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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM:from Renaissance to Reformation

^ Tmmortal Cod. what a world 1 seeI dawning! Why can I not grow

X young again?" This was written in1517 by Desiderius Erasmus, the mostfamous of all Christian humanists. Hewas surveying the European culture heknew so well and was full of hope for thefuture. By tragic irony, even as he wrotethese words, a small storm was brewingin the remote university town oí Witten-berg, which would in time obstruct andobscure everything Erasmus valuedmost. Even more confusingly, both Eras-mus and Luther could be described asChristian humanists, sharing tbe excite-ment about the Bible which so cbarac-

terised the age, using their scholarship touncover the beliefs and devotions of theearly church, using their skills as teach-ers and writers to reform and inspire theworld around them. Yet less than tenyears later they were bitterly divided.with Erasmus lamenting the 'disaster'that Luther had brought upon them all.

So what was Christian Humanism? Ithovers in the background of all our dis-cussions of Renaissance and Reforma-tion: it is applied to many great figures,from Erasmus and Lutber to such ill-assorted individuals as Thomas More,Huldrv'cb Zwingli. Reginald Pole or evenElizabeth I. It is immediately clear that

Lucy Woodingintroduces a highlysignificant, but oftenmuch misunderstood,cultural force.

Left: A portrait of the great Dutchscholar Erasmus (c. 1446-1536). painted by

Quentin Metsijs in 1517. A prolific writer,

he is depicted in characteristic pose, v/ith

pen in hand.

the chief proponents of Christianhumanism were often incapable ofagreeing with one anotber, and some-times became fiercely opposed. Can thelabel of 'Christian humanist" be of anyvalue to the historian today?

The first thing we need to wrestlewith is the problem of definitions.'Christian humanism" was itself a formof a wider movement we call 'human-ism', which might broadly be describedas tbe intellectual aspect of the Renais-sance, another historical movementwhich evades easy categorisation. At thispoint it is easy to feel discouraged, but itis important to persevere, because

HiSTORV REVIEW SEPTEMBER 2009 13

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humanism was a movement of extraordi-nary richness, inventiveness, ideologicalcommitment and literary beauty, worthstudying for its own sake, hut also for itsimportant intellectual legacy. We mightlocate its heyday in the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries, but itsinfluence was to shape the litera-ture, thought, art, architecture andmusic of every suhsequent centuryuntil our own. Furthermore,humanists wrestled with problemsof conflicting cultures, religiousdivision, the encounter betweenChristianity and Islam, poverty, dis-ease, war and political corruption.These are all issues with relevanceto the modern world, and the worksof the humanists still speak withstartling immediacy and moral forceto our own contemporary problems.

The Renaissance andthe 'Golden Age' ofHumanism

Below: The tide of Thomas More's Utnpki

(meaning'No Place'). Originally published

in Latin in 1516, it was translated into

English for the first time in 1551.

a ftmm/jAtniämt too^be of tfje

fcffte Bate of a pubípque ÍDca{p, antioftiïcnctDc pie calico ¿)topia;tDaítmfti ifatinc bp ßpi IT joroas ^oitfef, flnö íranlíaírD into iPngfpfl e

^ îRobpnfoa £itiyin anoof ffonOoh aií

The Renaissance was, broadlyspeaking, a movement of culturalrevival which sought to rediscoverand redeploy the languages, learn-ing and artistic achievements of theclassical world. It used to beclaimed as the 'dawn of modernity',with humanism seen as a set ofconvictions concerning the dignityof man; the beginnings of that indi-vidualism which would one day findexpression in the Enlightenment.These grand claims are now seen asdeeply misleading. The Renaissancewas not a new dawn after the dark-ness and ignorance of the "MiddleAges', but a gradual developmentwith a huge intellectual debt to themedieval past. We also now understandhow distinct Renaissance ideas werefrom the ideas of the Enlightenment, orfrom modern attitudes. We have largelystopped trying to find our own ideas andattitudes in the past, and started lookingat the work of the humanists in its owncontext; still an astonishing achieve-ment, but coloured less by individualismand the beginnings of secularism than bythe particular political, religious and cul-tural currents of the fifteenth and six-teenth centuries.

