A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

HUMANISM

Printing, the invention of which has just been described, was the new vehicle of expression for the ideas of the sixteenth century. These ideas centered in something which commonly is called "humanism." To appreciate precisely what humanism means—to understand the dominant intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century —it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.

[Sidenote: Petrarch, "the Father of Humanism">[

The name of Petrarch, who flourished in the fourteenth century (1304- 1374), has been made familiar to most of us by sentimentalists or by literary scholars who in the one case have pitied his loves and his passions or in the other have admired the grace and form of his Italian sonnets. But to the student of history Petrarch has seemed even more important as the reflection, if not the source, of a brilliant intellectual movement, which, taking rise in his century, was to grow in brightness in the fifteenth and flood the sixteenth with resplendent light.

In some respects Petrarch was a typical product of the fourteenth century. He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in his dislike for heretics. Moreover, he wrote what he professed to be his best work in Latin and expressed naught but contempt for the new Italian language, which, under the immortal Dante, had already acquired literary polish. [Footnote: Ironically enough, it was not his Latin writings but his beautiful Italian sonnets, of which he confessed to be ashamed, that have preserved the popular fame of Petrarch to the present day.] He showed no interest in natural science or in the physical world about him—no sympathy for any novelty.

Yet despite a good deal of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one significant element to the former medieval culture. That was an appreciation, amounting almost to worship, of the pagan Greek and Latin literature. Nor was he interested in antique things because they supported his theology or inculcated Christian morals; his fondness for them was simply and solely because they were inherently interesting. In a multitude of polished Latin letters and in many of his poems, as well as by daily example and precept to his admiring contemporaries, he preached the revival of the classics.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Petrarch's Humanism]

This one obsessing idea of Petrarch carried with it several corollaries which constituted the essence of humanism and profoundly affected European thought for several generations after the Italian poet. They may be enumerated as follows:

(1) Petrarch felt as no man had felt since pagan days the pleasure of mere human life,—the "joy of living." This, he believed, was not in opposition to the Christian religion, although it contradicted the basis of ascetic life. He remained a Catholic Christian, but he assailed the monks.

(2) Petrarch possessed a confidence in himself, which in the constant repetition in his writings of first-person pronouns partook of boastfulness. He replaced a reliance upon Divine Providence by a sense of his own human ability and power.

(3) Petrarch entertained a clear notion of a living bond between himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. Greek and Roman civilization was to him no dead and buried antiquity, but its poets and thinkers lived again as if they were his neighbors. His love for the past amounted almost to an ecstatic enthusiasm.

(4) Petrarch tremendously influenced his contemporaries. He was no local, or even national, figure. He was revered and respected as "the scholar of Europe." Kings vied with each other in heaping benefits upon him. The Venetian senate gave him the freedom of the city. Both the University of Paris and the municipality of Rome crowned him with laurel.

[Sidenote: "Humanism" and the "Humanities"; Definitions]

The admirers and disciples of Petrarch were attracted by the fresh and original human ideas of life with which such classical writers as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero overflowed. This new-found charm the scholars called humanity (Humanitas) and themselves they styled "humanists." Their studies, which comprised the Greek and Latin languages and literatures, and, incidentally, profane history, were the humanities or "letters" (litterae humaniores), and the pursuit of them was humanism.

Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite indifferently. About the close of his century, however, Greek teachers came in considerable numbers from Constantinople and Greece across the Adriatic to Italy, and a certain Chrysoloras set up an influential Greek school at Florence. [Footnote: This was before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.] Thenceforth, the study of both Latin and Greek went on apace. Monasteries were searched for old manuscripts; libraries for the classics were established; many an ancient masterpiece, long lost, was now recovered and treasured as fine gold. [Footnote: It was during this time that long-lost writings of Tacitus, Cicero, Quintilian, Plautus, Lucretius, etc., were rediscovered.]

[Sidenote: Humanism and Christianity]

At first, humanism met with some opposition from ardent churchmen who feared that the revival of pagan literature might exert an unwholesome influence upon Christianity. But gradually the humanists came to be tolerated and even encourage, until several popes, notably Julius II and Leo X at the opening of the sixteenth century, themselves espoused the cause of humanism. The father of Leo X was the celebrated Lorenzo de' Medici, who subsidized humanists and established the great Florentine library of Greek and Latin classics; and the pope proved himself at once the patron and exemplar of the new learning: he enjoyed music and the theater, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients and the creations of his humanistic contemporaries, the spiritual and the witty—life in every form.

[Sidenote: Spread of Humanism]

The zeal for humanism reached its highest pitch in Italy in the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, but it gradually gained entrance into other countries and at length became the intellectual spirit of sixteenth-century Europe. Greek was first taught both in England and in France about the middle of the fifteenth century. The Italian expeditions of the French kings Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, 1494-1547, served to familiarize Frenchmen with humanism. And the rise of important new German universities called humanists to the Holy Roman Empire. As has been said, humanism dominated all Christian Europe in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Erasmus, Chief Humanist of the Sixteenth Century]

Towering above all his contemporaries was Erasmus, the foremost humanist and the intellectual arbiter of the sixteenth century. Erasmus (1466-1536) was a native of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, but throughout a long and studious life he lived in Germany, France, England, Italy, and Switzerland. He took holy orders in the Church and secured the degree of doctor of sacred theology, but it was as a lover of books and a prolific writer that he earned his title to fame. Erasmus, to an even greater degree than Petrarch, became a great international figure—the scholar of Europe. He corresponded with every important writer of his generation, and he was on terms of personal friendship with Aldus Manutius, the famous publisher of Venice, with Sir Thomas More, the distinguished statesman and scholar of England, with Pope Leo X, with Francis I of France, and with Henry VIII of England. For a time he presided at Paris over the new College of France.

A part of the work of Erasmus—his Greek edition of the New Testament and his Praise of Folly—has already been mentioned. In a series of satirical dialogues—the Adages and the Colloquies—he displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen, especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included. "Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of Flanders, which produce effect only when seen from the distance."

[Sidenote: Humanism and Protestantism]

At first Erasmus was friendly with Luther, but as he strongly disapproved of rebellion against the Church, he subsequently assailed Luther and the whole Protestant movement. He remained outside the group of radical reformers, to the end devoted to his favorite authors, simply a lover of good Latin.

Perhaps the chief reason why Erasmus opposed Protestantism was because he imagined that the theological tempest which Luther aroused all over Catholic Europe would destroy fair-minded scholarship—the very essence of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe—More in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself—remained Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen, did not become Protestant but adhered to the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: Decline of Humanism]

Gradually, as the sixteenth century advanced, many persons who in an earlier generation would have applied their minds to the study of Latin or Greek, now devoted themselves to theological discussion or moral exposition. The religious differences between Catholics and Protestants, to say nothing of the refinements of dispute between Calvinists and Lutherans or Presbyterians and Congregationalists, absorbed much of the mental energy of the time and seriously distracted the humanists. In fact, we may say that, from the second half of the sixteenth century, humanism as an independent intellectual interest slowly but steadily declined. Nevertheless, it was not lost, for it was merged with other interests, and with them has been preserved ever since.

Humanism, whose seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical "humanities"—Latin, Greek, and history—are still taught in college and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant intellectual interest of the sixteenth century.