Lecture 6 (a)

Renaissance: Humanism

REL 1280

Oct 27, 2011

P. C. Lo

Outline

A. Nature of Renaissance

B. Humanists ≠ Humanism

C. Church and Renaissance Classicism

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“Renaissance”

• French for "rebirth"

• Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and

nascere "be born“

• 1300‟s – 1500‟s/1600‟s

• Transition from the Medieval Age to the

Modern Age

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Rebirth of “Classical” Culture

• Ancient Greece and Rome

• Early Church Fathers

• Prosperity and stability

• Constantly searching out for ancient

manuscripts

• Learn Greek and refine Latin

• 1453 Capture of Constantinople by the Turks

flight of Greek scholars to Italy and other

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• “the men of the Renaissance were often as

religious, as credulous, as caste-conscious, and

as „feudal‟ as their forbears. But they were

also materialistic, skeptical, and individualistic

to a degree unknown in the Middle Ages.” (reading 1: Brinton, Christopher, Wolff, A History of

Civilization, 3rd ed., 1967, vol. 1, pp.424b-25a.)

• Transition between Medieval and Modern

world

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• “art for art‟s sake, politics for politics‟s sake,

science for science‟s sake”

• New and old elements intermingled (Rdg 1,

p.425)

• Intellectual and cultural leaders are not

theologians or clergy

• “free intellectuals”

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Vernacular Literature

• Rise of vernacular

• Dante 但丁(1265 – 1321), The Divine Comedy

《神曲》, popular poetry

• Petrarch 彼特拉克(1304 – 1374), sonnet （十四行詩）

• Boccaccio 卜伽丘 (1313 -1375), The

Decameron《十日談》, prose-story

• 與五四新文化運動不同！

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“Humanism”

• “studia humanitatis” (Cicero; liberal arts) – grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, ethics

• umanisti (humanists) 人文學者

• a cultural and education movement, not an ideology

• “Humanism”一詞要等到十九世紀德國才出現, 再回套用在十五世紀義大利的新文化及教育運動!!!

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大陸學術界刻板的看法

1. 反對中世紀神學抬高神、貶低人的觀點，肯定人的價值，強調人的高貴。

2.反對中世紀神學的禁欲主義和來世觀念，要求享受人世的歡樂，注重人的現世生活的意義。

3.反對中世紀的宗教桎梏和封建等級觀念，要求人的個性解放和自由平等。

4. 反對中世紀教會的經院哲學和蒙昧主義，推崇人的經驗和理性。

《中國大百科全書（哲學卷）》，〈人文主義〉條， 頁711-712

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西方學術界也有類似的陳腔濫調

“the Burckhardtian myth of the Renaissance as the cradle of modernity, and of the humanists as the fearless cosmonauts of the future. …. Three historical tropes structure the myth and give it its seductive coherence: the break with the past (the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the Renaissance as „a complete break….with medieval culture‟); the return to the source (the same article defines humanism as „a return to the Hellenic sources of Western culture‟), and unbroken continuity with the present. And like all adventure stories, this one has its heroes – Petrarch, Pico, Michelangelo – and its villains (usually the Church), which perhaps helps to explain its obdurate hold on the historiographic imagination.”

• (Tony Davies, Humanism, London: Routledge, 1997, p.103)

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Crane Brinton

• “they never completely emancipated themselves from

the long medieval intellectual tradition of looking for

authority, looking for the answer, in the recorded

works of famous predecessors. Only, for the Church

Fathers, Aristotle, and the medieval doctors, the

humanists substituted the body of surviving Greek

and Roman writings, literary as well as philosophical,

and, where they still were actively interested in

religion, the text of the Bible, duly studied in the

original Hebrew or Greek.” (Brinton, Ideas and Men,

p.213 )

• 布林頓 著 ，王德昭譯 ，《西洋思想史》 臺北 : 正中書局，1963 copyright P C Lo 12

“Italian humanists like Ficino and Pico della Mirandola

were not merely Platonists; they were Neoplatonists,

tender-minded believers in this most cerebral and

scholarly mysticism. And in general it is true that

through most of Europe the humanists welcome Plato as

a relief from Aristotle, as a philosopher closer to the

purified but still sacramental Christianity they basically

wanted.” (Brinton, Ideas and Men, p.214 )

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Humanists before Humanism

“True, there was informal curriculum, the studia humanitatis or „study of humanity‟, grounded in the reading of ancient Greek and Roman authors….and the application of [them] to contemporary life; and the people who taught it or wrote about it sometimes referred to themselves as umanisti or „humanists‟, a purely functional term that conferred no particular prestige.

