Studia Humanitatis Research Articles

Pomponio Leto’s Lucretius, the Quest for a Classical Technical Lexicon, and the Negative Space of Humanist Latin Knowledge

Abstract Annotations in Pomponio Leto’s manuscript of Lucretius (now in Naples) reveal patterns in his engagement with the text, especially a focus on rare grammatical forms, participles, adverbs, time, and technical vocabulary usable for scientific, medical, and ontological discussion. Leto and fellow scholars of the studia humanitatis undertook an ambitious linguistic intervention, attempting to create a new classicizing Latin, which rejected simplified Medieval forms and adhered strictly to classical models. This led humanists to seek out everything rare, irregular, and absent from Medieval texts, and often to overshoot their ancient models in complexity, composing hyper-ornamented Latin no native speaker would produce. Thus negative space – all that was unknown, rare, and obscure in rediscovered classics – stands alongside Cicero and Virgil as a major shaper of Renaissance Latin style. The determination of humanists to reject scholastic Latin also meant rejecting the corpus of useful technical vocabulary developed in preceding centuries for discussions of such topics as cognition, perception, ontology, and cosmology. To rival the scholastics, humanists like Leto needed to develop a classical technical lexicon capable of discussing such topics with rigor. Leto’s annotations show how, while searching this newly rediscovered text, he was striving to (re)construct a classical Latin technical lexicon which we might say never existed.

La Pierre Eternelle ou soit La Glaura Augurelli Philosofi Angli. Tajemnice recepty w Księdze kabał królowej Sobieskiej w rękopisie 2284 Biblioteki Jagiellońskiej

La Pierre Eternelle ou soit la Glaura Augurelli Philosofi Angli. The mysteries of the recipe in The queen Sobieska’a Book of Kabballah, manuscript no. 2284 of the Jagiellonian Library The article discusses one of the recipes included in manuscript no. 2284 held by the Jagiellonian Library (card 125r-126r), rewritten in French by Maria Kazimiera Sobieska. The manuscript contains various recipes including those gathered and rewritten by the queen widow herself while she was in Rome from 1699 to 1714. The title includes the words La Pierre Eternelle, that is the Philosopher‘s Stone, herafter Glaura Augurelli, which should be understood as the name of the Glaura nymph, a character in the poem titled Chrysopoeia by Giovanni Aurelio Augurello (1441–1524), an Italian poet, mistakenly called Philosofi Angli, due to Augurello’s popularity in this country. These last words were written in the language similar to Polish, which was common in Maria Kazimiera’s writings. The recipe contains a formula for the Philosopher’s Stone, which alchemists considered a means to obtain gold, but was also regarded as a remedy for all diseases. The Chrysopoeia poem describes the Philosopher’s Stone creation process, the mythological history of Lynceus, the participant in the quest for the Golden Fleece, and the Glaura nymph is another name for the Philosopher’s Stone. The discussed recipe, as well as the cabbalistic and numerological works gathered in the manuscript no. 2284 by Maria Kazimiera, contrary to popular opinion, presents her as a person deeply rooted in the elitist mindset of the turn of the 17th c. During her stay in Rome, she, like Krystyna Szwedzka, entered the circle of persons associated with studia humanitatis, and on the 16th September 1699 was admitted to the Accademia dell’Arcadia where she was renamed Amirisca Telea.

Milton’s Shakespeare: Imitation and Originality

Encouraged by the recent renewal of interest in the relationship between Milton and Shakespeare, this essay focuses on that relationship in the light of the tension between the literalism of sola scriptura in reformed religion, on the one hand, and the countervailing insistence on imitation as the route to originality and individual agency in the studia humanitatis, on the other. This tension is central to all Milton’s thinking; at its core is the question, “How are we to reconcile God’s freedom with our own?” While God’s freedom is absolute, we are nothing more than puppets “in the motions” unless we find a way to define the contingency of our own. Milton is intoxicated with the majesty of God’s freedom but equally haunted by the memory of our own original freedom: “No man who knows ought, can be so stupid [as] to deny that all men naturally were borne free, being the image and likeness of God himself.” By concentrating on Milton’s representation of Shakespeare in his “Epitaph” on Shakespeare (1632) and Eikonoklastes (1649), my argument is that not only is Milton’s engage­ment with Shakespeare ongoing but that it allows us peculiar insight into the poet’s conflicted desire both to create enhanced space for human agency and to critique its overestimation, especially in the idealization of political virtù.

