Jens Zimmermann
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199697755
- eISBN:
- 9780191738159
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697755.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
This chapter locates the origin of humanistic ideals in Christian anthropology, particularly the Christological interpretation of the imago Dei and traces the impact of this teaching from patristic ...
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This chapter locates the origin of humanistic ideals in Christian anthropology, particularly the Christological interpretation of the imago Dei and traces the impact of this teaching from patristic through scholastic to Renaissance humanism. The Western ideals of a common humanity, of solidarity, of confidence in reason, of human progress, and of education as character formation emerge as Christian theologians adapt and wrestle with Greco-Roman thought. While none of these ideals would have come about without the participatory ontology of Neoplatonic thought, its adaptation in the development of Christian humanism is here portrayed as a generally faithful interpretation of biblical thought rather than a Hellenistic distortion (patristic humanism) or the antecedent of secular humanism (Renaissance philosophy). This chapter highlights the important natural link between consciousness and being provided by Platonic metaphysics, and that after its demise the subsequent development of humanism constitutes a series of attempts to maintain or repair this link without recourse to Christianity or metaphysics.Less
This chapter locates the origin of humanistic ideals in Christian anthropology, particularly the Christological interpretation of the imago Dei and traces the impact of this teaching from patristic through scholastic to Renaissance humanism. The Western ideals of a common humanity, of solidarity, of confidence in reason, of human progress, and of education as character formation emerge as Christian theologians adapt and wrestle with Greco-Roman thought. While none of these ideals would have come about without the participatory ontology of Neoplatonic thought, its adaptation in the development of Christian humanism is here portrayed as a generally faithful interpretation of biblical thought rather than a Hellenistic distortion (patristic humanism) or the antecedent of secular humanism (Renaissance philosophy). This chapter highlights the important natural link between consciousness and being provided by Platonic metaphysics, and that after its demise the subsequent development of humanism constitutes a series of attempts to maintain or repair this link without recourse to Christianity or metaphysics.
Ann Moss
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199249879
- eISBN:
- 9780191697838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249879.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses Renaissance humanism and introduces several concepts that are used throughout the different chapters in the book. Humanism, for example, is defined as an intellectual endeavour ...
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This chapter discusses Renaissance humanism and introduces several concepts that are used throughout the different chapters in the book. Humanism, for example, is defined as an intellectual endeavour for writing and debate. In this book, the period of the Renaissance is taken to be the period between the late 14th and the early 17th centuries.Less
This chapter discusses Renaissance humanism and introduces several concepts that are used throughout the different chapters in the book. Humanism, for example, is defined as an intellectual endeavour for writing and debate. In this book, the period of the Renaissance is taken to be the period between the late 14th and the early 17th centuries.
Noam Reisner
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199572625
- eISBN:
- 9780191721892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572625.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of Milton's poetic oeuvre in light of the literary and conceptual problem posed by Milton's sustained attempt to put into words that which is unsayable ...
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This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of Milton's poetic oeuvre in light of the literary and conceptual problem posed by Milton's sustained attempt to put into words that which is unsayable and beyond representation. The struggle with the ineffability of sacred or transcendental subject matter in many ways defines Milton's triumphs as a poet, especially in Paradise Lost, and goes to the heart of the central critical debates to engage his readers over the centuries and decades. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this study sheds fresh light on many of these debates by situating Milton's poetics of ineffability in the context of the intellectual cross-currents of Renaissance humanism and Protestant theology. The book plots an ongoing narrative in Milton's poetry about silence and ineffable mystery, which forms the intellectual framework within which Milton continually shapes and reshapes his poetic vision of the created universe and the elect man's singular place within it. From the free paraphrase of Psalm 114 to Paradise Regained, the presence of the ineffable insinuates itself into Milton's poetry as both the catalyst and check for his poetic creativity, where the fear of silence and ineffable mystery on the one hand, and the yearning to lose himself and his readers in unspeakable rapture on the other, becomes a struggle for poetic self-determination and, finally, redemption.Less
This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of Milton's poetic oeuvre in light of the literary and conceptual problem posed by Milton's sustained attempt to put into words that which is unsayable and beyond representation. The struggle with the ineffability of sacred or transcendental subject matter in many ways defines Milton's triumphs as a poet, especially in Paradise Lost, and goes to the heart of the central critical debates to engage his readers over the centuries and decades. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this study sheds fresh light on many of these debates by situating Milton's poetics of ineffability in the context of the intellectual cross-currents of Renaissance humanism and Protestant theology. The book plots an ongoing narrative in Milton's poetry about silence and ineffable mystery, which forms the intellectual framework within which Milton continually shapes and reshapes his poetic vision of the created universe and the elect man's singular place within it. From the free paraphrase of Psalm 114 to Paradise Regained, the presence of the ineffable insinuates itself into Milton's poetry as both the catalyst and check for his poetic creativity, where the fear of silence and ineffable mystery on the one hand, and the yearning to lose himself and his readers in unspeakable rapture on the other, becomes a struggle for poetic self-determination and, finally, redemption.
