council of churches from Ferrara to Florence in 1439, became so enamoured of Greek learning that, at the suggestion of Gemistus Plethon, he decided to found a Platonic academy of his own. He amassed a great collection of books, which would form the nucleus of the Laurentian Library. He generously supported the work of scholars, in particular encouraging the brilliant Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) to undertake a complete Latin translation of Plato. Other notable members of the academy were Politian, Cristoforo Landino (1424–1504), and Ficino’s own student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). The Medici family was equally notable in its patronage of the arts, supporting projects by a list of masters that included Brunelleschi,Michelangelo, and Cellini. Cosimo’s famous grandson Lorenzo (Lorenzo the Magnificent, 1449–92) was of a thoroughly humanistic disposition. Lorenzo’s versatile and energetic nature lent itself equally to politics and philosophy, to martial arts and music. He wrote poetry and literary commentary and formed close ties with Ficino, Pico, and other leading scholars of the academy. He continued his grandfather’s lavish patronage of art and learning and was said to have spent half of his city’s revenues on the purchase of books alone. Active in many fields, he nonetheless acknowledged the preeminence of the life of the mind. When chided by a friend for sleeping late and not going out to work, Lorenzo replied, “What I have dreamed in one hour is worth more than what you have done in four.”

The influence of humanism was evident in many 15th-century Italian courts, including Rome itself, which boasted, in Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini, also known as Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini; 1405–64), a humanist pope. It manifested itself strikingly at Urbino, where Federico da Montefeltro (1422–82) turned an isolated hill town into a treasury of Renaissance culture. Schooled by Vittorino in Mantua, Federico chose warfare as his calling. As a mercenary he gained a reputation for winning his battles and keeping his word, and the fortune he accumulated in fees and prizes became the medium for his city’s renewal. He brought architects, artists, and scholars to Urbino and built a great palace whose unadorned exterior concealed magnificent chambers, a graceful courtyard, and a secret garden. Federico was enthusiastically devoted to the collection and preservation of books. His library, described by Vespasiano Bisticci as being even more complete than that of the Medici, contained an army of 30 to 40 scribes who were constantly at work. Federico’s own virtues were so notable and diverse as to mark him as a possible model for Rabelais’s humanistic giant, Gargantua. Mighty at arms, he was also conscientious in religious observances; supremely powerful, he was nonetheless a modest and courteous companion. Beneath the ivied tranquility of his secret garden stretched an indoor equestrian arena. He commissioned paintings by Piero della Francesca and was the object of humanistic dedications by Poggio, Landino, and Ficino. He kept two organists at court and maintained five men to read the classics aloud at meals. Federico’s intellectual accomplishments were impressive. His skill at mathematics shows the influence of Vittorino. He was a good Latinist and as a student of Classical history was able to hold his own in conversation with the erudite Pius II. At philosophy Federico was even more astute. Vespasiano wrote that

Federico’s balance and versatility made him, even more than Lorenzo, an example of the humanistic program in action. Baldassare Castiglione, perhaps the most thoughtful of the later Italian humanists, would speak of him as “the light of Italy; there is no lack of living witnesses to his prudence, humanity [umanità], justice, intrepid spirit, [and] military discipline.” Castiglione described Federico’s residence as seeming to be less a palace than “a city in the form of a palace”; one might say as well that this structure, with its elegant accommodation for every creative human activity, was an architectural image of the humanistic mind.

Later Italian humanism

Simply put, the res–verbum controversy was an extended argument between humanists who believed that language constituted the ultimate human reality and those who believed that language, though an important subject for study, was the medium for understanding an even more basic reality that lay beyond it. The origin of the controversy lay in the debate in the 5th–4th century bce between the Socratic school, which held that language was an important means of understanding deeper truths, and the Sophistic-rhetorical school, which held that “truth” was itself a fiction dependent on varying human beliefs and language therefore had to be considered the ultimate arbiter. Petrarch, who had no direct contact with the works of Plato and little detailed knowledge of his ideas, drew on Cicero and St. Augustine in his development of a Christian-rhetorical position, holding that “it is more satisfying [satius] to will the good than to know the truth” and espousing rhetoric as the effective means of persuading people “to will the good.”

