Humanism

Also called: Renaissance humanism · Topic: Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Changing Cultural Traditions"

Meaning

Humanism (also called Renaissance humanism) was a programme of study that began in Italy. It was called the studia humanitatis: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy, learnt by reading ancient Greek and Roman authors closely and building skills through discussion and debate. [3] It matters because it moved the source of learning away from church authority and towards the original ancient texts. It also gave Europe a new belief: that people are free to shape their own lives and destiny. [4]

Explanation

Background: why it began in Italian towns

• Trade came first, then universities.
• Italian towns did large-scale commerce. Traders needed lawyers and notaries. A notary is an official who writes and certifies contracts and deeds.
• So Padua and Bologna became centres of legal studies from the eleventh century.

• The University of Bologna began as a law school in 1088. It is the oldest university in Europe. [2]

• Law began to be read in a new way.

• Scholars stopped treating law only as a list of rules.
• They read Roman law along with Roman history, language and ideas.
• This interest in the full world of ancient Rome is where humanism began.

Petrarch: the founder

• Francesco Petrarch (1304–78) said that antiquity was a distinctive civilisation. It was a complete world of its own, not just an older version of his own age.
• He said this world is best understood through the actual words of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Scholars had to read the original texts, not summaries or later commentaries.
• He is called the founder of humanism. [3]
• He wove classical culture and Christianity into one tradition. [3]
• He preferred the Classical authors of antiquity to the Scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages. Scholastics were medieval church scholars who argued through logic and church authority. [3]
• He saw the poet as a philosophical teacher and backed the study of rhetoric (the art of speaking and writing to persuade). [3]

Main features: what a "humanist" taught

• By the early fifteenth century, a "humanist" meant a master who taught five subjects:

• grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.

• Two things made these subjects new:

• They were not drawn from religion. Theology was not on the list.

• They built skills through discussion and debate, not by simply accepting what authorities said.

• Where the name comes from:

• The Latin word humanitas was used by Cicero (106–43 BCE), a Roman lawyer, orator and statesman, to mean culture.
• The modern word "humanities" comes from the same root.

How the idea grew, and what it led to

• Pico della Mirandola gave the classic statement of humanism in On the Dignity of Man (1486).
• He argued that God gave humans no fixed nature. People are free to shape their own destiny. [4]
• In the same year he planned to defend 900 theses (points for debate) drawn from Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Latin writers. He invited scholars from all over Europe to Rome to argue them out. [4]

• This was humanism in practice: truth was tested by public debate.

• The "Renaissance Man" ideal: the age admired a person of many parts, who could be a scholar, diplomat, theologian and artist all at once.

• A new way of dividing history:
• Humanists believed a "dark age" followed Rome's collapse. They saw their own age as bringing back a lost greatness.
• So they created the labels Middle Ages (5th–14th century) and Modern Age (from the 15th century), with the Dark Ages (5th–9th century) inside the Middle Ages.
• Recent historians reject this scheme. Change was slow and overlapping, and calling those centuries "dark" is unfair. They had their own learning, art and law.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: 14th to 15th centuries, the Italian Renaissance.
• Region: the towns of northern and central Italy, mainly Padua, Bologna, Florence and Rome.
• Key dates:
• From 1300: humanism taught at Padua.
• 1341: Petrarch crowned Poet Laureate in Rome. He was invited by both Paris and Rome in September 1340 and chose Rome. He was crowned on the Capitoline Hill on 8 April 1341, and his Latin epic Africa won him the crown. [3]
• 1349: Florence's university founded.

• 1486: Pico's On the Dignity of Man and his 900 theses. [4]

• Key people:

• Petrarch, founder of humanism. [3]
• Pico della Mirandola, author of the classic humanist statement. [4]
• Cicero, the ancient source of the word humanitas.

• Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), a layman (not a priest or monk) who wrote on religious themes. His work shows the same loosening of the Church's control over serious culture.

• How we know: from the humanists' own writings, such as Petrarch's Africa and Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man, and from university records of Bologna, Padua and Florence. [2][3][4]

Don't confuse with

• Scholasticism: the medieval church method of argument through logic and church authority. Humanism went back to the original Classical texts and favoured them over the Scholastics. [3]
• Modern secular humanism / atheism: Renaissance humanism was not anti-Christian. Its subjects did not come from religion, but Petrarch joined classical culture and Christianity into one tradition. [3]
• Renaissance: the wider cultural rebirth that also covers art and architecture, such as Giotto's lifelike painting. Humanism was its programme of learning and its ideas.
• "Renaissance Man": an ideal person, an all-rounder who was scholar, diplomat, theologian and artist at once. Humanism is the course of studies and outlook that produced such people.

Prelims Hooks

• Founder of humanism: Petrarch (1304–78), crowned Poet Laureate on the Capitoline Hill, Rome, 8 April 1341, for his Latin epic Africa. [3]
• Studia humanitatis: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy. Trap: theology was NOT one of them. [3]
• Humanitas = "culture", a term used by Cicero (106–43 BCE). It is the root of the word "humanities".
• Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, 1486. Same year: he offered to defend 900 theses. [4]
• Correct chronological order: Bologna law school (1088) → humanism taught at Padua (1300) → Petrarch crowned (1341) → Florence university (1349) → Pico's Oration (1486).
• Humanist periodisation: Dark Ages 5th–9th c., Middle Ages 5th–14th c., Modern Age from 15th c.

Mains Points

• Trade, not the Church, came first. Italian commerce needed lawyers and notaries, so law schools grew at Bologna (1088) and Padua. Reading Roman law alongside Roman culture led to humanism. This links economy to culture in a GS-I answer: the Renaissance came out of urban wealth, not only out of ideas. [2]
• A change in where authority comes from. Humanism moved learning from church doctrine to the original words of ancient authors (Petrarch), and from accepting authority to debate (studia humanitatis). Pico's claim that humans have no fixed nature and shape their own destiny prepared the ground for the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, where observation and argument beat authority. [3][4]
• Periodisation is an argument, not a fact. Humanists invented "Middle Ages" and "Dark Ages" to present themselves as reviving Rome's lost light. Modern historians reject these sharp breaks. This is a useful parallel to the Indian debate over James Mill's Hindu–Muslim–British division of Indian history.

Related concepts

• Universities of Padua and Bologna
• Petrarch
• Dante Alighieri
• Giotto
• Renaissance man
• Dark Ages

Read more

• Universities, humanism and the humanist view of history