The invention of the writing subject in school: The studia humanitatis in the 15th-century Renaissance

ABSTRACT This article seeks to discuss the relations between reading and writing against the historical backdrop of the initial affirmation of the studia humanitatis in fifteenth-century renaissance Italy and its initial movement towards the North of Europe. It focuses first on the theory of education and learning expressed in the Treatises of four Italian humanists. These treatises were structured based on the coeval experiments undertaken by extremely famous teachers such as the Byzantine diplomat Chrysoloras (1355–1415), who is generally credited with having initiated humanist pedagogy, Gasparino Barzizza (1360–1430), in the cities of Padua and Pavia, Vittorino da Feltre (1370–1446), in Mantua, and above all, Guarino Guarini da Verona (1374–1460), in Ferrara. The action of these last three teachers led to the consolidation of the introduction into the syllabus of a large number of Latin authors, through which the study of the Greek language and literature was endowed with greater legitimacy. It also tracks the proposals of Valla (1407–1457) and Rodolph Agricola (1444–1485). The options regarding the studies and the methodologies used spread to many schools, which we today call secondary schools and universities. Although this reality is restricted in time and space, the article has the broader goal of contributing to a deeper understanding of a school culture that promotes the real development of creative writing skills among its pupils, and which therefore opposes the civilisational principle that identifies the school model in the contemporary epoch as advocating the possibility to teach everything to everybody and always based on a textbook compiled for use by the pupils.

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.

РЕСПУБЛІКА КРАСНОПИСЬМЕНСТВА. КОМЕНТАР ДО ПЕРЕКЛАДІВ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ МОВОЮ ТЕРМІНІВ З ПРАЦІ ДЕВІДА Г’ЮМА «ПРО ЕСЕЇСТИЧНЕ ПИСЬМЕНСТВО»

The article is a commentary to philosophical terms of David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing”, that became necessary in working on its Ukrainian translation. “Of Essay Writing” is an essay on conversation that was published in English in 1742 in the first edition of “Essays, Moral and Political” by D. Hume. The commentary focuses on two concepts that are important for understanding the content and cultural and historical context of an essay. First, the concept of “Republic of Letters” is considered. This Renaissance metaphor was in active use in the XV-XVIII centuries and described the conversational community of European intellectuals, formed by correspondent networks. In the age of Enlightenment, an alternative to correspondence was conversation in the newly formed public sphere of communication, concentrated in salons, clubs and other common social spaces. In his essay, D. Hume contrasts the concept of "Republic of Letters" with the concept of “Empire of Conversation”, emphasizing the difference between the worlds of “learned” and “conversible”, where “learned” use correspondence and “conversible” participate in public conversation. Secondly, this commentary examines the concept of "Belles Lettres" - a term of Renaissance origin, the part of humanists educational project “bonnae litterae”, which revealed the role of “studia humanitatis” (humanities) in shaping the aesthetics of writing (including letter writing). David Hume associate "Belles Lettres" with the concept of “taste”, which is a central category of his empiricist aesthetics. According to Hume, the taste comes from specific experience, the components of which are the humanities. At the same time, “Belles Lettres” requires the experience of conversation, and essay-writing is a means, which D. Hume proposes to use to spread the achievements of the “Republic of Letters” in the community of the “Empire of Conversation”.

Integrálna antropológia ako cieľ jezuitskej pedagogiky a formácie

One of the characteristic features of the charisma of the Society of Jesus is the intellectual apostolate. Jesuit pedagogy is characterized by specific features based on previous pedagogical approaches (medieval universities, studia humanitatis), but also in a broader philosophical and theological context. The key starting point of the Ignatian and Jesuit pedagogy are the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. The education stemming from this background does not represent a value in itself, but rather a very effective instrument that helps to shape an integral personality, strengthens social ties and interpersonal relationships and leads to selfless service. The result of such education is not only the mere well roundedness, but above all the ability to take on commitment and move out of one’s comfort zone towards public service.

Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes

Avatars of Latin Schooling: Recycling Memories of Latin Classes in Western Poetry: Five Paradigmatic Cases

This paper tries to elucidate the significance of Latin schooling for the production of poetry by lining up five typical cases of recycling Roman texts, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The French poet Baudri de Bourgueil (ca 1050–1130) rewrote Ovid’s Heroides 16–17 within a cultural context, characteristic of the incipient “Ovidian age,” aetas ovidiana, based on classroom practices such as paraphrase, accessus and glosses, presupposing a sense of historical continuity – or translatio studii et imperii – from Antiquity down to the twelfth century. In his great work, The Comedy, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) reused Ovid in a quite different way, representative of the allegorizing tendencies noticeable in Italy and France towards the end of the Ovidian age. The Early Modern motto ad fontes, on the other hand, presupposed a breach between ancient and present times, none the less possible (and surely commendable) to bridge by means of imitation within the framework of studia humanitatis and a new philological culture, made possible by the printing press. This cultural paradigm shift is illustrated by a look at a famous sonnet by the Spanish Golden Age poet Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645). Finally, our modern and postmodern era, characterized by an ambivalent attitude to the classical heritage, is represented by the Anglo-American poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) and his Swedish successor Hjalmar Gullberg (1898–1961), both of whom remembered their Latin classes in their mature poetry, marked by irony, distance and, probably, nostalgia.

