Crítica de La Categoría Humanismo

Humanism, Religion, Society: Concepts and Motivations of Some Recent Studies
Author(s): Charles Trinkaus

Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter, 1976), pp. 676-713
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of
America
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Humanism, Religion, Society: Concepts and
Motivations of Some Recent Studies
PART I. CONTRASTING TRENDS IN RECENT
RENAISSANCE HISTORIOGRAPHY
HE following essay will address itself

tent and the motivation of Renaissanc
in the last decade and will be confined p
work that has been done in the En
History, as other scholarly disciplines
look inward at its own work and t
within its particular national and language boun
time more inventive minds within the disciplin
satisfaction with provincialisms of various sort
thinking and their work to wider influences. Ye
slowly. For example the famous essay of Lucien
1 This paper was prepared for the session of the Internat

and Institutes for the Study of the Renaissance at the XIV
torical Science, meeting in San Francisco, August 27, 1975
manism, Religious and Social Utopias in the Renaissance.' I w
on recentAmerican Renaissance studies upon nomination o
Renaissance Society of America. I was subsequently asked t
sance studies also by David Chambers and Nicolai Rubins
Renaissance Studies. I consulted and received information fro
Canadian, and British historians concerning their own wor
concerning themes and books that should be discussed. I fou
wish to thank all of them. I only hope my comments have no
or their intentions. These scholars were William J. Bouws
Zemon Davis, Robert M. Kingdon, J. G. A. Pocock, Lewis
Trexler of the United States; Peter Bietenholz, Paul Grend
of Canada; A. G. Dickens, Dermot Fenlon, Denys Hay, G
McNair of Britain. Marvin B. Becker, David Bien, and Ra
sity of Michigan History Department made valuable critici
ing earlier drafts of this paper. In the end, however, as is to
personal statement concerning certain aspects of Renaissan
for it is entirely mine and not that of so many kind collea
[ 676 ]
HUMANISM, RELIGION, SOCIETY 677
mal posee,' first appeared in 1929 (Revue historique, 161

Italian counterpart in Delio Cantimori's Prospettive di storia
liana of 1960, and was cited for its parallels with Pre-Reform
man piety in Berndt Moellers' 'Frommigkeit in Deutschlan
of 1965. And now both Moeller's and Febvre's essays have
English translations, though, to be sure, the influence of these
ter-historians was felt outside their own language areas long
and 1965 and also in the English-speaking world.
Renaissance studies in Britain and America, like Reformat
have had to bear an analogous burden to that Febvre deplo
study of sixteenth-century religious developments under
sectarian religious interests. It was Febvre's plea to throw o
den of sectarianism for the historically serious goal of rega
religious attitudes and practices with a more universal and
spective, to see them no longer as quarrels over dogmas
thought, sensibility, and actions of specific groups of peo
dividuals-histoire religieuse rather than historie ecclesiastiqu
tant and Counter-Reformation sectarianism was the burde
epoch of 'Reform,' free-thought (libre-pensee, libertinisme)
lightenment (Aujkldrung, Illuminismo) were those of the
Enlightened, anticlerical, humanistic liberals of the eighte
teenth, and twentieth centuries thus saw themselves as the heir
naissance which had originated the qualities and values they
There were, of course, other burdens-the dispute between
and its cousin neo-classicism, the formation of the modern
state with its 'Machiavellian' real politik, fin de siecle aesthe
ing its favors with the so-called Pre-Raphaelite painters of
and early Quattrocento), and so on. Yet a major distortion
sance historiography continues to be the contemporary eff
the beginnings of rationalism and political liberalism in tha
If a retrospective historiography, looking for paradigms
beds of admired contemporary developments, or even of d
ones, has become an obstacle to authentic understanding of
sance, Renaissance studies have suffered even more from
sance's own myth that it alone brought about a rebirth of
tiquity. For although the Renaissance did, indeed, add imp
our knowledge and understanding of antiquity, certain maj
the literature and philosophy of the classical world were als
possessed by the writers and thinkers and men of learning of t
678 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
ious centuries which we have learned from the Renaissance hum
to call the Medium Aevum. Now it seems as though the men of
naissance who gave us that name of the Middle Ages have, by th
tortions or memory-lapses or simple ignorance-or much more
their disgust with the more traditional scholastic and legistic pro
and intellectuals of their own day-also created our modern par
ship and rivalry between Renaissance scholars and medievalists
latter, who championed the cause of medieval culture against hu
tic exaggeration, have in the early twentieth century engaged i
Wallace Ferguson has characterized as a 'revolt' against those B
hardtians and others who seemed to take the humanists too m
their own word.
The danger for historians always is to identify their own pa
ships with those of the past. The real enemies of these medievali
not the men of the Renaissance but certain of their own contempor
Those were to be found not among the enlightened liberals so m
among the late nineteenth-century aesthetes and the dilettantes
Macht-politiker and the Neo-Nietzscheans. Those, largely Anglo-
ican, medievalists, who considered themselves enlightened libera
not prompted to their defense of the 'medieval' world by the na
tic literary and linguistic concerns of the earlier romantics w
batted what they regarded as the effete, archaic Latin-classical r
tendencies of the humanists. Nor were they considered with t
talgia of Catholic neo-scholastics. On the contrary, they took
empirical, professional, pro-scientific, post-Protestant point o
democratic and anti-elitist perhaps, and one even more impatien
the literary, the artistic, the amateurish, and with-above all-w
surprising agreement with Burckhardt, seemed to be the moral
ous and intellectually shallow, rhetorical character of humanist
Believers in professional learning, in science and progress both
Middle Ages and in the modern world, but also sympathetic to
cultures such as the early-medieval Germanic or the early Italia
munes were assumed to be, the modern medievalists found eve
world of antiquity to be characterized by magic and supers
wholesale erotic indulgence, tyranny, hypocritical moralism and
responsible legalism, and other such negative qualities that were
dim the lustre of what was once thought to be the world's hap
centuries. And thus for them the epigones of twelfth- and thir
century learning began to be regarded not so much as Ber
Chartres' dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants as gi

dwarfs. Scholastic theology and an oppressive ecclesiastic
were no longer viewed with fear in consideration of the g
tural works, both the buildings and the scholastic summ
and depended upon an awakening interest in the natu
mathematics and natural philosophy, and even in rudime
mental science. The modern world, they suggested, rath
nating in the Italian Renaissance, began in the twelfth cen
earlier Renaissance, its translations of Greek scientific wor
its first peak in the universities of the thirteenth. These
versity centers manifested the first organized, rational
learning and intelligence to human problems, and with t
minded teachers were more likely candidates to be foreru
modern technical bureaucratic world emerging over the
years than the more nonutilitarian, beauty- and pleasure
boys (and girls) of the 'so-called Renaissance.'
One cannot, of course, seriously criticize the magnificen
of Charles Homer Haskins or of Lynn Thorndike (and m
whose evaluative attitudes toward their historical period
hope, not unfairly characterized. (And lest I be misunder
say that I have no quarrel with serious study of any histor
cluding most definitely the Middle Ages, but only with
concerning the past in all its forms-medievalist, 'Renaissan
Protestant, conservative, Neo-Catholic, or whatever.) Yet
the medievalists nearly won the day, and a kind of bitter
among their heirs, many of them even students of thes
American medievalists, at the return of the pendulum. M
thing else the revival of Renaissance studies and the prese
nary retrospective admiration for this period2 has been ef
transplantation of early twentieth-century German schola
land and the United States as a tragic consequence of the H
wind. One could speak of many great figures, but perhap
2 This was predominantly anAmerican matter, and I shall speak of it as

a strong traditional interest in constitutional history, in the history of p
and a somewhat more recent interest in economic history has continued
twentieth century, with perhaps a much stronger distinction between Br
Italian (or continental Reformation) history than between medieval an
Society for Renaissance Studies has only recently been formed, and to a
slow spread of the influence of the Warburg Institute has kindled an in
sance studies as well as in history of art and intellectual history.
of whom were professional historians, may stand for all the rest
Panofsky, who extended the history of art to a general history
riodization of culture, and the philosopher-philologist Paul Oskar
teller.3 (The influence of a third great figure, in this case a hist
Hans Baron, we discuss below.) Significantly, both Kristeller an
ofsky were rather more empirical scholars, endowed with a vast
tion, than representatives of the Anglo-American bete noir, Ge
idealist philosophy. Even though they were in some respect
Kantians,' and certainly admirers of Ernst Cassirer's many wor
especially his Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissa
1927 (Eng. trans., 1963), still their concerns were primarily wit
naissance culture in its relationship to its medieval and classical
And it was not so much the original researches of Panofsky an
teller as their erudition and wide knowledge of ancient, mediev
Renaissance culture, together with their gift for apodictic form
and statement, that for a time at least restored the Renaissance to hi
ical respectability in the English-speaking world. Undoubtedly it
no such rehabilitation in Italy and Germany, and probably not in
where Febvre was busily creating his own revision.
The dates are important, as well as the structure of their solu
Critical articles were published in English in 1944-Panofsky's le
'Renaissance and Renascences' in the Kenyon Review, eventua
panded into his Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (U
1960; Harper Torchbook, 1969); Kristeller's key statement, 'Hum
and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance,' in Byzantion, XVII
45), reprinted in 1956 in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and
and again in 1961 in Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholasti
Humanist Strains, which incorporated his The Classics and Rena
Thought of 1955. We have thus now had thirty years in which to
the perspectives of these two great influences (need I say that I u
work as representative of many others' valuable contributions
sympathetic lines who will not be mentioned here). What they a
3 Of course Renaissance studies also retained some vitality in the United State
early forties, and Panofsky and Kristeller, as the latter reminds me, found a warm
tion from such figures as B. L. Ullman, Lester Bradner, and, among historians
K. Ferguson, at that point writing his important historiographical survey and e
of Renaissance history, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948). A
of such American scholars on the Committee on Renaissance Studies of the American
Council of Learned Societies led eventually a decade later to the foundation of the Renai-
sance Society of America. Myron P. Gilmore and the present writer had recently pub-
lished dissertations in the area of Renaissance history.
plished-and for this it is perhaps important to mention a