This assertion would critically shape the character of humanism through the Renaissance and beyond. It was never effectively challenged by Renaissance Platonists because, for reasons discussed below, Renaissance Platonists, though strong in Platonic idealism, were weak in Platonic analytic method. The enthronement of language as both subject and object of humanistic inquiry is evident in the important work of Lorenzo Valla (1407–57) and Politian (Angelo Poliziano, 1454–94). Valla spoke of language as a “sacrament” and urged that it be studied scientifically and historically as the synthesis of all human thought. For Valla, the study of language was, in effect, the study of humanity. Similarly, Politian held that there were in fact two dialectics: one of ideas and one of words. Rejecting the dialectic of ideas as being too difficult and abstruse, he espoused the dialectic of words (i.e., philology and rhetoric) as the proper human study. This project would bear fruit in the intensive linguistic-philosophical researches of Mario Nizolio (1498–1575). Though anticipated by Petrarch, the radical emphasis on the primacy of the word constituted a break with the teaching of other early humanists, such as Bruni and Vittorino, who had strongly maintained that the word was of value only through its relationship to perceived reality. Nor did the old viewpoint lack later adherents. In an epistolary debate with Ermolao Barbaro (1454–93), Pico asserted the preeminence of things over words and hence of philosophy over rhetoric:

Appeals of this sort, however, were not to win the day. Philosophical humanism declined because, though rich in conviction, it had failed to establish a systematic relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, between words and things. By the 16th century, Italian humanism was primarily a literary pursuit, and philosophy was left to develop on its own. Despite significant challenges, the division between philosophical and literary studies would solidify in the development of Western culture.

The idealism so prominent in the Florentine academy is called Platonic because of its debt to Plato’s theory of Ideas and to the epistemological doctrine established in his Symposium and Republic. It did not, however, constitute a complete appreciation or reassertion of Plato’s thought. Conspicuously absent from the Florentine agenda was the analytic method (dialectic), which was Socrates’ greatest contribution to philosophy. This major omission cannot be explained philologically, at least after Ficino’s work had made the complete Platonic corpus available in clear Latin prose. The explanation lies rather in a specific cast of mind and in a dramatically successful forgery. The major Platonists of the mid-15th century—Plethon, Bessarion, and Nicholas of Cusa (Nicholaus Cusanus; 1401–64)—had all concentrated their attention on the religious implications of Platonic thought; following them, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) sought to reconcile Plato with Christ in a pia philosophia (“pious philosophy”). The transcendental goals of these philosophers left little room for the painstaking dialectical method that sifted through the details of perception and language, even though Plato himself had repeatedly alleged that transcendence itself was impossible without this method. Along with Plato, moreover, Ficino had translated into Latin the Hermetic writings (see aboveThe emergence of the individual and the idea of the dignity of man). These books, which also emphasized transcendence at the expense of method, laid claim to divine authority and to an antiquity far greater than Plato’s. They were, in fact, forgeries from a much later period and are in many ways typical of the idealized and diluted versions of Plato that are called Neoplatonic. But the academy, and for that matter all the other Platonists of the 15th century, bought them wholesale. The result of these factors was a Platonism sans Platonic method, a philosophy that, straining for absolutes, had little interest in establishing its own basis in reality. Near the end of The Courtier, Castiglione puts a speech typical of Florentine Platonism in the mouth of his friend, the Platonist Pietro Bembo (1470–1547). As Bembo finishes his oration, a female companion tugs at the hem of his robe and says, “Take care, Master Pietro, that with such thoughts your soul does not forsake your body.”

These limitations notwithstanding, Hermeticism exerted a stabilizing force on culture and paved the way for change. In supplying a quasi-religious endorsement of reason and nature, it provided an alternative for those who had been unable to reconcile Christian doctrine with life as lived. In authorizing the unhindered exercise of the human intellect, Hermeticism also fed into the scientific revolution, earning praise from Francis Bacon (1561–1628). Lines of hermetic influence would extend to later developments, including Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and the Enlightenment itself.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), whose work derived from sources as authentically humanistic as those of Ficino, proceeded along a wholly opposite course. A throwback to the chancellor-humanists Salutati, Bruni, and Poggio, he served Florence in a similar capacity and with equal fidelity, using his erudition and eloquence in a civic cause. Like Vittorino and other early humanists, he believed in the centrality of historical studies, and he performed a signally humanistic function by creating, in La mandragola, the first vernacular imitation of Roman comedy. His unswerving concentration on human weakness and institutional corruption suggests the influence of Boccaccio; and, like Boccaccio, he used these reminders less as topical satire than as practical gauges of human nature. In one way at least, Machiavelli is more humanistic (i.e., closer to the classics) than the other humanists, for while Vittorino and his school ransacked history for examples of virtue, Machiavelli (true to the spirit of Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus) embraced all of history—good, evil, and indifferent—as his school of reality. Like Salutati, though perhaps with greater self-awareness, Machiavelli was ambiguous as to the relative merits of republics and monarchies. In both public and private writings (especially the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio[“Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy”]) he showed a marked preference for republican government, while in The Prince he developed, with apparent approval, a model of radical autocracy. For this reason, his goals have remained unclear.

