Humanism, Art, And Science - Encyclopedia Britannica

Humanism and Christianity

Though Christian identity was de rigueur in most of Europe through the Renaissance, humanistic insight did much to trouble relations between church and state. The two most prominent critiques of church power in the 14th century were by Dante in his Aristotelian De monarchia and by Marsilius of Padua in his Defensor Pacis (1324). Though both of these tracts sought to limit church authority in secular affairs, Marsilius went farther in demanding that the church be subject to the state in all worldly matters. The Defensor, rich in Classical ideas and notable especially for its use of Aristotle and Cicero, was influential both in galvanizing Italian city-states against the Avignon papacy and in arousing early interest in church reform.

More generally, humanism was effective in challenging established pieties. First, humanists from Brunetto onward recognized that the Classical (pagan) direction of humanism necessarily constituted, if not a challenge to Christianity, at least a breach in the previous totality of Christian devotion. The Christian truth that had been acknowledged as comprehending all phenomena, earthly or heavenly, now had to coexist with a Classical attitude that was overwhelmingly directed toward earthly life. Humanistic efforts to resolve the contradictions implied by these two attitudes were, if one may judge by their variety, never wholly successful. In particular, the extent to which humanistic inquiry led scholars toward the secular realm and the extent to which humanistic pedagogy concentrated on secular subjects suggest erosions of the domain of faith. Coluccio Salutati, who urged the young Poggio not to let humanistic enthusiasm take precedence over Christian piety, thereby acknowledged a dualism implicit in the humanistic program and never wholly absent from its historical development. In later years humanistic inquiry would form the basis for the fundamentally irreligious perspectives of Machiavelli and Sir Francis Bacon and the anti-Christian fulminations of Giordano Bruno.

Second, the humanistic philology that meticulously compared ancient sources and “cleaned up” the texts of important Christian writings was a serious challenge to the authority of the church. With new authorities or refined texts in hand, humanists found fault with established commentaries and questioned traditional interpretations. Valla’s arraignment of the Donation of Constantine and Bessarion’s discovery that the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite (later called Pseudo-Dionysius) had borrowed some of his material from Plato exemplify the uneasy relationship between humanism and Roman Catholic dogma. Third, the independent and broadly critical attitude innate to humanism could not but threaten the unanimity of Christian belief. Intellectual individualism, which has never been popular in any church, put particular stress on a religion that encouraged simple faith and alleged universal authority.

Last, humanism repeatedly fostered the impulse of religious reform. The humanistic emphasis on total authenticity and direct contact with sources had, as its religious correlative, a desire to obliterate the medieval accretions and procedural complexities that stood between worshippers and their God. The reform-mindedness of such humanists as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Desiderius Erasmus, and François Rabelais was balanced on the religious side by reformers such as John Calvin and Philipp Melanchthon, who employed humanistic techniques in their own cause. And the reform movement, while it may have modernized and thus preserved Christianity, rang the death knell for a medieval culture whose essential characteristic had been participation in a universal church.