Renaissance and Humanism (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what the Renaissance was, what is humanism, the characteristics of each one and the relationship between them.

Humanism was a closely related way of thinking with the Renaissance.

What are rebirth and humanism?

The concepts of humanism and rebirth are closely related. Some historians consider that the second was a consequence of the dissemination of the ideas of the first, that is, what we now call Renaissance humanism. Others see humanism as an integrated way of thinking in the Renaissance movement. But to distinguish what everything is, we must dedicate our attention separately.

In the nineteenth century it was called Renaissance The artistic and cultural movement gestated in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and that marked the traffic of the medieval world to the modern world. His epicenter was the Italian city of Florence and consisted of a recovery of the classical artistic and intellectual tradition Grecolatina.

For its part, Humanism It is a doctrine of thought that covers a set of philosophical currents and It is characterized by its emphasis on human existence. His irruption at the end of the Middle Ages involved running the center of attention of God (characteristic of art and medieval thought) towards the human being and promoting the use of reason and intelligence as guarantees of self -determination. This humanism called Renaissance (to distinguish it from its posterior variants) laid the foundations of the scientific method.

Both movements were key to the construction of the modern world from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Historical context

Renaissance and humanism They emerged in northern Italy at the end of the Middle Ages and they supposed a cultural and intellectual change that gave rise to what we usually call modern age. Its philosophical and aesthetic principles then extended northern Europe and laid the foundations of the modern conception of the world and the human being.

The time when these two movements arose and expanded coincided with the growing decomposition of the feudal regimethe constitution of modern states and the thrust of the commercial cities administered by enriched bourgeois sectors (especially in Italy).

It was also a period of facts that changed the knowledge that had about the world in Europe or that contributed to spread novel ideas:

Exploration trips and the arrival of European navigators to America.
The fall of Constantinople, which motivated migration to Western Europe of Christians of the Byzantine Empire that retained Greek works.
The invention of the modern printing press by Johannes Gutenberg.
The foundation of universities in various parts of Europe.
The arrival to the papacy of Nicolás V and Pío II, important promoters of humanism.

Renaissance characteristics

Renaissance and Humanism Mitology — The art of the Renaissance resumed Greek, Roman and biblical mythical themes.

Broadly speaking, we can characterize the Renaissance as follows:

It was a European artistic and intellectual movement that implied a radical change of paradigm in the arts and sciences, the result of a greater change in the way of thinking. In this sense, it was also a political and cultural phenomenon that covered the continent almost completely.
Traditionally it is located in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it is possible to track their background in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the work of artists today considered precursors of the Renaissance, such as the Italian painters Cimabue (1240-1302) and Giotto (1267-1337), or the sculptor Nicola Pisano (1215 or 1220-1278 or 1284).
The epicenter of the Renaissance was Italy, especially the city of Florence, which was its richest region. Then it extended to northern Europe, where it hit both plastic art and architecture, letters and thought.
The name “Renaissance” (in Italian Rincita), it refers to reliving classical Greco -Roman culture after the Middle Ages. It was first employed by the Italian artist and historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). Anyway, already in the fourteenth century the Poet Petrarca (1304-1374) said that the recovery of classic texts meant the opening of a new period that left behind the medieval “dark”. In the nineteenth century the use of the term Renaissance and its French form was extended Renaissance.
His predominant themes came from Greco -Roman mythology, but the presence of biblical motifs and a new way of representing Christian issues was also important. In both cases, special interest was dedicated to the figure of the human body and its actions as opposed to the centrality of the divine of medieval art.
Although his links with medieval art are evident, Renaissance art sought to move away from the aesthetics and imaginary of the Middle Ages and return to what was interpreted as the Greco -Roman roots of the West. For Renaissance artists, medieval art was indignantly subject to the religious pressures of the Church and, as such, had abandoned its ability to represent the world. Among the aesthetic innovations of this movement is the use of perspective in painting.
The artistic success of the Renaissance was largely due to patronage, which decreased the dependence of the church: the upper and wealthy classes sponsored the artists and exhibited their works as a sign of refinement and good taste, so there were few orders that were made to the artists. The Florentine family of the Medicis or Papacy himself in Rome were great patron of Renaissance art.
Art historians usually distinguish two stages of the Italian rebirth: the Quattrocento or first rebirth, which covered the fifteenth century and had exponents such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Donatello (1386-1466), and the Cinquecentowhich covered the 16th century. In this last period some of the most recognized names of the Renaissance emerged: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Rafael Sanzio (1483-1520) or Miguel Ángel Buonarotti (1475-1564), among others.
As for the sciences, an absolute revolution influenced by humanistic thinking occurred at the time of the Renaissance, which forever changed the vision of the world during the Middle Ages, determined by Christian religious conceptions. Of special importance was the development of astronomy and postulation by Nicolás Copernicus (1473-1543), and its subsequent defense and systematization by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), of the Heliocentric model, that is, the observation that the sun is the center around which the earth turns, and does not vice versa, as thought until then.
The introduction of the novel scientific method – which consisted of the formulation of hypotheses with the intention of confirming or refuting them through experimentation and mathematical calculations – influenced all areas of the thought of the Renaissance era, such as philosophy, physics, astronomy, geography, botany, cartography, anatomy, medicine and even art (as demonstrated by Leonardo’s techniques and experiments da Vinci).
In the Renaissance era, he highlighted the figure of the polymata, whose best example is Leonardo da Vinci himself: an interested andron person both in the arts and in science, and who cultivates an intense fervor for the knowledge of any kind. The term used for this kind of figure is “Renaissance man” and is directly related to the humanistic principle of the human being as a measure of all things.