His methods, on the other hand, were coherent throughout and remain a major contribution to social science and the history of ideas. Like earlier humanists, Machiavelli saw history as a source of power, but, unlike them, he saw neither history nor power itself within a moral context. Rather he sought to examine history and power in an amoral and hence (to him) wholly scientific manner. He examined human events in the same way that Alberti, Galileo, and the “new science” examined physical events: as discrete phenomena that had to be measured and described in context before they could be explained and evaluated. To this extent his work, though original in its specific design, was firmly based in the humanistic tradition. At the same time, however, Machiavelli’s achievement significantly eroded humanism. By laying the foundations of modern social science, he created a discipline that, though true to humanistic methodology, had not the slightest regard for humanistic morality. In so doing, he brought to the surface a contradiction that had been implicit in humanism all along: the dichotomy between critical objectivity and moral evangelism.

Although Italian humanism was being torn apart by the natural development of its own basic motives, it did not thereby lose its native attractions. The humanistic experience, in both its positive and negative effects, would be reenacted abroad. Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), whose The Courtieraffectionately summed up humanistic thought, was one of its most powerful ambassadors. Alert to the major contradictions of the program yet intensely appreciative of its brilliance and energy, Castiglione wove its various strains together in a long dialogue that aimed at an equipoise between various humanistic extremes. Ostensibly a treatise on the model courtier, The Book of the Courtier is more seriously a philosophically organized pattern of conflicting viewpoints in which various positions—Platonist and Aristotelian, idealist and cynic, monarchist and republican, traditional and revolutionary—are given eloquent expression. Unlike most of his humanistic forebears, Castiglione is neither missionary nor polemical. His work is not an effort at systematic knowledge but rather an essay in higher discretion, a powerful reminder that every virtue (moral or intellectual) suggests a concomitant weakness and that extreme postures tend to generate their own opposites. The structure of the dialogue, in which Bembo’s Platonic ecstasy is balanced by Bibbiena’s assortment of earthy jests, is a testament to this intention. While Castiglione’s professed subject matter would epidemically inspire European letters and manners of the 16th century, his more profound contribution would be echoed in the work of Montaigne and Shakespeare. His work suggests a redefined humanism, a virtue matured in irony and directed less toward knowledge than toward wisdom.

In 16th-century Italy, humanistic methods and attitudes provided the medium for a kaleidoscopic variety of literary and philosophical productions. Of these, the work that perhaps most truly reflected the original spirit of humanism was the Gerusalemme liberata (1581; “Jerusalem Liberated”) of Torquato Tasso (1544–95). New humanistic translations of Aristotle during the 15th century had inspired an Aristotelian Renaissance, with the attention of literary scholars focused particularly on the Poetics. In constructing his epic poem, Tasso was strongly influenced by Aristotle’s views regarding the philosophical dimension of poetry; loosely paraphrasing Aristotle, he held (in his Apologia) that poetry, by incorporating both particulars and universals, was capable of seeking truth in its perfect wholeness. As a vehicle for philosophical truth, poetry consequently could provide moral education, specifically in such virtues (reinterpreted from a Christian perspective) as Aristotle had described in the Nichomachean Ethics. The Aristotelian Renaissance thus facilitated the revival of one of the chief articles in the original humanistic constitution: the belief in the poet’s role as renewer of culture.

Northern humanism

Erasmus

Erasmus (c. 1466–1536) was the only humanist whose international fame in his own time compared to Petrarch’s. While lacking Petrarch’s polemical zeal and spirit of self-inquiry, he shared the Italian’s intense love of language, his dislike for the complexities and pretenses of medieval institutions both secular and religious, and his commanding literary presence. More specifically, however, his ideas and overall direction betray the influence of Lorenzo Valla, whose works he treasured. Like Valla, who had attacked biblical textual criticism with a vengeance and proved the so-called Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, Erasmus contributed importantly to Christian philology. Also like Valla, he philosophically espoused a kind of Christian hedonism, justifying earthly pleasure from a religious perspective. But he was most like Valla (and indeed the entire rhetorical “arm” of Italian humanism) in giving philology prominence over philosophy. He described himself as a poet and orator rather than an inquirer after truth. His one major philosophical effort, a Christian defense of free will, was thunderously answered by Martin Luther. Although his writings are a well of good sense, they are seldom profound and are predominantly derivative. In Latin eloquence, on the other hand, he was preeminent, both as stylist and theorist. His graceful and abundant Ciceronian prose helped shape the character of European style.

