The Astrological Cosmos and Rhetorical Culture of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano

Abstract

Renaissance humanism, it is generally agreed, emerged in the fourteenth century as an intellectual movement devoted to the study and imitation of ancient poetry and rhetoric. It was also dedicated to using literature to promulgate ethical values derived from a variety of classical schools and blended with Christian teachings in more or less convincing ways. Scholastic philosophy in its three branches of metaphysics, natural philosophy and logic was either avoided by and large by humanists or was subjected to an assortment of criticisms—especially dialectic and physics. Petrarch and Salutati are salient examples. There can thus be little ground today for confusing humanism and scholasticism, a tendency Paul Oskar Kristeller has so valiantly and persistently combatted.