The idea of the Renaissance as an ageof gold after an age of darkness was actu-

CJmpmtfeuatîionDottftp Jtibial)àm Ê>e{r,otDe((ing in paula

fy^ at t^t fpgnc oí

• • Humanism wasa movement of

extraordinary rich-ness, inventiveness,ideological commit-ment and literary

beauty, worth studyingfor its own sake, but

also for its importantlegacy

ally a tale spun by the humanists them-selves, and makes the important pointthat this was a very self-conscious move-ment, which shaped its own reputation.In 1492 the Italian humanist Marsiiio

Ficino claimed glory for his nativecity of Florence, when he wTote thatthis century, like a golden age, hasrestored to light the liberal arts,which were almost extinct: graÈiimar,poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture,architecture, music ... and all this inFlorence'. In 1575 the Frenchhumanist Loys le Roy wrote how' 'wehere in the West have in the last twohundred years recovered the excel-lence oí good letters and broughtback the study of the disciplinesaher they had long remained as ifextinguished. The sustained industiyof many learned men has led tosuch success that today this our agecan be compared to the mostlearned times that ever were. For wenow see the languages restored. antInot only the deeds and writings ofthe ancients brought hack to light,but also many fine things newly dis-covered.'

Some of the grander claims ahoLiihumanism, therefore, were self-

/€ promotion, and need to be treatedwith care. Yet some historians,reacting against the old-fashionet!view of the Renaissance as thedawn of modernity and humanismas the disco\-ery of individualism,have gone too far in the other direc-tion and hecome overly cautiousahout their definitions. For them'humanism' is little more than atype of educational programmebased upon classical Greek and

, Latin authors, and a 'humanist',strictly defined, a university teacher

within such a programme, called at thet ime stiidia hiimanitatis. But this

approach not only excludes such impor-tant figures as Erasmus, More and Mon-taigne, it fails to appreciate the excite-ment of the movement, its grandioseambitions, and its often impressiveachievements. For humanists not onlysought to go backííil/oiííes - to the origi-nal founts of knowledge - they alsosought to redesign their own world withthe knowledge and inspiration derivedfrom the classical past. Just as artistsand architects hegan to copy the tech-niques and derive ideas from classical

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mIBacctibípcntadccastctrasononrcrpícítíüudliofpín'umperntpaulírcrqiiínqjtiícrimt.foiftébbdiii

¿ ï noua fignatunter qmnq? rcccprat vtrunq?.

Êlctiie tcftamentumulriphcí lingua nûcpamoimp:elTuni. í£timpnmí6

b á M

tcjHdíüctaonicuíqjfualatina interpretan

tione»'I -Jílvx,

Statues, temples and paintings, sohumanists looked back to the politicalthought of Cicero, the histories of Livy.the moral philosophy of Seneca orPlutarch, the ethics of Aristotle and thestories of Homer.

Christian Humanism

If this was humanism, how should weunderstand 'Christian humanism? Itused to he thought that this was a clearlydistinct offshoot of the main Renais-sance movement, rooted in NorthernEurope, detached from Italian preoccu-pations, less 'modern'because more reli-gious, and in large part a prelude toProtestantism. This is unhelpful, notleast because it suggests that Christian

humanists were an oddly old-fashionedsplinter group from the mainstream ofRenaissance ideas. In fact, humanismnearly always had a Christian dimension.and it was the pure republican types, orthe mavericks like Machiavelli, whowere the exception, not the rule. TheSpanish humanist Juan Luis Vives wroteahout education; 'as for what booksshould he read ... there are some onwhich everyone is agreed, as the Gospelsof the Lord, the Acts of the Apostles andthe Epistles, the historical and moralbooks of the Old Testament, Cyprian,Jerome, Augustine, Amhrose, Chrysos-tom, Milary, Gregory, Boethius, Fulgen-tius, Tertullian, Plato, Cicero, Senecaand other such authors.'This is a charac-teristic example of how the Bihle - also aclassical text - and early church fathers

fci>.»iM<liiitMn ' «»«Mm. «aJW. t^ Ui ^MtilA.

¿•0.t^ ^ rtJ 1. <¿4•M• —'

Left and above: The title page of the

Polyglot ('many-tongued') Bible, completed

in 1517 at the University of Alcalá, and a

sample page, containing the beginning of

the book of Exodus.

• • The Renaissancewas not a new dawnafter the darkness

and ignorance of the'Middle Ages\ but a

gradual developmentwith a huge

intellectual debt tothe medieval past • •

were placed alongside Plato, Cicero,Boethius and the rest. Someone likeThomas More was at home in the worldof classical antiquity, translating theGreek satirist Lucian or writing Utopia,which was modelled on Plato's Republic.Yet More was also famous for his piety,insisting that his children study thechurch fathers, discussing churchreform with Erasmus, ultimately dyingfor his faith.