Characteristics of Renaissance humanism

Renaissance and Humanism Press — The invention of the printing press was one of the factors that promoted humanism.

We can characterize Renaissance humanism in the following way:

It was an intellectual, philosophical and cultural movement closely linked to the Renaissance, which ruled European thought since its inception in the fifteenth century Italy until the end of the 16th century. From that moment he diversified and transformed into a multitude of humanistic currents, many of whose principles survive today.
Their background can be traced in the previous centuries, from the work of writers and thinkers such as Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) or Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). The term “humanism” (Humanismus) was first employed in the nineteenth century by German theologian Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766-1848), but derived from “humanists” (Umanisti), The word with which it was called in Italy since the fifteenth century to those who studied the humanities (Studia Humanitatis), that is, grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy.
He was openly interested in the philological, artistic and cultural study of Greco -Roman antiquity. He went directly to the classic texts and encouraged the scholarly knowledge of Greek and Latin so as not to depend on the opinions or comments of the ecclesiastical authorities. Thus, humanism enabled the replacement of scholastic methods of reading ancient texts by observation, research and evaluation of empirical reality.
The reading of classic works by Aristotle, Cicero or Tito Livio, among others, gave a renewed impulse to philosophy and led to the recovery of classic values that had an impact on politics, such as personal autonomy and the civic duty of individuals. This was framed in anthropocentrism: the human being became considered the owner of himself and his destiny as well as the center of all things.
Philosophy was one of the main areas of reflection of the humanistic movement. Among its exponents are Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Tomás Moro (1478-1535) and the father of modern political theory, Nicolás Machiavelli (1469-1527).
With humanism the process of separation between religion and politics began, which laid the foundations of republicanism through the distinction between the “eternal” (religious) and “temporal” authorities (political). In addition, it pursued a more personal and intimate spirituality, which encouraged the translation of classical works and the Bible into vernacular languages. This process influenced the construction of national identities and the separation between Church and State.
Humanism promoted a climate of optimism to the destiny of humanity that broke with pessimism and waiting for the final judgment that characterized the Middle Ages. Since some principles of humanism were rationality, free will, the autonomous capacity of the individual, education, tolerance and curiosity, humanistic philosophy proposed a secular ethic and morals that understood the human being as a being able to procure their own well -being. In this way, humanism laid the foundations of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the illustration of the mid -eighteenth century.
Humanism was especially concerned about the education and valuation of the popular world. Many works in Latin were translated into vernacular languages and artistic works were composed with themes related to the popular, such as romances and pastoral novels. One of the most important humanists, Erasmus in Rotterdam (1469-1536), worried about publishing and disseminating the classic works and a new translation of the New Testament with the eagerness put in education (which included the instruction of the rulers).

Relationship between humanism and the Renaissance

Renaissance and humanism philosophy — The renovation climate of the Renaissance encouraged the expansion of humanism.

Humanism and Renaissance They were part of a historical moment of profound changes to the West And, therefore, they can be considered as different faces of the same currency: the novel ideas of humanism forged the Renaissance in the arts and sciences, and the climate of renewal of the Renaissance promoted humanism towards all corners of Europe and the world.

Humanism	Renaissance
It is a philosophical and political doctrine that has survived the centuries, although diversifying and opening a range of possible modern and contemporary aspects.	It was an artistic and cultural movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which forever remodeled the western aesthetic concept and then the witness passed to Mannerism, the Baroque, El Rococó, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, etc.
It was in the beginning an intellectual movement whose principles and ideas influenced the arts, sciences, philosophy, education, politics and life in general.	It was a mainly artistic and scientific movement that was deployed in painting, sculpture, architecture, lyrics, music, geography, medicine, mathematics, natural sciences and engineering.
It is considered a paradigm of the modern world, which broke with the medieval worldview of the universe and society.	It took place between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, so it is often considered a transit stage between one and the other.

Consequences of Renaissance humanism

The consequences of humanism were of immense importance for Western culture. Due to the globalization process that took place from the Modern Age onwards, they also were for much of the world. Broadly speaking, we can summarize them as follows:

The rupture with the medieval model materialized of society and its conception of the world, in line with the decomposition of the feudal regime, the reduction of the power of the nobility in favor of the commercial bourgeoisie and the questioning of the earthly power of the Catholic Church. This was translated over time in a freer and more tolerant society, with republican values and a separation between the Church and the State.
A new idea of education originated, which promoted knowledge and human reason as instruments to achieve truth and happiness and, therefore, to improve the living conditions of the human being and move him away from the darkness of superstition and ignorance that was considered to have dominated in the Middle Ages.
The foundations for different philosophical, political and social currents laid such as the illustration and rationalism that, in some cases, in turn influenced historical episodes such as the French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of the old regime.
Scientific thinking began through the so -called scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, which changed forever the paradigm for the understanding and study of the natural world and the human being. It was the basis of modern science.
Interest in the Greco -Roman world was renewed and other variants considered pagan by the Church, which allowed to overcome the limitations imposed by the religious authority and motivated a relative weakening of the power of the Catholic Church (which also had to face the attacks of the Protestant reform from the 16th century).

References

Álvarez Palenzuela, VA (coord.) (2002). Universal History of the Middle Ages. Akal.
Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2022). Renaissance Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
Grudin, R. (2022). Humanism Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
UNED (2018). Humanism and Renaissance (audio). UNED channel. https://canal.uned.es/