ence of E. R. Curtius' seminal notebook, European Litera
Latin Middle Ages of 1948, English translation 1953-was t
continuity of the classical traditions (emphatically plural) fro
through the medieval periods, on into the Renaissance wi
variations and transformations that took place over this e
span of roughly two millennia.
Panofsky with his notion of a series of classical revivals
Ages, both artistic and literary-philosophical, which he
cences,' ended by establishing a qualitatively and quantitat
Italian 'Renaissance' on the basis of its self-perceptions a
consciousness that was possibly the most important novelt
in identifying for this phase in the history of Western c
The 'Renaissance,' he claimed, through its historical co
was able to or at least strove to see the ancients in their
Thus he not only offered an acceptable key to understan
naissance in terms of its own characteristics with no need
comparisons over the degree of knowledge of antiquity,
a flood of studies, both art-historical and intellectual-his
naissance modes of perception-visual and literary-his
became of course simultaneously comparative with the v
of medieval, ancient, and post Renaissance modes of per
the parallel influence of Cassirer's interpretive study of
thought and philosophy along these lines needs emphasi
Renaissance classicism and Renaissance perspective as tw
aspects of at least that part of Renaissance consciousness
designated 'modes of perception,' Panofsky also establishe
the study of the history of science, then dominated by both
and Sarton's (later revised) rejection of any significant R
tribution. Thus they, with Duhem and others, created t
continuity of medieval and modern science, of how to mo
dan's and Oresme's important but clearly scholastic physi
science of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. But now afte
Kristeller, and Cassirer, the problem is more likely to be for
movement from Alberti to Galileo, though the former's
Biagio dei Pelacani's optical conceptions establishes links
some aspects of medieval science. In fact, what was missi
under way, was an understanding of the parallels and ev
nections of late medieval 'nominalistic' scholastic though
ology and natural philosophy) and Renaissance thought, h

and scientific.
But first the basic divisions and broad historical relati
Renaissance thought had to be placed in true perspective, an
the great contribution of Kristeller. Reacting in part to the
riodization of the history of philosophy or of intellectual hi
successive phases designated as scolasticismo, umanesimo, rin
Kristeller demonstrated that both scholasticism and humanism
growths in Italy and came in the fourteenth century side by sid
ism emerging from the medieval ars dictaminis and scholasti
oping independent traditions in such fourteenth-century uni
Bologna, Pavia, and Padua. Renaissance Aristotelianism, part
the area of natural philosophy, dominated university learning
ology being taught and cultivated primarily in the schools o
dicant orders. Thirteenth-century Italian learning had remain
ily concentrated in jurisprudence, the major Italian theolog
active in Paris. Thus a differentiation was made between a hig
northern French scholastic and literary culture and a later
and Quattrocento Italian culture divided between scholas
philosophy at the universities and the humanities, at first
and courts and in chanceries, but soon also within the univer
term 'Renaissance' simply indicated, spatially and temporally
of the late medieval culture that occurred at this time in Ita
But Kristeller also stressed the importance of the successive ph
rhetorical tradition-Greek, Roman, medieval, Renaissance h
and did the same for the Aristotelian and Platonic philosop
tions, indicating in each instance the classical phases, the Byz
Arabic, and the Western medieval and the ways in which th
brought to bear on Renaissance Aristotelianism and Platonism
contributed a very badly needed, large-scale chart of the basi
of the history of the Western cultures-Greek, Roman, Heb
Christian, Islamic, Byzantine, medieval Latin, Renaissance. I
very clear through his writings that Renaissance culture could n
be a revival of an undifferentiated classical antiquity but tha
itself was received in its own widely differing, complex sc
historical phases, and that they were in turn screened through t
tory in the three intervening successor cultures in highly differ
ways. Thus a much more refined and articulated conception
tory of thought emerged.
Although his background and training was in philosop

philology, medieval intellectual history, and he had little
sympathy for the modern social sciences as for instance
Kristeller's work also made an important contribution to
derstanding the Renaissance in terms of the multiple an
layers of historical traditions that diffused earlier learnin
within it, a perspective that in fact paralleled certain basi
cal conceptions of the process of diffusion. However, this
traditional but still highly valuable, rested on a thorough
the basic texts of philosophy and rhetoric, of the historical c
tioned, combined with a knowledge of the textual histor
of the key works written within the period under study
Moreover, Kristeller's sensitivity to the religious concer
manists and philosophers of the Renaissance, reflected in
of the importance of centers of lay piety such as he thin
tonic Academy was, underlined the importance of intelle
ments for certain aspects of the social history of the Ren
increasing interest in the religious aspects of Renaiss
thought Kristeller also contributed his emphasis on the r
gustinianism and of patristic thought generally as Chri
among the humanists and in the emerging Renaissance P
Thus, Kristeller (and Panofsky to a lesser extent) cont
clarification of the relationships of the Renaissance and o
their pasts, ancient and medieval, but basically left open
their relationships to and influence upon the historical genes
ture. Certainly the weight of Cassirer's thinking, and,
similarity of some of his ideas, by inference Panofsky's,
to the Enlightenment, to early modern science, to Germ
losophy. It was, perhaps, also difficult for Kristeller as histo
ophy and Neo-Kantian to escape from this tendency altog
notable that the thrust of his work was toward the goal of u
the Renaissance in terms of autonomous qualities authent
though derived in a complex historical process from th
doubt leading in an equally complex but unpredictable w
future. What he emphatically did not wish to do was to
period or phase of the history of thought with another
acterizations linking the two.
The work of Panofsky and Kristeller (and others) has
lished the distinctiveness of the Renaissance by clarificat
ture of its classicism, humanism, Aristotelianism, Platonism,

thought, and historical consciousness in comparison with prev
dieval ones. There is no doubt in my mind that, while to som
'correcting' the polemical emphasis of such historians as Has
Thorndike, work of this sort has also vindicated it. Distinctive
tinuity with past and future, parallelism and connection with
temporary developments-all three qualities were present and
affirmed.
Continuity and change are of the essence of the historical process so
that it becomes even banal and obvious to discuss the question. It is the
concrete continuities and changes that are of moment; yet what has
plagued Renaissance studies has been the persistence in Western histor-
ical thinking of the far too sweeping distinction between the 'medieval'
and 'modern' made so emphatically by so many Renaissance thinkers
and the consequent search for the 'medieval' or the 'modern' within the
Renaissance. If'modern times' began with the Renaissance, then the stage
is set for the long tradition of historical investigations of what aspects
of modern culture took their beginnings in the Renaissance. But the
very fact that the medieval-Renaissance controversy broke out as early
as the seventeenth century is evidence that something was wrong with
this historical scenario. It forgot, of course, that the Renaissance meta-
historians were saying that their age was or could be more like antiquity
than the saecula recentiora which would then become a medium aevum,
that in fact they saw their own times as regrettably closer to the prev-
ious period than to the ancient glories. The medieval-modern quarrel
was, of course, shaped also by the sectarian historiography of Protestants
and Catholics who identified the medieval with either religious decay or
triumph and, reversing the roles of the modern, with somehow both
developing a certain ambivalence about the Renaissance. Basically the
argument is about when the modern European world began and
whether the Middle Ages was an intervening 'middle' period or in fact
is the very tempus within which the modern world takes its start.
Yet at that very moment when the effect of work such as Kristeller's
and Panofsky's was to dampen the medieval-modern quarrel, a re-
newed assertion of the contrast and a location of the critical turn within
the Italian Renaissance was presented by Hans Baron with the assistance
of such epigones of modern, liberal enlightenment as Professors Walter
Ullmann of Cambridge University and Peter Gay of Columbia and
Yale. One should not underestimate the collective appeal of the work
of all three, nor their profound influence on contemporar

thought in England and America, nor their roots in the
liberalism of modern Germany (Bismarckian, Wilhelmian, as
Weimar), but for the comprehension of recent Renaissance
raphy we must undoubtedly turn to that of Hans Baron.
Baron's The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance was first pu
1955 (revised edition in 1966), exactly twenty years before
gress (though he had formulated his ideas as early as 1932). J
teller and Panofsky emphasized the distinctiveness of Renais
sicism in art history and intellectual history, Baron, also o
generation of Weimar emigres, stressed the uniqueness of t
attitudes of the Italian humanists-or at least of those whom
to include in his magic circle of 'civic' or biirgerlich huma
whereas for Kristeller and Panofsky the distinctiveness of t
sance is embedded in an even stronger sense of the historical
and connection with the ancient, medieval, and Byzantine pa
in his well-known thesis conceives of the Renaissance as a 'cr
ical turning away from or break with medieval culture and a
with the regressive elements of classical culture which wer
more favorably in the medieval period. His emphasis is for
ing and definitely 'modernizing.'
Apart from the many valuable analyses of particular datings a
such subsidiary problems that Baron has made in order to
argument, the basic appeal and value of Baron's work is that
ian Renaissance studies into a context of historical significan
period would seem to have lost if it had not in fact, as B
claimed, revived classical learning and given faith to modern
ism, and as a consequence was absorbed into a notion of a de
dieval culture. Baron made Renaissance republicanism the an
of the eighteenth-nineteenth-twentieth-century secularist, l
stitutional ideal.
Baron's conception has attracted three of the most impor
lectual historians working today (about whom we will have
say below), namely WilliamJ. Bouwsma, George Holmes, J.
cock, and he has also inspired a remarkable number of poten
institutional historians, as is evidenced by the Festschrift
Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho an
deschi in 1971. Yet to my mind, this work, however valuab
data and interpretive analyses of detailed portions of it, suf
sively from the traditional genetic-modernist bias that at the sa

