Renaissance Humanism Research Articles

Humanities Studies and Jesuit Principles of Education

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:The objective of the study is to identify key features of the concept of analysing humanitarianism and, eventually, humanity as an important sociogenic factor and its meaning for contemporary education.
 RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: This work focuses on recognizing the conceptual core in the humanist tradition through the analysis of the ancient and Renaissance idea of the study of humanitarianism that dominated in the educational paradigm in the period of the Renaissance humanism and in the development of Jesuit education.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The study indicates interpretative inconsistency in the concept of modern humanism. Trying to explain what is unclear in the humanistic discourse, the author will, first of all, focus on the origin of the Renaissance humanism with its outdated concept of the study of humanitarianism, and then he will present the analysis of the concept of the original, ancient understanding of the study of humanitarianism in the inspiring text of the Renaissance humanistic movement Pro Archia Poeta Oration by Cicero. Finally, the author presents the connection between the analysis of humanitarianism and the Renaissance educational system of Societas Jesu, as well as the perspectives of this tradition and its influence on the present time.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: In the research, the author identified the ancient and Renaissance concept of studying humanitatis as a key sociogenic factor necessary for the morphogenesis of cultural identity.
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS: Humanistic studies, as a lifelong process of cultivating cura personalis according to Jesuit principles, are an important condition for upgrading humanity which is characterized by the fulfillment of the moral dimension of an individual integrated with social and cultural processes of the society. The study indicates the meaning of the epideictic approach to analysing humanitarianism in its function of articulating the cultural identity of the polis.

Walking in the Boboli Gardens in Florence: Toward a Transdisciplinary, Visual, Cultural, and Constellational Analyses of Medieval Sensibilities in theHypnerotomachia Poliphili

Walking as a methodological approach has developed within anthropological, literary, sociological, and ethnographic research, and more recently in ethno-biographic studies, but has not greatly crossed into history or art history. In this article, using the metaphor of the “constellation,” we offer a transdisciplinary methodology to complicate Euro-western renaissance humanism, in our exploration of the gendered, temporal, spatial, and cultural aspects of renaissance Florence, through a walk in the “Boboli gardens” in the footsteps of Poliphilo. Walking helps us to form a sense of our past, present, and future, and in walking, we gain ground in the “art of paying attention” (Ingold). In our walk, key emerging themes are the gardens as a metaphor for visual culture; the phenomenological, temporal, and spatial transgression of gender norms and their demarcated thresholds; gardens as stimulating cognition and the sensorial; and the developing art of garden aesthetics and the architectonic.

Les Aventuriers de la mémoire perdue: Léonard, Érasme, Michelet et les autres. Par Jean-Christophe Saladin

Jean-Christophe Saladin, editor-in-chief of the Miroir des humanistes series of editions of Renaissance humanist texts at Les Belles Lettres, brings his wide-ranging erudition to bear upon the protean phenomenon of the European Renaissance. Saladin’s volume promotes a holistic approach to the Renaissance, finding inherent unity in diverse social, cultural, and intellectual currents and products from the fourteenth century to the early seventeenth. The scope of this book, therefore, is necessarily ambitious, taking in the social history of Europe from 1350 to 1650 (Part One, ‘La Comédie de ce monde’), alongside its art history (Part Two, ‘Arts’, which also includes theatre), literature (Part Three, ‘Lettres’), science (Part Four, ‘Sciences et techniques’, which also includes print technology), religion along with philosophy (Part Five, ‘Philosophie et religion’), and politics (Part Six, ‘Politique’). Saladin’s book argues that the creative exploration of the culture of classical antiquity, epitomized in the work of early modern humanists...

