A Dynamic Culture 57

A humanist educator and his charges.

focus from the scholastic curriculum—law, medicine, and theology—to the
curriculum of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and metaphysics became known as
“humanists.” They considered the study of the “humanities” to be essential
for educating a good citizen.
Renaissance humanists believed that they were reviving the glory of the
classical age. They considered their era greater than any since the Roman
Empire. They also believed the Italian peninsula, although divided by po­
litical units, dialects, and by the Apennine Mountains, shared a common,
distinct culture.

Venerating classical civilization, the humanists turned their backs on
medieval scholasticism, which they believed was composed of irrelevant the­
ological debates and encouraged ascetic withdrawal from the world.
Scholastics celebrated the authority of Church texts and revered the saint,
the monk, and the knight. Petrarch rejected idle philosophic speculation or
even knowledge that seemed irrelevant to mankind. He mocked scholastics,
remarking that they can tell you “how many hairs there are in the lion's
mane... with how many arms the squid binds a shipwrecked sailor....
What is the use, I pray you, of knowing the nature of beasts, birds, fishes
and serpents, and not knowing, or spurning the nature of man, to what end
we are born, and from where and whither we pilgrimage.”
The humanists proclaimed the writers of antiquity to be heroes worthy of
emulation. Although virtually all humanists accepted Christianity, and cleri­
cal religious culture persisted intact, humanism stood as an alternative
approach to knowledge and culture. Humanists believed that a knowledge of
the humanities could civilize mankind, teaching the “art of living.” Petrarch
insisted that the study of classical poetry and rhetoric could infuse daily life
with ethical values.
Unlike the scholastics, humanists believed that it was not enough to
withdraw into philosophy. Petrarch rediscovered the classical ideal that the