is so prevalent among contemporary social and political scienti
those historians whom they have influenced. The trouble is that
genetic-modernizing kind of history which has flourished in r
years (and not only with respect to the Renaissance) we tend to
ancestors and not for understanding of the way things were, th
in fact tend to impose our reading of universal history on a per
may have had a very different historical consciousness from ou
The consequence is that we can all-too-easily impose issues and a
of forces and parties that essentially do not correspond with t
concerns of the period in question, which are frequently much
complex and problematical than we, in our quest for clarity, som
make them.
All historiography is by definition retrospective; it is totally
sible to escape one's own cultural values altogether. Historical p
zations are bound to be to some extent self-reflecting and arb
Nonetheless, it is also not impossible to be critical or to attem
critical, to attempt to acquire a sufficient understanding of the
ness of a past period to be able to grasp it in its own terms. It s
me that the need to revise our most basic historical assumptio
cerning the place of the Renaissance within the whole Western t
has now arrived and that an increasing number of historians are
ing aware of this. I should like to sketch out my own views of this
lem in close relation to an evaluation of the recent historical st
the Renaissance I have set out to discuss. What I have said abou
teller and Panofsky is not a diversion because they have set the stag
the kind of thinking that must now go on-indeed has in many r
already begun to go on, and, if we can refer back to Lucien Fe
essay mentioned at the beginning, already some time ago. No do
French Annales school has contributed heavily to this kind of re
thinking, but it is by no means the only or the most important
Modern western European history might better be seen as beg
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the formation of the
and English monarchies, the medieval German empire, and the
communes, with the attempted consolidation of the papacy wi
Gregorian reforms. At least as far as the central institutional a
continuities are concerned that is where it begins. As far as cult
concerned, both its Christian and classical elements were inheri
it begins, in a sense that was not true of the earlier Middle Ages, to
a history of its own, and one where new professional classes

tuals assume a certain responsibility within society as a whol
their own institutions for training, study, and debate, the m
versities with theologians, canon and civil lawyers, notaries a
cians, natural philosophers and physicians. All the most imp
stitutional and intellectual developments of the modern wo
evolved directly from these beginnings-divided regionally
in protest and revolt, but always with a sense of relationship
assumption of responsibility for the culture as a whole, som
shamelessly self-centered and corrupt manner, but always w
lip-service to the wider common interest. By whatever defi
civilization, a culture, a polity, a social order we wish to ma
torical facts fit a phasing such as this.
But as Haskins, Thorndike, Panofsky, and Kristeller knew,
nificant by far than the established institutions-political pow
ecclesiastical temporalities, professions, economic organizatio
tically and sometimes catastrophically important)-were the
of consciousness: ideas, purposes, feelings, behavior, beliefs,
fears; the characters and differences of urban and rural com
individualism and community-identifications; conceptions
lieved relations with supernatural beings and forces; technol
its, and skills. For all of these, too, not only have their struc
differentiations, and their phasings, sometimes regional, fre
tally individual, but do in fact comprise the sum-total of the
self. And they must be grasped not taxonomically but dyna
cause they are evanescent and only exist in relation to and i
with experience. Institutions, power-concentrations, statuses
exercise a continuing influence, inhibiting or releasing, on t
of life, as does the provision of means of subsistence and mater
the presence of famine, prosperity, and business depressio
through conceptions, purposes, moods, feelings of the livi
who enact and suffer them can they be understood.
To my mind the most important phasing of the history of
pean culture did not occur between the medieval and Renai
ormation periods but later. Yet there is no doubt but that t
prepared by what had gone on before. It would not be exces
inal to think that the gradual impact of the new sciences of
teenth century, the technological and industrial revolution
eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the emergence of larg
political movements beginning with the abortive seventeenth-

English Puritan revolution were the elements that brought about
tic transformation of the older European modes of consciousn
this did not happen suddenly or without great confusion.
What, however, was central to them was the gradual developm
a 'deification' of man, or a displacement of the consciousness of
the prime directive force in the universe by a notion of human
and of 'natural' forces, which indeed begins in the Italian Rena
What I am asserting, of course, is the historical centrality of the di
ment of religion which occurred very gradually in the course of
history. The roles of the earlier phases of European culture wit
process have been very badly misinterpreted-those of twelfth-c
humanism, of twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholasticism, fourt
and fifteenth-century 'nominalism,' Petrarchian humanism, Ari
natural philosophy, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Platonism, rel
conflict and reform, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science. Fo
secularization of culture and the 'deification' of man grew direc
of the movements and attitudes that were present within med
Renaissance-Reformation Christianity itself rather than being t
gram of a secularist opposition movement to 'medieval' Christi
within this first great phase of the history of the modern West
Unquestionably the relationship of the sacred and the secular
a critical problem in our period of the Late Middle Ages, Rena
and Reformation; and the major cultural innovations-nomi
mysticism, humanism, reformation theologies-should perhaps
as varied attempts to clarify the relationship of secular and re
values while somehow preserving both. The revival of Augusti
'Augustinianism' should be equally seen as a recourse to a think
seemed so centrally to be trying to resolve the same problem. T
matrix for the study of the self-consciousness of our period-n
assertion of a dichotomy between the sacred and the secular, th
and the layman, the mystical and the rational which generated
and multifarious parties, but a search for ways of trying to br
gether and reconcile the apparently conflicting values. Let us
that what was going on was a tendency to secularize the sacred
simultaneously sacralizing the secular.
Obviously polarizations did occur, some solutions chosen wer
satisfactory to some groups than others, sometimes to such an
that persecution, war, massacre seemed the only answer to the d
the false solution embraced by others. Obviously also

ranged from complete separation and isolation of the mo
ing and acting within the two spheres to complete identif
ever the degree of rational thought applied to carefully
lems (which in the case of Machiavelli could be intense), t
supernatural, the magical, the daemonic remained palpabl
to be accepted in some form or another-even in Galileo's
universe, even in politics, history, or fortune.
Within this context of enormous confusion concerning
ship of sacred and profane, divine and human, the indivi
possess power, again in some form or other-divine, daem
ical, social, magical, scientific, mechanical, sacramental,
ularly moral-for virtue is personal moral power, and th
sought it by his own free will, or trusted it would come to h
sufficiently, that is, to render him 'just' as well as 'justified.
toriousness was debated, not only in a theological context
of secular or sacred status. Was nobility a matter of birth
seized by virtue, by action, by achievements? Was the m
'religious' by vocation, especially sacred and thus merito
he was bound over to God by his vows (thus contributin
sury of holiness in which his less meritorious neighbor m
gence participate)? Or was the spontaneously, graciously
charity or love by the layman or secular cleric more sain
tion-bringing (or salvation-signifying)? Is it too daring to
power that all sought-from the Impruneta Virgin's secr
the king's thaumaturgic touch to the prince's seizure of
sions-by that odd old anthropological term 'manna'? At
are talking about has some of the qualities of 'manna.'
And then there is the matter of human thought and cu
power, its effectiveness, its reliability, its veracity. Cert
one of the foci of the debates between humanists and sch
the concern with the power of words and language-rheto
to dialectic, the former enchanting and the latter compel
the validity of the Word, of revelational knowledge aga
manly conjectured, becomes of great issue between nonminal
How much of this is connected with the great debates co
potentia absoluta against his potentia ordinata, his philosophi
limitless power and the seemingly much closer and mor
creed power of his commandments and covenants? How
ancient doctrine of reification in which a deeply intellected t

itself the substance of its object was being asserted by the ear
lastic's philosophical realism or how much reification was th
uttered word of the sacrament, the written word of the Scrip
Aristotle), and later the ipse dixit of the printed word? All of th
conceptual counters in the efforts to discover the validity of tho
language-not to mention the visual language in the painting
ture, on or off the altar. And positions and solutions are mul
Individuals sought 'power' in a vast variety of ways, but th
of 'power' must be grasped collectively and socially as well. C
which binds men to each other as well as to God, is seen as pu
and emotional power, fierce and fortitudinous, by Valla. It b
and sends men forth as milites Christiani against their enemie
or not with daemonic power. And the collectivity of the com
divinely endowed and providentially directed, seeks a new f
of the Christian vision of brotherhood in apocalyptic movem
civic religions. For Machiavelli the question of justice and m
the constituted source of political power becomes entangled
brutal assertion of princely power in the corrupt community
only the individual, the class, the religious status that is endo
virtue, but also the community, the universal condition and d
mankind. It is in this process that the 'deification' of man that lo
ward to the later modern culture begins to emerge in writi
time.
Such, loosely stated, are some of the problems that need more syste-
matic exploration in any effort to develop an anthropological consider-
ation of the history of the Italian Renaissance and its cousin-cultures, the
northern Late Middle Ages, and the Reformation epochs of both Italy
and the North. To approach the study of the Renaissance in this way
does not necessarily contradict and certainly does not supersede or can-
cel the importance of the genetic-modernizing type of study exempli-
fied by Baron and others. A number of historians working today clearly
subscribe to both approaches and probably would not agree that they
are even separate or different. Nevertheless, from my point of view as
I have stated it, a much more radical effort at a critical 'then-mindedness'
seems called for, one that does not fall into the extreme of historicism
seeking to think entirely within the concepts and perceptions of a past
age but one which seeks to see that age in the fullness of its internal inter-
connections, including its reconstructions of its past and its anticipa-
tions of its future, as an autonomous sub-whole of the total