Humanism Learning Theory And Mathematics Learning

Humanism that is widely understood in this modern era is renaissance humanism which is one of the atheist philosophies. Humans are respected. Even humans are made as the center of truth by glorifying reason and rejecting theism or supernaturalism. The earliest thinkers in education based on this notion in the modern age were John Dewey, Johann Pestalozzi, and Maria Montessori. This understanding became ligitimate after The Association of Humanistic Psychology was founded in 1962. At that time, the humanistic movement began to influence psychology, education, and the workplace. This humanistic movement also gave birth to humanistic psychology with a character, Abraham H. Maslow. Maslow’s Theory of Needs, then had a significant effect on education, especially in the development of learning theories, including andragogy, transformational learning, and independent learning. Maslow’s humanistic learning theory encourages innovation and creativity. It is believed in this theory that everyone is responsible for their own learning as well as learning from those around them. This theory encourages students to be in a supportive and safe environment, so they are comfortable asking questions and exploring new concepts and possibilities. This theory states that the best learning occurs when the whole person (cognitive, affective, psychomotor) is involved, taking into account the totality of human experience. This theory has also drawn criticism. Some experts think that this theory is not based on rigorous scientific experience. Meanwhile, other experts review the philosophy that underlies this theory from the context of values, religion, culture and ideology of the Indonesian nation. However, the learning theory built on the philosophy of humanism can also be applied in mathematics education. A good example of this is the differentiation of mathematics learning. Through this learning differentiation, all students learn in different ways and according to their level of difficulty in understanding mathematical concepts. In other words, each student gets treatment according to his or her need

Towards a knowledge base of medieval and renaissance geographical Latin works: The IMAGO ontology

Abstract In this article we present the first achievement of the Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum (IMAGO)—Italian National Research Project (2020–23), that is, the ontology we have created in order to formally represent the knowledge about the geographical works written in Middle Ages and Renaissance (6th–15th centuries). The IMAGO ontology is derived from a strict collaboration between the Institute of Information Science and Technologies (ISTI) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the scholars who are involved in the project, who have supported ISTI-CNR in defining a conceptualization of the domain of knowledge. Following the re-use logic, we have selected as reference ontologies the International Committee on Documentation CRM vocabulary and its extension FRBRoo, including its in-progress reformulation, LRMoo. This research is included in a wider project context whose final aim is the creation of a knowledge base (KB) of Latin geographic literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance Humanism in which the data are formally represented following the Linked Open Data paradigm and using the Semantic Web languages. At the end of the project, this KB will be accessed through a Web application that allows retrieving and consulting the collected data in a user-friendly way for scholars and general users, e.g. tables, maps, CSV files.

Dissent from Mt. Ventoux: Between Christian and Secular Humanism in Petrarch’s de Ascensu Montis Ventosi

Petrarch’s letter de Ascensu Montis Ventosi has long served as the founding document of “renaissance humanism”. Since thebeginning of renaissance studies in the mid-nineteenth century, the letter has become almost a talisman for summoning the new, secular spirit of humanism that spontaneously arrived in Italy in the fourteenth century, took hold of the hearts and minds of Europeans in the fifteenth century, and led to cataclysmic cultural, religious, and political changes in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This reading, still common among non-specialists, especially in the English-speaking world, is overly simplistic and ignores Petrarch’s profound debt to classical and Christian tradition, obscuring the fundamentally religious character of the letter. This article examines how scholars came to assign the letter so much importance and offers an interpretation that stresses Petrarch’s continuity with tradition and his desire to revitalize rather than reinvent the traditions of Christian scholarship and contemplation.

УКРАЇНСЬКА НАЦІОНАЛЬНА РЕВОЛЮЦІЯ XVII СТ. В ЗАГАЛЬНОЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ КОНТЕКСТІ: СВІТОГЛЯДНІ ВИТОКИ

Throughout the course of the 16th – 17th centuries, a new epoch begins in the history of European civilization – the epoch of the New Age. A revolutionary formation and, subsequently, the establishment of a new state system based on political democracy, legal freedom and civil equality are taking place. As in other European countries, significant socio-political transformations in Ukraine were also due to the national revolution of 1648–1676. Analyzing the events in Ukraine in the mid-seventeenth century as a component of the pan-European revolutionary movement, the author considers the attitudinal and ideological origins of the Ukrainian revolution. Their common European features, as well as specific features are clarified and characterized. In general, the change in the worldview system in Ukraine is associated with the renaissance-humanist and reformation ideas that began to spread in the Ukrainian lands without losing its original meaning, but acquiring here a kind of national color, aimed at understanding the urgent problems of Ukrainian society. In the field of political and legal doctrine, the assertion of the legal worldview takes place, replacing the theological. Its classic embodiment became the theory of natural law with its concept of inalienable natural human rights as well as the concept of social contract. These ideas became, to a greater or lesser extent, the basis of the Ukrainian revolution of the seventeenth century. Their embodiment can be found in the works of Ukrainian «Renaissance humanists» of the 16th – early 17th centuries: S. Orikhovsky, J. Vereshchynsky, I. Dombrovsky, S. Klenovych, S. Pekalid, J. Shchasny-Herburt, K. Sakovych. It is found that in the seventeenth century, the works of such prominent political thinkers, theorists of natural law as J. Lipsius, G. Grotius, later B. Spinoza, T. Hobbes, S. Pufendorf were becoming widespread in Ukraine. They found a favorable ground in Ukraine and directly influenced the Ukrainian revolution, as the state and legal ideas of these thinkers became especially popular not only among the intellectual elite, but also among the Cossacks – the main driving force of the revolution. A number of Ukrainian thinkers, despite the fact that until 1649 Ukraine did not have its own state, were considering the future path of its political development. Specific plans of forming own state are embodied, in particular, in the works of J. Vereshchynsky, P. Mohyla, Y. Nemyrych, and others. They became a logical continuation and development of the state approaches of Ukrainian Renaissance humanists and reflected the tendency to combine the understanding of the history of their own state-building tradition with the study of Western experience. The analysis of political and legal ideas of Ukrainian authors, real historical events of the seventeenth century testify to the emergence among the Ukrainian population of clear tendencies to build their own state. Since then, the idea of the Ukrainian nation-state became fundamental to the Cossack state-building and leading in the liberation struggles of the Ukrainian people of all subsequent centuries.