Martin Mclaughlin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264775
- eISBN:
- 9780191734984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264775.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of Leon Battista Alberti on the redirection of Renaissance humanism given at the British Academy's 2009 Italian Lecture. This text explains ...
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This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of Leon Battista Alberti on the redirection of Renaissance humanism given at the British Academy's 2009 Italian Lecture. This text explains that Alberti, as successor of Renaissance humanism founder Petrarch, sought to redirect the movement. It compares Petrarch's and Alberti's notions of humanism and traces Alberti's inflection of the movement in directions that would never have been thought of by his predecessor.Less
This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of Leon Battista Alberti on the redirection of Renaissance humanism given at the British Academy's 2009 Italian Lecture. This text explains that Alberti, as successor of Renaissance humanism founder Petrarch, sought to redirect the movement. It compares Petrarch's and Alberti's notions of humanism and traces Alberti's inflection of the movement in directions that would never have been thought of by his predecessor.
Mark Jurdjevic
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199204489
- eISBN:
- 9780191708084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199204489.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
Guardians of Republicanism analyses the political and intellectual history of Renaissance Florence—republican and princely—by focusing on five generations of the Valori family, each of ...
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Guardians of Republicanism analyses the political and intellectual history of Renaissance Florence—republican and princely—by focusing on five generations of the Valori family, each of which played a dynamic role in the city's political and cultural life. The Valori were early and influential supporters of the Medici family, but were also crucial participants in the city's periodic republican revivals throughout the Renaissance. Mark Jurdjevic examines their political struggles and conflicts against the larger backdrop of their patronage and support of the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the radical Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola, and Niccolò Machiavelli, the premier political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Each of these three quintessential Renaissance reformers and philosophers relied heavily on the patronage of the Valori, who evolved an innovative republicanism based on a hybrid fusion of the classical and Christian languages of Florentine communal politics. Jurdjevic's study thus illuminates how intellectual forces—humanist, republican, and Machiavellian—intersected and directed the politics and culture of the Florentine Renaissance.Less
Guardians of Republicanism analyses the political and intellectual history of Renaissance Florence—republican and princely—by focusing on five generations of the Valori family, each of which played a dynamic role in the city's political and cultural life. The Valori were early and influential supporters of the Medici family, but were also crucial participants in the city's periodic republican revivals throughout the Renaissance. Mark Jurdjevic examines their political struggles and conflicts against the larger backdrop of their patronage and support of the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the radical Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola, and Niccolò Machiavelli, the premier political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Each of these three quintessential Renaissance reformers and philosophers relied heavily on the patronage of the Valori, who evolved an innovative republicanism based on a hybrid fusion of the classical and Christian languages of Florentine communal politics. Jurdjevic's study thus illuminates how intellectual forces—humanist, republican, and Machiavellian—intersected and directed the politics and culture of the Florentine Renaissance.
Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823269556
- eISBN:
- 9780823269594
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269556.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This collection of essays argues that contemporary “critical posthumanisms,” even as they distance themselves from particular iconic representations of the Renaissance (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci’s ...
