1st Edition

Renaissance Humanism, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times

By John Monfasani Copyright 2015
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    Starting with an essay on the Renaissance as the concluding phase of the Middle Ages and ending with appreciations of Paul Oskar Kristeller, the great twentieth-century scholar of the Renaissance, this new volume by John Monfasani brings together seventeen articles that focus both on individuals, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, and Niccolò Perotti, and on large-scale movements, such as the spread of Italian humanism, Ciceronianism, Biblical criticism, and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy. In addition to entering into the persistent debate on the nature of the Renaissance, the articles in the volume also engage what of late have become controversial topics, namely, the shape and significance of Renaissance humanism and the character of the Platonic Academy in Florence.

    Preface. The Renaissance: The Renaissance as the concluding phase of the Middle Ages. Renaissance Humanism: Italian Humanism and European culture; Erasmus and the philosophers; Erasmus, the Roman Academy, and Ciceronianism: Battista Casali’s invective; The Ciceronian controversy; Renaissance Ciceronianism and Christianity; Criticism of biblical humanists in Quattrocento Italy; Angelo Poliziano, Aldo Manuzio, Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond and chapter 90 of the Miscellaneorum Centuria Prima (with an edition and translation); The puzzling dates of Paolo Cortesi; Niccolò Perotti’s date of birth and his preface to De Generibus Metrorum; Marsilio Ficino and Eusebius of Caesaria’s Praeparatio Evangelica; Prisca Theologia in the Plato-Aristotle controversy before Ficino; Two 15th-century ‘Platonic academies’: Bessarion’s and Ficino’s; Quality control in Renaissance translations: a note of Pietro Balbi to Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. Paul Oskar Kristeller: Toward the genesis of the Kristeller thesis of Renaissance humanism: four bibliographical notes; Kristeller and manuscripts; Paul Oskar Kristeller †. Addenda et corrigenda. Indexes.

    Biography

    John Monfasani is Professor in the Department of History, State University of New York at Albany, USA.