System of education and mode of inquiry that originated in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Key Figures
- Francesco Petrarca
- Giovanni Boccaccio
The ideal of Humanitas
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 Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero’s concept of humanitas, an educational and political ideal that was the intellectual basis of the entire movement.
Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent.
humanists considered Cicero to be the pattern of refined and copious discourse, as well as the model of eloquence combined with wise statesmanship.
Arts and letters
For lengthier discussions, the humanist was likely to compose a formal treatise or a dialogue—a Classical form that provided the opportunity to combine literary imagination with the discussion of weighty matters.
Renaissance thought
Aristotle’s authority remained preeminent, especially in logic and physics, but humanists were instrumental in the revival of other Greek scientists and other ancient philosophies, including stoicism, skepticism, and various forms of Platonism.
While humanists had a variety of intellectual and scholarly aims, it is fair to say that, like the ancient Romans, they preferred moral philosophy to metaphysics. Their faith in the moral benefits of poetry and rhetoric inspired generations of scholars and educators.
Humanists were secularists in the sense that language, literature, politics, and history, rather than “sacred subjects,” were their central interests.