The exact point in time when the term Humanist was first adopted escapes our knowledge. It is, however, quite certain that Italy and the readoption of Latin letters as the staple of human culture were responsible for the name of Humanists. Literae humaniores was an expression coined in conscious contrast, at the beginning of the movement into current medieval learning, to the end that these "letters," i.e., substantially the classic literature of Rome and the imitation and reproduction of its literary forms in the new learning, might stand by themselves as over against the Literae sacrae of scholasticism. In the time of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Luther's beginnings, the term umanista was in effect an equivalent to the terms " classicist " or " classical scholar."
Dante, an earnest son of the Roman Catholic Church, was at the same time, as to his cultural valuations and aspirations, filled with a certain awe and admiration for ancient Italian letters. He at first seriously intended to compose his great epic in Latin verse. Petrarch considered his Africa a fair effort to reproduce Vergil; the choice of Scipio Africanus as the central hero reveals the new desire to consider the worthies of classic Italy as spiritual and cultural progenitors in the pursuits and concern of the new learning. In the exordium of his chief work Petrarch appeals to the Heliconian Sisters as well as to Jesus Christ, Savior of the world; also he reviews the epics of Homer (he never learned Greek), Statius, and Lucan. He was overwhelmed with the friendships of the most highly placed men of his day, among whom Cardinal Stephen Colonna was prominent. Petrarch is the pathfinder as well as the exemplar of the new movement. He idealized the classical world, he read into such Latin letters as he had, or extracted as he could, profound and surpassing verities. His classicist consciousness and his Christian consciousness are revealed in his writings like two streams that do not intermingle though they flow in the same bed. The experiences of life constantly evoke in him classic parallels, reminiscences, associations. Julius Caesar, Papirius Cursor, are nostri, "our people"; Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Massinissa are externi, "foreigners." His epistles afford the best revelation of his soul. Of course, the craving for pure Latinity and the elevation of such practical power of imitation and reproduction involved an artificiality of which neither Petrarch nor his successors were aware. Boccaccio was not only a humanist, but he, with appaling directness, revealed the emancipation of the flesh as one of the unmistakable trends of the new movement. Both he and Poggio, Valla, Beccadelli, Enea Silvio dei Piccolomini (in his youth) show that the hatred of the clerical class was a spur to literary composition. At the same time in the caricatures of foulness which these leaders of the new learning loved to draw, there is no moral indignation, but clearly like satyrs they themselves relish these things. For this reason the Humanists of Italy, as such, were not at all concerned in the efforts for a reformation of the church as attempted in the councils of Constance or of Basel (qq.v.). Poggio, apostolic secretary, came to Constance with the corrupt pope John XXIII., but spent most of his time in ransacking the libraries of Swiss monasteries for Latin codices. The defense of Jerome of Prague before the Council reminded him of Cato of Utica; his correspondent Lionardo Bruni at Florence warns him to be more circumspect in his praise of a heretic. In the Curia itself a semipagan spirit was bred by
|
402 |
A very clear view of the Humanistic movement may be gained from the writings of the biographer and beneficiary of Leo X., Paul Giovio (Jovius). In his Elogia (Antwerp, 1557) he presents a gallery of literary scholars, beginning with Dante, and including Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bruni, Poggo, Beccadelli (the pornographic poet), Valla, Filelfo, Platina, the Greeks Emanuel Chrysoloras, Cardinal Bessarion, Trapezuntius the Cretan, Theodorus Gaza, Argyropulos, Chalcondylas, Musurus of Crete, and Lascaris; also Lorenzo de' Medici, Ermolao Barbaro, Politian, Pico di Mirandula, and even Savonarola. But Savonarola's attacks on Pope Alexander VI., father of Cesare and Lucrezia, are treated as treason and felony. The Platonic academy of Ficinus at Florence had certainly no power to regenerate the political and moral corruption of its patron Lorenzo. Bibienna, the favorite of Leo X., was witty at banquets; at Leo's court this cardinal produced his lascivious comedy, "Colandra," because Terence was too grave. Even Thomas More and Reuchlin are included. Among the latter's academic friends were the anonymous composers of the satiric Epistole obscurorum virorum (q.v.)