Eloquent, humane, and profoundly sensible, Erasmus earned a golden reputation that has not forsaken him since his death. His good repute owes much to his magisterial prose style, which is infused with judiciousness and self-control. His one brief easing of this control, however, produced his most original achievement. In 1511 he composed his Ciceronian rhetorical manual De copia verborum et rerum (On Copia of Words and Ideas) and published his satirical Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly). These two works have much in common. De copia concerns the stylistic strategy of creating abundant variations on common ideas. Praise of Folly is a case in point: a book-length set of variations on the idea of folly. In applying the copia strategy to human affairs, Erasmus found not only an attractive literary device but also a powerful medium of discovery. Praise of Folly is a true flight of fancy, a revelry of imagination that explores an unruly domain of topics, attacking a variety of social institutions and at times stretching the limits of then-permissible expression.

The Erasmian conception of copia, as applied in Praise of Folly, had far-ranging consequences, from negative responses by the church to the enthusiastic emulation by writers such as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Shakespeare and artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The influence of copia was also felt in architecture (Giulio Romano) and music (Claudio Monteverdi). It would find analogies in the Wunderkammern (“wonder chambers”), the forerunners of the modern museum.

Erasmus’s associates in France included the influential humanists Robert Gaguin (1433–1501), Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1455–1536), and Guillaume Budé (Guglielmus Budaeus; 1467–1540). Of these three, Budé was most central to the development of French humanism, not only in his historical and philological studies but also in his use of his national influence to establish the Collège de France and the library at Fontainebleau. The influence of Francis I(1494–1547) and his learned sister Margaret of Angoulême (1492–1549) was important in fostering the new learning. The diversity and energy of French humanism is apparent in the activities of the Estienne family of publishers; the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85), Joachim du Bellay (c. 1522–60), and Guillaume du Bartas (1544–90); the political philosophy of Jean Bodin (1530–96); the philosophical methodology of Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée; 1515–72); and the dynamic relationship between humanistic scholarship and church reform (see below, Humanism and Christianity). Hampered by religious repression and compressed more severely in time, the French movement lacked the intellectual fecundity and the programmatic unity of its Italian counterpart. In François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne, however, the development of humanistic methods and themes resulted in unique and memorable achievement.

Rabelais ranks with Boccaccio as a founding father of Western realism. As a satirist and stylist (in his hands French prose became a free, poetic form), he influenced writers as important as Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, and James Joyce, and he may be seen as a major precursor of modernism. His five books concerning the deeds of the giant princes Gargantua and Pantagruel constitute a treasury of social criticism, an articulate statement of humanistic values, and a forceful, if often outrageous, manifesto of human rights. Rabelaisian satire took aim at every social institution and (especially in Book III) every intellectual discipline. Broadly learned and unflaggingly alert to jargon and sham, he repeatedly focused on dogmas that fetter creativity, institutional structures that reward hypocrisy, educational traditions that inspire laziness, and philosophical methodologies that obscure elemental reality. His heroes, Gargantua and his son and heir Pantagruel, are figures whose colossal size and appetites (Rabelais’s etymology for Pantagruel is “all-thirsty”) symbolize the nobility and omnivorous curiosity that typified the humanistic scheme. The multifarious educational program detailed in Gargantua is reminiscent of Vittorino, Alberti, and the Montefeltro court; and the utopian Abbey of Thélème, whose gate bears the motto “Do as you please,” is a tribute to enlightened will and pleasure in the manner of Valla, Erasmus, and More. Characteristically overstated and never wholly free of irony, Rabelais’s work is a far cry from the earnest moral and educational programs of the early humanists. Rather than rebuild society, he seeks to amuse, edify, and refine it. His qualified endorsement of human dignity is based on the healthy balance of mind and body, the sanctity of all true learning, and the authenticity of direct experience.

Montaigne

Montaigne’s famous Essays are not only a compendious restatement and reevaluation of humanistic motives but also a milestone in the humanistic project of self-inquiry that had originally been endorsed by Petrarch. Scholar, traveler, soldier, and statesman, Montaigne was, like Machiavelli, alert to both theory and practice; but while Machiavelli saw practice as forming the basis for sound theory, Montaigne perceived in human events a multiplicity so overwhelming as to deny theoretical analysis. Montaigne’s use of typical humanistic modalities—interpretation of the classics, appeals to direct experience, exclusive emphasis on the human realm, and universal curiosity—led him, in other words, to the refutation of a typical humanistic premise: that knowledge of the intellectual arts could teach one a sovereign art of life. In an effort to make his inquiry more inclusive and unsparing, Montaigne made himself the subject of his book, demonstrating through hundreds of personal anecdotes and admissions the ineluctable diversity of a single human spirit. His essays, which seem to move freely from one subject or viewpoint to another, are often in fact carefully organized dialectical structures that draw the reader, through thesis and antithesis, stated subject and relevant association, toward a multidimensional understanding of morality and history. The final essay, grandly titled Of Experience, counsels a mature acceptance of life in all its contradictions. Human dignity, he implies, is indeed possible, but it lies less in heroic achievement than in painfully won self-knowledge. In this sense Montaigne’s attitude toward the humanistic tradition is generally similar to that suggested in the work of Castiglione and Rabelais. While effectively taking issue with a number of the more extreme humanistic contentions, he retained, and indeed justified, the basic attitudes that gave the movement its form.

