Christian Humanism

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century students from the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England flocked to Italy, absorbed the “new learning” of humanism, and carried it back to their own countries. Northern humanists shared the Italians’ ideas about the wisdom of ancient texts and felt even more strongly that the best elements of classical and Christian cultures should be combined. These Christian humanists, as they were later called, saw humanist learning as a way to bring about reform of the church and to deepen people’s spiritual lives.

The Englishman Thomas More (1478–1535) began life as a lawyer, studied the classics, and entered government service. He became best known for his controversial dialogue Utopia (1516), a word More invented from the Greek words for “nowhere.” Utopia describes a community on an island somewhere beyond Europe where all children receive a good humanist education and adults divide their days between manual labor or business pursuits and intellectual activities. The problems that plagued More’s fellow citizens, such as poverty and hunger, are solved by a beneficent government. Inequality and greed are prevented because profits from business and property are held in common, not privately. Furthermore, there is religious tolerance, and order and reason prevail. Because Utopian institutions are perfect, however, dissent and disagreement are not acceptable.

More’s purposes in writing Utopia have been hotly debated. Some view it as a revolutionary critique of More’s own hierarchical and violent society, some as a call for an even firmer hierarchy, and others as part of the humanist tradition of satire. It was widely read by learned Europeans in the Latin in which More wrote it, and later in vernacular translations, and its title quickly became the standard word for any idealized imaginary society.

Better known by contemporaries than Thomas More was the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) of Rotterdam. His fame rested largely on his exceptional knowledge of Greek and the Bible. Erasmus’s long list of publications includes The Education of a Christian Prince (1504), a book combining idealistic and practical suggestions for the formation of a ruler’s character through the careful study of Plutarch, Aristotle, Cicero, and Plato; The Praise of Folly (1509), a witty satire poking fun at social, political, and especially religious institutions; and, most important, a critical edition of the Greek New Testament (1516). For Erasmus, education was the key to moral and intellectual improvement, and true Christianity was an inner attitude of the spirit, not a set of outward actions.