04 Origins of the Humanist Movement
Vincenzo Foppa, Young Cicero reading (1468)
Main goals today:
- origins: city culture of Italy
- basic goals, social contexts of movement
- Petrarch as first famous representative
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
Exx: Brunetto Latini, Dante’s teacher (d. 1294)
Latini
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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
Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen in 1357 autograph (Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 3358 fol. 49 recto)
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
humanist culture after 1400
collecting, editing manuscripts
Greek
public arena
schoolteachers
group of learned people outside universities
–first big center: Florence