English humanism flourished in two stages: the first a basically academic movement that had its roots in the 15th century and culminated in the work of Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, and Roger Ascham and the second a poetic revolution led by Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare.

Although continental humanists had held court positions since the days of Humphrey of Gloucester (1391–1447), English humanism as a distinct phenomenon did not emerge until late in the 15th century. At Oxford William Grocyn (c. 1446–1519) and his student Thomas Linacre (c. 1460–1524) gave impetus to a tradition of Classical studies that would permanently influence English culture. Grocyn and Linacre attended Politian’s lectures at the Platonic Academy of Florence. Returning to Oxford, they became central figures in a group that included such younger scholars as John Colet (1466/67–1519) and William Lily (1468?–1522). The humanistic contributions of the Oxford group were philological and institutional rather than philosophical or literary. Grocyn lectured on Greek and theology; Linacre produced several works on Latin grammar and translated Galen into Latin. To Linacre is owed the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians; to Colet, the foundation of St. Paul’s School, London. Colet collaborated with Lily (the first headmaster of St. Paul’s) and Erasmus in writing the school’s constitution, and together the three scholars produced a Latin grammar (known alternately as “Lily’s Grammar” and the “Eton Grammar”) that would be central to English education for decades to come.

John Colet by Holbein

In Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490–1546), and Roger Ascham (1515–68), English humanism bore fruit in major literary achievement. Educated at Oxford (where he read Greek with Linacre), More was also influenced by Erasmus, who wrote Praise of Folly (Latin Moriae encomium) at More’s house and named the book punningly after his English friend. More’s famous Utopia, a kind of companion piece to Praise of Folly, is similarly satirical of traditional institutions (Book I) but offers, as an imaginary alternative, a model society based on reason and nature (Book II). Reminiscent of Erasmus and Valla, More’s Utopians eschew the rigorous cultivation of virtue and enjoy moderate pleasures, believing that “Nature herself prescribes a life of joy (that is, pleasure)” and seeing no contradiction between earthly enjoyment and religious piety. Significantly indebted to both Classical thought and European humanism, Utopia is also humanistic in its implied thesis that politics begins and ends with humanity; i.e., politics is based exclusively on human nature and aimed exclusively at human happiness. Sir Thomas Elyot chose a narrower subject but developed it in more detail. His great work, The Book Named the Governor, is a lengthy treatise on the virtues to be cultivated by statesmen. Born of the same tradition that producedThe Prince and The Courtier, The Governor is typical of English humanism in its emphasis on the accommodation of both Classical and Christian virtues within a single moral view. Elyot’s other contributions to English humanism include philosophical dialogues, moral essays, translations of ancient and contemporary writers (including Isocrates and Pico), an important Latin-English dictionary, and a highly popular health manual. He served his country as ambassador to the court of Charles V. The humanistic educational program set up at the turn of the century was vigorously supported by Sir John Cheke(1514–57) and codified by his student Roger Ascham. Ascham’s famous pedagogical manual, The Schoolmaster, offers not only a complete program of humanistic education but also an evocation of the ideals toward which that education was directed.