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This collection of essays argues that contemporary “critical posthumanisms,” even as they distance themselves from particular iconic representations of the Renaissance (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man), may in fact be moving ever closer to ideas of “the human” as at once embedded and embodied in, evolving with, and de-centered amid a weird tangle of animals, environments, and vital materiality in works from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Too often contemporary work in posthumanism presents itself as a rejection of Renaissance humanism when what it rejects is a straw man—albeit a straw Vitruvian Man—that bears little, if any, resemblance to Renaissance humanism qua the skeptical, critical, and irreverent close readings of ancient texts and cultures. Ironically what is being repressed, fantasized, and evaded in these accounts is nothing other than Renaissance humanism itself. Reducing Renaissance humanism to a handful of icons and caricatures risks diminishing its potential theoretical purchase on the past, in addition to the present and future. Renaissance Posthumanism, too, reconsiders traditional languages of humanism and the human but it does so not by nostalgically enshrining or triumphantly superseding humanism’s past but rather by revisiting and interrogating them. Seeking those patterns of thought and practice that allow us to reach beyond the pre- and post- of recent thought, the contributors to this collection focus on moments where Renaissance humanism seems to depart and differ from itself.Less
This collection of essays argues that contemporary “critical posthumanisms,” even as they distance themselves from particular iconic representations of the Renaissance (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man), may in fact be moving ever closer to ideas of “the human” as at once embedded and embodied in, evolving with, and de-centered amid a weird tangle of animals, environments, and vital materiality in works from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Too often contemporary work in posthumanism presents itself as a rejection of Renaissance humanism when what it rejects is a straw man—albeit a straw Vitruvian Man—that bears little, if any, resemblance to Renaissance humanism qua the skeptical, critical, and irreverent close readings of ancient texts and cultures. Ironically what is being repressed, fantasized, and evaded in these accounts is nothing other than Renaissance humanism itself. Reducing Renaissance humanism to a handful of icons and caricatures risks diminishing its potential theoretical purchase on the past, in addition to the present and future. Renaissance Posthumanism, too, reconsiders traditional languages of humanism and the human but it does so not by nostalgically enshrining or triumphantly superseding humanism’s past but rather by revisiting and interrogating them. Seeking those patterns of thought and practice that allow us to reach beyond the pre- and post- of recent thought, the contributors to this collection focus on moments where Renaissance humanism seems to depart and differ from itself.
Euan Cameron
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199594795
- eISBN:
- 9780191741494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594795.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity, Religion and Literature
In Continental Protestantism, the history of the Church acquired vital explanatory importance for the theological justification of the movement. Protestant thought argued that for 1,000 years before ...
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In Continental Protestantism, the history of the Church acquired vital explanatory importance for the theological justification of the movement. Protestant thought argued that for 1,000 years before the Reformation the Catholic Church had erred more and more seriously from correct belief and practice. However, the first experiments in writing ecclesiastical history were heavily influenced by northern Renaissance humanism. A tension developed between human, pragmatic explanations for religious behaviour and doctrinal or apocalyptic explanations of Church history. This chapter analyses that tension through the writings of humanist-educated Protestant historians such as Joachim Vadian, Heinrich Bullinger, Philipp Melanchthon, and Caspar Peucer. Over the sixteenth century, humanist influence dissipated, as even Renaissance-trained scholars adopted dogmatic arguments; however, it did not entirely disappear. The chapter concludes by comparing humanist-inspired Church histories with doctrinally based histories written within Lutheran orthodoxy, such as the Magdeburg Centuries and the Epitome of Lucas Osiander the Elder.Less
In Continental Protestantism, the history of the Church acquired vital explanatory importance for the theological justification of the movement. Protestant thought argued that for 1,000 years before the Reformation the Catholic Church had erred more and more seriously from correct belief and practice. However, the first experiments in writing ecclesiastical history were heavily influenced by northern Renaissance humanism. A tension developed between human, pragmatic explanations for religious behaviour and doctrinal or apocalyptic explanations of Church history. This chapter analyses that tension through the writings of humanist-educated Protestant historians such as Joachim Vadian, Heinrich Bullinger, Philipp Melanchthon, and Caspar Peucer. Over the sixteenth century, humanist influence dissipated, as even Renaissance-trained scholars adopted dogmatic arguments; however, it did not entirely disappear. The chapter concludes by comparing humanist-inspired Church histories with doctrinally based histories written within Lutheran orthodoxy, such as the Magdeburg Centuries and the Epitome of Lucas Osiander the Elder.
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199765935
- eISBN:
- 9780199895168
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765935.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his ...
