The R/renaissance(s), Humanists And Classics by Jerome Moran

huius enim scientiae cura et disciplina ex teacher was known in Italian in the ‘Renaissance’ is a French word for an universis animantibus uni homini data Renaissance as a umanista (hence originally Italian phenomenon. It may est idcircoque humanitas appellata est. ‘Humanist’). The Humanists were have been used in the sense of a historical extremely important educational, and cultural epoch for the first time by (For the attention to this knowledge literary and cultural figures, and they Jules Michelet in 1855 (though he applied and training in it has been given to a were prime movers of the Renaissance. it to a period of French history, not human alone out of all living beings Humanism was a defining feature of Italian). B L Ullman, Italian Studies in the and on that account it has been the movement. I shall return to Renaissance (1973) pp. 24 onwards, called humanitas) Humanism and the Humanists later. discusses the history of the words used to What is less well known is that in describe the phenomenon. He says that Gellius, Noctes Atticae 13.17 [my clumsy the Middle Ages there had already been ‘no single word found general acceptance formatting, of course, and plodding two movements and periods in the West … to describe the phenomenon’ and that translation] each of which it is now customary to ‘The idea of rebirth came into use very First, where does the Renaissance fit call a Renaissance (or renaissance). slowly’. The Latin word for rebirth renasci in chronologically with other periods of These were the period 750 to 900, is used by Nicolas de Clamanges soon the past? There is general agreement that known as the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ after Petrarch’s death in 1374. From 1518 the Renaissance should be dated from after Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus), Melanchthon uses litterae renascentes 1300 to 1650, though some believe that a and the period 1050 to 1200 (‘the long frequently, and others used litterae renatae. more accurate and meaningful starting twelfth century’), the age of the early/ The metaphor of rebirth caught on more date would be 1400/1450. The Middle first Humanists, known as the ‘Twelfth widely with Vasari’s use of the Italian Ages is generally taken to be the period Century Renaissance’. Some refer to word rinascita for the fine arts in 1550, 500 to 1500 (a considerable overlap with each of these two periods as a ‘mini- some 250 years after the beginnings of the Renaissance then), though some Renaissance’ (hence the lower case ‘r’ the Renaissance, and about 100 years would date the start to the Arab conquests above). As many as five Byzantine (mini) before its end. beginning about 640. A period of the renaissances have been identified, two The idea of a rebirth suggests future Middle Ages is traditionally known as the of them (800–1000 and 1260–1453) growth and development, to maturity and ‘Dark Age(s)’. Those who believe that the more important than the other three. beyond. And can one read anything into term is still appropriate (many reject it (This sounds impressive until you realise the choice of tenses used for the Latin because of its negative connotations) date that if it is true then there must have verb? The present tense (still being used this from 500/600 to 800, though some been five slumps or periods of decline in 1518) suggests something that has not extend it to 1000. (See later for the origins too. The Byzantine Empire did in fact even been born but is in the process of of the terms ‘Renaissance’, ‘Middle Ages’ have a very chequered history.) And of being born. The past tense gives no and ‘Dark Age(s)’.) course Byzantine learning and culture, indication of the stage of growth or Every Classics teacher knows how and the conservation of literary texts development reached. The metaphor of a important the Renaissance and the from classical antiquity (though many living thing is suggestive in itself. The Renaissance Humanists were for the failed to be conserved), had a great Renaissance is not seen as a thing that has history and development of their influence on the Renaissance in the been created, whole and complete. subject. In fact, what we call a Classics West, both before and after 1453. Instead it is still to emerge or still to reach

The Journal of Classics Teaching 19 (38) p.96-98 © The Classical Association 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of Downloaded96 from https://www.cambridge.org/corethe Creative Commons Attribution. IP address: licence 170.106.33.42 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),, on 25 Sep 2021 at 03:10:29, subject to the Cambridge which permits Core termsunrestricted of use, available re-use, atdistribution, and https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsreproduction in .any https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631018000259 medium, provided the original work is properly cited its consummation. Either way it is a work achievements, some of which influenced innovation in other areas too) is almost in progress. the culture of the Renaissance. If there synonymous with the development of The words renaissance (French), was a ‘Dark Ages’ it was 500/600–800 Humanism. As far as we can tell, the word renasci, renascentes, renatae (Latin) and and due to the upheaval caused by the ‘humanism’, in its German form rinascita (Italian) all mean ‘rebirth’ and collapse of the Roman Empire. The new humanismus, was first used in 1808 by the denote the supposed rebirth of classical conditions