Humanism:the making of Renaissance

To begin with, I believe what we need to clarify is whether Renaissance is to be studied as a period or a movement. Renaissance, literally means ‘rebirth’. The concept of labelling the cultural achievements of a particular period under the broad title of Renaissance I think is unfair, because due importance needs to be given to variety and diversity of the way in which the ideology of the period was professed. Instead what we must look at is the birth of a new idea, that of revolutionizing art and different facets of it. Burke specifies that Renaissance should be seen as a movement rather than as an event or a period. Firstly it would encompass more than the general cultural achievements of the chronological time span. And secondly it would explain the underground eventualities in other words the underlying instruments of Renaissance.
Renaissance simply put is the study of a revival. Revival of what? That which was lost in antiquity, hence merely the cumulative outcome of humanistic studies. It is the study of the extraordinary cluster of cultural achievements, placed within a particular context, often identified as an elite movement.
Often the birth of Renaissance has been synonymously associated with the advent of modernity. Because it professes a novelty that previous ages hadn’t probably witnessed. Or even if they had, it must not have been as diverse and widespread as Renaissance was. However Burke disagrees with this view, saying that one must dissociate Renaissance with Modernity. The very idea behind a movement is to revive the culture of the distant past: a doctrine that contradicts the notion of progress or modernity. He views the culture of Western Europe as one culture co-existing and interacting with others, among which were the Byzantine and the Islamic cultures, both of which had their own Renaissances of Greek and Roman antiquity.
Humanism as a discipline could be defined as a collection of all that needs to be studied to study the human, the individual. The aspects of entities created, modified and involved into by the humans. Chronologically its development can be dated to the fourteenth and turn-of-the fifteenth century. It emerged probably as a response to the challenge of medieval scholastic education, which emphasized on practical, pre-professional and scientific studies. In the refined civilization that was the Renaissance, the humanists believed they were the ancients reincarnate.
They spread the gospel of eloquence and wisdom, which would enable a human to engage in a civic life effectively. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. Although logic was one of surprisingly missing elements of Renaissance humanism. It was a movement to revive the cultural—and particularly the literary—legacy and moral philosophy of classical antiquity. With every aspect of Humanism was embedded the sense of Renaissance, the revival of what is lost in antiquity.
The leading intellectual feature of the era was the recovery, to a certain degree, of the secular and humane philosophy of Greece and Rome. The primary humanist ideology was the rebirth of individualism, which, developed by Greece and Rome to a remarkable degree, had been suppressed by the rise of a caste system in the later Roman Empire, by the Church and by feudalism in the Middle Ages. The Church considered individualism to be identical with arrogance, rebellion, and sin. Medieval Christianity restricted individual expression, fostered self-abnegation and self-annihilation, and demanded implicit faith and unquestioning obedience. The humanists worked in favour of the general emancipation of the individual. The writings of Dante, and particularly the doctrines of Petrarch and humanists like Machiavelli, emphasized the virtues of intellectual freedom and individual expression.
In Italy, the humanist educational program won rapid acceptance and, by the mid-fifteenth century, many of the upper classes had received humanist educations. Some of the humanists we study are Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, they were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Giovanni brought 200 ancient Roman manuscripts from Constantinople. Many worked for the organized Church and were in holy orders (like Petrarch), while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, like Petrarch's disciple, Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence, and thus had access to book copying workshops. Among the ones who were a part of the order of the church were Cardinal Basilios Bessarion, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), Pope Nicolas V. Humanism was identified in two contexts, one in that of Rome and the other in that of Florence. Renaissance humanists borrowed from Socrates, Plato and Cicero was their happy, natural and wholesome enjoyment of human life.
The emphasis was not only on learning, but also of bringing back the impact and assessment of classical texts, preferably in their original language. Hence there was this interest in the study of Latin and Greek, so that ancient Roman and Greek texts could be revived. Humanists literally hunted for manuscripts of classical texts, from Petrarch onwards. Bruni, Salutati and some of his colleagues are considered a part of the bracket of civic humanists, a slight variation of the stereotypic humanists. Civic humanism is basically the application of principles of humanity in public life, stressing on morals, ethics, although slightly non-aligned towards the Church’s perspective on the same.
Renaissance also saw the deviation from the dominance of Christian influence to the revival of paganism, again owing to the most fundamental Humanistic principle-reviewing that which has been forgotten, or perhaps (as some humanists believed) deliberately buried. The paganism of Ancient Greece and Rome had been lost for about one thousand years, when Europe followed the warning of Augustine against becoming too engrossed in earthly affairs. Humanism directly and indirectly revived the pagan scale of virtues. When men like Petrarch and his fellow humanists read pagan literature, they were infected with the secular outlook of the Greeks and Romans. This view, however, of the Renaissance as a return to "paganism", although popular in the nineteenth century, is no longer accepted by historians. Nevertheless, the discovery of classical philosophy and science would eventually challenge old beliefs.
Renaissance Neo-Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, whose translations of Plato were still used into the nineteenth century, attempted to reconcile Platonism with Christianity, according to the suggestions of the early Church fathers, Lactantius and Saint Augustine. Petrarch, a devout Christian, worshipped the pagan eclecticism of Cicero. Much humanist effort went into improving the understanding and translations of Biblical and early Christian texts.
Why we consider Renaissance a different period is because of the perceptible shift that can be noticed in the culture of the preceding times. In Brunelleschi’s architecture the shift from Gothic tradition of the medieval times is visible in the semicircular arches(replacing pointed ones), flat tops of doors and windows instead of arches. There seemed to be an emphasis on architecture of antiquity (alla antica), and Florentine Baptistery (12th century architecture). Brunelleschi followed classical and medieval models in whatever he designed. Other Florence humanists include Alberti and Donatello. Donatello’s contribution is very well known, his revival of ancient Roman sculpture, David and the equestrian statue of the professional soldier “gattamelata”.
Decline in depiction of civic values occurs with the incoming of the Medicis around 1434. Landino, Poliziano and Ficino were humanists who illustrated this trend. Landino wrote extensive commentaries on Virgil and Dante, while Ficino wrote comprehensively on Plato. Whatever be the case, the emphasis was on the revival of precious past.
As far as Rome is concerned, it emerged only due to Florentian incluences. And within a few years, in the middle of the 15th century Rome was more of a centre of humanism than Florence was, The two Popes Nicholas V and Pius II have made several contributions to Renaissance, in a humanistic approach. Nicholas commissioned a series of translations of Greek classics into Latin, asking another humanist Poggio to translate Xenophon. He also got Lorenzo Valla, another leading humanist from Rome to translate Thucydides. He received a treatise on architecture from Alberti. The papal chancery offered employment to humanists, allowing scholars from all over Italy to get together. The Humanist popes built libraries, museums(one of the first in the world), repaired walls and doors, aqueducts, new bridges. They also undertook the project of St. Peter’s Basilica, the magnificent structure where artists like Michelangelo, Boticelli, Bernini and Raphael have also displayed their mastery. Pope Paul II built the fountain complex and gave Vatican city its characteristic look. Therefore in the spread of Renaissance, as we can see, humanists played a characterizing role.
And the fact that antiquity to them was not just confined to ancient Greece and Rome comes across when we discover their studies on Hebrew and Arabic texts too. So the extent of humanistic, as in hard core humanism, in the Renaissance culture is evident from the character and incentive that lies behind the creation of every piece of work in the period. Therefore I do not see why should the credibility of the statement that Humanistic approaches did have a major influence in the birth, the spread and the character of Renaissance, be questioned.