| What was the most significant intelletual movement during the Renaissance? |
| Humanism was the most significant intellectual movement of the Renaissance. It was a mixture of the history of and the actions of human beings with religious concerns.A humanist was a scholar or artist who would go about studing particular things that they thought in their own mind would help to solve the problems of our humanity. They used the Ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome as their models as they believed that they were instrumental towards their views. They had a stance that portrayed classical antiquity as a basis of life. The first burden was to understand the languages of the ancient civilizations of greece and rome so that their culture could be fully understood. The Greeks had a language forgein to that of Italy and the Romans used a type of Latin different from that used in the 1300's and 1400's. So the humanists studied philology (no not named after me but it was the study of the meaning and history of words). It soon became one of two main concerns to the humanists of the Renaissance. The other main focus was that of history. They say history as the great actions taken by courageous, noble, or wise men of classical antiquity. The humanists searched for manuscripts, statues, coins and other items from the times of Ancient Greece and Rome that they thought displayed classical antiquity. After finding manuscripts, where ever that may be, they would study them and then prepared critical editions of them of translated them. Soon people like Petrarch, Giovanni and Boccaccio were discovering many manuscripts that gave insite into the times of of Ancient Rome and Greece. This included a great dicovery that delved into the life of the ancient Roman polotician. These were letters that were sent to Atticus from the statesman and curator Marcus Tullius Cicero. These men continued to study classical writing and began to imitate thestyles of the ancient authors. They also urged people to act accurately and elegantly. Petrach soon became famous as a poet and Boccaccio for his stories called the Decameron series.These men believed that people should study the past in order to find solutions to there problems in life rather than try to understand god's will. There wish was that intelluctuals would concentrate on human problems and how to overcome them. |