Wokół roku 1420. Początki szkolnictwa renesansowego we Włoszech

Paul F. Grendler suggested the year of 1420 as a symbolic date marking the dawn of Renaissance humanist teaching in the Latin education system. In 1420, the commune of Verona employed Guarino Guarini da Verona (1374–1460) to teach on the basis of Cicero’s letters and speeches. The anniversary has posed an opportunity to challenge a stereotype of two epochs: the Middle Ages and Renaissance, perpetuated in contemporary narration. I have presented my own image of these epochs, synthetic and simplified, yet based on historical facts. The synthetic approach to the similarities and differences between the Middle Ages and Renaissance, suggested here, is coherent with the changes which took place at the dawn of Italian Renaissance education (presented in the second part of the article). I have found out that this development was possible owing to personal contacts among humanists and their familiarity with inspiring texts. I have also discovered that before 1420, before Renaissance humanist education was introduced to public city schools, it had left its mark on self-education, informal relations, private city schools and urban home schooling. Only then did studia humanitatis became attractive to Italian communes and started to employ teachers knowledgeable about the new curriculum. The differences between the Renaissance and medieval education models in Italian public city schools include primarily the means at hand (i.e. the curriculum, the obligatory reading and partly the teaching organisation). They did not pertain to the major goals set by the then teachers (i.e. providing children and adolescents with knowledge and skills that they found useful in adult life, coupled with moral teaching and developing their habits). In my opinion, the Renaissance education model is continuation of the medieval model rather than its opposition because these two models complement each other harmoniously.

