Humanism

Petrarch (1304-1374)

• Petrarch felt that people should study the classics not just for how Christians could use them, but because they were true and beautiful in their own right.

The School of Athens

• Human life was seen to have an inherent dignity.

Leonardo

• Humanism gave birth to a new individualism. The right of people to think their own thoughts would be the beginning of a secularism that would challenge the church.

Michelangelo

• A life of genius, adventure, invention, and art was the new goal. A “renaissance man” was a person fully and gloriously alive.

The Sistine Chapel

• Pope Julius II brought artists like Raphael and Michelangelo to Rome to paint and sculpt and design for the church.

Raphael

• Renaissance historians divided time into three periods (instead of the traditional two): Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.

Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)

• Pico wrote the manifesto of humanism titled Oration on the Dignity of Man.

• For the renaissance humanists, human glory is only possible because they have been created in the image of God.

Conclusion

• Renaissance humanism gave humans new dignity, nature new meaning, and the role of religion more flexibility.

Conclusion

• The humanists also helped to bring forth a new individualism that opened the door for people to have their own thoughts.

Conclusion

• The Renaissance brought about a new birth, the birth of the modern mind in all its glory and in all its vulnerability.