The renewal of classical culture:
Renaissance means “rebirth”; it conveys the idea that for centuries European culture had been dead, and then, by some means, had recovered life. The middle ages received their name from the men of the renaissance because they thought to have come between the vigorous civilizations of Greece and Rome and the reborn culture of 16th century Europe. Yet we know that the Middle Ages had a most vigorous civilization and a most active intellectual life: European civilization had, in fact, no need for re-birth.
What actually occured was an immense and complicated change which was felt as re-birth an extension of energies and the discovery of new means of insight in almost every aspect of the experience, especially in the rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature. Again to talk of ‘rediscovery’ is in some respect misleading, for medieval culture had in many ways been a continuation of that of the Roman Empire: Latin had continued as a living language, the organization of the church grew directly from the imperial organization, and its philosophy developed from Greek and Roman Premises.
However, Europe has grown not only from these classical roots but also from the very different Asiatic roots of Hebrew culture, through Christianity. It is significant that the book most sacred to the Middle Ages was the fifth-century translation into Latin of the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the bible; it was called the Vulgate, for it made the Bible available to the ‘Vulgus’ or masses since Latin was the common language of Western Europe.
The Vulgate can be regarded as a symbol of Hebraic-Christian culture conquering the pagan Latin culture of the Roman Empire and transforming it into Christendom. The Renaissance was a counter-movement: The spirit of Greek and Roman culture reasserted itself over against Hebraic-Christian tradition, not indeed reconquering it, but achieving independence. The essence of this independence is implicit in the movement known as Humanism.
The Renaissance Humanist was a scholar who chose to concern himself with classical literature and not with theology. He was not usually opposed to theology, though he was often opposed to the way in which much theological thinking had been conducted in the middle Ages. Unlike the characteristic medieval thinker, the humanist was foremost a critic, studying and testing his texts for their own sake, and this meant that he practised freedom of thought even though he did not advocate it, The movement began in Italy; one of the earliest humanists was the Italian poet Petrarch ( 1304–74), who collected texts of the ancient Greek and Italian writers. The practice spread and gradually European scholars rerlized that not only had medieval scholarship been ignorant of many ancient authors whose works were thus being rediscovered, but that the texts of such writers as had long been known were often incomplete and corrupt.