--the flail of the new learning swung against the old. The Italian Humanists were not concerned in the reformatory movements of the fifteenth century. They drifted into a palpable paganism or semipaganism, curiously illustrated in the verse, e.g., of Politian, especially his Greek verse, and of him even the lax Giovio writes: "he was a man of unseemly morals." They all more or less emphasized "vera virtus" by which they meant "true excellence," the self-wrought development of human faculties and powers. Still they knew how to maintain friendly relations with those higher clerics who had resources with which to patronize the new learning. They often accepted clerical preferment, as did Giovio, who became bishop of Nocera. Often the Latin verse of their youth proved very awkward when they entered upon their benefices. All were more interested "in viewing the early monuments of sensual enjoyment" than in study of the New Testament. As they greatly exceeded the corruption of the clergy in their own conduct, they could not take any practical interest in any spiritual or theological reformation. In all the correspondence of Filelfo, extending from 1428 to 1462, there is but once or twice a slight (deistic) utterance of spiritual concern, when, in the siege of Milan by Francesco Sforza, 1449, the ducal city endured terrible sufferings. Jacob Burckhardt (Die Cultur der Renaissance, § vi., Basel, 1860) says of the Humanists that they were demoralized by their reproduction of Latin verse. But why did they delve in Ovid, Catullus, and the like with steady predilection? At best a mild deism or pantheism may be perceived in their more serious writings. Greek, on the whole, was a rare attainment among them, reproductive ostentation limited most of them to Latin.
Erasmus of Rotterdam (q.v.) in his person and career marks the point where the "new learning" had arrived at the parting of the ways. He felt an affinity for Lucian; his Encomium Morioe, a vitriolic satire, dealt not gently with clerical corruption. He edited the New Testament and dedicated it to Leo X. He had no desire to abandon the old Church; the bounties and pensions which he received were all derived from princes or clerics who adhered to the papacy. He pretended that he could not read the German writings of Luther. Erasmus wrote that "Luther's movement was not connected with learning," and, at the same time he wrote to Pope Hadrian VI.: "I could find a hundred passages where St. Paul seems to teach the doctrines which they condemn in Luther." Other utterances show his unwillingness to serve the Reformation or to be held responsible for any part of it: "I have written nothing which can be laid hold of against the established orders. . . . I would rather see things left as they are than to see a revolution which may lead to one knows not what. Others may be martyrs, if they like. I aspire to no such honor. . . . I care nothing what is done to Luther, but I care for peace. . . . If you must take a side, take the side which is most in favor." His keen sense of actual dependencies in the movement of things led him to see situations and realities with wonderful clearness; but his genius, like that of many scholars, was essentially negative. When he was fifty-one, not long before 1517, he wrote to Fabricius at Basel: "My chief fear is that with the revival of Greek literature there may be a revival of paganism. There are Christians who are Christians but in name, and are Gentiles at heart." In the fall of that grave year 1525, when central Germany had been harried by the Peasants' War, he wrote (Oct. 10, 1525): "You remember Reuchlin. The conflict was raging between the Muses and their enemies, when up sprang Luther, and the object thenceforward was to entangle the friends of literature in the Lutheran business, so as to destroy both them and him together."
It is customary to speak of German Humanists, also Colet and More and Linacre may be so called perhaps as representing the new learning in Britain. But these in the main were men of great spiritual earnestness. As for the wider knowledge of Greek grammar and letters, of course it quickened the study of the New Testament. As to the positive aspects of theological and spiritual regeneration, little, very little, can be attributed to the movement of the Humanists. The overvaluation
|
403 |
|
404 |
|
405 |
|
406 |
|
407 |
|
408 |
|
409 |
|
410 |
|
411 |
|
412 |
|
413 |
|
414 |
|
415 |
| Calvin College. Last modified on 10/03/03. Contact the CCEL. |  |