Humanism during the European Renaissance:
A Short note
Renaissance humanism was a European intellectual movement that was a crucial component of the Renaissance, beginning in Florence in the last years of the 14th century. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of classical Latin and later Greek texts. Initially, a humanist was simply a scholar or teacher of Latin literature. By the mid-15th century humanism described a curriculum — the studia humanitatis — comprising grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry and history as studied via classical authors. Humanists mostly believed that, although God created the universe, it was humans that had developed and industrialized it. Beauty, a popular topic, was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God.
The humanists were often opposed to philosophers of the preceding movement of Scholasticism, the “schoolmen” of the universities of Italy, Paris, Oxford and elsewhere. The scholastics’ methodology was also derived from the classics, especially Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of the thought of Aristotle, and a classical debate which referred back to Plato and the Platonic dialogues was revived.
The rise of Humanism during the Renaissance of the 14th-15th century Europe aimed at ending scholasticism, scientism and the dominance of logic in thought; it sought to bring about a reversion to rhetoric and ethics in the public domains and in intellectual discourse.
Humanism propounded the dignity of man; it highlighted man’s uniqueness vis-à-vis his surroundings. Through man’s writing and speech, his intellect and potential, Humanism sought a shift from the mystery of divinity to the potentiality of humanity. It espoused freedom of will, or free-will in all of man’s facets—pleasure, virtue, health, beauty—and sought to achieve a climax of man’s potential through a full enjoyment of his many facets.
Humanism was influenced by the study of the classics. Its proponents, among others included Erasmus, Petrarch, Van Hutter, Thomas More, Colet, de Groot, Pascal, da Vinci, Alberti, Machiavelli, Ximenes, Botticelli etc. Consequently, major influences of humanism were seen in most human endeavours—literature, art, history, poetry, painting, politics, architecture, science, technology etc. Humanism, at its core, criticised the medieval conception that antiquity was unenlightened, coarse, condemned. Rather, Humanists regarded the medieval ages as the dark age, by using the classics of antiquity in their original form to aid this conception. A distinctive method of intellectual procedure in this time was not so much a rediscovery of the classics; rather, it was a new historical perspective in which the classics were now being viewed.
Humanists proposed solutions for peace of mind and tranquillity in an otherwise increasingly conflictual time of religious, spiritual and political upheaval. There was a growing sense of time and history (Petrarch’s Letters of the Ancient Dead), an awareness of one’s position in time. There was a rampant, reinvigorated interest in archaeology; religious symbols were being understood and appreciated as they appeared. Humanists thinkers, unlike the medievalists, were not men of the church; they were lay folk, trying to understand their own time and place in history, and their own potentialities that nature had endowed them with. These men were teachers and civil servants, authors and thinkers.
Humanists placed a heavy emphasis on the study of primary sources rather than the study of the interpretations of others. This is reflected in their motto of ad fontes, or “to the sources” which informed the search for texts in the monastery libraries of Europe. Humanist education, called the studia humanista or studia humanitatis (study of humanity), concentrated on the study of the liberal arts: Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy or ethics, and history.
Early 15th-century humanists were interested in classical Latin and not in Medieval Latin, which was a different and more developed language with many neologisms. Petrarch, sometimes called the father of Renaissance humanism in Italy, called the Latin of the middle Ages “barbarous;” when he collected his “Familiar Letters” his model was Cicero and his model for Latin was that used by Virgil, who was emerging from the persona as a magus that had accrued in the middle Ages. This new interest in the classical literature led to the scouring of monastic libraries across Europe for lost texts. One such hunt by Poggio Bracciolini, who was credited with the discovery of the complete works of fifteen different authors, turned up Vitruvius’ work on art and architecture, allowing for the completion of the Duomo of Florence by Filippo Brunelleschi.
Under Erasmus, a distinct movement, the “Devotio Moderna” was expounded. Dovotio Moderna proclaimed the primacy of Christian life and Christian doctrines. Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devotion, was a religious movement of the Late Middle Ages. It came into being at the same time as Christian Humanism, a meshing of Humanism and Christianity. Christian Humanism advocated studying the fundamental texts of Christianity to come to one’s own relationship with God. The book “The Imitation of Christ,” written by Thomas Kempis, a Brother of the Common Life, outlines the concepts of Modern Devotion, based on personal connection to God and the active showing of love towards Him (e.g., in the blessed sacrament of the altar or during mass). (The 15th century laity were able to study the scriptures by the advent of the printing press.)
Practitioners of the Devotio Moderna emphasized the inner life of the individual and promoted meditation according to certain strictures. With the ideals of Christian Humanism, Devotio Moderna recommended a more individual attitude towards belief and religion and was especially prominent in cities in the Low Countries during the 14th and 15th centuries. It is regarded sometimes as a contributing factor for Lutheranism and Calvinism. The origins of the movement are bound up with the career of Geert Groote of Deventer (Netherlands). From his work two kinds of communities formed, the Brethren of the Common Life, consisting mainly of laymen, as well as monasteries in the area of Windesheim near Zwolle.