were generally not favourable German educationist F I Niethammer. He antiquity. ‘Rebirth’ is a metaphor, of to cultural, i.e. ‘high culture’, activity.1 And used it (a translation of the Latin word course, and not altogether an apt one of course, as we have seen, the Middle humanitas) to mean a Classical education, when applied to classical antiquity, in spite Ages contained two renaissances. It has as his source Gellius had: see below). As I of what was said above, since the same even been said that every century from 800 have said, a person who was in effect a thing (as opposed to the same kind of onwards (five centuries from the end of teacher of Classics (a Renaissance thing, here a culture) cannot be born the Dark Ages to the start of the Humanist) was known in Italian as a twice — and is a culture something that is Renaissance) could lay claim to have been umanista. Clearly there was once a born, even once? If one is to stick with the a renaissance. Classical antiquity and the connection, still being made in the 19th metaphor, it is better to think of the birth Renaissance did not have a monopoly of Century, between Classics and and rebirth of culture rather than of the cultural activity and achievement, as the Humanism, as the latter was then culture of classical antiquity. The birth of historian Charles Haskins insisted, one of understood. Nobody today would make the Renaissance is not the rebirth of a the first to draw attention to the such a connection: we don’t think of previous culture but rather of culture achievements of the period 1050–1200 Classics when we think of Humanism. again after the culture-free Middle Ages in his provocatively titled book The But maybe some people in Scotland still (as Petrarch saw it). Of course the idea Renaissance Of The Twelfth Century. do, where Latin is/was known as that classical antiquity was the birth of 1300 conventionally marks the start ‘Humanity’; and an Oxford Classics culture, i.e. ‘high culture’, is questionable, of the period of Latin known as ‘Neo- course is known as Literae Humaniores. however attractive it may appear, Latin’, a return to the use of a form of And Classics of course in some places is especially to us Classicists, possibly with Classical Latin as against contemporary now just one, no longer the whole of, what Eurocentric myopia. Petrarch, learned Medieval Latin (both of them varieties of is termed the ‘Humanities’. though he was, knew little enough of standard Latin, of course).2 This can be All these terms have their origin in classical antiquity as a whole, and even seen as a linguistic renaissance of a piece the Classical world, specifically in second less of cultures before it — or after it. with the main cultural Renaissance and century CE Latin. Aulus Gellius at Noctes The Renaissance then was the inspired by the same motives. A return to Atticae 13.17 introduces the term ‘rebirth’ of culture or the ‘birth’ of a new ‘proper’ Classical Latin was regarded by humanitas. He quickly makes a connection culture (chiefly art, literature, learning), the Humanists in particular as central to between this and education by equating it beginning in Italy in the 14th Century and the Renaissance movement, though there with the Greek word paideia, which he says still within the period of the Middle Ages was some disagreement among them on is the equivalent of the Roman eruditionem (the idea of the ‘Middle’ Ages is owed to just how far the return should go. institutionemque in bonas artes (‘learning and Petrarch (1304–1374) : see below). The Contemporary Medieval Latin was for training in the good [i.e. liberal] arts’). He birth of culture was thought from them tainted with the same degeneracy as maintains that this was the meaning it had Petrarch onwards to have been in classical the Middle Ages generally, a time of for earlier writers, in particular Varro and antiquity. The culture of the Renaissance darkness, inactivity and ignorance, as Cicero, which omnes ferme libri declarant. was based on, inspired by, derivative of Petrarch described it. Scholars already had Humanitas for Gellius does not mean that of classical antiquity. Very broadly access to manuscripts containing Classical humanity, humaneness, human nature or speaking, the earlier part of the Latin and so were aware of the extent to the human condition, or any of the things Renaissance mostly imitated aspects of which contemporary standard Latin had that are subsumed under the modern the culture of classical antiquity, based on strayed from the standards of Classical notion of Humanism. It means first and the discovery (curiously called Latin. The spate of discoveries of more foremost what is distinctive of, peculiar ‘rediscovery’ usually — when was the manuscripts. served to confirm this. The to, human beings (see the quotation at the ‘discovery’?) of the physical remains, Carolingian Renaissance had earlier beginning of the article). Gellius sees this including written remains, of ancient instituted a return to the teaching of as the ability to learn, especially to learn Greece and Rome that had been largely Classical Latin, but many centuries had what is most worth learning and what is unknown to Western Europe during the passed since then. So important was the most becoming of a human being to Dark Ages and earlier part of the Middle Humanists’ campaign for a return to learn. Humanitas therefore is equated with Ages. Later it became more creative and Classical Latin that it is safe to say that we learning and the objects of learning, and less imitative. Very broadly speaking. would not