Renaissance
rebirth of ancient literature, culture

• Italy: 1350-1560
• Northern Europe: 1450-1650

Seven Liberal Arts

Scholasticism

• disputation
• harmony in opposing authorities

commentaries
Peter Lombard, Sentences
Peter Abelard, Sic et non

Humanism

• humaniora - grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy
• studia humanitatis
• eloquence: ars dicendi et scribendi bene

Italian communes
bureaucracy: chancellor, notary
dictatores, ars dictaminis

Francesco Petrarcha (1304-77)
Avignon
Cicero, Letters to Atticus (1c B.C.)

ad fontes! - back to the sources

• perspective in art
• recovery of ancient texts
• republicanism in urban communes
• Fall of Byzantium (1453) - Greek
• Printing Press (ca. 1460) - J. Gutenberg/Mainz