Gente Rutheni, Natione Poloni: The Ruthenians of Polish Nationality in Habsburg Galicia by Świątek Adam (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 362 in purging language of its conventional banalities, obscurantisms and falsities, purifying everyday discourse, while simultaneously redeeming the obscene and the blasphemous from degradation, and the common people from disregard and disdain. These trends have inevitably resulted in the enactment of state censorship laws and the decision of groups such as the Belarus Free Theatre to choose self-exile. The situation in Ukraine and Belarus is complicated by issues of language. The prioritization of the Russian language in countries now perceived to have been Russian ‘colonies’ in the past means that the practitioners of the New Drama are caught in a double bind between needing audiences both at home and in the former Soviet Union while, at the same time, registering the need to reclaim ownership of their own native languages at the risk of losing both a wider audience and revenue. Given the current situation whereby cultural activities tend to be funded by the state, fringe organizations need to find means of self-funding or seek financial support from abroad, as well as the kind of moral support already received from internationally renowned theatre people. This may mean that the days of New Drama are numbered. If so, their actions in clearing the ground may well have prepared the way for other, more structured and less iconoclastic dramatic forms to take root and flourish. In the meantime, this present volume serves as worthy testimony to the authenticity and vitality of a critical moment and movement in the theatrical history of all three nations. London Nick Worrall Świątek, Adam. Gente Rutheni, Natione Poloni: The Ruthenians of Polish Nationality in Habsburg Galicia. CIUS Press in cooperation with Księgarnia Akademicka, Edmonton, AL, Toronto, ON and Cracow, 2019. 633 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 (paperback). The book under review is a translation of Adam Świątek’s Polish-language monograph of 2014. Published under the auspices of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, this book deals with the duality of the so-called gente Rutheni, natione Poloni Ruthenians (Ukrainians) who felt a kinship with Polishness. Świątek looks into the transformation of the Ruthenians of Polish nationality in Habsburg Austria from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Starting with the Renaissance humanist and writer Stanisław Orzechowski, Świątek employs a wide array of studies by his predecessors, including Stanisław Kot, Henryk Litwin, Janusz Tazbir, David Althoen, Serhii Plohy, Natalia Yakovenko and Marin Mudry. The REVIEWS 363 chronological and geographical scope of the study, terminology and source base are discussed in the introduction to the book which comprises eight chapters, bibliography, list of illustrations, and various indices. The book opens with a preface authored by Frank E. Sysyn, who himself studied the phenomenon of gente Ruthheni, natione Poloni in the early modern period. Chapter one looks into the characteristics of the formation of gente Rutheni, natione Poloni (pp. 55–147). By referring to such terms as ‘ethnicity’, ‘nation’ and ‘identity’, Świątek offers a detailed survey of the various social layers of the Ruthenian population of Galicia and their relation to the identity type of gente Rutheni, natione Poloni: the landed gentry, the gentry, the intelligentsia, the Greek Catholic clergy and the peasants. By analysing the structure of the two-tier (dual) identity of Ruthenians of Polish nationality, Świątek places this phenomenon within time and geographical expanse (pp. 55–149). The reader learns about family, the Uniate Church, school, language of instruction, especially at institutions of higher education, conflict situations with Ruthenians of other political persuasions (pp. 132–42). Chapter two, ‘Rus’ in the Historical Consciousness of Poles’, examines the literature (Adam Mickiewicz, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and especially Platon Kostecki), art (Jan Matejko) and historiography (Joachim Lelewel, Henryk Schmitt) which determined the development of the identity of the gente Rutheni, natione Poloni. One must also mention the textbook for secondary schools in Galicia which, prepared by Anatol Lewicki and reprinted a dozen or so times (the very last time in 1999), propagated the free-willed union of Poland, Lithuania and Rus’ (pp. 190–93). The genesis of political demands made by Ruthenians of Polish nationality...

Running in everyday life and festive culture of the Renaissance and the Modern Age

The subject of this research is determination of the peculiarities of running as a type of activity in the sociocultural situation of the Renaissance and the Modern Age of the Old and New World. The relevance of studying the socially important aspects of running in everyday life and festive, carnival culture of the XV – XIX centuries is substantiated by the fact that namely this period marks the onset of mental requests and revival of physical practices, which in 1896 would become the heart of the First Olympic Games, the beginning and culmination of which were the athletic competitions. The ancient ideal of kalokagathia at this time is instilled with the ideas of self-sufficiency and self-projectivity of a person, whose creative aspirations equally captivate the spirit and the body. Running develops physical and mental qualities that broaden human capabilities, being that instrument for existential growth through overcoming the boundaries of physical and spiritual “normality”, conditioned by the stereotypes and norms of everyday life. The author views running from the perspective of culturological concepts of “everyday life”, “festivity”, “carnival”, as well as the binary opposition sacred/profane. The fields of application of the acquired results include social philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of sports. The novelty of this research consists in the interpretation of endurance running as an existential measurement of everyday life, the method of communication between different types of communities and population groups, and formation of the prototype of a “cultural body” of that time. Running is examined as a type of activity that is characteristic mostly to the lower, marginal social classes. Participation in the city festival in the format of a “carnival” running was a way to integrate into society, a manifestation of collective solidarity. Their buffoonery running distracted the audience from the everyday routine, becoming its counterpoint. The author also determines the contribution of the upper social classes to the development of running practices d: economic (funding of professional runners and material reward for the non-professional winners of the city festivals); practical (amateur running or other athletic practices as a component of a gentleman's everyday life); ideological (Renaissance humanists assumed that physical activity is a non-religious way to overcome time through maintaining physical well-being).

The Presence of Rome in Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Texts, Artefacts and Beliefs. Andrew Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xviii+248.

<i>The Presence of Rome in Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Texts, Artefacts and Beliefs</i>. Andrew Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xviii+248.

Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450–1700 by Hugh Cagle

Reviewed by: Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450–1700 by Hugh Cagle Suman Seth Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450–1700. By Hugh Cagle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xix + 364 pp. In 1787, the English physician, Benjamin Moseley, who had practiced and served as surgeon-general in Jamaica, published A Treatise on Tropical Diseases and on the Climate of the West Indies. The book was perhaps the first English-language work to include the term "tropical diseases" in its title and scholars have, in general, identified the end of the eighteenth century as the period in which the idea of the tropics as a distinct disease environment began to emerge. In this monograph, the author argues that the scholarship is mistaken on this point—that such a conception emerged roughly a century earlier—and that the reason for the error is that we have been looking in the wrong place. Had more of the literature focused on the Portuguese empire than those, say, of the British or French, it would have seen, already in the seventeenth century, arguments for the similarity of diseases between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and their differences from the afflictions of more temperate zones. To this bold intervention into the history of medicine, the author adds an important corrective to the history of science. The period covered by Assembling the Tropics is one often described in terms of "the" (or at least "a") "Scientific Revolution." In analyzing the works of those studying the natural world at this time, scholars have often tried to identify the novel epistemologies and ontologies that supposedly characterized a newly empiricist age. As Cagle elegantly demonstrates, however, empiricism came in many forms and was encouraged by many logics. For example, that of Garcia de Orta, physician and author of Coloquios dos simples, e drogas e cousas medicinais da India (published in Goa in 1563) was shaped by his involvement in trade in eastern India. Thus, his "work of accumulating, comparing, and identifying Asian nature spoke first and foremost to the intertwined commercial and epidemiological concerns of disadvantaged traders" (p. 309). Instead of trying to read the Coloquios alongside the classics of the European scientific revolution, then, we are directed to see Orta's text as part of "the bustle, possibility and uncertainty of life in mid-sixteenth century Goa—a world rich with commercial and curative possibility, but also riven with economic and epidemiological uncertainty" (p. 65). The book is divided into three unequal sections, defined geographically and in rough chronological order. The first, made up of a single chapter, looks at Portuguese exploration on the coast of [End Page 164] western Africa from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. In this period, Portuguese travelers and traders grappled with the seeming refutation of once-authoritative classical knowledge. Aristotle and others had posited the existence of a lifeless, parched and arid region—the torrid zone—between the tropics. Instead, the Portuguese found a rich and verdant land, one whose very fecundity set up a medical conundrum. Where life seemed so abundant, why did death, particularly from debilitating fevers, seem equally plentiful? The same apparent paradox was to be found in Goa, the principle location of the second section. The main protagonist in the three chapters of this chapters is Orta, with Cagle seeking to steer a third route between two, largely antagonistic, ways of understanding his contributions. Where some scholars have tried to fit Orta into the mould of a "Renaissance humanist" or else a "Portuguese progenitor of a scientific revolution" (p. 64) and others have portrayed him as an intermediary between European and Indian worlds, with his Coloquios serving as a means of transmitting Indian medical knowledge, Cagle insists on understanding de Orta on his own terms and in his own place. Certainly one comes to see the Coloquios as an amalgam, with a fraught religious and social politics shaping engagements with Hindu and Muslim medicine and the curative practices of women from multiple backgrounds. Yet, at the same time, Cagle's aim is almost intimate: "to encounter Goa as Orta did, to peer over...

Las ideas políticas en el Renacimiento

James Hankins es uno de los mas importantes especialistas en la historia del pensamiento politico de los humanistas del Renacimiento. Su libro sobre el platonismo del Renacimiento es de referencia obligada para los estudios sobre la epoca, asi como sus articulos sobre Leonardo Bruni y el “humanismo civico”. En este reciente libro reune el trabajo de muchos anos. Consta de veintiun capitulos y tres apendices. Los dos primeros son traducciones de textos latinos al ingles. El primero de ellos es un pasaje del De vita solitaria de Petrarca. El segundo es un pasaje de la Historia de Bruni y el tercero es una lista de ediciones de Francesco Patrizi.

The humanism in shakespeare’s work

Humanists were understood as somebody in possession of love for humankind, also as someone who learned humane arts to achieve assumptive level of knowledge, writing or speaking eloquence and, of course, the understanding of the world and history.We can see humanistic ideals in Shakespeare’s plays for instance Hamlet and Julius Ceaser. W.Shakespeare demonstrated the ideas of Renaissance humanism; even his tragic plays and he also presented characters lively the principles and ideals of Renaissance humanism. Shakespeare was an artist who could understand deeply the humanity and an uncanny ability for self-expression who openly practiced and celebrated the ideals of intellectual freedom. It is clear that, Shakespeare did not study like other dramatists who lived at that period. In spite of this, his knowledge is regarded as the grounded in humanism.