From Sinai to Athens: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s philological quest for the transmission of theological truth

ABSTRACTIn the summer of 1486, Pico came into possession of what he regarded as the original Chaldean text of the Chaldean Oracles, whose Greek text thus came to appear to him as an incomplete and flawed translation. The now-lost purported original Chaldean Oracles were a back translation infused with kabbalistic elements produced by Flavius Mithridates. In his Conclusiones nongentae (Rome, 1486), however, Pico devoted to them fifteen conclusions. Through an overall analysis of these conclusions, the first part of the article points out the kabbalistic themes and symbols that Pico descried in the original Chaldean Oracles. In the second part, an in-depth analysis of one of these conclusiones demonstrates that Pico’s reading of the oracle quoted therein implied that the Greek translator had missed the kabbalistic purport of the original. The article shows that Pico’s Conclusiones aimed at pointing out that the transmission of kabbalah to Zoroaster and from Zoroaster (although not without misinterpretations) to the Greek world – in other words, the existence of a divinely revealed prisca theologia transmitted through the ages – could be demonstrated on the basis of philological analysis and that, according to Pico, insofar as they provided a philological reconstruction of that science and its transmission, the Conclusiones should be reckoned as the culmination of the studia humanitatis.

Las escuelas de gramática en la Castilla bajomedieval (siglos XIII-XV)

This paper aims to determine the main features that defined the so-called grammar schools in the Crown of Castile in the context of the Late Medieval European school system. The analysis of the limited extant information that has been collected about the foundation, funding, appointment of masters and school syllabuses seeks to establish similarities and differences. Although both exist, the current study stresses the existence of a complex and diverse school system that the Late Medieval Castilian cities shared with the Crown of Aragon and other medieval European kingdoms. Some of the parameters used to rebuild the syllabus at the said schools reveal the influence of the Studia humanitatis curriculum and its contribution to the shaping of civic values in the urban culture of the Late Middle Ages

Criticism of the ideal and idols of humanism

The paper critically considers the ideology of humanism, which is different from the humanism known to religion and philosophy. The institutions that provide the narratives of this new humanism seek to regulate the lives and ideals of human beings and do so by emphasizing populist values. The ideology and propaganda of this humanism are hidden under an institutional and populist philanthropic rhetoric, spectacular actions of charity, and manipulative political invitations. The important aim of the ideology of humanism is to construct autonomous subjects-individuals who voluntarily serve in the spectacle of illusory grace. This essentially differs from the Renaissance idea of studia humanitatis, from Hegel’s "Studium der Humaniora”, from the result of analyzing Arendt’s “The Human Condition”, from various groups of cultural diversity that empower the dignity, autonomy, and critical thinking of human beings. This paper maintains that contemporary forms of philanthropic humanism are just means used by the hegemonic class of bureaucracy under the contemporary conditions of neoliberalism. Humanism is an instrument of social engineering, of collaboration between big corporations and the state to suppress the significance of dignity, harmony, and other ideals, and to win mass support. It has nothing to do with education in human dignity by philosophy, art, and literature. The spread of humanistic instrumentalities is incompatible with the principles of humanitas and helps explain the paradoxical situation when with the ever greater dominance, locally and worldwide, of humanistic rhetoric less and less attention is devoted to critical studies and the study of the humanities.

“나는 아이네아스도, 바울도 아닙니다” 인문학(Studia Humanitatis)과 종교개혁, 그리고 한국 교회의 미래

“나는 아이네아스도, 바울도 아닙니다” 인문학(Studia Humanitatis)과 종교개혁, 그리고 한국 교회의 미래

‘Wandering’ Scholars in the Beginning of Printing

The dissemination of humanism depends on personal contacts between individuals. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was an intense exchange between Germany and the Italian universities. German princes recruited administrators, counselors, and diplomats among Italian humanists. Italian teachers of rhetoric or art tried to make their fortunes north of the Alps. Apollon himself and with him the studia humanitatis are imagined as crossing the mountains.

