Humanism

The term humanism derives from the expression "Studia Humanitas" (studies relating to humanity), which in classical antiquity designated an education aimed at the overall formation of the individual through literary and philosophical studies. Humanism came to life culturally in Italy in the last years of the 14th century and developed in Europe in the 15th century. The characteristic element of this cultural movement was the rediscovery of the culture of classical Greek-Roman antiquity. With humanism, there is the rediscovery of Latin and Greek texts and the values of the classical world. The concrete philological work awakens a particular critical spirit and reappraises the importance of man (repressed during the Middle Ages) in his active life in the world in contrast to a mainly contemplative vision of the divine and the supernatural (Middle Ages).

The element that had favoured the birth and development of Humanism in Italy was mainly that in the cities of central-northern Italy (in particular Florence) there was an economic and cultural vitality, with the presence of numerous libraries, monasteries and universities with ancient texts inside. In these cities, the cultural interest increased and the legal training of many intellectuals, based on the study of Roman law, had made the ancient world familiar. It was Petrarch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch) who gave a decisive impulse to humanistic studies, both with his works in Latin and with his activity as a discoverer of lost classical works. Giovanni Boccaccio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio) had also made a decisive contribution by introducing the study of Greek in Florence and contributed to the formation of a generation of young Tuscan intellectuals.

The first important personality in the humanistic sense was that of Coluccio Salutati (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coluccio_Salutati), Chancellor of Florence for more than 30 years and tenacious supporter of the high civil value of classical culture. Coluccio Salutati was a man of letters, poet, politician and diplomat of European fame. He composed various treatises including De tyranny (1400), where he exalted the civil commitment against asceticism. The greatest humanist exponents were: Leonardo Bruni who in Dante and Petrarch recognised the importance of the vernacular and the validity of its literary use; Poggio Bracciolini (The Facezie exalt the new humanistic civilisation by placing the skill, culture and commitment of civilised man at the "moral centre" of their narratives); Vittorino da Feltre was the model of the humanist teacher par excellence: a humanistic pedagogic of which there are countless portraits written by various humanists of the time; Leon Battista Alberti, was a great architect, a man of letters, mathematician and theorist of the visual arts; According to Alberti, he considered man, at the centre of the universe. A man who had to build himself through direct experience, ingenuity and the reworking of knowledge; Lorenzo Valla demonstrated the falsity of the Donation of Constantine, that is a document with which the Church of Rome justified its temporal power, and Enea Silvio Piccolomini (great patron father with the name of Pius II). Two characters who are emblematic of our Humanism both for literary taste and philological research have been: Marsilio Ficino, who reinserted the great line of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought in the Cristina tradition and Pico Della Mirandola claimed the dignity of man, made by God, the creator of his destiny and superior to the angels themselves.

By Kork75