Humanism

1
The Age of Humanism Petrarchs Role

• Jess Sautter

2
Beginnings of Humanism

• Early Humanism formed in a culture spiritually
  determined by mendicant friars (Dominicans and
  Franciscans)
• Voluntary poverty was the center of true
  Christian conduct

3

• In the fourteenth century, scholarship shifted
  from the hands of the Church to the hands of
  laymen such as lawyers and doctors.
• These men revived the classical studies of Greece
  and Rome
• Instead of focusing exclusively on God and
  religion, they were more interested in human
  aspects such as culture, society, and values.

4
Principles of Humanism

• Salutati
• Man is responsible for his good or bad deeds
• God does not control a mans will or morality
• It is better to benefit others by living an
  active public life than to live as a monk, which
  does not benefit anyone other than the monk

5
Principles of Humanism

• Bruni
• Medieval values of piety, humility, and poverty
  not important
• Attitudes about wealth, credit finances, and
  usury modified
• Pagan elements introduced into Christian culture

6

• Emphasized the dignity and worth of the
  individual
• People are rational beings who possess within
  themselves the capacity for truth and goodness
• Emphasized the value of the Greek and Latin
  classics for their own sake, rather than for
  their relevance to Christianity
• Collection and translation of classical
  manuscripts
• Inspired by Plato (Aristotle inspired medieval
  scholarship)
• Centered around education
• Attempted to develop the character and
  intelligence of pupils by a general literary
  study of the ancient classics

7

• Interested in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history,
  and ethics as an alternative to the Scholastic
  curriculum which laid emphasis on logic, natural
  philosophy (science), medicine, law, and theology
• Humanism was mostly a new educational discipline,
  not a philosophy of life
• To write well and speak effectively, it is
  necessary to closely study and to imitate the
  ancient classics
• Created a new mental outlook by establishing that
  the study of ancient literature and the writing
  of new works based on this inspiration
  contributes directly to the dignity, usefulness,
  and happiness of human beings

8

• Stimulated critical attitudes and freed minds
  from the old systems
• Lessened the ecclesiastical monopoly of learning
  and challenged philosophy to deal with practical
  subjects such as ethics
• Revived ancient literary forms such as the
  dialogue, essay, familiar letter, comedy,
  tragedy, ode, and the literary treatment of
  history, biography, moral philosophy, and
  political theory
• Ideal life is dedicated to scholarship
• Values of the Civis Romanus influenced and
  nurtured the idea of ceaseless activity of the
  mind

9

• New solutions to all political, social, artistic,
  and ethical problems could be found in the
  classics
• Humanism sought for polish and elegance of
  diction, ease and wit in expression, and, at the
  same time, they wished to avoid involved
  argument, subtle distinctions, and all obscure
  terminology
• Restored the whole surviving heritage of Greek
  and Latin literature, edited all of it, and,
  later, brought out printed editions of the whole
• Introduced the idea of a lay morality which laid
  stress on ethical conduct as an end in itself.
• Increased the sense of the dignity of man and
  emphasized what man can do for himself

10
Factions of Humanism

• StoicRely on the power of reason alone to
  achieve contentment
• Neither material goods nor misfortune should have
  any meaning
• Stoicism in a Christian framework was popular in
  intellectual circles as a remedy for the affluent
  and commercialized age
• Life of poverty is necessary for a wise mans
  independence of mind
• Every step from poverty to wealth was bound to
  increase human desire, greed, passion, unrest,
  and misery
• Christian-Neoplatonist
• Aristotelian-Epicurean

11
Francesco Petrarch

• Born in Arezzo in 1304 after his father was
  banished from Florence
• Began to study law in 1316 because his father
  wanted him to
• His father died in 1326 and Petrarch abandoned
  his legal studies discovered Cicero, Vergil, and
  the Latin classics began his exclusive devotion
  to literature

12

• In 1327 he accepted minor ecclesiastical vows but
  did not accept powerful or prestigious positions
• Traveled through Europe 1327-1336
• Given the title of Poet Laureate in 1340
• Returned permanently to Italy in 1353

13
Two Periods of Petrarchs Life

• Great boldness Influenced solely by ancient
  philosophers
• Ignored his true self because of too many
  distractions (fame, success of Laura sonnets,
  title of Poet Laureate)

• Awareness of the insufficiency of his earlier way
  of life
• Need to identify more closely with contemporary
  ways of thinking introduced during the Christian
  Era

14
The First Modern Intellectual

• Petrarch had a deep understanding of what ancient
  Latin and Greek literature had been in antiquity
• He was very interested in making literature the
  greatest of intellectual activities
• Founded philology, the systematic and scientific
  study of all literary and linguistic phenomena
• Made poetry his sole profession

15
Petrarch and Politics

• He was not involved in politics
• He had a sentimental and intellectual attachment
  to Italy
• He was interested in individual affairs, not in
  political affairs
• He viewed Italy as a centralized unity under Rome
  and, influenced by the history of classical
  times, had ideas of a republic or a universal
  empire
• Petrarch believed that the Vita solitaria was the
  supreme standard for living
• A truly wise man is focused on intellectual and
  spiritual matters, not distracting political
  problems

16
Petrarch and Solitude

• He felt that being alone, in the absence of
  avarice, was the secret to happiness
• He was happiest when he lived by himself in his
  country home
• He never truly integrated into any group or
  society that he joined
• Autonomy and freedom were needed to apply himself
  to his humanistic studies

17
Petrarch and wealth

• Petrarch hated wealth, power, and external honors
• It was not the wealth itself that he hated, but
  the anxiety, toil, and trouble connected with it
• He said he would rather live in bitter, abject
  poverty than be wealthy
• At another time, however, he said that he would
  rather be wealthy because living in poverty is
  only bearable for those who do it in the name of
  Christ
• One should not escape wealth, but one should not
  possess it with an avaricious mind

