Christian Humanism: Lecture Notes



Christian Humanism: Lecture Notes

Why did humanism appear in transalpine Europe later than in Italy?

One possible reason is the political and social chaos of northern Europe from 1350 to 1450. England and France were fighting each other in the Hundred Years War, and peasant uprisings occurred in both countries; Spain was divided among five kingdoms, the greatest of which were dealing with civil wars; Bohemia, in the Holy Roman Empire, was undergoing a religious-political revolution (the Hussite Revolution) in the early 1400s. It appears, anyway, the humanists generally appear in these countries, and have an impact, once peace and central rule are reestablished.

A second possible reason is cultural. Compared to Italy, northern Europe had no strong roots in the classical tradition, nor was its society one that was easily paralleled to ancient Rome.  In the north, less of a class of literate laymen involved in government: intellectual activity more restricted, as in Middle Aages, to clergy.  And the heritage they associated with was the one in which they’d been strong—in religion, in medieval romance and chivalry, more than classicism.  

Final possible reason is the changing nature of the Italian Renaissance itself. Politically it shifted from a land of city-republics to a land of despots; culturally, according to some, the Renaissance shifted its interests away from civic humanism (political involvement) and more toward philosophy and religion. As its character began to resemble that of the north more, its influence was more readily absorbed.

What was northern humanism like?

The careers of some prominent early figures can help sketch out a general portrait.

← In France, Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1450-1536).  Visited Italy as a young man, and became very influenced by Pico della Mirandola.  Like Pico, interested in all knowledge, including scholasticism, mysticism, and occult studies.  Published Marsilio Ficino’s hermetic translations in France—but just the philosophy part, without the magic, and with much emphasis on the parallels between hermeticism and Christianity.  Also quite devoted to Aristotle, which of course had been the backbone of medieval French intellectual life; but approaches him in humanist strain, i.e. looking at them philologically and expunging medieval excrescences to get to original Aristotle.  In his 50s, he turned away from his classical interests and toward religion—even thought of entering a religious order.  Between 1505 and his death, he published many commentaries and textual criticism of religious texts, including a translation of the Epistles of St Paul, a commentary on the Gospels, and a new Latin translation of the New Testament.

← In Spain, Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540): born and educated in Valencia, then Univ. of Paris, he was a wide-ranging man of letters.  A church reformer, who attacked corruption and abuse, though not Catholic doctrine.  An educational reformer, who wanted to reconcile humanism and Christianity, with the idea that education is to create moral and good people, and this requires knowledge of history, and of Latin and Greek lit, as well as of the Bible.  Like Italian humanists, he criticized blind acceptance of past authorities, and argued in favor of direct observation of nature and the performance of experiments. He was a truly international figure: a professor at the University of Louvain in the Low Countries (by then under the rule of the same man who ruled Spain, Charles V), he was invited to England and given a post at Oxford, though he left when Henry VIII had his quarrel with the Church over his divorce from the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, and went back to Bruges.

← In Germany, the apostle of Italian humanism was Rudolf Agricola (1444-85), who studied in Germany before heading to Italy in 1469, and was so enchanted he stayed 10 years, studying law at Pavia and even making himself organist to the Duke of Ferrara, in whose court he remained, learning Greek, studying classical Latin texts, etc.  He worshipped Petrarch, and considered himself the Petrarch of the north when he returned to Germany in 1479, where he tried to promote a cultural and religious renaissance. His most famous follower was Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522)—a great admirer of Pico, and a “Renaissance man” in breadth of his knowledge: studied law at Orléans (France) and Rome, philosophy at Paris, Greek at Basel and Florence, and was especially interested in Jewish cabala (mysticism).  He published a Hebrew-Christian grammar—i.e. Hebrew needed to study Christianity—which shows, again, that his end was to reform and purify the Church in part through reliable scholarship of early Church writers.

← Some general characteristics from this list, then, would seem to be

1. they are often inspired by some Italian Ren figure: Petrarch, Pico, Ficino—but not Bruni, Machiavelli.