고대인들의 발자취를 따라서: 르네상스 휴머니즘과 휴머니스트 세계관

고대인들의 발자취를 따라서: 르네상스 휴머니즘과 휴머니스트 세계관

Mistrzowie dawni. Szkic do dziejów dziewiętnastowiecznego pojęcia

Mistrzowie dawni. Szkic do dziejów dziewiętnastowiecznego pojęcia

Introduction—on and off Topic

It has long been established, mainly with the works of Robert Roswell Palmer, Jacques Godechot, and more recently, Wim Klooster and Janet Polasky, that a revolutionary wave, promoting more egalitarian and progressive political regimes, swept over Northern America and Europe, France more particularly, in the 18th century. This approach, known as the Atlantic Revolution theory, holds that the 1776 American War of Independence initiated such a philosophical and political process, later reaching Europe. It appears however that this revolutionary movement was initiated a long time before 1776. In the 1960s, famous French historian Fernand Braudel had already raised the question whether the questioning of a society dominated by the Catholic Church originated from Renaissance humanism.

Philosophical Posthumanism

Philosophical Posthumanism

The Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Latinitas in the Research of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

This paper analyses the reception of Latin language and culture in the research of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It focuses on the works of various disciplines – social and cultural history, literary research, art criticism, etc. – and seeks to identify the recurring themes, symbols and topics that comprise homogenous narratives and interpretations. They consolidate the findings of different fields of study and thus allow to analyse the Latinitas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an integral part of the political community’s identity.The symbols of Latin language and culture can be identified as a basis for a Shift from oral to written culture. It conveys the ideas of order and organisation, as it transforms customary law into a codified one, a natural religion into that based on Scripture, etc. It alters the society as well, mainly because writing and written culture marks a shift in identity and behaviour. Also, by focusing on social and educational aspects, the Shift marks an institutional change, which permeates the developments of the state and society as a whole.The multipolar cultural field of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is described by four cultural models – Polish, Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Latin. The metaphor of Interaction shows how Latin culture and language is seen as one of the four ideological alternatives that legitimize the state, dynasty and sovereignty.Thirdly, the metaphor of Tension depicts Latinitas as part of the dichotomy between Eastern and Western civilizations by expressing the symbolical content of the latter. This narrative also emphasizes the internal confessional disputes inside the Western Church, and by exploiting the specific understanding of the Renaissance humanism, it becomes a means to understand sociocultural conflicts of the Early Modern state.The interpretation of Latinitas as a communication channel is nested under the metaphor of Medium. Works in this category usually portray Latin language as an expression of a social, economic, political, etc. status quo, which differs in each European state. Latin culture thus helps to articulate national interests and identity, and enables the cultural exchange among the Western countries as well.Finally, by emphasizing the poor literacy of the society and only limited possibilities to learn Latin and acknowledge its cultural code, researchers portray Latinitas as a Secret. The speakers and writers of Latin form a hermetic group, possessing the knowledge of a cultural matrix inaccessible to others. The dignity of Latin language also strengthens the status of vernacular languages, and thus accumulates the process of identity formation.These five narratives exemplify how Latinitas is embedded within the economic, political, and cultural activities of the society. It also depicts the different ways by which it becomes an integrating principle of the identity of the intellectual and political classes in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It provides an account of Roman descent, sustains the claim for political sovereignty, and indicates the civilizing process. By adopting those five different narratives, researchers may further analyse Latinitas not only as a separate cultural layer, but as a part of social identity as well.

Humanismo renascentista e Hagiografia

Este estudo toma como ponto de partida um corpus restrito de produção hagiográfica novilatina no contexto do humanismo português. O seu autor pretende sustentar que o humanismo renascentista europeu exerceu um papel decisivo no nascimento de uma hagiografia renovada, com novas exigências críticas, filológicas e literárias . O contexto europeu de reformas doutrinais e a polémica em torno do culto dos santos foram determinantes na produção literária hagiográfica, mas outros factores foram pertinentes neste processo: certas características do espírito humanista, como o interesse pela reconstituição filológica, a imitação dos modelos literários gregos e latinos e uma certa paixão de ‘antiquário’. Este estudo pretende identificar este influxo humanista na literatura hagiográfica e suas consequências.