Ascham had been tutor to the young Princess Elizabeth, whose personal education was a model of humanistic pedagogy and whose writings and patronage bespoke great love of learning. Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603) saw the last concerted expression of humanistic ideas. Elizabethan humanism, which added a unique element to the history of the movement, was the product not of pedagogues and philologists but of poets and playwrights.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86) was, like Alberti and Federico da Montefeltro, a living pattern of the humanistic ideal. Splendidly educated in the Latin classics at Shrewsbury and Oxford, Sidney continued his studies under the direction of the prominent French scholar Hubert Languet and was tutored in science by the learned John Dee. His brief career as writer, statesman, and soldier was of such acknowledged brilliance as to make him, after his tragic death in battle, the subject of an Elizabethan heroic cult. Sidney’s major works—Astrophel and Stella, Defence of Poesie, and the two versions of Arcadia—are medleys of humanistic themes. In the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, he surpassed earlier imitators of Petrarch by emulating not only the Italian humanist’s subject and style but also his philosophical bent and habit of self-scrutiny. The Defence of Poesie, composed (like Erasmus’s Praise of Folly) in the form of a Classical oration, reasserts the theory of poetry as moral doctrine that had been articulated by Petrarch and Boccaccio and revived by the Italian Aristotelians of the 16th century. The later, or “new,” Arcadia is an epic novel whose theoretical concerns include the dualities of contemplation and action, reason and passion, and theory and practice. In this ambitious and unfinished work, Sidney attempts a characteristically humanistic synthesis of Classical philosophy, Christian doctrine, psychological realism, and practical politics. Seen as a whole, moreover, Sidney’s life and work form a significant contribution to a debate that had been smoldering since the decline of political liberty in Florence in the 15th century. How, it was asked, could humanism be politically active, or “civic,” in a Europe that was almost exclusively monarchic in structure? Many humanists had counseled retirement from active life, while Castiglione had seen his learned courtier rather as an adviser than as a leader. Sidney and his friend Edmund Spenser (1552/53–1599) sought to resolve this dilemma by creating a form of chivalric humanism. The image (taken on personally by Sidney and elaborated upon by Spenser in The Faerie Queene) of the hero as questing knight suggests that the humanist, even if not empowered politically, can achieve a valid form of activism by refining, upholding, and representing the values of a just and noble court. Spenser’s poetic development of this humanistic program was even more specific than Sidney’s. In his famous letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, he asserts that his purpose in The Faerie Queene is “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline” and describes a project (never to be completed) of presenting his idea of the Aristotelian virtues in 12 poetic books. As with Sidney, however, this moral didacticism is neither self-righteous nor pedantic. The prescriptive content of The Faerie Queene is qualified by a strong emphasis on moral autonomy and a mature sense of the ambiguity of experience.

The poetry and drama of Shakespeare’s time were a concourse of themes ancient and modern, continental and English. Prominent among these motives were the characteristic topics of humanism. George Chapman (1559?–1634), the translator of Homer, was a forthright exponent of the theory of poetry as moral wisdom, holding that it surpassed all other intellectual pursuits. Ben Jonson (1572–1637) described his own humanistic mission when he wrote that a good poet was able “to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength” and that the poet was “the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master in manners.” Jonson, who sought this moral goal both in his tragedies and in his comedies, paid tribute to the humanistic tradition in Catiline, a tragedy in which Cicero’s civic eloquence is portrayed in heroic terms.

Less overtly humanistic, though in fact more profoundly so, was William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Thoroughly versed (probably at his grammar school) in Classical poetic and rhetorical practice, Shakespeare early in his career produced strikingly effective imitations of Ovid and Plautus (Venus and Adonisand The Comedy of Errors, respectively) and drew on Ovid and Livy for his poem The Rape of Lucrece. In Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, he developed Plutarchan biography into drama that, though Elizabethan in structure, is Classical in tone. Shakespeare clearly did not accept all the precepts of English humanism at face value. He grappled repeatedly with the problem of reconciling Christian doctrine with effective political action, and for a while (e.g., in Henry V) seemed inclined toward the Machiavellian alternative. In Troilus and Cressida, moreover, he broadly satirized Chapman’s Homeric revival and, more generally, the humanistic habit of idolizing Classical heroism. Finally, he eschewed the moralism, rationalism, and self-conscious erudition of the humanists and was lacking as well in their fraternalism and their theoretical bent. Yet on a deeper level he must be acknowledged the direct and natural heir of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Castiglione, and Montaigne. Like them he delighted more in presenting issues than in espousing systems and held critical awareness, as opposed to doctrinal rectitude, to be the highest possible good. His plays reflect an inquiry into human character entirely in accord with the humanistic emphasis on the dignity of the emotions, and indeed it may be said that his unprecedented use of language as a means of psychological revelation gave striking support to the humanistic contention that language was the heart of culture and the index of the soul. Similarly, Shakespeare’s unparalleled realism may be seen as the ultimate embodiment, in poetic terms, of the intense concern for specificity—be it in description, measurement, or imitation—endorsed across the board by humanists from Boccaccio and Salutati on. Shakespearean drama is a treasury of the disputes that frustrated and delighted humanism, including (among many others) action versus contemplation, theory versus practice, res versusverbum, monarchy versus republic, human dignity versus human depravity, and individualism versus communality. In treating of these polarities, he generally proceeds in the manner of Castiglione and Montaigne, presenting structures of balanced contraries rather than syllogistic endorsements of one side or another. In so doing, he achieves a higher realism, transcending the mere imitation of experience and creating, in all its conflict and fertility, a mirror of mind itself. Since the achievement of such psychological and cultural self-awareness was the primary goal of humanistic inquiry, and since humanists agreed that poetry was an uncommonly effective medium for this achievement, Shakespeare must be acknowledged as a preeminent humanist.