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This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his thought in contrasting ways. This flexible reception raises fundamental questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. It can also illuminate the relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism, with its famous claim to return to the classical sources. Based on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, this study seeks to break new ground on three levels. It systematically grounds the reception of ideas in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. Second, it is not restricted to particular confessional parties or geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Third, on a conceptual level, this book contributes to a more advanced understanding of the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period. The book is organized around the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. It studies the impact of print, humanist scholarship and confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. It examines how editors managed patristic knowledge through search tools and anthologies. It illuminates how individual readers used their copies, and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. All this shows that the emerging confessional pressures did not just restrict, but also promote intellectual life. It furthermore reveals that humanism, despite its claim to return to the sources, continued to facilitate selective, purposeful reading styles.Less
This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his thought in contrasting ways. This flexible reception raises fundamental questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. It can also illuminate the relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism, with its famous claim to return to the classical sources. Based on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, this study seeks to break new ground on three levels. It systematically grounds the reception of ideas in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. Second, it is not restricted to particular confessional parties or geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Third, on a conceptual level, this book contributes to a more advanced understanding of the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period. The book is organized around the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. It studies the impact of print, humanist scholarship and confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. It examines how editors managed patristic knowledge through search tools and anthologies. It illuminates how individual readers used their copies, and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. All this shows that the emerging confessional pressures did not just restrict, but also promote intellectual life. It furthermore reveals that humanism, despite its claim to return to the sources, continued to facilitate selective, purposeful reading styles.
David H. Price
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195394214
- eISBN:
- 9780199894734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394214.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Not the study of antiquity in isolation but the ideal of a seamless unity of classicism and Christianity is what made Johannes Reuchlin's humanist perspective compelling to the scholars and students ...
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Not the study of antiquity in isolation but the ideal of a seamless unity of classicism and Christianity is what made Johannes Reuchlin's humanist perspective compelling to the scholars and students of his time. Although well-known as the founder of Christian Hebrew studies, Reuchlin also emerges as a harbinger of the recovery of Greek language, literature, early Christian writings, and biblical philology. This chapter defines Renaissance humanism (the studia humanitatis) and traces Reuchlin's contributions to the movement, in particular, to the evolution of Christian humanism. His contributions to early printing and the career of Philipp Melanchthon are also assessed.Less
Not the study of antiquity in isolation but the ideal of a seamless unity of classicism and Christianity is what made Johannes Reuchlin's humanist perspective compelling to the scholars and students of his time. Although well-known as the founder of Christian Hebrew studies, Reuchlin also emerges as a harbinger of the recovery of Greek language, literature, early Christian writings, and biblical philology. This chapter defines Renaissance humanism (the studia humanitatis) and traces Reuchlin's contributions to the movement, in particular, to the evolution of Christian humanism. His contributions to early printing and the career of Philipp Melanchthon are also assessed.
Arnoud Visser
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266601
- eISBN:
- 9780191896057
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266601.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
The edition of Augustine’s City of God by the Spanish-born humanist Juan Luis Vives (first published in 1522) is one of most successful pieces of patristic scholarship of the sixteenth century. ...
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The edition of Augustine’s City of God by the Spanish-born humanist Juan Luis Vives (first published in 1522) is one of most successful pieces of patristic scholarship of the sixteenth century. Produced just before the explosive escalation of the Reformation, it remained the key version of the text for over a hundred years. This article analyses the presentation of patristic knowledge in Vives’ commentary to explore how the confessional conflicts affected patristic scholarship. It argues that Vives’ work survived the confessional pressures relatively unscathed because it made Augustine’s work manageable and accessible across confessional parties. In doing so it seeks to highlight the importance of confessional silence in the Republic of Letters as a strategy to confront the pressures of confessionalisation.Less
The edition of Augustine’s City of God by the Spanish-born humanist Juan Luis Vives (first published in 1522) is one of most successful pieces of patristic scholarship of the sixteenth century. Produced just before the explosive escalation of the Reformation, it remained the key version of the text for over a hundred years. This article analyses the presentation of patristic knowledge in Vives’ commentary to explore how the confessional conflicts affected patristic scholarship. It argues that Vives’ work survived the confessional pressures relatively unscathed because it made Augustine’s work manageable and accessible across confessional parties. In doing so it seeks to highlight the importance of confessional silence in the Republic of Letters as a strategy to confront the pressures of confessionalisation.
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199765935
- eISBN:
- 9780199895168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765935.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main ...
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This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main arguments in the context of recent research in the fields of Reformation history (including the confessionalization paradigm, the concept of Augustinianism and recent studies of the reception of the Church fathers), Renaissance Humanism, and the history of reading.Less
This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main arguments in the context of recent research in the fields of Reformation history (including the confessionalization paradigm, the concept of Augustinianism and recent studies of the reception of the Church fathers), Renaissance Humanism, and the history of reading.