18
Petrarch as a Humanist

• Belonged to the Stoic faction
• However, he often had warm emotional reactions,
  which are more characteristic of a Christian, not
  Stoic, attitude
• Felt that all of Medieval culture was uniformly
  barbarousclassical-minded scholars and poets
  were needed to lead humanity away from the arid
  Scholastic rationalizing and the cultural
  degradation into which it had been sunk ever
  since the Barbarian Migrations
• Influenced by Horace, Lucan, Statius, Persius,
  Juvenal, Martial, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and Caesar

19

• Petrarch wanted to pull himself out of the
  physical and mental world around him to live
  imaginatively in Roman antiquity
• He loved the classical ways of feeling, thinking,
  and writing
• He admired the polish, elegance, and perfection
  of form of the Classics as opposed to the
  un-Roman Latin of the Middle Ages
• He took words, methods of sentence structure,
  figures of speech, and stories from the Latin
  classics and gave them a new European life
• Petrarch had intellectual autonomy and an
  aesthetic, political, and moral outlook on life

20

• He combined Classical-pagan and
  Christian-Medieval elements into universal
  humanism, which states that sentiments,
  conscience, and self-analysis are a part of every
  human being, not just pagan or Christian

21
Petrarchs Works

• All of his works contain self-analysis,
  meditation, internal dilemmas, and crisis
  concerning moral and cultural values

22
Secret Conflict of My Desires

• Petrarch states he had difficulties while
  attempting to resolve the inner conflicts between
  reason and emotion
• He puts forth the passions which had pushed him
  from one false, petty goal to another
• Struggles to conquer the passions which stem from
  his lower nature

23
Canzoniere

• Manifests the beginning of modern consciousness
• An awareness of the end of the great dogma of
  divine providence which had held much power
  before
• As a result, man realizes his tragic destiny, his
  isolation, and analyzes his continuous sense of
  dissatisfaction and oscillation between opposing
  feelings

24

• Petrarch seeks the absolute, divine, and eternal.
  He experiences anxiety because he cannot cast
  off his worldly concerns, such as fame and glory,
  and therefore cannot achieve spiritual peace
• The surface meaning of the work indicates a story
  of unfulfilled love and the different emotions
  that the lover goes through however, there are
  no concrete facts to point to this interpretation
• Petrarchs love for Laura impedes his search for
  control over and distancing from his human
  aspirations and desires

25

• Conflict between divinity (religion and reason)
  and humanity (desire, passion, enthusiasm, and
  poetic activity)
• Petrarch searches for truth while at the same
  time experiencing conflict between what he is and
  what he should be
• The style of the work is based on classical Latin
  style

26
Letter to Posterity

• Autobiography with moral considerations
• Classical style
• Statements about love really concern literature
• I have always possessed an extreme contempt for
  wealth not that riches are not desirable in
  themselves, but because I hate the anxiety and
  care which are invariably associated with them.
  I certainly do not long to be able to give
  gorgeous banquets. I have, on the contrary, led
  a happier existence with plain living and
  ordinary fare than all the followers of Apicius,
  with their elaborate dainties.

27

• I fled, however, from many of those to whom I
  was greatly attached and such was my innate
  longing for liberty, that I studiously avoided
  those whose very name seemed incompatible with
  the freedom that I loved.
• I possessed a well-balanced rather than a keen
  intellect, one prone to all kinds of good and
  wholesome study, but especially inclined to moral
  philosophy and the art of poetry.

28

• Among the many subjects which interested me, I
  dwelt especially on antiquity, for our own age
  has always repelled me, so that, had it not been
  for the love of those dear to me, I should have
  preferred to have been born in any other period
  than our own. In order to forget my own time, I
  have constantly striven to place myself in spirit
  in other ages, and consequently I am delighted in
  history.
• I gave up the subject law altogether, however,
  so soon as it was no longer necessary to consult
  the wishes of my parents. My reason was that,
  although the dignity of the law, which is
  doubtless very great, and especially the numerous
  references it contains to Roman antiquity, did
  not fail to delight me, I felt it to be
  habitually degraded by those who practise it.

29

• He offered to bestow that honour upon me at
  Naples, and urged me to consent to receive it
  there, but my veneration for Rome prevailed over
  the insistence of even so great a monarch as
  Robert.
• Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in
  my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile
  in great minds? (Augustine)
• Had I been of riper age I should not have
  desired it. The aged love what is practical,
  while impetuous youth longs only for what is
  dazzling. The laurel brought me no increase of
  learning or literary power, as you may well
  imagine, while it destroyed my peace by the
  infinite jealousy it aroused.

30

• I believe that I speak but the strict truth when
  I claim that as there is none among earthly
  delights more noble than literature, so there is
  none so lasting, none gentler, or more fruitful
  there is none which accompanies its possessor
  through the vicissitudes of life at so small a
  cost of effort or anxiety.

31
Petrarchs Contributions to Humanism

• Recognition of the true features of classical
  Latin prose and poetry
• Admiration for Cicero
• Passion for collecting ancient manuscripts
• Perception that the future of classical
  scholarship depended upon the recovery of Greek
  works
• Support for Humanism among the rich and powerful
• Reconciliation between pagan and Christian ways
  of thinking

32
Petrarchs Influence on Humanism

• Petrarch was concerned with individual matters,
  not general problems
• As a consequence, few humanists of the next
  generations were directly influenced by him
• Petrarch did not influence many of his fellow
  humanists, either, because his life was so
  different than theirs (isolationism)
• However, Petrarch is still considered to be the
  father of Humanism because he broke with
  tradition and completely changed the way people
  thought, learned, and lived.