One cannot leave Shakespeare and the phenomenon of English humanism without reference to a highly important aspect of his later drama. Throughout his career, Shakespeare had shown a keen interest in the concept of art, not only as a general idea but also with specific reference to his own identity as dramatist. In two of his final plays, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, he developed this concept into dramatic and thematic structures that had strongly doctrinal implications. Major characters in both plays practice a moral artistry—a kind of humanitas compounded of awareness, experience, imagination, compassion, and craft—that enables them to beguile and dominate other characters and to achieve enduring justice. This special skill, which is cognate with Shakespeare’s own dramatic art, suggests a hypothetical solution to many of the dilemmas posed in his earlier work. It implies that problems unavailable to political or religious remedy may be solved by creative innovation and that the art by which things are known and expressed may constitute, in and of itself, a valid field of inquiry and an instrument for cultural renewal. In developing this idea of the sovereignty of art, Shakespeare made the final major contribution to a humanistic tradition that will be discussed in the two sections that follow.

Humanism and the visual arts

Humanists paid conscious tribute to realistic techniques in art that had developed independently of humanism. Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266–1337), the Florentine painter responsible for the movement away from the Byzantine style and toward ancient Roman technique, was praised by Giorgio Vasari as “the pupil of Nature.” Giotto’s own contemporary Boccaccio said of him in the Decameron that

Boccaccio, himself a naturalist and a realist, here subtly adopts the painter’s achievement as a justification for his own literary style. So Shakespeare, at the end of the Renaissance, praises Giulio Romano (and himself), “who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape” (The Winter’s Tale). It should be noted that neither Vasari, Boccaccio, nor Shakespeare endorses realistic style as a summum bonum; rather, realism is the means for regaining touch with the sovereign creative principle of Nature.

Like the humanists, Italian artists of the 15th century saw a profound correlation between Classical forms and realistic technique. Classical sculpture and Roman painting were emulated because of their ability to simulate perceived phenomena, while, more abstractly, Classical myth offered a unique model for the artistic idealization of human beauty. Alberti, himself a close friend of Donatello and Brunelleschi, codified this humanistic theory of art, using the fundamental principle of mathematics as a link between perceived reality and the ideal. He developed a classically based theory of proportionality between architectural and human form, believing that the ancients sought “to discover the laws by which Nature produced her works so as to transfer them to the works of architecture.”

Humanism and Italian art were similar in giving paramount attention to human experience, both in its everyday immediacy and in its positive or negative extremes. The religious themes that dominated Renaissance art (partly because of generous church patronage) were frequently developed into images of such human richness that, as one contemporary observer noted, the Christian message was submerged. The human-centredness of Renaissance art, moreover, was not just a generalized endorsement of earthly experience. Like the humanists, Italian artists stressed the autonomy and dignity of the individual. High Renaissance art boasted a style of portraiture that was at once humanely appreciative and unsparing of detail. Heroes of culture such as Federico da Montefeltro and Lorenzo de’ Medici, neither of whom was a conventionally handsome man, were portrayed realistically, as though a compromise with strict imitation would be an affront to their dignity as individuals. Similarly, artists of the Italian Renaissance were, characteristically, unabashed individualists. The biographies of Giotto, Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) not only describe artists who were well aware of their unique positions in society and history but also attest to a cultural climate in which, for the first time, the role of art achieved heroic stature. The autobiographical writings of the humanist Alberti, the scientist Gerolamo Cardano (1501–76), and the artist Benvenuto Cellini(1500–71) further attest to the individualism developing both in letters and in the arts. Montaigne dramatized the analogy between visual mimesis and autobiographical realism when he said, in the preface to his Essays, that given the freedom he would have painted himself “tout entier, et tout nu” (“totally complete, and totally nude”).

Italian Renaissance painting, especially in its secular forms, is alive with visually coded expressions of humanistic philosophy. Symbol, structure, posture, and even colour were used to convey silent messages about humanity and nature. Renaissance style was so articulate, and the Renaissance sense of the unity of experience so deeply ingrained, that even architectural structures could be eloquently philosophical. Two features of Federico’s palace at Urbino exemplify the profound interrelationship between humanistic principle and Renaissance art. The first feature is architectural. On the ground floor of the palace, two private chapels, of roughly the same dimensions, stand side by side. The chapel at the left is a place of Christian worship, while that at the right is dedicated to the pagan Muses. Directly above these chapels is a study, the walls of which are covered with representations (in intarsia) of assorted humanistic heroes: Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Boethius, St. Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Bessarion, and Federico’s revered teacher Vittorino, among others. The message conveyed by the positioning of the three rooms is hard to ignore. Devotion to the opposing principles of Christianity and earthly (pagan) beauty is rendered possible by a humanistic learning (represented by the study) so generous and appreciative as to comprehend both extremes.

