humanism

humanism was an intellectual and cultural movement based on the recovery, interpretation, and imitation of Greek and Roman antiquity. It began in the fourteenth century and continued to flourish until the seventeenth, making an impact not only on scholarship but also on literature, art, and science. A variety of different attitudes towards the body can be found in the writings of humanists. What all these views have in common, however, is that they derive from the study of the classical past.

Many humanists were teachers, and in their pedagogical theory and practice they devoted attention to physical development as well as to intellectual formation. The Education of Boys (1450), for example, by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405–64), later to become Pope Pius II, is divided into two parts: the first concerned with the body, the second with the mind. Piccolomini stressed the necessity of developing a sturdy physique by avoiding feather beds, silk clothing, and other luxurious items which encouraged softness and effeminacy. Youths were advised to obey Plato's dictum, as recounted by St Basil, that the body should be indulged with food and drink only to the extent that it was of service to philosophy. Relying on the Roman rhetorician Quintilian and the Greek moralist Plutarch (to whom an influential pedagogical treatise was falsely attributed), Piccolomini counselled against corporal punishment, ‘since boys must be led to virtue by rational arguments, and admonitions, not by wounds and blows’. He was nevertheless a keen advocate of energetic physical training and martial exercises, as practised by the ancient Spartans and described by the Roman military theorist Vegetius, since these helped to develop a strong and vigorous body, which his noble and princely students would need for future exploits in battle.

In addition to the pedagogical value of physical exercise, humanists took an interest in its health-giving benefits. The physician Hieronymus Mercurialis (1530–1606) drew on an enormous range of Greek and Latin texts in his Six Books on the Gymnastic Art, Famous among the Ancients but Unknown in Our Times (1559). Although Mercurialis wanted to revive this lost art, he recommended exercising only in the morning and taking a nap in the afternoon, because man's physical constitution had weakened considerably since antiquity on account of changed eating habits and daily routines.

For the French medical humanist Jacobus Sylvius (1478–1555), the difference between ancient and modern bodies was more than a matter of physical condition. A passionate defender of Galen, Sylvius argued that where the Greek physician's anatomical descriptions differed from those of his critic Andreas Vesalius (1514–64), which were based on dissection, it was due to the fact that the massive Roman frame had degenerated over the centuries into the puny body of contemporary man. Despite such cases of misguided devotion to antiquity, the philological study of Greek medical works, many newly available in print in the Aldine editions of Galen (1525) and Hippocrates (1526), contributed in no small measure to the increasing knowledge of human anatomy in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Humanists also gained knowledge of the body through their study of Greek and Latin tracts on physiognomy, which taught them to infer mental and moral characteristics from corporeal signs. In On Good Manners for Boys (1530), Erasmus (c.1469–1536) maintained that a smooth brow indicated a good conscience and that a well-ordered mind would reveal itself through calm, steady eyes. In addition, he showed how to decode body language: crossing one's legs when sitting was a sign of uneasiness, while standing with one's legs wide apart was the hallmark of a braggart. Among the bodily habits for which Erasmus laid down behavioural guidelines were spitting, nose-wiping, and answering the call of nature (to be done in private, but even so with modesty and decency, ‘for the angels are always near’).

Another ancient source from which humanists took ideas about the body was Greek philosophy. Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) translated all of Plato's dialogues into Latin, thus making generally available the Platonic belief that the body occupied the lowest level of reality, that it was the prison of the soul, and that the truly wise man would attempt to escape its material confines through contemplation of immaterial ideas, such as Truth and Beauty. From Epicurus, on the other hand, humanists such as Thomas More (1478–1535) learned to appreciate the value of corporeal pleasures. In his Utopia (1516) More imagined an ideal society, whose entirely rational inhabitants had a high regard for the stable and calm pleasures which derive from health, beauty, and strength, and even took unashamed delight in those which come by way of the senses.

A popular humanist genre was the praise of mankind, which usually included sections on both the body and the soul. The first book, for instance, of On Man's Dignity and Excellence (1452), by Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459), is a hymn to the beauty, utility, and divine craftsmanship of the human body. Quoting long passages of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and Lactantius's On the Handiwork of God, Manetti lovingly describes each organ and limb, noting how man's erect posture, unique among all living beings, allows him to observe and contemplate the heavens; and how the placement of his eyes, ears and nose ‘in the citadel of the head’ is marvellously adapted to sense perception, while nevertheless keeping these delicate organs far away from the bodily equivalent of drains, which, as in the best-designed houses, are relegated to the rear.

Humanists uncovered a more inspiring parallel between buildings and the human body in the architectural treatise of the Roman author Vitruvius. He compared the symmetry of a temple to that of a well-proportioned man, who, with extended hands and feet, fits exactly into both a circle and a square, the two most perfect geometrical figures. The famous drawing of ‘Vitruvian man’ (Venice, Accademia) by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is a good example of the way in which the humanists' study of ancient texts influenced the Renaissance perception of the human body.

Jill Kraye

Bibliography

Kraye, J. (ed.) (1996). The Cambridge companion to Renaissance humanism. Cambridge University Press.
Nutton, V. (1988). From Democedes to Harvey: studies in the history of medicine. Variorum Reprints, London.