Brill’s New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 8 : The Reception of Antiquity in Renaissance Humanism

see Greek | Latin | Literary languages

A. Introduction L. became a dead language towards the end of Antiquity. However, the linguistic technical term 'dead', denoting a language with no native speakers, in no way implies the disappearance of the language from society or everyday life. On the contrary, L. remained in use as a secondary, acquired language of education and culture, particularly in the context of the church, throughout the Middle Ages, and it was used orally and in writing, actively and passively, in verse and i…

A. Legal HumanismEarly modern legal studies in late 15th-cent. Italy opened up to the key philological principle of Humanism (the recourse  ad fontes) and set to work on methodical revision of the ancient legal sources. As 'legal Humanism', this discipline flourished in a number of European countries through the course of the 16th cent. and only waned in significance with the rise of modern natural L. in the 17th [26].Humanists all shared a fascination with the culture of Greco-Roman Antiquity, which they regarded as a model for a new ideal of humanity. They str…

see Law

A. Latin schoolThanks to the textile industry, L. from the 14th cent. developed into a thriving commercial town of the northern Netherlands, but not until much later did it open up to the cultural movement of the Renaissance. Until the mid-16th cent., Humanism here was essentially restricted to the Latin school. The school's director, Engelbert Schut, for instance, who also corresponded with Erasmus of Rotterdam [4.306–309], published two treatises on the use of Latin, De arte dictandi (Gouda 1484) and  Tractatus quidam de elegancia, composicione, dignitate dictatus (Gouda 1484…

A. LifePainter, sculptor, art theorist, architect, natural historian and engineer – in his sheer virtuosity, L. embodied the Renaissance ideal of the  uomo universale. Born on April 15, 1452 at Vinci (near Florence), the illegitimate son of the notary Ser Pietro and a peasant girl, he died on May 2, 1519 at the Manoir du Cloux (now Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, France). Around 1469, he began practical training in art, without higher education in the  artes liberales (on L. as  uomo senza lettere, cf. [3. vol. 1, § 10]), with the sculptor and painter Andrea del Ver…

see Epistolography

A. OriginsAfter the Duke of Burgundy, Philip III (the Good) brought the Duchy of Brabant under his control in 1430, its political centre of gravity shifted permanently from L. to Brussels. Nonetheless, L. developed into a prominent centre of intellectual and cultural life, thanks to the university, which was founded in 1425 [5]. The foundation, which was instigated by the L. municipal authorities with the support of the canons of St. Peter's and Johann IV, Duke of Brabant, and which Pope Martin V sealed, was part of a first wave of academic expa…