the church and its representatives.^5 The frame was reinforced by the cultiva-
tion of neo-classical Latin, a discourse that, by modelling itself on the language
of pagan antiquity, often effaced or transformed the discourse of medieval
Christianity. Yet so neat a division of responsibilities was by no means easy
to maintain. Humanistic education created a cadre of teachers and devotees
of ancient literature and philosophy who for centuries defended, from
commanding heights of cultural authority, the need for Christians to open
themselves to the moral and intellectual resources of non-Christian civiliza-
tions. This had an enormous impact on the mentality of Western Christians,
especially when we compare the West with the very different situation that
obtained in Muslim countries during the same period.^6 Moreover, as educa-
tors devoted to the improvement of human nature, they were committed to an
anthropology that had real theological implications. They found more support
for their project among ancient Greek theologians, for example, with their
typical emphasis on the human potential for deification, than in the unre-
lievedly negative view of unredeemed human nature found in the later works
of Augustine. A rejection of Augustine’s late political theory, with its grim
view of the possibilities for the improvement of human government, was
implicit in many humanist writings, sometimes even explicit.^7 The humanist
project of translating the work of the Greek church fathers into Latin, once it
began in the earlyfifteenth century, helped create an authoritative counter-
weight to the pessimism of Augustine.^8 The recovery of Plato’sRepublicand
intense study of Aristotle’sEthicsandPoliticsalso reinforced the humanist
programme of moral reform.
Eventually, by the mid-fifteenth century, the success of the humanists with
the elites of the church and the Italian city states led to a certain cultural
imperialism, and they began to colonize rival disciplines, including law,
(^5) See James Hankins,‘Humanism, Scholasticism and Renaissance Philosophy’, in J. Hankins
(ed.),The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 30–49, esp. 39–46.
(^6) The relative openness to outside influences of early modern European civilization in
comparison with Islamic civilization in the same period is a point often defended by the
Princeton historian Bernard Lewis; see for example hisEurope and Islam(Washington, D.C.:
AEI Press, 2007).
(^7) For an example see Biondo Flavio,Roma triumphans(Basel, 1531), 116–18, where Biondo,
following Petrarch and Boccaccio, defends against Augustine the Roman pursuit of glory as
productive of virtue, good character being necessary to the preservation of the state.
(^8) The basic reference work is Irena Backus (ed.),The Reception of the Church Fathers in the
West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists(Boston, MA: Brill, 2001), but see also the articles on
individual Greek fathers in theCatalogus translationum et commentariorum. Also useful for the
fifteenth century is the exhibition catalogueUmanesimo e padri della chiesa: manoscritti e
incunaboli di testi patristici da Francesco Petrarca al primo cinquecento, ed. Sebastiano Gentile
(Rome: Rose, 1997). All of these works are more descriptive than analytical, and a detailed study
of the impact of the Greek fathers on Western theology in the Renaissance and Reformation is
still a desideratum.
Marsilio Ficino and Christian Humanism 57