man experience. Thus, hopefully, the ideological partisanship
torian with a fragment of the past, which tends to be utilized as
in his own ideological battles of the present, may be avoided,
and deeper understanding of a past phase of history may be
After these far too lengthy preliminaries, I should like to discus

the recent work in the late medieval, Renaissance-Reformatio
seems to fall within these two approaches. I shall attempt to d
according to the categories set for the International Congress
the International Federation of Renaissance Societies and Institutes:
'Humanism,' 'Religions,' 'Social Utopias.' However, it is clear from my
own approach that questions of this type cannot be fully isolated, so that
no special effort will be made to stay strictly within these categories. The
books themselves frequently wander across these boundaries. And, in-
deed, I am particularly interested in those which do-relating human-
ism, religious thought and movements, social conditions, policies and
programs within the general frame of Renaissance culture. A number of
recent studies, for purely arbitrary reasons, will not be discussed. Polit-
ical, administrative, general regional studies have for the most part been
skipped regardless of their importance, for instance, such an outstanding
work as Peter Partner's Lands of St. Peter (1972). Lack of space excludes
others. In general I have sought to talk about works that seem signifi-
cant in signaling the directions, particularly the new directions, of Re-
naissance research, ones that suit my arguments laid forth above, studies
that I happen to know and understand better than some others.4
4 One effort in recent years to bring about a closer interrelationship of the varying ap-
proaches to the study of late medieval and Renaissance religion in its theological, social,
and cultural ambience was a conference at The University of Michigan in April 1972. The
ensuing volume, The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (1974),
edited by Heiko A. Oberman and myself, may be mentioned for the sake of reference-
identification of some of the papers on varying themes whose authors' work we may
want to discuss. Other recent volumes of essays which contain similar matters and to
which reference may similarly be made are: Medievalia et Humanistica, N.S. 4 (1973),
devoted to medieval and Renaissance spirituality; Transition and Revolution (1974), ed.
Robert M. Kingdon; the Festschrifts for E. Harris Harbison, Action and Conviction in
Early Modern Europe (1969), ed. T. K. Raab and J. E. Seigel; for Hans Baron, Renaissance
Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (cited above); for Wallace K. Ferguson, Florilegiumn His-
toriale (1971), ed. J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale; for Paul Oskar Kristeller, Itinerariumn
Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations
PART II. HUMANISM, RECENT TRENDS AND STUDIES
A. The Civic Humanism Issue
The year 1968 saw the publication of three importa

with the question of humanism and its involvement
tural-political problems of its ambience. Hans Baron
says, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, is not only a
reaffirmation of his basic thesis concerning Bruni
critical turn in political and cultural attitudes, but it
attempt to analyze Petrarch's writings in terms of h
change of attitudes toward religion and political life,
Bruni's Laudatio Florentiae Urbis.
Jerrold E. Seigel's Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissan
only stressed the traditionalism of the humanists' car
rhetoricians following the precedent of Cicero (as he
his Past and Present polemic against Baron), but const
break out of the formalism of this position in order
sophical aspects of humanism as an indication of its resp
spiritual problems of the time. Although he recogn
political aspects of humanism Baron sought to stress a
Seigel sought also to highlight the many religious asp
ment and its relations with the continuing scholastic stu
William Bouwsma's Venice and the Defense of Repu
the other hand, began by affirming the Baron thesis, bu
ened it into a struggle between 'medieval' and 'Re
and cultural values not only in Bruni's Florence and
more generally between the Catholic Counter-Refor
designates as indeed also a 'Counter-Renaissance') and
publicanism broadly conceived. Like Seigel in his ant
however, Bouwsma in his espousal of the Baron thes
vision than that position implies. Corresponding to
philosophically skeptical character of humanism, he b
of Christian vision emerges, one which simultaneous
macy of the will and salvation by grace. Bouwsma's
(1975), ed. H. A. Oberman (with T. A. Brady, Jr.), Cultural Aspect

sance (1976), ed. C. H. Clough, and Philosophy and Humanism (19
Although they contain a variety of matters falling under variou
convenient to mention these bibliographically difficult items toge
sance Christianity, outlined in condensed form in his introd

ter, are highly compatible with other recent studies of the reli
of the humanists. An investigation of the problem of the re
humanist religious thought to the Reformations, Protestant
and Radical, has now become essential after the growing in
cerning the blending of secular and religious motifs in Qu
Italy. Fittingly, Bouwsma's current work, at this date still
seeks to explore the degree of congruity between Italian hu
the thought of the classical Protestant Reformers. Though
sented some of his ideas in preliminary papers (cf. 'Ren
Reformation, An Essay on Their Affinities and Connections
and the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed. H. A. Oberman [1947
Two faces of Humanism, Stoicism and Augustinianism in R
Thought,' in Itinerarium Italicum), we shall eagerly await
tion of this major study.
In 1969 Seigel's and Bouwsma's studies of humanism were
by George Holmes's The Florentine Enlightenment 1400-50.
influenced by Baron, saw the need, however, to explore and
the relationship of the radical moral and intellectual stanc
Florentine and curial humanists with traditional Christian
this 'avant-garde' group as freer and more open in their spec
cause of the weakness of the papacy during the latter years of
its aftermath and papal dependence on Florence. Thus severa
who were active both in the curia and in Florence-Bruni,
berti, and others- advanced morally and religiously dubiou
And he sees Lorenzo Valla, though then associated with Ki
of Naples' anti-papal policies, as going even further. The t
book clearly manifests his judgment that the humanists in t
in some way anticipated the philosophes of the eighteenth
he must be aware of the very specific differences between the
rhetorical and voluntaristic character of the humanists' tho
genuinely religious concerns, and, on the other hand, the th
tific naturalism, and rationalism of the philosophes. His title th
taken as more metaphorical than literal in an effort to con
the intellectual intensity and excitement of this group of w
it is exposed to the risk of perpetuating a serious misconc
riving perhaps from the prevalence of the genetic-moder
proach to history, of the historical affinity of the Renaiss
Enlightenment. Although his theory that humanist radicali
to Florentine dominance over the papacy could be questioned, his

does have the particular merit of directly connecting the humanists
the new artistic theory and practice, and thus presenting a detail
ture of a broad but concentrated phase of Renaissance culture.
over, it is symptomatic of the trends of historiography in these
that, despite an initial approach to the problem from the perspec
Baron's 'civic humanism,' Holmes felt it necessary to deal exten
with the religious ideas of the humanists.
A thesis supported by Holmes and Bouwsma (as well as Gar
Baron) is that in the later Quattrocento, particularly under Lore
Florence, there was a 'Return to Metaphysics' (in Holmes's phrase
was thought to result from a more despotic, hierarchical, courtly
ical condition than existed during the oligarchic rule of the earli
teenth century. However, Donald Weinstein in his Savonarola and
ence, Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (of 1970), a work de
with a religio-political movement, and also its connections with
humanists, shows the intimacy of the ties of many Laurentian huma
and Platonists with the Savonarolan movement, which he also r
as closely tied to the Florentine civic and populist traditions. Th
lem then arises of whether the theological concerns of this later
of writers, seemingly greater than those of earlier humanists, was d
political or other causes. Weinstein's book will be discussed f
below.
B. Rhetoric and Renaissance Historical Consciousness
In 1970 Nancy Struever's book was published: The Language of H

in the Renaissance, Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentin
manism. Essentially it is an effort to explore the extent to which
sophist ideas as transformed by Cicero find duplication among th
generation of humanists Seigel and Holmes discussed, and also t
tent to which viable comparisons between humanist language th
and modern linguistics can be made. Her book has been regarde
some respects obscure. Indeed her manner of writing and organi
reflect her fascination with the humanists' own discovery of t
biguous character of human thought and discourse. Writing wi
aphoristic style, presenting a melange of insights in a series of burst
puts the reader who does not share her wide range of historical, liter
and philosophical associations at a disadvantage. However, what
very importantly shown is the critical nature of language theo
practice among the humanists for the emergence of a new

ing of history in some respects more like our own understandin
the infinite play of contingency in human societies and the con
provisational response. Although she does not say so, it is c
believes that the prestige of humanism and the profession
rhetoric meant a much more radical change in Renaissance
has sometimes been perceived, and that this change is som
related to the character of the humanists' social world, alt
does not describe it. Neither is she much interested in the
ideas.
Struever's study, which is a follow-up of Seigel's book and of Kris-
teller's emphasis on humanism as derived from the rhetorical traditions,
both classical and medieval, a paternity she would probably not recog-
nize, also owes its interest to the increasing concern with Renaissance
historical consciousness, prompted in part by Panofsky and enormously
furthered by Nicolai Rubinstein's and Felix Gilbert's studies, particularly
the latter's Machiavelli and Guicciardini of 1965. Thus, also in 1970, there
appeared Donald R. Kelley's Foundations of Modern Historical Scholar-
ship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance. It is Kelley's
thesis that the rhetorical and philological interests of the Italian human-
ists, particularly Valla's, led to a deepened historical sense whose impact
Kelley traces in the development of French juridical thought and in turn
on late sixteenth-century French historical thought. Like Struever's this
also is a book of depth and vitality; unlike Struever's the texture follows
a more consistent course.
In this same genre, but a volume of related essays, J. G. A. Pocock's
Politics, Language and Time appeared in 1971. Pocock's major study, The
Machiavellian Moment-Florentine political thought and the Atlantic repub-
lican tradition: a study in the politics of time, saw publication in 1975. Like
Bouwsma, Struever, Gilbert, and Kelley, Pocock is deeply concerned
with the Renaissance experience of historical contingency. He is also gen-
erally interested in how, theoretically, the problem of dealing withfor-
tuna has been handled from Aristotle to the Fathers of the American
Republic. Out of this tradition he finds both modern historical and mod-
ern political consciousness emerging. The moment is truly 'Machiavel-
lian' in those instances of history where men stare pure contingency
nakedly in the face and then confront it with either virtu or submission.
The critical historical consciousness, that men can shape their collective
life, gradually emerges in the Renaissance. Pocock sees it as evolving
from Bruni's 'civic humanism' also grasped according to Hans B