Brian Cummings
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187356
- eISBN:
- 9780191674709
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187356.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in ...
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This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and Protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and, in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing that are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), the author offers a re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.Less
This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and Protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and, in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing that are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), the author offers a re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.
Ian Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719088360
- eISBN:
- 9781781706022
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088360.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Inspired both by debates about the origins of the modern ideology of race and also by controversy over the place of Ireland and the Irish in theories of empire in the early modern Atlantic world, ...
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Inspired both by debates about the origins of the modern ideology of race and also by controversy over the place of Ireland and the Irish in theories of empire in the early modern Atlantic world, Renaissance Humanism and Ethnicity before Race argues that ethnic discourse among the elite in early modern Ireland was grounded firmly in the Renaissance Humanism and Aristotelianism which dominated all the European universities before the Enlightenment. Irish and English, Catholic and Protestant, all employed theories of human society based on Aristotle's Politics and the natural law of the medieval universities to construct or dismantle the categories of civility and barbarism. The elites operating in Ireland also shared common resources, taught in the universities, for arguing about the human body and its ability to transmit hereditary characteristics. Both in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, these theories of human society and the human body underwent violent changes in the late seventeenth century under the impact of the early Enlightenment. These changes were vital to the development of race as we know it.Less
Inspired both by debates about the origins of the modern ideology of race and also by controversy over the place of Ireland and the Irish in theories of empire in the early modern Atlantic world, Renaissance Humanism and Ethnicity before Race argues that ethnic discourse among the elite in early modern Ireland was grounded firmly in the Renaissance Humanism and Aristotelianism which dominated all the European universities before the Enlightenment. Irish and English, Catholic and Protestant, all employed theories of human society based on Aristotle's Politics and the natural law of the medieval universities to construct or dismantle the categories of civility and barbarism. The elites operating in Ireland also shared common resources, taught in the universities, for arguing about the human body and its ability to transmit hereditary characteristics. Both in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, these theories of human society and the human body underwent violent changes in the late seventeenth century under the impact of the early Enlightenment. These changes were vital to the development of race as we know it.
Katharina N. Piechocki
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226641188
- eISBN:
- 9780226641218
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226641218.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ...
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What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cartographic Humanism sheds new light on how humanists negotiated and defined Europe’s boundaries at a momentous shift in the continent’s formation: when a new imagining of Europe was driven by the rise of cartography. This tool of geography, philosophy, and philology was used not only to represent but, more importantly, also to shape and promote an image of Europe quite unparalleled in previous centuries. Engaging with poets, historians, and mapmakers, this study resists an easy categorization of the continent, scrutinizing Europe as an unexamined category that demands a much more careful and nuanced investigation than scholars of early modernity have hitherto undertaken. Cartographic Humanism charts new itineraries across Europe from the perspective of comparative literature. It aims for a wide geographic scope, bringing France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal into a lively, interdisciplinary dialogue.Less
What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cartographic Humanism sheds new light on how humanists negotiated and defined Europe’s boundaries at a momentous shift in the continent’s formation: when a new imagining of Europe was driven by the rise of cartography. This tool of geography, philosophy, and philology was used not only to represent but, more importantly, also to shape and promote an image of Europe quite unparalleled in previous centuries. Engaging with poets, historians, and mapmakers, this study resists an easy categorization of the continent, scrutinizing Europe as an unexamined category that demands a much more careful and nuanced investigation than scholars of early modernity have hitherto undertaken. Cartographic Humanism charts new itineraries across Europe from the perspective of comparative literature. It aims for a wide geographic scope, bringing France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal into a lively, interdisciplinary dialogue.
Gerard Passannante
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199794959
- eISBN:
- 9780199949694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794959.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy, European History: BCE to 500CE
Gerard Passannante’s contribution, “Reading for Pleasure: Disaster and Digression in the First Renaissance Commentary on Lucretius,” explores the reception of Epicurean pleasure in ...
