Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism

Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism by Walter Ullmann, 202 pages

 

In this book, Ullmann locates the origins of the Renaissance in the development of political science in the late Middle Ages, particularly in the legal faculty at the university of Bologna and in the work of St Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic philosophers influenced by Aristotle.  In these schools, there developed the idea of a secular realm where the natural man finds his proper sphere of activity, complementary to, but separate from, the religious realm.  This, in turn, prompted a reexamination of classical sources in a search for purely secular examplars.  The search for a pure understanding of classical philosophy, untethered from medieval interpretations and interpolations, subsequently served to inspire the quest for an ahistorically pure primeval Christianity which produced the Reformation.

 

This is a rather interesting study of the genesis of the Renaissance, though Ullmann is perhaps a bit too sweeping in his assertions that the early Middle Ages completely lacked any concept of secularity.  Despite this quibble, the book remains an erudite, compelling account of the gestation of the modern world.