Devotio Moderna sought to display and prescribe that the Christian way of life, with its emphasis on hard work, mercy and simplicity was the best template to realise the human potential that so fascinated the humanists. This was devotion, for and by the modern times.
Another intellectual movement, that of “NeoPlatonism” sought to, by analysing the classical age, encourage man’s endeavour of seeing and coming into contact with the divine, by utilising the faculties that he had been endowed with.
Neoplatonists believed human perfection and happiness were attainable in this world, without awaiting an afterlife. Perfection and happiness— seen as synonymous— could be achieved through philosophical contemplation. They did not believe in an independent existence of evil. They compared it to darkness, which does not exist in itself but only as the absence of light. So too, evil is simply the absence of good. Things are good insofar as they exist; they are evil only insofar as they are imperfect, lacking some good that they should have. It is also a cornerstone of Neoplatonism to teach that all people return to the Source. The Source, Absolute, or One is what all things spring from and, as a super-consciousness (nous), is where all things return. It can be said that all consciousness is wiped clean and returned to a blank slate when returning to the Source. All things have force or potential (dynamis) as their essence. This dynamis begets energy (energeia). When people return to the Source, their energy returns to the One, Monad, or Source and is then recycled into the cosmos, where it can be broken up and then amalgamated into other things.
The Neoplatonists believed in the pre-existence, and immortality of the soul. The human soul consists of a lower irrational soul and a higher rational soul (mind), both of which can be regarded as different powers of the one soul. It was widely held that the soul possesses a “vehicle”, accounting for the human soul’s immortality and allowing for its return to the One after death. After bodily death, the soul takes up a level in the afterlife corresponding with the level at which it lived during its earthly life. The Neoplatonists believed in the principle of reincarnation. Although the most pure and holy souls would dwell in the highest regions, the impure soul would undergo a purification, before descending again, to be reincarnated into a new body, perhaps into animal form. A soul which has returned to the One, achieves union with the cosmic universal soul, and does not descend again, at least, not in this world period.
Although the founder of Neoplatonism is supposed to have been Ammonius Saccas, the Enneads of his pupil Plotinus are the primary and classical document of Neoplatonism. The philosophers called Neoplatonists did not found a school as much as attempt to preserve the teachings of Plato. They regarded themselves as Platonists. Neoplatonism was revived in the Italian Renaissance by figures such as Nicholas Cusanus, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, the Medici, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli and later Giordano Bruno. Platonism in the Renaissance was a major force in European cultural life.
The central feature of humanism in this period was the commitment to the idea that the ancient world (defined effectively as ancient Greece and Rome, which included the entire Mediterranean basin) was the pinnacle of human achievement, especially intellectual achievement, and should be taken as a model by contemporary Europeans. According to this view of history, the fall of Rome to Germanic invaders, in the fifth century, had led to the dissolution and decline of this remarkable culture; the intellectual heritage of the ancient world had been lost—many of its most important books had been destroyed and dispersed—and a thousand years later, Europeans were still living in the ghetto. The only way in which Europeans could expect to pull themselves out of this intellectual catastrophe was to attempt to recover, edit, and make available these lost texts, which included, among others, almost all the works of Plato. (In the process, Greek texts had to be translated into Latin, the language of intellectuals and the learned.) This enterprise, launched through the reintroduction of Greek to Italy by Manuel Chrysoloras, generated enormous enthusiasm, and the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were devoted to this project.
Renaissance humanists believed that the liberal arts (art, music, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, using classical texts, and the studies of all of the above) should be practiced by all levels of “richness”. They also approved of self, human worth and individual dignity. They hold the belief that everything in life has a determinate nature, but man’s privilege is to be able to choose his own nature. Pico della Mirandola wrote the following concerning the creation of the universe and man’s place in it:
“But when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness. Therefore, when everything was done… He finally took thought concerning the creation of man… He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature and, assigning him a place in the middle of the world, addressed him thus: “Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according to thy judgement thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form and what functions thou thyself shalt desire. The nature of all other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of law. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgement, to be born into the higher forms, which are divine.” (Pico 224-225)”
Humanists believe that such possibilities lead to the diverse ways of human development. Value is given to this uniqueness and encourages individualism. A few of Christ’s teachings were deliberately forwarded to push for this view of Christian Humanism during the Renaissance:
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” — Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27 (also Leviticus 19:18)
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’
“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’” — Matthew 25:34-40
The program of Christian Humanism was built on a conviction of the importance of the rational faculties of man and it exalted the role of an intellectual aristocracy. It emphasized nature rather than grace, ethics rather than theology and action rather than contemplation.