2. They have less interest in civic issues and political advice, and more interest in reform of the Church.

3. This may relate to their own jobs: they are supported more by Church positions or university posts than by government service or princely patronage.

4. Finally, following their concern with reform of Church, their interest in antiquity is less about pagan authors and more about early Christian authorities.

5. Of equal importance is to remember that humanism was not only a philosophy of life, but a curriculum of studies which should ultimately lead men to live “well and holy” and to move others to “do good.” As we discussed in class, several important “tools” were created by the humanists to improve their handle of the studia humanitatis. The Christian humanist embraced two particular “tools”

← Going back to the sources: One of the groundbreaking “advances” made by the Christian humanists was the questioning of medieval commentaries and translations of the Bible and the works of the Church Fathers. Christian humanists re-examined the original sources, as many manuscripts of the same work as possible, in order to find and “restore” those books to their intended “original” form. Likewise, they pointed out places where misunderstanding and mistranslation of the sources had led to mistaken assumptions/interpretations.

← Another step, equally married to humanists’ interest in “literary criticism” was their concerted effort to translate Christian sources from their original language into “pure” Latin. Again, the issue at hand was that faulty translations led to faulty interpretations.

← Arguably, this interest in re-translating the texts and cleaning up commentaries leads to the Reformers’ own efforts to translate the Bible into the different vernaculars and make it available for a larger audience to interpret themselves.

Was northern humanism influenced by the Protestant reformation?

No. Northern humanism was in full swing before Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation. The reverse, though, was true: Martin Luther and his Reformation were influenced by northern humanism. The concern with reform of Church abuses, and the concern with a more personal, “authentic” spirituality (which we will see in a moment in Erasmus) were big influences on Luther; further, the humanist effort to create reliable translations of early Christian texts made Luther’s Protestant plan possible: he considered the Bible the only religious authority and believed that everyone should be able to read and interpret it for themselves. But this would only be possible if there were a reliable Bible, carefully translated from its original languages, whose words one could trust and hand out to everyone.

At the same time, the spread of Protestantism spelled the end of northern humanism just as, belatedly, it spelled the end of the Renaissance in Italy. That is, in a new climate of suspicion and fear, it was no longer possible (among Catholics) to admire Pico’s magic or criticize Church abuses, nor possible to remain neutral between Protestantism and Catholicism.

Two portraits

← Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was among the most famous humanists of his day, and his life is worth a little more discussion. A Dutchman from Rotterdam, he spent his schoolboy years with a group of Dutch known as the Brethren of the Common Life.  The Brethren were very serious about education, and very strict; but to them it was all about inculcating personal spiritual reform through emphasis on inner spirituality, not outward vows.  This emphasis on educational reform and Christian reform was common to most northern humanists, and indeed the German humanist Agricola was a teacher here.  So Erasmus got a very thorough classical education, and a lifelong commitment to the inner spirit of Christianity.

In 1487, he became an Augustinian canon, which was a kind of monk.  But he found the outward, purely formal religion of his fellow monks intolerable, as well as their lack of education, and in 1493 he left the order to put himself under the patronage of a bishop, whose secretary he became.  As a reward for his service, the bishop gave him a leave of absence to attend the University of Paris. Here, however, he was as unsatisfied with its intellectual aridity, its scholastic disputes and formal disputations, as he’d been with the spiritual aridity of the monastery.  He thus left again, this time for England, in the company of some fellow students he’d met in Paris, and in England he became immediate, close friends with the great English humanist, Thomas More. It was More who directed Erasmus’ interests away from the classics, and toward the study of the ancient Church fathers and Scripture.   Through More, he saw that there was another option besides the arid disputations of the University of Paris; there was a way to combine his excellent mind and scholarly abilities with his belief in inner Christian spirituality.