Christian humanism makes the pointthat we have misunderstood the Renais-sance if we see it in terms of a paganrevival, a straightforward championing ofthe abilities of man. In any Renaissanceart gallery, the motifs remain predomi-nantly Christian, and most Renaissancethinkers continued to work within aChristian context. But Christian human-

REVIEW SEPTEMBER 2009 I 5

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ists were not afraid to pose a vigorouscballenge to the religious assumptions ofthe time, particularly where they sawhypocrisy and corruption. Although asindividuals they were shaped by theirlocal circumstances, a key feature of themovement was its internationalism. Thiswas maintained in various ways: throughthe travelling of scholars around Europe;through copious correspondence, whichwas intended for circulation to tbird par-ties and often published; through theuse of the printing press, wbose spreadtbrougbout Europe mir-rored and facilitated thespread of humanist con-cerns. Most of all, theinternational aspect ofChristian humanismwas encouraged by tbehumanists' use of a sin-gle common language -they all spoke and wroteLatin fluently, whichfacilitated the kind ofintellectual exchangewhich the modernworld, hampered by language differ-ences, Stil! struggles to attain.

It is important here to issue a warn-ing. Christian humanism was a higblydiverse movement. It contained individ-uals as distinct as tbe German GorneliusAgrippa who studied tbe occult and tbeKabbala; tbe Italian noblemen Pico dellaMirándola wbo befriended Savonarolaand some of wbose religious ideas werecondemned for heresy; the SpaniardJuan de V''aldes who was the centre of anevangelical Catholic circle in Italy or theEnglishman John Fisher who combinedbumanist learning witb a renownedpiety, died a Cardinal and in due coursebecame a saint. Cbristian bumanismcould manifest itself at the most hasiclevel as little more than a style of writ-ing, full of classical, biblical and patristicallusions and quotations. Even a thor-ough humanist education could not beguaranteed to produce the same results:Mary I and Elizabeth I were both giventbe best bumanist education of wbichEnglish scbolars were capable, and tbeywere both exceptionally learned, but stillbad very different religious convictions.Yet Cbristian bumanism was more tbanjust a form of religious education; therewere enough shared aims and ideals forus to see it as movement which com-prised ideology, not just techniques for

Erasmuswrote to a

friend that' tobe a school-master is anoffice secondin importance

to a king'y A

instruction. Tbis ideology of Christianrenewal was channelled in differentways, often with very different conse-quences, but it sprang from the samesources of inspiration.

Education

At the heart of Christian humanism wasa fervent desire for education. In partthis meant education for the humaniststhemselves, many of whom studied at a

succession of universitiesall over Europe. But theyalso sought to educatesociety at large. Erasmuswrote to a friend that tobe a schoolmaster is anoffice second in impor-tance to a king. Do youthink it a mean task totake your fellow-citizensin tbeir earliest years, toinstil into tbcm from tbebeginning sound learningand Christ himself, and to

return them to your country as so manyhonourable upright men?'Yet if Christianhumanists sought to reconfigure theirworld, they planned to do so from thetop down. Erasmus might write dreamilyof a time wben the ploughman would'sing texts of the Scripture at his plough,and ... the weaver ... hum them to tbetune of his shuttle, but works like TheEducation of a Christian Prince targetedthose at the apex of the social pyramid.Humanists sought tbecompany - and tbepatronage - of Popes,archbisbops and

princes, nobility andgentry, and tried toencourage tbeir patronsto implement pro-grammes of reformbased on tbe recom-mendations of tbeir scbolarly advisors.Meanwbile these influential individualscourted the humanists in their turn, anx-ious to be perceived as educated andenlightened Renaissance princes, or asnobles or cburchmen of scholarlyrenown.

Cbristian bumanism was thus to set apattern for the education of the rulingclasses which would long endure. Thestarting point was the study of ancientlanguages. Rabelais bad Pantagruel's

Satire wasthe humanist

weapon, gleefullyand skilfully

deployed y y

fatber exhort him to become 'a perfectmaster of languages. First of Greek, asQuintilian advises; secondly, of Latin;and tben of Hebrew, on account of theHoly Scriptures; also of Chaldean andArabic, for tbe same reason; and I wouldhave you model your Greek style onPlato's and your Latin on that of Cicero.'Tbis - pruned of tbe satire - was essen-tially tbe bumanist model. Even womenwere included in tbis, aitbough it wasroyal and aristocratic women, or thedaughters of men hke Thomas More,who most immediately benefited. TbatElizabeth I was fluent in Latin atn!Greek, as well as Frencb and Italian, wasa testimony to tbe bumanist programmeof study she had followed.

