Humanism

Humanism: What is it, and Why is it so Important? AMERICAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY SYSTEM Adam Manuel HIS 535: Renaissance and Reformation Dr. Heather Thornton December 28, 2014 When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. Niccolo Machiavelli, Edited and Translated by David Wootton, (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1995): 3. These are the words of the great Renaissance author Niccolo Machiavelli. Though he is more famous for his views on politics and the way a ruler should rule, in The Prince, he can also be placed among the great humanistic minds of the Renaissance era. Ibid., 17. However, the concept of humanism is perhaps one of the more complicated ideas to come out of the period of the Renaissance. One can see this idea expressed in art, literature, architecture, sculpture, philosophy, science, religion, and education. Ernest H. Wilkins, “On the Nature of the Extent of the Italian Renaissance.” Italica, 27, no. 2 (June 1950): 69-72. All of these fields saw a period of growth and change that today is commonly referred to as “the Renaissance.” Yet, one problem for historians is the task of giving a definite answer to the question of what is humanism? An even more difficult question to answer is, why was humanism so important, and how did it spread? Perhaps if one were to look at the various definitions given and create a composite definition, one may be able to understand what humanism truly is. Also, this may give clues to why the idea spread so easily and why it became the focal point of the period of history commonly referred to as the Renaissance. First, one must look at the various definitions of humanism given by intelligent men and women of past and present. Take, for example, the quote by Machiavelli above. In it, one gets the sense that Machiavelli sees the study of classical literature as a way of freeing one’s self from the stress of the world, a way of becoming an equal to those who held so much power and superiority in the past. It is the average person’s way of gaining wisdom and courage to get through the struggles in life. The one truly telling line is where Machiavelli states, “I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.” Machiavelli, The Prince, 3. Another prolific Renaissance and humanistic author was the Italian, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He had a very interesting view on what humanism was. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s view on humanism was more spiritual. He saw it thusly, “Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are animal; thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms of life, which are divine.” Elizabeth Livermore Forbes, “Of the Dignity of Man: Oration of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Count of Concordia.” Journal of the History of Ideas 3, no. 3 (June 1942): 348. Mirandola’s view on humanism is essentially a view on “man” and what it means to be a human. He felt that the way to understand what it meant to be a human can be found through careful study of the classical authors. He felt that they held some secret on what humanity was. He felt that man had control over his nature. He could sink to the lowest depths and be like a beast, or rise to the highest heights in virtue and become equitable to an angel. Ibid. Another ancient man of the Renaissance era that wrote about what humanism could be was the painter Leon Battista Alberti. In his book On Painting, one can find how Alberti’s career was affected by the concept of humanism. To Alberti, humanism was equivalent to realism. One can see that concept in his art and see how he used math and science to create images and other drawings that were never before seen coming out of the Middle Ages where drawings were two-dimensional and devoid of texture and layers. More importantly, it was his addition of realism that helped to honor the human form. For the first time, art was a depiction of life in motion, compared to life that was flat and emotionless. Alberti’s view on humanism was that “[s]ince man, nature, and mathematics are all parts of the same whole, man has only to use mathematics to understand and to control nature.” Leon Battista Alberti, Translation, Introduction, and Notes by John R. Spencer, On Painting, (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1966): 18. This is nowhere more obvious than in this excerpt from his book. “With the extreme rays quantity is measured. All space on the plane that is between any two points on the outline is called a quantity. The eye measures these quantities with the visual rays as with the pair of compasses.” Ibid. Therefore, Alberti saw humanism as the ability to control his art by using exact math adding a great degree of realism to his art. If one looks at the definitions by modern historians, the ideas and definitions of humanism change drastically. A definition of humanism located in a standard undergraduate textbook. “The study of the Latin and Greek classics and of the Church Fathers both for their own sake and to promote rebirth of ancient norms and values.” Donald Kagan, The Western Heritage, Tenth Edition (NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010): G-5. This is fine for a basic idea of what it could be, but it also lacks some refinement and does not match any of the ideas being claimed by the humanists of the past. That is because the overall idea of the Renaissance as a whole is an invention of the nineteenth-century historians. