08: Humanist Movement
Raphael, School of Athens
Main goals today:
- origins: city culture of Italy
- basic goals, social contexts of movement
- how do these changes relate to our topic
Roles of ancient authors
- antiquity: Greek and Latin
- loss of Greek in West
- First great period of recovery: 12-13th c
- . Next: Renaissance
Origins and definitions
Phases: in Italy
early 1300-1400; middle 1400-1500; late 1500-1600 ca
15th c picture: who are the humanists
- educational program: studia humanitatis
- Grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy.
Rhetoric or poetics: “method” discipline
Cicero Quintilian
professions: “Man of letters”
- teachers
- secretaries
- editors
- founders of libraries
Writings: styles and genres based on Latin antiquity
notaries/schoolteachers
Literary culture of Europe ca. 1300
Early humanists ca. 1300
- teachers, lawyers, notaries: Padua, other northern cities
- leisure reading, writing of literature
. Languages:
Latin:
- Church business
- university scholarship
Provencal (vernacular)
- courtly literature from north of Alps
Volgare (vernacular)
- business documents
- preaching: Dominicans, Franciscans
Exanples of early figures:
Brunetto Latini, Dante’s teacher (d. 1294)
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School of Giotto, portrait of Dante Alighieri |
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Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Vita Nuova; Commedia
Francesco Petrarca (1304 Arezzo-1374 Arquà)
portrait of Petrarch by Francesco Bonsignori
- Exiled Florentine family; 1312 Avignon for father’s notarial career.
- Montpellier, Bologna
- Avignon; minor orders, household of Giov. Cardinal Colonna til 1337
- Livy
- 1337 first visit to Rome
- 1340 crowned as poet there by King of Naples
- 1345 Discovery of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, Brutus, Quintus. Cicero, Augustine (354-430)
Petrarch’s house in Arquà
Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406)
- notary. Friend of Petrarch
- chancellor of Lucca, then of Florence 1375-1406
- war against Visconti in Milan
- teacher of Greek, Manuel Chrysoloras, 1397-1400
- collecting, copying mss
Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459)
- Florence to study notarial arts (age 16-17)
- In Florence: Salutati
- apostolic secretary (papal service) anti-pope John XXIII
- Handwriting reform
humanist culture after 1400
- collecting, editing manuscripts
- Greek
- public arena
- schoolteachers
- group of learned people outside universities
- –first big center: Florence
Intersections with food and foodways
- to ca 1450: personal and social
- after ca 1450: “new” ancient texts
- medical
- plants and materia medica
- farming and estate management