or politeia, as modified by Seigel's strictures into a coexisting 'p
ical humanism or paideia transmitted by sundry Florentine cit
propelled forward by Savonarola's apocalyptic vision of Florence
savior-city for mankind (following Weinstein's analysis), main
then by Machiavelli under the Soderini regime until the great
of 1512. The aftermath, Machiavelli's moment of insight in a t
despair, becomes the scene of an intensive outpouring of specula
the nature of history and of the political and constitutional re
available to man to bestride and control it. In a lengthy analysis
ciardini's political thought and of Machiavelli's, Giannotti's, an
tarini's, Pocock spells out his conception of the combination of
vellian virtu with Guicciardinian theory of mixed governm
balanced powers, derived from Aristotle by way of Polybius, a
basic paradigm of modern constitutionalism, Harringtonian En
and Madisonian American.
For Pocock the Renaissance experience was one of being overwhelmed
by the contingency of daily secular and political life and of ultimately
yielding up the religious pseudo-solutions and diversions in order to
face squarely the situation that there is nothing unless man organizes a
morality within a political order. The insight is indeed profound but
fails to take into account the historical necessity in the Renaissance for a
religion of contingency such as certain humanists sought to promulgate
through their rhetoric-Petrarch, Valla, More, Erasmus. Despite this
somewhat incongruous retention of an enlightenment antireligious bias,
one must pay tribute to a work which, because of its depth and sweep,
and its connection of our own Machiavellian moments with the ancient
Greeks and the Renaissance, will surely have an enduring influence. I
may say this, even granting my enduring skepticism concerning such
genetic-modernizing approaches to history which Pocock, though with
significant inner contradictions, practices, because we can learn from all
historical 'paradigms' and 'moments' if, as in this instance, they are
grasped with sufficient depth of understanding of their rootedness in
their own times.
The theme of rhetoric and its relationship to new historical and (as we
shall discuss in the next section) religious modes of consciousness raises
the question of the importance of the study of traditions. I would not
want it to be thought from my criticisms of the genetic-modernizing
approach and its distortions of Renaissance history by precursory selec-
tivity that I minimize the importance of studying both shor

term intellectual, artistic, religious, and scientific tradition
comes when the items of a particular tradition taken out of the
ical context are then substituted for the understanding in
complexity all historical cultures demand. There are indeed
paradigms within which men grasp and direct their experie
humanist tradition is one of them, as is the Platonic, the Aristo
Augustinian, the Ockhamist, etc. Of particular importance
standing the Renaissance was the humanists' rhetorical tra
Pocock along with Struever, Kelley, and many other sch
(one thinks also of Hanna Gray) are right to stress it. But R
humanism as a paradigm needs to be seen not merely as po
totelian, 'civic humanist,' or whatever), nor only as paideia,
theologia rhetorica, as well as the new visual and literary c
conceptions and style, and indeed in terms of other compon
And here it is important to mention the contribution of tw
an understanding of the artistic-literary relationships of
Michael Baxandall's Giotto and the Orators of 1971 (and man
his Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy of 19
with delicacy and insight the interrelations between literar
rhetoric. Wesley Trimpi is a literary scholar who, working
carefully, is reconstructing classical literary and rhetorical phil
show how it was received and in turn transformed by the
thinkers, writers, and artists of the Renaissance. It is the sort
but absolutely essential research that is both rare and preci
his contributions are: 'The Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction: A
the Origins of Literary Theory,' Traditio, 27 (1971), 'The Q
Fiction: The Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory,'
with sequel papers continuing in the same journal, and 'The
Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis,'Journal of the Warburg and Courtau
36 (1973).
Indeed, following the precedents of the work of Panofsky and Kris-
teller, a new sophistication concerning the interconnectedness of history,
philosophy, rhetoric, literary theory, aesthetics, social forms and atti-
tudes, and moral and religious attitudes and theories has been emerging
in recent scholarship. And this new sophistication, anthropological in
its conceptual basis, simultaneously grasps the Renaissance both as an
autonomous new culture and as intertwined with living medieval tradi-
tions and with transmitted and newly recaptured ancient ones.
C. Humanism and Religion
Our discussion of this question will be somewhat abbreviated be

so obviously overlaps with the next major section of this report.
to the greatly augumented scholarly emphasis on religious aspect
naissance humanism-more innovative for Italian humanism still
the shadow of the nineteenth-century myth of Renaissance 'pag
metamorphosed into twentieth-century 'secularism' than for th
traditional conception of a northern 'Christian' humanism-was
sight that classical and medieval Christian themes might conver
new Renaissance religious stance manifested in humanist literatu
thought. Again Kristeller has led the way with his early essays on A
tinianism, the patristic revival, lay piety in the Ficinian circle, and
recently in his 'Thomism and the Italian Thought of the Renai
(1967), both reprinted with another related essay in Medieval As
Renaissance Learning (1974), edited by Edward P. Mahoney.
It is central to Kristeller's scholarly convictions to lay all the stran
the intellectual history of a period side by side but to avoid w
them into a single unified conception. My own work on the re
thought of the humanists, although deeply indebted to that of Krist
sought to give at least an overall view of humanist religious tho
a single publication (In Our Image and Likeness, Humanity and Divini
Italian Humanist Thought, 1970). Although it dealt primarily wit
and indeed some reviewers have suggested that it represented 'in
tual history' in its purest sense, it seemed essential at least to po
lationship between the modes and substances of humanist discus
religious questions and a preexisting tendency in their historic
vironments for men in general or certain important classes of m
think and speak in similar terms, whatever the formal category
provenance. Among them, the humanists were seen as respond
men of their times to the problems of their times. The discovery
religious potentialities of rhetoric by the humanists, which I have la
theologia rhetorica, seemed to derive from a dissatisfaction, sha
many of their contemporaries, with the abstractness and metap
character of scholastic and canonistic Christian thought, which
Petrarch or a Salutati, seemed remote from the Christian feelin
spirituality of the men of their time. Thus humanist religious t
seemed to be an effort to relate in a new way to a social conte
Alongside the deepening recognition of Italian humanist, parti
Valla's, influence on Erasmian humanism, there has been a c

emphasis on Erasmus' English experience and dependence on
circles there for the development of his spirituality by such
James K. McConica, whose recent contributions include
Scriniumn Erasmianum and The Pursuit of Holiness. Myron Gilm
tinuing interest in Erasmus' Christian classicism and in his s
has been particularly evident in the series of studies of Era
troversies he is publishing, summarized and extended his 'It
actions to Erasmian Humanism,' in Itinerarium Italicum.
Eugene F. Rice, Jr., now engaged in a major study of 'The R
of Christian Antiquity' as well as medieval influences in Re
thought, has published a paper on Lefevre d'Etaples and med
tics (Ferguson Festschrift, 1971) and has brought to comple
his important edition of Lefevre's prefatory epistles and othe
Charles B. Schmitt, formerly a student of Kristeller, though
in a number of important areas of Renaissance intellectual hi
versities, Aristotelianism, etc.), has made a special contribu
study of skepticism in the Renaissance as a religiously mot
tility to philosophy, e.g., his Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirand
Critique of Aristotle (1967) and his Cicero Scepticus, A Study of
ence of the Academica in the Renaissance (1972). Both scholars see
respective areas of study a critical reassessment of the rela
philosophy and religion in their ancient and medieval traditi
this the role of humanism, if not exclusive, was central. Mor
with the announced boundaries of this critique, one cannot i
parallel and crucial work of Garin and his followers and of ot
scholars. Major studies of Lorenzo Valla's religious thought
Fois, Giovanni di Napoli, and Salvatore Camporeale (contemp
publication with my own emphasis on him) are leading on t
tions of a teologia umanistica as a fifteenth- and sixteenth-centu
tian aggiornamento encompassing not only the Italians but M
mus, Melanchthon, and 'evangelism' in its sweep. We should
Eugenio Garin's report to the 1970 International Congress.
PART III. RENAISSANCE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
AND THEIR SOCIAL CONTEXTS
Our review of work on humanism in Part II seem

effort has been expended on studies of the relati
the political order, on rhetoric and the relationsh
ture and the operative intellectual traditions, and finally on the

ment of humanism in the religious ideas, aspirations, and refor
ceptions of the age. So also recent scholarly work more directly
on Renaissance religious movements has sought to comprehend
in their social contexts. Hence our discussion will not only over
the previous section but must also be seen in close relationship w
IV on the work in social history of the Anglo-American scholarl
Social utopias have attracted less specific interest here and the f
vant studies will be mentioned at the end.
Perhaps the critical division of approach that has characterize
ious and social historical studies reflects the differences between
pology and sociology as new 'social' sciences endeavoring in
hundred years to comprehend the world of man. Perhaps also o
suggest that anthropology has been more open to and cogn
irrational motivation and affectivity, or at least more positivist
acceptance of data in their own terms and face-value; whe
ciology (along with political science) has sought to discover mo
tional or functional patterns beneath the surface evidence of hu
pression and behavior. One cannot here get into the question of
fluence of varieties of Marxism, neo-Marxism, and anti-Marxi
social and religious history, whether directly or through thei
festations in the social sciences, further than to recognize that
and is important for understanding much of modern Renaissa
toriography, e.g., Salvemini, Ottokar, Von Martin. Nor can we
the profound and important influence of Durkheim or of Max
or indeed of Nietzsche, whose influence on Francis Cornfor
Harrison, and Ruth Benedict was potent. Yet it is clear that hi
orientations inspired by these figures (and others) have correspo
conceptions of and attitudes toward late nineteenth- and early twen
century industrial societies. We need not spell out the issues h
general, we shall find in our survey that recent studies of Rena
religion have tended to have an anthropological orientation, st
the importance of conscious or unconscious perceptual and val
tems as they do; whereas social critical studies, but to a lesser
social utopian, have tended to be sociological.
A. Theology, Spirituality, and the Late Medieval-Renaissanc