His first major work illustrating this commitment was the Enchiridion, also known as the Handbook of the Christian Militant, (1503) which has, in short, a handbook of Christian values and practice. It was his manifesto of how to liberate theology from the arid, spiritless scholasticism he’d seen at Paris and make it something more vibrant and essential to man: he described classical learning preparing the mind for God’s revelation, and devotion to Christ as the guide and model, of every Christian life.  Leading a simple, pure life in imitation of Christ was the center of Christianity, to him, one available to all; but one way to know Christ’s and the apostles’ life better was the read the ancient Christian authorities. One fulfilment of this idea was to have a good scholarly Greek edition of the New Testament, so that the world would know what it had actually said, return to the original text—he worked on this for many years, and completed it in 1516. (Luther apparently used this edition of the New Testament.)

Another turning-point came in 1507, when Erasmus traveled to Italy.  He had long wanted to go and visit the places familiar to him from his classical reading; but when he got there, during the reign of Pope Julius II, the experience actually destroyed his confidence in the Italian renaissance and its emphasis on the dignity of man.  What he saw was the decadence of the Roman clergy, the undoing of society through corruption.  As was characteristic of him, he didn’t see the answer being in outward reform of Church practice; the problem was the inner weakness and foolishness of human beings, and the answer, therefore, was a regeneration of the human spirit, its redirection toward a moral, truthful, unhypocritical and spiritual orientation.    

All this makes Erasmus sound like a prig, but that would be to miss the lighter, more human aspect of him.  He was totally restless, and spent his whole life moving between England, Holland, France, Switzerland, and other places.  He never had a secure income, and often dedicated his writings to popes and cardinals, kings and queens in search of patronage.  He loved fine clothes and good cuisine, which made his financial needs higher; and he himself was illegitimate, born out of wedlock; an escapee from his own monastic vows, which he was formally loosed from only in 1517; and even accepted benefices—that is, church offices from which he’d get income without doing much—from the notorious Julius II.  So when he takes up the topic of human foolishness and weakness, he doesn’t do so with self-righteousness; he does so with an eye to the real comedy, as well as pathetic nature, of human beings, a trait that just lent more fuel to his belief that the reform of the individual heart was the key to all.

It was after his return from Italy to England, and in this frame of mind, that he wrote his most famous work, In Praise of Folly.  It was dedicated to his dear friend Thomas More, and the title is a pun on his name: Moriae encomium. He didn’t dedicate it to More in search of patronage, but as a friend; and it was a humorous work, meant to delight, as in fact it delighted most of Europe.  It is a satire of human foibles—not just the clergy, but people from all walks of life—and a gentle call to reform. He was not one for dogmatic statements; he didn’t much care for outward forms and rigidness anyway.  He believed in the inner spirit of man, its essential goodness and ability to be turned toward the right.  And the way to turn people toward the right was not to cudgel them over the heads, not to force them, but to persuade.  As he once said, “one shouldn’t say ‘you will do this,’ but rather ‘this in my opinion would be better.’” The Praise of Folly had a similar end—to tell the truth while joking, as Erasmus said, to make his message easier to take because of its humor.  Folly is the symbol of all the good things in life—and by slowly revealing how it is responsible for the ills of the world, by lampooning the short-sightedness of people, he hopes to bring the reader to a true notion of wisdom and god.

Thanks to the Handbook and Folly, by 1517 Erasmus was the most famous humanist in Europe, an international celebrity.  The Univ of Turin in Italy gave him an honorary degree as doctor of theology; the great Spanish reformer Ximenes invited him to the University of Alcalà; the future Emperor Charles V, as yet just Prince of Burgundy, made him his chancellor; the king of France wanted him to come to the royal court; he was much admired by the new King Henry VIII; and all through the Netherlands and the Rhineland in Germany he was greeted as a national hero.

With Luther’s challenge in 1517, however, it was no longer possible to be undogmatic, gently satirical, in Erasmus’ mode; one had to take sides.  Erasmus refused to condemn Luther, and because of this was suspected of being himself a Lutheran and enemy of the Church; his colleagues at the University of Louvain made life so intolerable for him he finally left the city for Basel. Under continuing pressure from the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and other princes, Erasmus finally responded in 1524 with a work called “On Free Will”, meant to refute the Lutheran insistence on predestination.  It was totally Erasmian—moderate, eloquent, aiming to persuade and not force or condemn; and was effective enough that Luther himself praised it!  But in these new times, the work’s very moderation brought Erasmus under further suspicion—he hadn’t been forceful enough.  Now he was hounded from Basel.  To the end of his life he refused to take sides in what he considered a senseless struggle, leading only to more war and hatred.  In 1535 Pope Paul III tried a last time to enlist him on the Catholic side, promising him a cardinal’s hat in return for his help in an upcoming council, but Erasmus refused, and died the following year, 1536.