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Gerard Passannante’s contribution, “Reading for Pleasure: Disaster and Digression in the First Renaissance Commentary on Lucretius,” explores the reception of Epicurean pleasure in the early sixteenth century in the crucible of loss and melancholy. By carefully following the digressions that repeatedly take us away from the Lucretian text in the first commentary edition of the De Rerum Natura, published by Gianbattista Pio in 1511, Passannante provides an exemplary demonstration of the interaction of philology and affective response, love of text and the bittersweet pleasures of Lucretius’s lessons on disaster. As Passannante declares, these digressions must not be seen as minor asides, but rather as “a crucial entry into the mental world of the poem” as it was taking shape at the birth of humanism.Less
Gerard Passannante’s contribution, “Reading for Pleasure: Disaster and Digression in the First Renaissance Commentary on Lucretius,” explores the reception of Epicurean pleasure in the early sixteenth century in the crucible of loss and melancholy. By carefully following the digressions that repeatedly take us away from the Lucretian text in the first commentary edition of the De Rerum Natura, published by Gianbattista Pio in 1511, Passannante provides an exemplary demonstration of the interaction of philology and affective response, love of text and the bittersweet pleasures of Lucretius’s lessons on disaster. As Passannante declares, these digressions must not be seen as minor asides, but rather as “a crucial entry into the mental world of the poem” as it was taking shape at the birth of humanism.
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199765935
- eISBN:
- 9780199895168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765935.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Proceeding from two skeptical assessments of Augustine's authority in the Reformation by the Enlightenment philosophes Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, this epilogue explores the implications of ...
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Proceeding from two skeptical assessments of Augustine's authority in the Reformation by the Enlightenment philosophes Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, this epilogue explores the implications of Augustine's varied reception in the sixteenth century for the history of ideas. It concludes, first, that the rise of confessional divisions did not merely repress intellectual activities, but also promoted new scholarship. Second, and related, it reconsiders the impact of Renaissance humanism on individual reading practices. In contrast to the movement's claim to return to the sources, humanist scholarship and education continued to serve contemporary needs. Individual readers used humanist techniques to read the same ancient sources in strikingly different ways.Less
Proceeding from two skeptical assessments of Augustine's authority in the Reformation by the Enlightenment philosophes Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, this epilogue explores the implications of Augustine's varied reception in the sixteenth century for the history of ideas. It concludes, first, that the rise of confessional divisions did not merely repress intellectual activities, but also promoted new scholarship. Second, and related, it reconsiders the impact of Renaissance humanism on individual reading practices. In contrast to the movement's claim to return to the sources, humanist scholarship and education continued to serve contemporary needs. Individual readers used humanist techniques to read the same ancient sources in strikingly different ways.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198778783
- eISBN:
- 9780191823961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198778783.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter delineates Calvin’s Christian humanism for those who are perplexed by this label for Calvin, because they either equate humanism with secular humanism, or they cannot fathom how this ...
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This chapter delineates Calvin’s Christian humanism for those who are perplexed by this label for Calvin, because they either equate humanism with secular humanism, or they cannot fathom how this austere, moralistic authoritarian who consented to the execution of Servetus could be a humanist. It outlines three categories under which Calvin’s thought proves humanistic, namely Renaissance humanism, social humanism, and anthropological humanism. The chapter concludes by pointing out implications from Calvin’s humanism for scholarship and for education. Calvin’s humanism seeks to cultivate in scholars and students Christian devotion, in Calvin’s extraordinarily expansive understanding of Christian devotion. It will cultivate in students awe, gratitude, delight, grief, the recognition of solidarity, and commitment to social justice. Christian humanism, in short, pursues education for the sake of shalom, and what Calvin calls devotion—in Latin, pietas—is the same thing, seen from a slightly different angle.Less
This chapter delineates Calvin’s Christian humanism for those who are perplexed by this label for Calvin, because they either equate humanism with secular humanism, or they cannot fathom how this austere, moralistic authoritarian who consented to the execution of Servetus could be a humanist. It outlines three categories under which Calvin’s thought proves humanistic, namely Renaissance humanism, social humanism, and anthropological humanism. The chapter concludes by pointing out implications from Calvin’s humanism for scholarship and for education. Calvin’s humanism seeks to cultivate in scholars and students Christian devotion, in Calvin’s extraordinarily expansive understanding of Christian devotion. It will cultivate in students awe, gratitude, delight, grief, the recognition of solidarity, and commitment to social justice. Christian humanism, in short, pursues education for the sake of shalom, and what Calvin calls devotion—in Latin, pietas—is the same thing, seen from a slightly different angle.
Salvador Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199594795
- eISBN:
- 9780191741494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594795.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity, Religion and Literature
This chapter examines the efforts made by Irish Catholic writers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reconstruct the history of the Irish Christian past. This was undertaken both to ...