Historical Cultures
Certainly a critical question in recent theological studies has b

relationship of 'nominalism,' however defined or designated
emerging picture of Renaissance humanist religious thought

traditionally, to that of the Reformation. This, of course, i
moving out from sectarian types of approach to confrontat
uine historical problems; and, despite his sometimes contro
tation, Heiko A. Oberman must be given the credit for
way, from his 1960 essay 'Some Notes on the Theology of
ism with Attention to its Relationship to the Renaissance'
through his difficult but rewarding study of Ockham and B
vest of Medieval Theology (1963), to his recent 'The Shape
Thought: The Birthpangs of the Modern Era' (ARG, 1973,
Holiness). The last, although displaying its 'modernist' bias r
title is nonetheless a salutary analysis of the interplay of comm
of this era in nominalism, humanism, and reformation tho
the important emphasis on the blending of the sacred and p
have stressed above. It is anthropological in act if not in pr
Through his publications, his editorial work, his students,
spread activities, he is a major force working to bring the s
history of theology into relationship with the history of cu
Two former students of Oberman, WilliamJ. Courtenay
Ozment, have moved in somewhat different directions:
looking toward elements of a cultural and social base for no
high medieval economic practice, Ozment very much towa
cific exploration of the late medieval elements in Luther's t
mystical, the scholastic, the humanist. He is more concern
influence of types of intellectuality than social experience
theology as a stimulus to social movements rather than as
(though his latest work, cf. below, could modify this judgm
enay's paper, 'Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion' (i
suit of Holiness), is a closely analyzed survey of the transforma
interpretation of Ockhamism and related positions in twenti
scholarship, stressing, perhaps too strongly, a trend away f
ing it radically and as in sharp opposition to thirteenth-century
A parallel paper on 'Nominalism and Late Medieval Thou
liographical Essay' appeared in Theological Studies, 33 (1972
his shifting interest to social and juridical aspects on nomin
paper in Speculum, 46 (1971), on 'Covenant and Causalit
d'Ailly' and, more explicitly anthropological, his 'The K
Leaden Coin: The Economic Background of "Sine Qua N
ality,' Traditio, 28 (1972). Ozment's recent works have i
basic Homo Spiritualis. A Comparative Study of the Anthropolog
Gerson and Luther (1968), Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideo

Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (1973), The Reformation in th
The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Swit
(1975), and, in his concern with the relation of late medieval r
to the Reformation, his valuable collection of studies of 1971, T
ormation in Medieval Perspective.
Another scholar concerned with dissolving old boundaries
study of religious and social thought is Charles T. Davis, wh
gaged in an important study of Spiritual Franciscan theology, es
the doctrine of poverty. His studies of Florentine culture in th
Dante should also be mentioned as part of his conviction that '
humanism was not critically new in the Renaissance but present
Italian communes much earlier. This is illustrated in recent pa
'Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic,' Proc. Am. Philol. So
(1974), and 'Roman Patriotism and Republican Propaganda: P
of Lucca and Pope Nicholas III,' Speculum, 50 (1975).
The question of late medieval spirituality and its relation to
clesiastical penitential system and to the reformation changes is
cern of Thomas N. Tentler. He is engaged in major studies of t
chological and consolatory aspects of both the confessional and
of the good death in relation to the problems of church discipl
social control, both Catholic and Protestant. A paper on 'The S
for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control' appears in Th
suit of Holiness with important critical discussion. His Sacramen
fession Before the Reformation is to be published in 1976.
F. Edward Cranz's recent paper in the same volume on Nicho
Cusa's subjective theology is, I believe, the only place where he
far published some of his important conclusions concerning the
break away from antique modes of perception and conception
as first occurring with Anselm and Abelard. This is another reas
I am convinced that the twelfth century is where we must date
ginnings of the modern period of history. Cranz has a book in p
on the subject of this great transformation which he sketches
above piece. I have been privileged to see early versions of some
of it and one may hope this work of probably revolutionary im
will be completed soon.
B. Renaissance and Reformation, Especially in Sixteenth-Century I
Reference to the timeliness of a reconsideration of the relatio

the Renaissance to the Reformation has been made in connectio
Bouwsma's current work, and my own essay on 'The Religio

of the Italian Humanists and the Reformers' appeared in Th
Holiness. Of even greater urgency is the need to follow th
humanism and other Renaissance movements on sixteenth-c
ian religious developments, reform and otherwise, and indee
in the Anglo-American world have been doing so. For inst
O'Malley in a recent study, 'Preaching for the Popes' (also
suit of Holiness), shows how strongly high Renaissance curi
were influenced by humanist and Platonist notions of the
man. O'Malley's important book of 1968, Giles of Viterbo on
Reform, provided background for this study and leads him on t
rent work on the idea of reform in the Renaissance and Re
which should bear fruit in an expansion of his study of rhe
ology in curial sermons. Undoubtedly Vatican II and the se
couragement to a new ecumenicism, talk of reversing the s
the decrees of the Council of Trent, have contributed to th
interest. Yet it seems a logical continuation of the general inten
of Renaissance studies and of the weakening of sectarian z
historians. Very important work in the editing of texts, an
stimulated by this project, is going on for the Corpus Reformat
licorum under the leadership of Antonio Rotondo and of Jo
of the Newberry Library. This of course, is in the tradition
mori's interest in Italian heresy and Protestantism. Similarly
Nair's Peter Martyr in Italy of 1967 is concerned with Luth
ences in Italy, as is Jose C. Nieto in his Juan de Valdes and the
the Spanish and Italian Reformation (1970). Carlo Ginsburg
mismo of 1970 was similarly inspired, a work of critical im
M. T. Logan contributes a continuing series of papers on th
grace and justification, including some on early sixteenth-c
ians. One of the most important recent works in this genre
the process of Catholic Reform, Protestant influence, event
Reform is Dermot Fenlon's Heresy and Obedience in Triden
Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (1972). With a
broader social and cultural orientation Paul Grendler's Critics
ian World 1530-1560 of 1969 examines the interplay on the leve
lar writers of the issues of Erasmianism, Reform, social cri
pianism. This seems a more fruitful approach than strictly
studies as it is an effort to get at the popular mind. Grendler's
work has been devoted to a testing of the effectiveness of
terms of the actual distribution of prohibited books in his f
work, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540-16o05.

bert's central interest has been in historiography and Renais
ical thought, in which he continues actively, but in movin
Venice and Contarini he has published two important articl
teenth-century religious thought and policy, his 'Cristiane
nesimo c la Bolla "Apostolici Regiminis" del 1513,'Rivista Stor
79 (1967), and 'Religion and Politics in the Thought of Gasp
tarini,' in the Harbison Festschrift. James Bruce Ross was dr
growing interest in psycho-history and generational studies
a study of'Gasparo Contarini and His Friends,' Studies in the
17 (1970), but the impossibility of gaining access to the cri
ments, sequestered by a well-known Italian scholar for his pe
has forced the abandonment of the project. She has, however
a valuable bibliographical essay, 'The Emergence of Gasparo
Church History, 41 (1972). Bouwsma's contribution to sixte
tury Italian studies, discussed above, may also be recalled. An
that they are perhaps the wave of the future might be seen
phenomenon, a historical bestseller, Eric Cochrane's Florence
gotten Centuries of 1973. Not to be forgotten, however, is hi
survey of recent Counter-Reformation scholarship, 'New Lig
Tridentine Italy,' The Catholic Historical Review, 56 (1970),
his extremely valuable collection of scholarly studies on Th
ian Renaissance (1970.)
It is impossible to discuss, even in a summary manner, all
portant work in this area of Renaissance religion, even con
mainly to the English language. The omissions are obviously
Final mention might be made of Lewis W. Spitz's continuing
tions, occupied though he is by deanship, particularly papers
manistic aspects of German Reformation thought, such as
of German Humanism' in Itinerarium Italicuni. His great bib
talents should soon come to fruition in his The Reformation
Thought. Charles G. Nauert is another scholar making conti
tributions to the study of the impact of Renaissance thought on
ormation. Neal Gilbert's contribution to the volume Antiqu
derni (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9) (1974), 'Ockham, Wyclif a
Moderna," ' is particularly clarifying on the relationship of
tives to nominalism. Francis Oakley's exhaustive critique
Ullmann's Visions of Medieval Politics'-'Celestial Hierarchies Re-
visited,' Past and Present, no. 6o0-seems strategically important.
C. Magic and Science, Magic and Religion, Witchcraft, Proph
Magic and religion (and science) are among the themes of a