Rediscovering the Bible

Above all else, tbe study of ancient lan-guages enabled Christian humanists toread tbe Bible witb new-found accuracyand enthusiasm. On one level, the bibli-cal revival was a practical matter. To readthe Old Testament required an under-standing of Hebrew; to read the NewTestament required Greek, wbich alsoenabled tbe reading of the Septuagint,the ancient translation of the Old Testa-ment into Greek from the 3rd and 2ndcenturies BC. New universities, or uni-versity colleges, were therefore estab-jjsbed which emphasised the learning ofthese ancient languages, from the Uni-versity of Alcalá founded 1499 to Corpus

Christi College inOxford. founded1517, or the Col-legium Trilingue' inLouvain, also found-ed 1517, where tbreelecturers were 'to readand expound publiclyto all comers bothCbristian and otber

moral and approved authors, in the three-languages, tbat is in Latin, Greek andI lebrew'.

Latin was still a living language, andtbe main form of communication amonghumanists, who latinised their ownnames to indicate their intellectual sta-tus. Greek was something new, and tostudy Greek, or patronise tbe study ofGreek, was to mark yourself out as a cut-ting-edge tbinker, dedicated to the pur-suit of truth. It gave access not just to

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the Bible, but to the Greek fathers whohad written in the centuries immediatelyafter Christ. Erasmus translated theworks of the Greek fathers St JohnChrysostom, St Ireneus and St Basilamong others. Most importantly of all, in1516 he published a new translation ofthe New Testament in Greek and Latin.This Novum ¡nstrnmentum caused astorm of excitement, and in many cases,of protest from those who challenged hisright to question the usual Latin text,commonly called the Vulgate. He wasaccused of tr)ing to undermine thechurch. In his own defence, Erasmuspointed out that the text had heenapproved by his bishop, and accepted byPope Leo X to whom it was dedicated.His was only one of several attempts toachieve a flawless edition of the Bible.The Complutensian or 'Polyglot' Bible,produced at the university of Alcalá, settexts in different languages side by sidefor purposes of comparison. In the OldTestament the Latin text of the Vulgatewas given between the Hebrew and theGreek of the Septuagint. with an Arama-ic text and its Latin translation added atthe bottom of the page for the first fivebooks, or Pentateuch. The New Testa-ment had Greek and Latin Vulgate textsplaced side by side. This great work tookfrom 1502 to 1517, the year in whichMartin Luther began to cause a stir. Itcould be argued that everything Lutherhad to say about the importance of read-ing the Bible, and paying attention to theliteral meaning of the text, had alreadyheen anticipated by the work of theChristian humanists.

Humanists were not merely interest-ed in points of grammar and translation.rheir study of Creek and Hebrew, theirrediscovery of the Bible, were all under-taken for a reason, namely the revival ol"Christianity. It was a moral revolutionthat Christian humanists intended; arevolution to be achieved by learning.And although it began with the educat-ed, it was a revolution which was toextend in time to all. Erasmus wrote Idisagree very much with those who areunwilling that Holy Scripture, translatedinto the vulgar tongue, he read by theuneducated, as if Christ taught suchintricate doctrines that they couldscarcely be understood by very few the-ologians, or as if the strength of theChristian religion consisted in men'signorance of it.

Above: The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (23-24 August 1572), when several thousand

Protestants were killed by Catholics in Paris. Erasmus had always feared that schism in the

Church would lead to violence.

The Road to Protestantism

Equipped with a knowledge of theancient tongues, and thus with anunderstanding of the Bihie and the earlychurch fathers, humanists were poisedto renew Christian societ). The conclu-sions they drew could he radical, on theone hand exhorting the laity to lives ofuncompromising religious commitment,on the other telling princes to embracepacifism. Erasmus's Handbook of theChristian SoUier portrayed the Christianlife as a spiritual struggle, aiming at a

state of being where 'we shall be high-minded in Christ, of abundant charity,strong and constant in good or had for-tune, closing our eyes to petty things,striving towards higher things, full ofenthusiasm, full of knowledge'. In orderto achieve this, many forms of ignorance,superstition and corruption had to beput aside. Erasmus and his like vigorouslyattacked the wealth and indolence ofmany of the clergy, the moral laxity ofmany monks, the stupidity of popularreligious traditions, the pomposity andobscurantism of theologians, in Praise of

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Folly, for example, attacked tbose igno-rant clergy, wbo 'believe it's tbe bighestform of piety to be so uneducated thattbey can't even read. Then wben tbeybray like donkeys in church, repeating byrote the psalms they haven't understood,they imagine they are charming the earsof their heavenly audience with infinitedelight". Satire was the humanistweapon, gleefully and skilfully deployed.Popes, prelates, monks, nuns and thecredulous laity wereall mocked in turn.

