‘humanism’

‘humanism’ is the term conventionally used to describe a set of moral and literary values and techniques chiefly associated with the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th cents. It embraced enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics in their purest, most original forms; preference for rhetoric over logic as the means to persuade; the belief that good literary education would produce better people; and optimism about mankind's dignity and worth. However, this value-system was neither watertight nor exclusive: ‘humanists’ varied in their attachment to any of these elements, and often combined them with traditional learning.

Renaissance ‘humanism’ originated in Italy: even the word ‘humanist’ in this sense was derived from the Italian for a teacher of grammar. It was through literary and church contacts with Italy that humanism spread to England in the first half of the 15th cent. At first, some English patrons employed Italian secretaries and scribes to prepare for them manuscripts of ancient and more recent texts in the round, open, clear characters favoured by Renaissance book-collectors. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (1390–1447), youngest brother of Henry V, employed such writers as Tito Livio Frulovisi, Antonio Beccaria, Lionardo Bruni, and Pier Candido Decembrio to prepare texts for him. John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester (d. 1470), collected books in Italy and patronized English scholars working there. The majority of the early English enthusiasts for humanism, however, were not noblemen but academics and churchmen, especially royal representatives at the papal curia such as George Neville, bishop of Exeter, or James Goldwell, bishop of Norwich.

By c.1500 the teaching of rhetoric, poetry, and those classical writers neglected in the Middle Ages had become appreciated at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. Humanist propaganda often depicted the campaign for ‘good letters’ as a gladiatorial struggle against the ‘barbarism’ of Gothic Latin and medieval school-logic. The reality, in England as elsewhere, was rather that humanistic studies developed alongside older styles of scholarship, within the traditional institutions. William Grocyn (c.1449–1519) introduced Greek studies to Oxford on his return from Italy in 1491. The royal physician and Oxford academic Thomas Linacre (c.1460–1524), pupil of Angelo Poliziano, wrote works on Latin composition and also encouraged good medical practice. In 1511–14 John Fisher recruited the famous Netherlands humanist Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466–1536) to teach Greek at Cambridge, and fostered the inclusion of humanist courses within the university curriculum.

The apogee of English humanism as a conscious movement was reached in the first four decades of the 16th cent. John Colet (1467–1519) learned Greek in Italy and taught at Oxford from c.1497; as dean of St Paul's from 1504 he refounded St Paul's School with a curriculum based on the new classical learning. His pessimism about human nature and emphasis on mordant criticism of failings among the clergy, however, were not typical of all humanists. Thomas More (1478–1535), unusually for humanists a lay lawyer rather than an ecclesiastic, cultivated the friendship of Erasmus and produced the most bewildering literary fantasy of the movement, Utopia (1516). Sir Thomas Elyot (c.1490–1546) in The Boke Named the Governour produced an English equivalent of the many treatises on education and politics current in Europe at the time.

As in France, Germany, and Italy, the advent of the Lutheran movement provoked a crisis in English humanism. The older generation of scholars, who had previously mocked or bemoaned the state of the church, rallied zealously to its defence when dogma was threatened. Both Thomas More and John Fisher deployed their rhetorical techniques to lambast reformers such as Luther, Oecolampadius, or Tyndale without mercy. Younger scholars such as Thomas Starkey (c.1495–1538) were pulled between two poles of attraction: the household of Thomas Cromwell, who encouraged humanist writers to produce work defending the royal divorce, the supremacy, and the changes to religious practice; and the group around the expatriate English Cardinal Reginald Pole in Italy, which wavered on the royal marriage before c.1535, was moderate in theological controversy, but stayed loyal to the papacy.

By the mid-16th cent. it becomes impossible to speak of ‘humanism’ as a distinct entity, because its influence was spread so widely. Renaissance techniques for learning classical languages and editing classical texts became generally accepted. Erasmus' Colloquies were repeatedly printed in England well into the 17th cent. Humanist opinions on such issues as structured poor relief, proper family relationships, even maternal breast-feeding became standard elements in the teaching of English protestants. The belief that exposure to vast quantities of Greek and Latin literature, combined with vigorous physical exercise, would produce healthy, moral young men survived in the public school system until about a generation ago.

Euan Cameron