Download Lecture 6 Renaissance: Humanism

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
•
•
•
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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
countries
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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
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“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) copyright P C Lo
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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
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•
•
•
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)
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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
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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
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Constantinople. copyright P C Lo
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)