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• “But if that adds up to an „intellectual

program‟, it is one characterised by a notable

absence of coherence and a remarkable degree

of discord.” (Davies, p.94)

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• “The humanists of the Renaissance…revered

both the style and the content of the classics

and began to study them for their own sake,

not to strengthen or enrich their faith” (Rdg 1:

p.427)

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Dante 但丁

• Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321)

• The Divine Comedy 《神曲》

• First literary piece (epic poemy)

in Italian

• Content: Medieval worldview

• Hero: Virgil (poet of ancient

Rome)

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Petrarch 彼特拉克 • Francesco Petrarca

(1304 – 1374)

• Collecting and copying ancient manuscripts

• Liked Plato, but disliked Aristotle

• Letters to the Ancient Dead

• Lives of Illustrious Men

• Vernacular love poems, sonnet (十四行詩)

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Beauty of this world

• Admired the beauty of nature

• Yet, under the influence of Augustine, “angry

with myself that I still admired earthly things”

(READ p.428b-29a, quotation)

• Cf. quotation on p.456a-b; the stress on beauty.

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Boccaccio 卜伽丘 • Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 –1375) • The Decameron 《十日談》, the

first major prose work in the Italian vernacular

• best known for its bawdy tales of love

• “is both a stinging social commentary (it exposes sexual and economic misconduct) and a sympathetic look at human behavior” (Western Heritage, p.287)

• Scholar of ancient manuscripts

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Platonic Academy, Florence

• A discussion group (文化沙龍)

• Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499)

• Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)

• Translation into Latin of Plato‟s and other

Neoplatonist works

• Published the complete works of Plato

• “Platonic love” (amor platonicus, “the love that

transcends the senses and may also lead man to mystical

communion with God,” p.432b) copyright P C Lo 21

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(Oration) On the Dignity of Man

-- the myth !!!

(1486) by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

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皮科《論人的尊嚴》的“神話”

• Has been called “the manifesto of Renaissance

humanism”

• “In fact the oration, intended to serve as a

preface to a set of nine hundred contentious

theological theses and not printed in Pico‟s

lifetime, was not given the title by which it is

generally known until some seventy years later”

(Davies, p.95)

• He was pious and broad-minded, respected

Medieval scholasticism copyright P C Lo 24

God speaking to Adam:

“3. ….The nature of all other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set thee at the world‟s center that thou mayest from thence more easily observe whatever is in the world. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. 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 reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.”

From The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John H. Randall, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p.225.

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Desiderius Erasmus of

Rotterdam • “Prince of Humanists”,

1466-1536 • Regarded as the most

learned scholar in Europe • Published a scholarly

edition of the Greek New Testament

• In Praise of Folly 《愚人頌》

• Attacked clerical laxity and church corruption

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Religious significance

• “Pico and Erasmus proposed to enrich or

purify Christianity; they did not intend to

subvert it.” (Rdg 1, p.452)

• “the church was neither strong nor healthy” at

that time (ibid.)

• 對教會不滿 ≠ 排斥宗教信仰

• 尋求另一種基督教文化 宗教改革

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Condition of the Church

• Great Schism in papacy

• 1378-1417 Two Popes at the same time (Pope

and Antipope; Rome, Avignon)

• 1409- Three Popes (Rome, Avignon, Pisa) !!!

• Many priests and bishops were corrupt as well

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Savonarola

• priest and leader of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498.

• Attacked the moral corruption of the city and the church

• Not friendly with Renaissance movement

• Martin Luther and Reformation: 1517 !!

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Vatican Library and Renaissance

• Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1475 (official

establishment)

• Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) established the

library in the Vatican in 1448 “for the common

convenience of the learned” (R. Hughes, Rome,

2011, p.219)

• Started with 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew

codices, expanded to 1160 volumes in 7 years

through extensive acquisitions, among them

manuscripts from the imperial Library of

Constantinople. copyright P C Lo 33

A “catholic” library “Since its origin it has

preserved the

unmistakable, truly

„catholic‟ universal

openness to everything

that humanity has

produced down the

centuries that is beautiful,

good, noble and worthy.” (Benedict XVI, “Letter at Reopening

of the Vatican Library,” November 9,

2010)

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Tutorial Discussion questions

• How did some “Renaissance men” try to create

a synthesis of classicism and Christianity?

(Reading 1, esp. pp.432a-34b)

• What is the relationship between the

Renaissance and the Reformation? (Reading 2;

reading 1, pp. 452a-53a)