Chrysoloras, detail of a drawing by an unknown artist, c. 1400; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, ParisJ.P. Ziolo, Paris
The term humanist (Italian umanista, Latin humanista) first occurs in 15th-century documents to refer to a teacher of the humanities. Humanists taught in a variety of ways. Some founded their own schools—as Vittorino da Feltre did in Mantua in 1423 and Guarino Veronese in Ferrara in 1429—where students could study the new curriculum at both elementary and advanced levels. Some humanists taught in universities, which, while remaining strongholds of specialization in law, medicine, and theology, had begun to make a place for the new disciplines by the late 14th century. Still others were employed in private households, as was the poet and scholar Politian (Angelo Poliziano), who was tutor to the Medici children as well as a university professor.
Politian, detail from Zaccharias and the Angel, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1490–94; in Santa Maria Novella, Florence.Alinari/Art Resource, New York
Formal education was only one of several ways in which the humanists shaped the minds of their age. Many were themselves fine literary artists who exemplified the eloquence they were trying to foster in their students. Renaissance Latin poetry, for example, nowadays dismissed—usually unread—as imitative and formalistic, contains much graceful and lyrical expression by such humanists as Politian, Giovanni Pontano, and Jacopo Sannazzaro. In drama, Politian, Pontano, and Pietro Bembo were important innovators, and the humanists were in their element in the composition of elegant letters, dialogues, and discourses. By the late 15th century, humanists were beginning to apply their ideas about language and literature to composition in Italian as well as in Latin, demonstrating that Vulgar Latin could be as supple and as elegant in poetry and prose as was Classical Latin.
Pontano, GiovanniGiovanni Pontano.
Classical scholarship
Not every humanist was a poet, but most were classical scholars. Classical scholarship consisted of a set of related, specialized techniques by which the cultural heritage of antiquity was made available for convenient use. Essentially, in addition to searching out and authenticating ancient authors and works, this meant editing—comparing variant manuscripts of a work, correcting faulty or doubtful passages, and commenting in notes or in separate treatises on the style, meaning, and context of an author’s thought. Obviously, this demanded not only superb mastery of the languages involved and a command of Classical literature but also a knowledge of the culture that formed the ancient author’s mind and influenced his writing. Consequently, the humanists created a vast scholarly literature devoted to these matters and instructive in the critical techniques of classical philology, the study of ancient texts. Arts and letters
Classicism and the literary impulse went hand in hand. From Lovato Lovati and Albertino Mussato to Politian and Pontano, humanists wrote Latin poetry and drama with considerable grace and power (Politian wrote in Greek as well), while others composed epistles, essays, dialogues, treatises, and histories on Classical models. In fact, it is fair to say that the development of elegant prose was the major literary achievement of humanism and that the epistle was its typical form. Petrarch’s practice of collecting, reordering, and even rewriting his letters—of treating them as works of art—was widely imitated.
Raphaeclass="underline" portrait of Baldassare CastiglioneBaldassare Castiglione, portrait by Raphael, 1514–15; in the Louvre, Paris.Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York
Ludovico Ariosto wearing a laurel crown, engraving.© Photos.com/ThinkstockFor lengthier discussions, the humanist was likely to compose a formal treatise or a dialogue—a Classical form that provided the opportunity to combine literary imagination with the discussion of weighty matters. The most famous example of this type is The Courtier, published by Baldassare Castiglione in 1528; a graceful discussion of love, courtly manners, and the ideal education for a perfect gentleman, it had enormous influence throughout Europe. Castiglione had a humanist education, but he wrote The Courtier in Italian, the language Bembo chose for his dialogue on love, Gli Asolani (1505), and Ludovico Ariosto chose for his delightful epic, Orlando furioso, completed in 1516. The vernacular was coming of age as a literary medium.
According to some, a life-and-death struggle between Latin and Italian began in the 14th century, while the mortal enemies of Italian were the humanists, who impeded the natural growth of the vernacular after its brilliant beginning with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. In this view, the choice of Italian by such great 16th-century writers as Castiglione, Ariosto, and Machiavelli represents the final “triumph” of the vernacular and the restoration of contact between Renaissance culture and its native roots. The reality is somewhat less dramatic and more complicated. Most Italian writers regarded Latin as being as much a part of their culture as the vernacular, and most of them wrote in both languages. It should also be remembered that Italy was a land of powerful regional dialect traditions; until the late 13th century, Latin was the only language common to all Italians. By the end of that century, however, Tuscan was emerging as the primary vernacular, and Dante’s choice of it for his The Divine Comedy ensured its preeminence. Of lyric poets writing in Tuscan (hereafter called Italian), the greatest was Petrarch. His canzoni, or songs, and sonnets in praise of Laura are revealing studies of the effect of love upon the lover; his Italia mia is a plea for peace that evokes the beauties of his native land; his religious songs reveal his deep spiritual feeling.
Charon, illustration by Gustave Doré for an 1861 edition of Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy).© Photos.com/Thinkstock
Petrarch’s friend and admirer Giovanni Boccaccio is best known for his Decameron; but he pioneered in adapting Classical forms to Italian usage, including the hunting poem, romance, idyll, and pastoral, whereas some of his themes, most notably the story of Troilus and Cressida, were borrowed by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Torquato Tasso.
Torquato Tasso, detail of an oil painting by Federico Zuccari, 1594; in a private collectionCourtesy of L. Locatelli-Milesi-Tombini, Bergamo, Italy
The scarcity of first-rate Italian poetry throughout most of the 15th century has caused a number of historians to regret the passing of il buon secolo, the great age of the language, which supposedly came to an end with the ascendancy of humanist Classicism. For every humanist who disdained the vernacular, however, there was a Leonardo Bruni to maintain its excellence or a Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini to prove it in his own Italian writings. Indeed, there was an absence of first-rate Latin poets until the late 15th century, which suggests a general lack of poetic creativity in this period and not of Italian poetry alone. It may be that both Italian and Latin poets needed time to absorb and assimilate the various new tendencies of the preceding period. Tuscan was as much a new language for many as was Classical Latin, and there was a variety of literary forms to be mastered.