We tend to seeChristian humanismas only a prelude toProtestantism, but in1517 Erasmus was ascholar of internation-al repute and Lutherwas an unknown friarin an obscure Cermantown. We might dobetter to see buman-ism as the biggermovement, with farwider concerns, fromwbicb the theologianswbo would later betermed Protestantsbecame a small break-away group. Humanism, however, was amovement of intellectuals and seholars,who sought to change tbe world throughthe enlightened application of humanistideals by intelligent and educated headsof state. Protestantism worked in muchmore crude and efficient ways, mobilis-ing popular opinion, deploying cheapprint and propaganda, whipping upantagonism and protest. Erasmus had atfirst given cautious encouragement toLuther, but warned him that one getsfurther by eourtesy and moderation thanhy clamour. That was how Christbrought the world under his sway'. Asthe Lutheran movement gatheredmomentum, however, Erasmus began todeplore the violence involved. 'What wastbe point of a savage torrent of invectivedirected against men whom it wasunwise to treat like that if he wished tomake them better, and impious if be didit to provoke them and set the wholeworld by tbe ears?"

Tbe Reformation as it unfolded inEurope after 1517 used humanist ideasabout the Bible, about the defeat ofignorance and superstition, about moralrenewal and pious reform. It also relied

heavily on tbe scholarly achievement ofthe humanists - iheir language skills,their editions of the Bible and thechurch lathers, their attacks upon popu-lar ignorance, monastic corruption andscholastic obscurantism. But it was aworld away from its aims of regenerationthrough education, cultural exchangeand influence upon the elites, Erasmusin 1527 wrote to Martin Bucer, and gavean explanation of why he had not

become a Protes-tant. 'If I couldhave been con-\inced tbat tbismovement camefrom God I wouldbave enlisted longago", he wrote. Buthe was alarmed althe human cost ofthe movement, par-ticularly 'the con-stant in-fightingbetween the lead-ers', and said 'if youwere what you bragof being, theywould have set anexample of godlyand patient con-

duet which would have made the Cospelwidely acceptable". And witb ominousclear-sightedness, Erasmus wrote 'I fore-see a xiolent and bloody century shouldthose who are angry get their strengthhack, as tbey surely will,"

Cbristian humanism and early Protes-tantism shared many characteristics. Butit could be argued that it was thehumanist vision which had the greaterbreadth, where Protestantism was to loseitself in precise definition of doetrineand the subsequent violent defence ofthose doctrines. Christian humanismcould be put to many uses, many ofthem of only localised importance. Itwas deployed in Spain in the service ofthe wider aims of Ferdinand and Isabel-la: in Switzerland it served to underpinpolitical dissatisfaction, facilitating tbeemergence of Swiss national identity,and the Swiss reformation: in England itwas used to construct Henry V'lU's casefor the Royal Supremacy, and a reforma-tion which attacked abuse and supersti-tion but equally rejected Protestantism.Yet Christian humanism never lost itsinternational dimension, reinforced bythe exchange of scholars and books as

We might dobetter to see

humanism as thebigger movement,

with far widerconcerns, fromwhich the theo-

logians who wouldlater be termed

Protestantsbecame a small

breakaway group * *

well as the exchange of ideas. It eontin-ued to uphold a vision of educated andcivilised exchange, of the pursuit oflearning, of biblical and patristic renew-al, of new standards of lay piety, of tberejection of obscurantism and ignorance.These ideals remained a key part of earlymodern culture, the foundations of edu-cation, a formative influence in a rangeof different disciplines. Yet in the areawhere the humanists bad most wantedto make a difference, conflict raged. TbeBible became a familiar part of earlymodern vernacular culture, and a sourceof pious inspiration as they had wished:but it also became a battle-ground, itsmeaning fiercely contested between dif-ferent religious groups. Still the oldermovement, although challenged, wasnever eclipsed. Despite the confessionaldivide which resulted from the Reforma-tion, Christian humanism, as both aneducational and an ideological force,refused to go away.

Issues to DebateWhat were the key features of theRenaissance?Should we see Christian humanism asa coherent ideological movement?What was the relationship betweenChristian humanism and Protes-tantism?

R e a d i n

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

A. Goodman and A. MacKay. The

Impact of Humanism on Western

Europe (1990)

R. Porter and M.Teicb, The

Renaissance in National Context

(1992)

R. Black (ed.). Renaissance Thought A

Reader {200\)

Dr Lucy Wooding is lecturer in early

modern history at King's College London.

She has recently published a biography of

Henry VIII.

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