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This chapter examines the efforts made by Irish Catholic writers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reconstruct the history of the Irish Christian past. This was undertaken both to counteract the claims of some reformers that early Irish Christianity was proto-Protestant in character and also to construct a workable Irish Catholic identity for the seventeenth century that would incorporate the historical narratives of both Old English and Gaelic Irish communities who now sought common cause against increasing waves of mostly Protestant settlers. In charting their way through a changing political and cultural landscape, Irish Catholic writers, both at home and on the Continent, would attempt to bring to bear on their polemical works the standards of Renaissance humanist scholarship to forge such an identity. In doing so, they also fully participated in the renewal of ecclesiastical history that was a feature of Reformation Europe.Less
This chapter examines the efforts made by Irish Catholic writers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reconstruct the history of the Irish Christian past. This was undertaken both to counteract the claims of some reformers that early Irish Christianity was proto-Protestant in character and also to construct a workable Irish Catholic identity for the seventeenth century that would incorporate the historical narratives of both Old English and Gaelic Irish communities who now sought common cause against increasing waves of mostly Protestant settlers. In charting their way through a changing political and cultural landscape, Irish Catholic writers, both at home and on the Continent, would attempt to bring to bear on their polemical works the standards of Renaissance humanist scholarship to forge such an identity. In doing so, they also fully participated in the renewal of ecclesiastical history that was a feature of Reformation Europe.
Theodore G. Van Raalte
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190882181
- eISBN:
- 9780190882211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190882181.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology, Religion and Literature
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship regarding humanism and scholastic method in the early-modern period, then focuses on developments in scholastic method in the Swiss ...
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This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship regarding humanism and scholastic method in the early-modern period, then focuses on developments in scholastic method in the Swiss cantons, particularly between c. 1530 and c. 1590. The place of Aristotle’s works and the role of disputations receive detailed treatment. From the classical period onward, writers had several ways of distinguishing the expansive and persuasive rhetorical style from the tightly argued method of the schools and academies. Chandieu promoted this distinction, with his own approach being but one example of many in which the humanist concern for the original sources fit seamlessly within the scholastic method in use in the academies and universities.Less
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship regarding humanism and scholastic method in the early-modern period, then focuses on developments in scholastic method in the Swiss cantons, particularly between c. 1530 and c. 1590. The place of Aristotle’s works and the role of disputations receive detailed treatment. From the classical period onward, writers had several ways of distinguishing the expansive and persuasive rhetorical style from the tightly argued method of the schools and academies. Chandieu promoted this distinction, with his own approach being but one example of many in which the humanist concern for the original sources fit seamlessly within the scholastic method in use in the academies and universities.
Susan Longfield Karr
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474408851
- eISBN:
- 9781474418522
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408851.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
Departing from narratives that dominate the history of political and legal thought, this chapter argues that it is necessary to reassess the contribution of legal humanism to the history and ...
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Departing from narratives that dominate the history of political and legal thought, this chapter argues that it is necessary to reassess the contribution of legal humanism to the history and development of the western traditions of natural law, natural rights, and the law of nations (ius gentium). In particular, it explores Ulrich Zasius’ fundamental departure from traditional (scholastic and Roman) jurisprudence in the early 16th century. Addressing local problems of authority, Zasius reinterpreted ius gentium as a form of natural law, and, by extension, the source of natural and universal rights and obligations that exist prior to—and transcend—civil society. Rights and obligations derived from ius gentium not only provide civil laws and authorities with their moral and historical authority, they demarcate the limits of power within and between societies. As such, Zasius effectively transformed ius gentium from a mere category of law into a criterion of justiceLess
Departing from narratives that dominate the history of political and legal thought, this chapter argues that it is necessary to reassess the contribution of legal humanism to the history and development of the western traditions of natural law, natural rights, and the law of nations (ius gentium). In particular, it explores Ulrich Zasius’ fundamental departure from traditional (scholastic and Roman) jurisprudence in the early 16th century. Addressing local problems of authority, Zasius reinterpreted ius gentium as a form of natural law, and, by extension, the source of natural and universal rights and obligations that exist prior to—and transcend—civil society. Rights and obligations derived from ius gentium not only provide civil laws and authorities with their moral and historical authority, they demarcate the limits of power within and between societies. As such, Zasius effectively transformed ius gentium from a mere category of law into a criterion of justice