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Group, 2003): 76. According to the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, one must look at what the men referred to humanism as back during the period of the Renaissance. He states that “…it became common to talk about the liberal/non-theological arts subjects in a university curriculum as ‘humanae litterae’ (literature which was human rather than divine in focus), and a scholar who had a particular enthusiasm for these subjects was called a ‘humanista’.” Ibid. This perhaps seems to be a better definition because of the fact that it uses the actual terms by the people of the era. There are still more views on what humanism could be. To just quickly go through some of the others, they include Robert E. Proctor’s view that the people of the Renaissance saw the great authors of the past as greater than human individuals. These men held great wisdom and super-human powers compared to mortal humans. Overwhelmed by change, especially contingent, unexpected change—what he[Petrarch] and his age called Fortuna—unable to rise in contemplation above the vicissitudes of human existence, as the ancients tried to do, and as Dante had done in his own way, Petrarch turned within. He filled his mind with the biographies of ancient Roman heroes in the hope of strengthening his own soul by comparing his courage to theirs. That their battles were real physical ones while his were, for the most part, psychological, made no difference to Petrarch: he wanted to be able to withstand the blows of Fortune by emulating what he believed was the inner strength of his ancient heroes. Robert E. Proctor, “The Studia Humanitatis: Contemporary Scholarship and Renaissance Ideals.” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 814. There are also the ideas of Hanna H. Gray and Paul Oskar Kristeller. In Gray’s view, humanism was the study of classical literature to be more eloquent. “True elocquence according to the humanists, could arise only out of a harmonious union between wisdom and style; its aim was to guide men toward virtue and worthwhile goals, not to mislead them for vicious or trivial purposes.” Hanna H. Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence.” Journal of the History of Ideas 24, no. 4 (October-December 1963): 498. Yet, Kristeller is under the impression that humanism was a precursor to what in modern universities was called the humanities. Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The European Diffusion of Italian Humanism,” Italica 39, no. 1 (March 1962): 2. In modern universities, the humanities are usually comprised of many of the ideas that were affected by humanism. So with all of that said, and all of the various ideas expressed for what humanism could be, the ultimate question is, what is humanism? To answer that question one must first focus on the people of the time. From the words of Alberti, Mirandola, and Machiavelli, one begins to gather an idea of what humanism could be. Alberti, the artist, saw humanism as a way to control both his life and his art. He used these ideas to create works of art that were more realistic than the world had ever seen. Mirandola was a pious man, and, therefore, he saw the use of humanism as a way to get closer to God. He did this by studying the men he saw as model humans, and by trying to emulate them. Machiavelli was a man who had a troubled past. He was tortured and imprisoned for years before he wrote The Prince. Machiavelli saw humanism as a way to forget the world and live in those moments in his mind, away from sorrow and despair. Alberti, On Painting, 18; Forbes, On the Dignity of Man, 348; Machiavelli, The Prince, 3. Humanism was a revival in ancient literature during the period now called the Renaissance that allowed people to use the ideas discussed by the men of the past as a way to help them in their personal lives. With the question of what humanism could mean answered, more questions need to be answered. Why was humanism such an important idea, and how did it spread throughout Italy and most of Europe? For the answer to the why we must first turn to Ernest H. Wilkins. In his article entitled “On the Nature and Extent of the Italian Renaissance,” Wilkins explains a very interesting theory. According to Wilkins, the idea of interest in classical literature is cyclical. He says that the period of the Renaissance is just part of a cycle of change that the people of the time was experiencing. He states, “The word “renaissance” carries within itself the assertion that the cultural entity with regard to which it is used has had three stages of existence: a first life, a death, and a second life—or, in less figurative terms, that a cultural tradition, once active has for a time been superseded by another culture and has at last become active again.” Ernest H. Wilkins, “On the Nature and Extent of the Italian Renaissance,” Italica 27, no. 2 (June 1950): 68. He then goes on to say, “In our particular case the three stages are, of course, classic culture itself, medieval culture, and the culture of the Renaissance.” Ibid. This makes perfect sense considering the definition one can come to by examining other definitions. In the late fourteenth century through the early fifteenth century, the world was coming out of a period of medieval culture, a time of dull two-dimensional art, depression, and plague. People were aching for change, and they found it in the solace of humanism. A rebirth of old ideas allowed them to mold it how they saw fit. One can also equate this in modern days to fashion or trends. For a period of time, an idea or style of dressing is popular. However, over time those ideas are replaced with something new. Yet, eventually, these old fashions come back with new twists and features added. In the case of humanism, it was the study of people who had been dead for centuries. The humanists could not bring Cicero, Plato, or Aristotle back from the dead, but they could emulate and become as close to them as they possibly could by studying their works. Now to answer the question of how these ideas were able to spread throughout the known world. The great historian Paul Oskar Kristeller has an opinion on this question. He rightly centered the spread of humanism to Italy. Italy was not only the birth site of classical thought, but it was also the site of a new and developing society of Italian provinces. Florence was perhaps one of the most successful of the provinces, and its success was thanks to the backing of an extremely wealthy banking family, the Medicis. However, Florence was Italy’s main location for commerce and human travel. “The first important channel through which Italian humanism spread abroad was what we now like to call the exchange of persons.” Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The European Diffusion of Italian Humanism.” 2. Italy was a place where people would go to trade as well as a great place to go to learn. Ibid., 3. These young and impressionable youth would come to Italy to seek knowledge and to expand their minds, and that is exactly what they would do. These newly-converted humanists would then go back home and start writing and talking about these ‘new’ ideas that they had discovered in Italy. “No less important for the diffusion of humanism were the Italians who lived in other countries for periods of varying length.” Ibid., 4. These Italians would already have knowledge of humanist concepts, and, therefore, when they went abroad to places in Europe, they would discuss these ideas with locals at the places of business, and the concept of humanism would also spread that way. Kristeller also brings up an interesting point when he states that once enough people were talking about humanism and the value of a classical learning, schools of humanism started to pop up. Ibid., 6. Lastly, Kristeller mentions that eventually royalty and nobles started to discuss these new revisions of classical ideas. To prove this fact he states, “Several copies of the humanist texts in Spanish libraries seem to be derived from the manuscripts sent by Italian humanist authors to Spanish princes or scholars.” Ibid., 8. Much has been said about humanism, and there are ideas that were not discussed here. Yet, humanism was one of the major ideas that were vital to the period now referred to as the Renaissance. The label of “renaissance” was created by nineteenth-century historians trying to understand why suddenly in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century there appeared to be a sudden and nearly unprovoked “rebirth” in classical thought. This idea of classical thought has puzzled historians for centuries, and there are multitudes of possible meanings and interpretations of what the Renaissance humanists meant by their way of thinking. The ideas ranged from a spiritual connection to God to a way of freeing one’s mind of negative thoughts and problems. With those ideas in mind one can safely say that humanism was a school of thought in which men and women could study classical texts and then use the ideas that they gained from these readings to better their lives and maybe the lives of those around them. The people of Italy, and eventually the known world, were in the middle of a period of a cycle of ebb and flow of enthusiasm for classical literature. These ideas of self-improvement, aided by the movement of people all over Italy and Europe, allowed these ideas to be transferred to people of different countries. Humanism had become almost a religion all to its own, that people had prescribed to in addition to their devotion to God and the Church. As things were started with Machiavelli, and his release of worldly stress by escaping to the solitude of the study of the classics, we shall now end with Giovanni Pico dell Mirandola. As stated earlier, Mirandola had a unique view of humanism in which through studying the classics, one could become closer to God and control his own fate. His words summarize the whole of humanism. What else is to be understood by the stages through which the initiates must pass in the mysteries of the Greeks? These initiates, after being purified by the arts which we might call expiatory, moral philosophy and dialectic, were granted admission to the mysteries…..And if we may be permitted, even in the form of a riddle, to say anything publicly about the deeper mysteries: since the precipitous fall of man from heaven has left his mind in a vertiginous whirl and since according to Jeremiah, death has come in through the windows to infect our hearts and bowels with evil, let us call upon Raphael, the heavenly healer that by moral philosophy and dialectic, as with healing drugs, he may release us. When we shall have been restored to health, Gabriel, the strength of God will abide in us. Giovanni Pico dell Mirandola, Translated by A. Robert Caponigri, Introduction by Russell Kirk, Oration on the Dignity of Man, (Regnery Publishing Inc., 1956): 25, 33. Bibliography Alberti, Leon Battista. Translation, Introduction, and Notes by John R. Spencer. On Painting. Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1966. Forbes, Elizabeth Livermore. “Of the Dignity of Man: Oration of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Count of Concordia.” Journal of the History of Ideas 3, no. 3 (June 1942): 347-354. Gray, Hannah H. “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence.” The Journal of the History of Ideas 24, no. 4 (October-December 1963): 497-514. Kagan, Donald. The Western Heritage. Tenth Edition. NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “The European Diffusion of Italian Humanism.” Italica 39, no. 1 (March 1962): 1-20. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. Machiavelli, Niccolo. Edited and Translated by David Wootton. Indiana: Hacket Publishing Company, Inc. 1995. Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della. Translated by A. Robert Caponigri. Introduction By Russell Kirk. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1956. Proctor, Robert. “The Studia Humanitatis: Contemporary Scholarship and Renaissance Ideals.” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 813-818. Wilkins, Ernest H. “On the Nature and Extent of the Italian Renaissance.” Italica 27, no. 2 (June 1950): 67-76. 10