The second feature is iconographic—a portrait of Federico and his son Guidobaldo (probably by Pedro Berruguete) that occupies a central position on the wall of the study. It depicts the duke, his full coat of armour partly covered by a courtly robe, sitting and reading. The son stands beside his father’s chair, gazing out of the picture toward the viewer’s left. An abbot’s mitre rests on a shelf in the upper left, while the duke’s helmet sits on the floor in the lower right. Here also a typically humanistic message is evident. The duke’s scholarly attitude and curious attire suggest his triple role as warrior, ruler, and humanist. The two main axes of the picture—the line between mitre and helmet and the line between father and son—converge at the book, symbolizing the central role of humanistic learning in reconciling the concerns of church and state and in conveying humanistic virtue from generation to generation. The boy’s outward gaze implies the characteristic direction of humanistic learning: into the world of action. The scope and organic wholeness of Federico’s humanistic iconography are so striking as to rival great expressions of religious faith. The private heart of his palace concealed, like a genetic code, the principle that had given shape to the edifice and informed the state.

Humanism, art, and science

Humanism and Christianity

Later fortunes of humanism

Johann Goethe

Shakespeare may be seen as the last major interpreter of the humanistic program. Sir Francis Bacon and John Milton, though formidably adept at humanistic techniques, diverged in their major work from the central current of humanism, Bacon toward natural science and Milton toward theology. If Bacon’s rationalism may be seen as a link between humanism and the Enlightenment, his strong emphasis on nature (rather than humanity) as subject matter presaged the permanent separation of the sciences from the humanities. In Milton’s theocentricity, on the other hand, lay the Christian distrust (going back, perhaps, to Luther) of humanistic secularism. These epochal divergences, moreover, were complemented by a series of rifts and ramifications within the humanistic movement. The split between philosophy and letters was, over future generations, to be compounded by the development of countless discrete specialties within both fields. Philosophers came more and more to define themselves within narrow boundaries. Creative writers and “critics” took up distinct positions and assumed adversarial relationships. The profound loss of coherence in humane letters was furthered by the gradual decline of Latin as the lingua franca of European intellectuals and the consequent separation of national traditions.

Of course there were exceptions. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) reasserted humanistic values in a broad-based attack on contemporary institutions, and inGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) can be found the serious intention and multifarious curiosity that characterized humanism at its best. Elements of ancient Greek thought may be found in Germany at the turn of the 19th century, particularly in the writings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831); while, on the other side of the Atlantic, Cicero and his vision of the republic enjoyed a vigorous revival in the work of Thomas Jefferson.

By the end of the 20th century, however, humanism was such a lost art as to have to be reassembled, like a disjointed skeleton, by careful historians. To the modern mind, a “humanist” is a university scholar, walled off from the interdisciplinary scope of the original humanistic program and immune to the active experience that was its basis and its goal. This decline is easy enough to explain. Had there been nothing else, one external factor would have made the cultivation of humanitas, as originally practiced, more and more difficult from the beginning of the 16th century on. The proliferation of published work in all fields, and the creation of many new fields, made increasingly impracticable the development of the comprehensive learning and awareness that were central to the original program. In 1500 the major texts constituting a humanistic education, though numerous, could still be counted; by 1900 they were legion, and people had long ceased agreeing about exactly which ones they were. But problems implicit in the movement were equally responsible for its demise. The characteristic emphases on rhetoric and philology, which gave the humanistic movement vitality and made it available to countless students of moderate intellectual gifts, also betokened its impermanence. Weak in dialectic or any other comprehensively analytic method, the movement had no instrument for self-examination, no medium for self-renewal. By the same token, neither had humanism any valid means of defense against the attackers—scientists, fundamentalists, materialists, and others—who camped in ever-larger numbers on its borders. Lacking an integral method, finally, humanism in effect lacked a centre and became prey to an endless series of ramifications. While eloquent humanists rambled through Europe and spread the word about the classics, the method that might have unified their efforts lay, available but unheeded, in texts of Plato and Aristotle. Given this core of rigorous analysis, humanism might (all other challenges notwithstanding) have retained its basic character for centuries. But, ironically, it might also have failed to attract followers.

Conclusion