A New Field:History of Humanities

A New Field:<i>History of Humanities</i>

The Humanities in the Eyes of the Humanists – From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day

This article aims to trace the transformation, which the term “humanities” (“human sciences”) was subject to from the early modern era to modern times. Its scope is limited to an indication of some of the key turning points in the history of understanding of the humanities by the humanists themselves, and to an identification of key categories that define the humanities (they include: paideia, studia humanitatis, république des lettres, and Bildung). The arguments contained herein are to serve rather as a voice, a contribution to the debate over the “crisis of the humanities”, which has been conducted more and more intensively for at least several decades.

Innovation Through Tradition: Rediscovering the "Humanist" in the Medical Humanities.

Throughout its fifty-year history, the role of the medical humanist and even the name "medical humanities" has remained raw, dynamic and contested. What do we mean when we call ourselves "humanists" and our practice "medical humanities?" To address these questions, we turn to the concept of origin narratives. After explaining the value of these stories, we focus on one particularly rich origin narrative of the medical humanities by telling the story of how a group of educators, ethicists, and scholars struggling to define their relatively new field rediscovered the studia humanitatis, a Renaissance curriculum for learning and teaching. Our origin narrative is composed of two intertwined stories-the history of the studia humanitatis itself and the story of the scholars who rediscovered it. We argue that as an origin narrative the studia humanitatis grounds the medical humanities as both an engaged moral practice and pedagogical project. In the latter part of the paper, we use this origin narrative to show how medical humanists working in translational science can use their understanding of their historical roots to do meaningful work in the world.

Shaftesbury and Literary Criticism: Philosophers and Critics in Early Eighteenth-Century England

This article re-examines the assumption that Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury) and Joseph Addison should be studied together as architects of similar theories of criticism. I argue that though Addison may have used some of the same terms as Shaftesbury, their approaches to criticism were, in fact, irreconcilable. In discussing criticism, both men contributed to debates about the encroachment of modern philosophy on the disciplines and areas of knowledge which were traditionally part of the studia humanitatis . This demands a reappraisal of the nature of Shaftesbury’s relationship to English literary and intellectual culture. I argue that this relationship was more hostile and oppositional than is currently understood.

Humanistic education in East Asia. With special reference to the work of Ogyu Sorai and Motoori Norinaga

The term can adopt a range of meanings, varying with the interpretation of or human. For this investigation, humanistic education refers to education that emphasizes humanistic studies (studia humanitatis) such as language, literature, and history, which aims to make a human being truly human. The basic insight of this education is that, as language is an essential characteristic of humanity, its care and cultivation is crucial in education. This original meaning of humanistic education was developed during the Renaissance. Despite this narrow definition of humanistic education, a similar trend can be found in East Asian traditions, especially in the original teachings of Confucius. In this article, the author first discusses the humanistic features of the original Confucian thoughts, as expressed in his Analects (Chapter 1). Second, he considers the significance of a Japanese Confucian scholar, Ogyu Sorai, who developed the Japanese humanistic interpretation of Confucian texts (Chapter 2). This is followed by an examination of the central thoughts of Motoori Norinaga, who transplanted Sorai's interpretation into the study of classical Japanese literature (Chapter 3). Finally, I consider future dimensions of East Asian humanism by referring to both Sorai and Norinaga (Chapter 4). (DIPF/Orig.)

Beyond the classroom: international interest in the studia humanitatis in the university towns of Quattrocento Italy

This article challenges two common misconceptions about ultramontani and Italian Renaissance education. The first is better known but still prevalent in some accounts: it is too often assumed that a visit to Italy needs must make a foreigner come under the influence of the studia humanitatis – but, in truth, many travelled without ever coming in contact with what we call humanism. The second misconception is less recognized: it is the assumption that travellers to Italy sought out specific teachers, in particular, Guarino da Verona, as a font of humanist learning. Even in the classic iconoclastic account of Grafton and Jardine, it is accepted that Guarino enjoyed an international reputation that attracted students to him. In truth, the claim tells us more about the self‐conscious construction of Guarino's image by his students (sometimes under his own direction) than it does about their own experience. It is a reputation that has created a classic case of misdirection: modern scholars concentrate on what was or was not happening in his presence, at the risk of missing what was going on elsewhere. Despite their own rhetoric, Guarino's foreign students did not flock to Italy solely to sit at the pedagogue's feet: they submitted themselves to multiple educational stimuli, and continued their own studies away from their master. In other words, the students manufactured their own humanist experience, both within and outside educational establishments.