plicitly anthropological historiography. Whereas, after Tho
could not doubt the omnipresence of a wide variety of ma
links with the activities of many individuals supposedly rep
of a movement toward enlightenment and 'science,' a m
connection of magic with culture and religion and the effor
late not only the natural world but human relationships is
Frances Yates's work, of course, has been central for the sc
intellectuals since her study of Giordano Bruno and the Hermet
a decade ago. With her fertile historical imagination, schola
and Rabelaisian energy she has continued her explorations o
ination and history with The Art of Memory (1966), Theatre of
(1969), and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972). Her use o
ment,' however, is only partially ironical. Despite what som
viewers like to consider a taste for the odd and exotic, by sh
and intrinsic interest of her contributions she is making this k
tellectual pursuit seem more convincingly to be one of the cent
of late Renaissance culture. It must, of course, be seen in close c
with the spread of alchemy and the other pseudo-sciences, w
dreams and most definitely with Hermetic and other aspirat
man deification. Her colleague D. P. Walker, whose Spiritua
monic Magic from Ficino to Campanella of 1958 was an influent
the magical aspects of Renaissance philosophy, has now br
collection of his articles on prisca theologia, The Ancient Theolo
throwing additional light on the uses of late classical religious a
gic traditions to reinforce the Christian vision of the age. O
perhaps, mention at least the important work of continenta
this area of interest; Secret, Vasoli, Zambelli.
Although Miss Yates's projection of the possibly critical r
metic' ideas of the cosmic powers of man in bringing about
tual environment favorable to the scientific revolution is receiv
spread approval, it has also begotten its critics. This whole
along with the related issue of the extent of Galileo's depe
scholastic natural philosophy, is debated by such scholars as
Cesare Vasoli, Stillman Drake, A. C. Crombie, Marie Boas
Rossi, and A. Rupert Hall in the volume Reason, Experiment and
in the Scientific Revolution (1975), edited by M. L. Righini-
William R. Shea. Robert S. Westman,

historical and generational aspects of th
will soon publish a lengthy critique of th
late Renaissance science (in the Bulletin
Memorial Library of the University of
ing more at the rational side of the pro
made an important addition to our know
Italian humanists to the mathematical rev
the work of Galileo in sixteenth- and ear
Cf. his The Italian Renaissance of Mathe
manisme et Renaissance, CXLV).
A major study of the role of magic an
ture, though confined to sixteenth- and
is Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline
fact that he is so overtly influenced by t
given his book an exceptional interest, a
tailed, rich survey of the entire range o
(witchcraft) as prescientific modes of so
material and social life. It is Thomas' no
somewhat questionable thesis that magi
supernatural powers in material objects,
ism, whereas Protestant theology oppos
evidence, however, shows that these dist
lie Davis argues in a paper cited below, m
respects coextensive and indistinguishab
(pp. 636-640) when he attributes the 'dec
teenth and eighteenth centuries not to the
which he thinks by then has become m
ophy, but to science, technical innovati
growth of insurance, the emergence of
titude toward life. He draws partly on M
pragmaticism and on Weber's 'de-magif
his theories, he has presented convincing
of magical, astrological, demonological,
tices as part of both an offensive and a
One large section of Thomas' book is de
notable that several important studies of
peared, perhaps reflecting contemporary
and the daemonic. Carlo Ginsburg's I ben
demonstrated that a group of practitioners of white magic,

disturbing influences from crops, were persuaded that they wer
witches. Alan Macfarlane's Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Engla
is a pioneering study of ecclesiastical trial records in Essex w
to have uncovered a basic social motivation for the denounce
witches as the embarrassing outcasts of a village commu
Erik Middlefort's Witchhunting in Southwestern Germany 1562-
Social and Intellectual Foundations is a similarly valuable local stu
C. Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-170
mentary History of 1972 is a source collection, and Jeffrey
Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, is a summary of the literature a
To the many theories and speculations as to why the Late M
gave rise to this phenomenon, no one seems to suggest that t
crease in religiosity and search for sanctity in all forms should
have the negative side of the wish to avert the unholy, and a
ing a condition of 'anti-manna.' And if the attainment of ho
be aided by holy persons and ordained clergy through the s
why could there not be similarly gifted people who could
curse of unholiness? Notably, these studies have found comp
thropological studies of primitive sorcery, witchcraft, and d
helpful in their conceptualizations.
Among major recent publications essential to a more anthr
vision of the religious movements of our period is surel
Reeves's The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages,
Joachimism (1969). Thorough and comprehensive, her accoun
from the late thirteenth century through the Reformation, sho
incredibly wide ramifications of the chiliastic hopes for renovat
linked with so many important other hopes for Reformatio a
Donald Weinstein's Savonarola and Florence, Prophecy and Pa
the Renaissance (1970) was mentioned above. It is not only
working of the sources on Savonarola that places it as the ou
study of the prophet. Perhaps its most important contribut
tablish the homogeneity of populist apocalyptic, Florentine c
ology, and the religio-cultural programs of the Laurentian
and Platonists. Weinstein sees the Savonarola movement not
sion to medievalism' but as an integral part of Renaissance cu
Moorman's A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins
1517 (1968) may be mentioned as a useful chronicle that som
not come to terms with the potency and influence of Franc
the Renaissance (in the way that Weinstein does for his, possibl
rational, Dominican).
A volume of essays by present or past faculty at the Univer
California, Los Angeles, The Darker Vision of the Renaissance:
the Fields of Reason, edited by Robert S. Kinsman in 1974, uti
variety of anthropological and socio-pathological approaches fo
terpretation of the Renaissance which is contrary to the traditi
tionalistic enlightenment one. Suggestive rather than definitiv
symptomatic of the current search for a view of the period whi
full account of the elements which are here called the 'darker' si
this tendency is sustained by a not entirely concealed assertion t
Renaissance was in many ways a pathological successor to a mo
lightened' medieval culture, whereas a totally new perspective,
than a reversal of an older one, is perhaps what is called for.
D. Religion in Social Contexts: Poverty, Women, Youth,

Lay Piety, Popular Rites
More explicitly anthropological and popularistic has been the w

two American scholars, Natalie Zemon Davis and Richard C. Tr
Professor Davis has been following out three themes in her wo
oldest involves the problem of religious affiliation of organized
especially Lyonnaise printers, but also the problem of poverty i
eral, schemes of poor relief, commitments of humanists and r
figures toward such programs. This theme on which she has pu
several papers will eventuate in her book Strikes and Salvation. A
more recent thematic interest has been in the history of wome
ticularly in sixteenth-century France, but also generally. A thir
sees her exploring the psychological and social implications of
types of popular ritual-charivaris, religious violence, and tran
tism among protesting men and women of the early modern p
Several of these essays are now contained in her Society and Cu
Early Modern France (1974). Of particular value from a methodo
point of view is her discussion of the work of Trexler on you
fraternities in Florence, on French lay piety as expounded by
Galpern (The Pursuit of Holiness), on Keith Thomas' distinction b
magic and religion, and her own analysis of the psychological d
of Renaissance beliefs and practices concerning death and the be
'Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion' (The
suit of Holiness). Although she sees with important perspicuity that
and religion are coextensive, she retains what is possibly a fa

tion between 'popular' religion and the religion of elites, whi
be doctrinal and theological. But it does seem important fo
standing the latter not to separate it from its emotional root
tent, such as may be more overtly revealed in lay rites.
Trexler has also worked along three interrelated lines of in
rected at the social aspects of Florentine religion. His disserta
Interdict has been expanded and published in 1974 as The Spiritu
Republican Florence Under the Interdict. His Synodal Law in F
Fiesole, 1306-1518 also looks at church law in relation to socia
'Le celibat a la fin du Moyen Age: Les religieuses de Florence
Economies, Societes, Civilisations (1972), is a history of Flore
neries. 'Florence, by the Grace of the Lord Pope,' Studies in M
Renaissance History (1972), deals with another aspect of Flo
clesiastical history in relation to lay polity. All of these are p
to a planned history of the church in Florence. Another line
-toward understanding the role of charity and poor rel
Natalie Davis' similar interest, and both are indebted to Bri
monumental study of Venetian philanthropy-Rich and Poor
sance Venice (1971). Trexler's 'Charity and the Defense of U
in the Italian Communes' appeared in The Rich, The Well Bor
Powerful, edited by F. Jaher, 1974. Two papers on infanticide an
lings reflect his concern with urban distress, in part taking
Herlihy's demographic studies emphasizing late marriages for
a floating population of young men: 'Infanticide in Flor
Sources and First Results' and 'The Foundlings of Florence 1
both in History of Childhood Quarterly, 1 (1973). To some
population and family-structure questions have motivated h
study of youth-confraternities in Florence, 'Ritual in Floren
cence and Salvation in the Renaissance,' in The Pursuit of Ho
paper is a companion piece to two others on popular religio
'Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image,' Studies
naissance, 19 (1972), and 'Ritual Behavior in Renaissance Flo
Setting,' Medievalia et Humanistica, N.S. 4 (1973), combinin
preparatory studies for a major publication. The study of y
fraternities perhaps typifies his work at its most significa
combing of a wide variety of archival and literary sources,
tion of a hitherto neglected history, bold hypothesizing. In
Trexler puts forth the notion that the urban crisis bred a n
tion of the sacred in society, no longer in a special class of 'rel

in the innocence of youth whose purity, carefully preserved by o
confraternities, would compensate within the sacred communi
defects and corruption of their elders. Special attention is giv
vonarola's organization of the fanciulli. Whatever the validit
claim, there is no doubt that he has opened a very illuminatin
of inquiry.
It is worth mentioning that Trexler was influenced by Rab Hatfield's
study of the lay religiosity of the confraternity of the Magi, 'The Com-
pagnia de' Magi,' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33
(1970), also a pioneering essay. Another scholar who is concerned with
childhood and religion, or at least with Reformation policies toward the
moral formation of the child, is Gerald Strauss, whose 'Reformation
and Pedagogy: Educational Thought and Practice in the Lutheran Ref-
ormation' appears in The Pursuit of Holiness. Strauss has decided to ex-
tend his study now under way to include both Protestant and Catholic
educational theory and practice in sixteenth-century Germany.
PART IV. SOCIETY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIAL UTOPIAS
I place somewhat arbitrarily a group of studies under this