← In a nutshell, what do Erasmus’s works tell us?

1. Although a sincere “Catholic”, Erasmus argued for the liberalizing the believer from the narrow constraints of Catholic worship/rites. For example, he argued that mass should be officiated in the vernacular.

2. Erasmus was against what he called the “impious clergy”. He condemned the Pope and his “courtiers” for abandoning their flock.

3. For Erasmus, truth and piety were the products not of rituals, but of clear thinking and right living.

4. His goal was ultimately to promote meaningful reform of the Church based on reason and Scripture. In fact, Erasmus viewed his mission as cleansing and purifying the Church through the application of humanist scholarship to the important sources of the Christian tradition.

5. His ultimate hope was to reconcile both personal and universal conflicts by moderation and balance.

6. It is crucial to remember that, although his ideas foreshadow many of the concerns and challenges brought to bear by the Reformers, Erasmus argued for reform from WITHIN; as he put it: to the Church “at all times I willingly submit my own views, whether I attain what she prescribes or not.” (“Diatribe on Free Will,” 6)

← One of Erasmus’ great friends, and the guy who pushed him toward the Christian classics, was Thomas More (1478-1535).  In some ways he is closest to our Italian model of a Renaissance humanist: he was in government service, like Bruni and Petrarch and Machiavelli and many others; and he did give political advice, or at least political commentary, in the work we are reading, Utopia.

As a young man he studied at Oxford, read the Greek and Latin classics, and became a great admirer of Pico della Mirandola—indeed, he wrote a biography of Pico that was published in 1510. Once done with school, he was torn between a monastic life and a life in government service (like his father, who was a judge). For several years (around 1501-4) he lived with the very austere, strict monastic order called the Carthusians. Like other groups of monks, the Carthusians possessed nothing individually, wore identical robes, lived in identical cells in a communal complex, and followed a strict regimen of prayer and work. More’s admiration for this way of life is reflected in parts of Utopia, and he himself continued to wear a hairshirt under his clothes (which was a traditional form of penance, and made his skin bleed) until the week before his death.

In the end, however, his sense of civic duty won out: he entered Parlaiment in 1504. At first he was not very successful, due to his opposition to King Henry VII (the king wanted to collect a lot of money from the people through a high tax and More was against it). IN fact, Henry VII put More’s father in prison and refused to let him out until More himself retired from public life. But after Henry VII died in 1509 and Henry VIII succeeded him, More’s star began to rise. He was elected an ‘undersheriff’ of London in 1510, and became known for his impartiality and care for the poor. In 1515 he was part of a diplomatic group sent to the Netherlands—this is the visit he opens Utopia with. In 1516, he wrote Utopia—so still near the beginning of his political career, and before Martin Luther burst on the scene.

It was the following years that were so dramatic and turbulent. More continued to advance politically: a member of the king’s Privy Council in 1518, he was knighted in 1521, and chosen as Speaker of the House of Commons (Parlaiment) in 1523. This last was a reward for More having helped Henry VIII write “A Defense of the Seven Sacraments,” which was a catholic repudiation of Luther’s doctrine that there were only two real sacraments. In 1529 More was named High Chancellor of England.

Unfortunately for More, these were the same years in which Henry VIII decided he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn and produce a male heir. More, a very Catholic man, tried simply to stay uninvolved. He retired from public life in 1532; he didn’t attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533. In 1534 he refused to swear the Act of Supremacy (which made Henry VIII the head of the Church in England, and marked the break with Catholicism) and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Condemned for treason, he was beheaded on 6 July 1535.

This lecture is taken in part from Dr. Samantha Kelly’s lecture for HIST 530 (Rutgers University in the Spring of 2003), available at

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