be teaching it to our this is the meaning it had for the Taking its lead from its founder students now had it not been for them. Renaissance Humanists. In Renaissance Petrarch, the Renaissance was largely So the campaign was successful, but it was parlance, humanitas is what the umanista ignorant of and unfairly ignored or not an overnight success as Medieval learns and helps others to learn, which is disparaged the Middle Ages as an age of Latin continued to be used alongside essentially knowledge of classical culture. In fact, especially from 800 in Neo-Latin until at least 1500. antiquity. Humanism is therefore Christian Europe and Moslem Spain, it As I have suggested, the Renaissance essentially a Classical education, which is could boast of many cultural as a term of high culture (it was an age of what Neithammer said it was centuries

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42The R/renaissance(s),, on 25 Sep 2021 at Humanists 03:10:29, subject And Classics to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at 97 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631018000259 later. Humanitas for the Renaissance founding father of the Renaissance, was a saeculum obscurum was not used by Petrarch Humanists comprised the ‘classically devout Christian who saw the new but was coined by the 16th Century church grounded verbal arts’ (Celenza) of movement as an instrument for historian Baronius to denote the period grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and strengthening Christianity, not subverting between the two mini-renaissances in the moral philosophy, collectively known as it. But artistic, literary and scholarly west, i.e. 900–1050. Most of those who studia humanitatis (the ‘Humanities’), more activity generally was increasingly more still use the term apply it to the period colloquially referred to among the concerned with documenting and before 800 only, the start of the mini- Humanists as haec nostra studia. examining human experience and the Renaissance of the ‘Carolingian Revival’; The differences between the human condition than with the some extend it to about 1000. Renaissance and classical antiquity (and unquestioning acceptance of the neither of them was a monoculture, of authoritarian tenets of religion. Jerome Moran (a retired umanista, course, both embracing several countries I have already explained the origin of but a practising Humanist) and each lasting for hundreds of years) the word ‘Renaissance’ and some of its [email protected] were much greater than the similarities. earlier cognates. The term ‘Middle Ages’ The main difference was Christianity, is generally used in the west, of the west which informed the Renaissance much only, and of Europe only or mainly. The more deeply and widely than it did term derives from the Latin expression 1Interestingly, there was a Byzantine dark age classical antiquity and was at odds with medium tempus used by Petrarch to denote that extended over roughly the same period pagan antiquity in a number of ways. the period between the end of the Roman and was marked by the phenomenon of Christianity came late to antiquity, Empire and his own day, so about ‘Iconoclasm’. Like the dark age in the West it especially as a widespread phenomenon, 500–1300 (‘middle’ between the worlds was succeeded by a renaissance, the and played little part in the cultural life of of ancient Greece and Rome and their ‘Macedonian’ renaissance. the empire before late antiquity i.e. before ‘rebirth’ at the start of the Renaissance). 2If that is what Alcuin achieved. Some think c. 300 CE. But most people now extend it to 1500 to that it was (just another form of) Medieval The Renaissance(s) was a selective, cover most of the period of the Latin, even further removed from not a wholesale, attempt to create a Renaissance (‘middle’ between the ancient contemporary, everyday spoken Latin than culture like that of classical antiquity, and modern worlds), and some date it what it was intended to replace, as one might since many of the features of the original, from the Arab conquests and rise of expect in fact. Alcuin was familiar with especially of art and literature, if not Islam from about 640, which marked the Classical Latin and the debased version of it that he sought to reform. However, the paganism as such, were incompatible with most decisive end of the Roman Empire vernacular for him, i.e. the language that was the tenets of Christianity, as some had in the west. spoken by most of the people most of the always been. Classical antiquity was more The first part of the Middle Ages time, coming from Britain, was Anglo-Saxon, of a guiding principle than a template. (500/600–800) is still referred to by many not everyday contemporary spoken Latin, The Renaissance was not as secular a as the ‘Dark Age(s)’, after an image called which was already very different from the movement as it is often claimed to have up by Petrarch, who applied it existing Medieval Latin of the day. The been; certainly there were few, if any, indiscriminately to the whole of the Middle difference between the Latin vernacular and either the contemporary standard Latin or the atheists or agnostics or Humanists in the Ages: 800 years unillumined by cultural Latin he sought to replace it with would have modern sense, any more than there had achievement and unilluminated by been less apparent to him — not that he would been in classical antiquity. Petrarch, the historical enquiry. The actual term in Latin have cared much, one supposes.

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