Christian humanism
What he finds in Vitruvius is a mathematical formula for the proportions of all parts of the human body, which results in its idealized representation as the true microcosmic measure of all things.
[2] Historian Margaret Mann Phillips wrote that the basis of Christian humanism was "the belief that all that is good comes from God, and the pre-Christian ages were inspired by Holy Spirit for his own purposes.
Even more important, they associated their scholarly work (classical as well as biblical and patristic) with a determination to bring about a spiritual renewal and institutional reform of Christian society.
[5] The term has been criticized by figures associated with the modern secular humanist movement, with some noting that it lacks coherence, or is in fact used to argue for the "exceptionalism" of Christianity.
In the Middle Ages, people typically yielded some of their identity to corporations—the church, the state, the feudal society, the guild, the university, and the monastic order.
Christian humanism originated towards the end of the 15th century with the early work of figures such as Jakob Wimpfeling, John Colet, and Thomas More; it would go on to dominate much of the thought in the first half of the 16th century with the emergence of widely influential Renaissance and humanistic intellectual figures such as Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and especially Erasmus, who would become the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance.
[4]: 170–171 John Colet (1467–1519) was another major figure in early Christian humanism, exerting more cultural influence than his older contemporary, Jakob Wimpfeling.
He was educated in the University of Paris and began studying Greek under George Hermonymus due to his interest in contemporary cultural changes in Italy.
He began publishing various Latin texts of biblical books such as the Psalms and Pauline epistles and was keen to study textual variations between surviving manuscripts.
According to Nauert, these "biblical publications constitute the first major manifestation of the Christian humanism that dominated not only French but also German, Netherlandish, and English humanistic thought through the first half of the sixteenth century".
He believed that "learning and scholarship were a powerful weapon both for the cultivation of personal piety and institutional church reform", which is called instrumentalism.
He also gained incredible success as a textual scholar, interpreting, translating and editing numerous texts of Greek and Roman classics, Church Fathers and the Bible.
[4]: 180 Literary critic Lee Oser has suggested that Christian humanism ended with Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope; however, it began again with G.K. Chesterton, T.S.
"In his explicit turn back to an ancient model in search of knowledge and wisdom, Leonardo follows early humanist practice. What he finds in Vitruvius is a mathematical formula for the proportions of all parts of the human body, which results in its idealized representation as the true microcosmic measure of all things. [...]The perfection of this ideal human form corresponds visually to the early humanist belief in the unique central placement of human beings within the divine universal order and their consequent human grandeur and dignity, expressed in the philosopher Pico della Mirandola 's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), known as the manifesto of the Renaissance."
— Anne Hudson Jones [ 1 ]