of which could well have been discussed either in conn
manism or religious thought. On the other hand, such
stein's Savonarola and Thomas' Religion and the Decline
work of N. Davis and Trexler have important affiliati
lowing studies. These are by scholars who have either
by developments in the social sciences or by current s
and events (both pro and contra). In 1969, for exampl
Medieval and Renaissance Studies of U.C.L.A. held a conference on
Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities, 1200-1500, published as a vol-
ume edited by Lauro Martines in 1972. Several of the participants refer
to their direct experience of violence on campuses in those years as
deepening their understanding. The contributions in the volume are
wide-ranging and of varying profundity, but the general outcome is a
recognition of what a critical problem violence was in the late medieval
Italian cities, and how deeply motivated the movements for security and
order were, how profound the psychological effects. Some of the re-
ligious developments that interest us undoubtedly found provocation in
this condition.
David Herlihy, who contributes to this volume a paper on 'Some
Psychological and Social Roots of Violence in the Tuscan Citi

plementing his other important studies deriving from his qu
analysis of the Florentine Catasto of 1427), places the marriag
ily pattern discerned there at the center of the provocations to v
resulting from the large number of detached young men. Th
of the family and the 'nuclear' or extended family is the sub
creasing scholarly interest, along with demographic and
questions generally. Herlihy's study (in collaboration with C
Klapisch), for instance, is described by her in a contributio
Laslett and Richard Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past T
This and a number of related social problems have received th
of Gene A. Brucker in his Renaissance Florence of 1969 and h
ciety of Renaissance Florence, A Documentary Study (1971). Th
indeed more than a collection of documents: a carefully selec
ing by Brucker to demonstrate the social tensions he sees in F
tween older family and corporate ties and a more imperson
civically ideological political order. Engaged now in comp
study of Florentine political culture 138o to 1427, which wi
'recent conceptual visions' of Florence, Brucker, symptomat
increasing concern with psychology and religiosity perhaps
turn to a study of the psychological responses of Italians to the p
the fifteenth century.
Marvin B. Becker, who is also continuing his synoptic stud
ence in Transition in a third volume covering the early Qua
has similarly moved away from a mainly economic and politi
sis to a concern with psychological and spiritual stress of laym
the context of late medieval corporativism. Becker envisions
civic humanist ideal permeating the political atmosphere but t
of a deeply Christian notion of an enlarged community wit
some of the alienations and psychic stress of individuals soug
tion. In a number of articles he has discussed such question
Quest for Identity in the Early Italian Renaissance' (Florilegiu
ale), 'Individualism in the Early Renaissance: Burden and
(Studies in the Renaissance, 19), 'Aspects of Lay Piety in Early Re
Florence' (The Pursuit of Holiness).
The problem of individualism, corporativism, the 'nuclear' v
extended family received important attention in a work of a
previous, Richard A. Goldthwaite's Private Wealth in Renaiss
ence (1968), On the basis of the four principal families he stu
others of the patriciate, Goldthwaite concluded that there was a

rise of individual entrepreneurship in the fifteenth and sixteen
turies with a corresponding emphasis on the small, 'nuclear' fa
conclusion somewhat counter to Brucker's stress on the survival
larged family interests as a shelter for the individual and to Becker'
emphasis on communitarianism. However, the views of all thr
on nuances and trends and seem not at all irreconcilable.
Brian Pullan's Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice (1971) is another
ample of the new 'concerned' social history. A very large volum
to some extent loaded with material that has not been thoroug
gested, it is a storehouse of information concerning the charitab
ities of the confraternities (scuole), the charitable and educationa
tutions of the Venetian state, and the Venetian policies with reg
Jewish pawnbroking and small loans. A careful, critical but appr
review of Pullan's study has been made by an American scholar
working on the problem of charity and the Jews in Venice-Re
C. Mueller, 'Charitable Institutions, the Jewish Community, and
tian Society, A Discussion of the Recent Volume by Brian Pullan
Veneziani, 14. A propos of these two studies and those of N. Dav
Trexler, as well as others, it might be well to suggest that conce
poverty, elites, popular movements, religion, and culture can a
spite its sociological or anthropological inspiration, fall into the
for precedents of modern concerns-in this case with the socia
tion rather than liberal rationalism.
Different in methodology and conceptions, Peter Burke's stud
ture and Society in Renaissance Italy 1420-1540 (1972), is an effort t
meaningful links between art, thought, culture, and society. Th
wishes to view his problem more in the tradition of constructin
ciology of art' (Antal, Hauser), his treatment is in fact more su
if regarded anthropologically. It is full of imaginative insights and s
ing anecdotes concerning artistic, social, and religious life, but his r
feeble quantitative study of social backgrounds of artists and in
tuals seems a wasted effort. The volume is also inadequately docu
and heavily dependent on secondary materials. In the same serie
ture and Society, edited byJ. R. Hale, are recent volumes by John L
(1971) on Italy 1290-1420, and by Oliver Logan (1972) on V
1470-1790. Although this series is to be welcomed for opening
subject, with all its pitfalls, to a wider public, its problems ca
fully solved by busy scholars whose main interests lie elsewher
own Renaissance Europe, the Individual and Society, 1480-152

different series manages to triumph over its textbook conce
its richly illustrated cross-sectional analysis of contemporar
and behavior. It is genuinely anthropological in seeking to
'states of mind.'
Historians in the Anglo-American world seem more conce
the actualities of social stress and the movement toward reli
reform, partly to relieve it, partly as an outcome of the br
older forms of social organization, than in the projection of
pias. This realism is reflected, for instance, in the papers con
the volume Florentine Studies, Politics and Society in Renaissanc
edited by Nicolai Rubinstein in 1968. Only Donald Weinstei
on 'The Myth of Florence' and Charles Davis on 'I1 Buon Te
tico' show utopian and nostalgic concerns. Certainly there w
tic utopian notions in Savonarola's political prophecies an
Reeves's survey ofJoachimism has been mentioned above. J.
published in 1973 some of his studies of More, Machiavelli, a
including his important introduction (with a section on Ca
social utopianism missing in the original) to the Yale edition
Utopia, all in The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformati
Machiavelli, Seyssel. Hexter's judgments continue to be salut
as crisp. It has remained for two literary historians to write mo
on the basic Renaissance utopian mythology, that of the G
Harry Levin's The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissanc
Russell Fraser's The Dark Ages and the Age of Gold (1973). R
Venice, edited by J. R. Hale, 1973, mixes more idealism wi
nomic and social facts in essays on the myth of Venice as a p
social utopia which had a remarkable afterlife in the early m
riod. Both Myron Gilmore and William Bouwsma are conce
Venice as paradigm ('Myth and Reality in Venetian Political
and 'Venice and the Political Education of Europe'). J. G. A.
his The Machiavellian Moment also sees a powerful political-utop
coming especially out of Contarini's political treatise.
The University of Michigan CHARLES TRINKAUS

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Humanism, Religion, Society: Concepts and Motivations of Some Recent Studies

Author(s): Charles Trinkaus

PART I. CONTRASTING TRENDS IN RECENT

HE following essay will address itself

1 This paper was prepared for the session of the Internat

mal posee,' first appeared in 1929 (Revue historique, 161

Chartres' dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants as gi

2 This was predominantly anAmerican matter, and I shall speak of it as

plished-and for this it is perhaps important to mention a

ology and natural philosophy) and Renaissance thought, h

Although his background and training was in philosop

ture of its classicism, humanism, Aristotelianism, Platonism,

of all three, nor their profound influence on contemporar

sively from the traditional genetic-modernist bias that at the sa

a history of its own, and one where new professional classes

political movements beginning with the abortive seventeenth-

the false solution embraced by others. Obviously also

ancient doctrine of reification in which a deeply intellected t

tions of its future, as an autonomous sub-whole of the total

After these far too lengthy preliminaries, I should like to discus

PART II. HUMANISM, RECENT TRENDS AND STUDIES

A. The Civic Humanism Issue

The year 1968 saw the publication of three importa

(1975), ed. H. A. Oberman (with T. A. Brady, Jr.), Cultural Aspect

sance Christianity, outlined in condensed form in his introd

to Florentine dominance over the papacy could be questioned, his

B. Rhetoric and Renaissance Historical Consciousness

In 1970 Nancy Struever's book was published: The Language of H

practice among the humanists for the emergence of a new

from Bruni's 'civic humanism' also grasped according to Hans B

tivity that I minimize the importance of studying both shor

C. Humanism and Religion

Our discussion of this question will be somewhat abbreviated be

Valla's, influence on Erasmian humanism, there has been a c

PART III. RENAISSANCE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

AND THEIR SOCIAL CONTEXTS

Our review of work on humanism in Part II seem

ture and the operative intellectual traditions, and finally on the

A. Theology, Spirituality, and the Late Medieval-Renaissanc

Certainly a critical question in recent theological studies has b

emerging picture of Renaissance humanist religious thought

Gerson and Luther (1968), Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideo

B. Renaissance and Reformation, Especially in Sixteenth-Century I

Reference to the timeliness of a reconsideration of the relatio

Bouwsma's current work, and my own essay on 'The Religio

work, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540-16o05.

C. Magic and Science, Magic and Religion, Witchcraft, Proph

Magic and religion (and science) are among the themes of a

William R. Shea. Robert S. Westman,

demonstrated that a group of practitioners of white magic,

D. Religion in Social Contexts: Poverty, Women, Youth,

More explicitly anthropological and popularistic has been the w

and religion are coextensive, she retains what is possibly a fa

tion of the sacred in society, no longer in a special class of 'rel

PART IV. SOCIETY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIAL UTOPIAS

I place somewhat arbitrarily a group of studies under this

Psychological and Social Roots of Violence in the Tuscan Citi

others of the patriciate, Goldthwaite concluded that there was a

own Renaissance Europe, the Individual and Society, 1480-152

The University of Michigan CHARLES TRINKAUS

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