| Popis: |
By the closing decades of the Quattrocento (the fifteenth century), humanism dominated the culture of the ruling groups in all important Italian cities, from Rome north to the Alps. Although Florence deservedly has received the most attention and provides the best evidence of a link between the new culture and an ethic of political action and public service, humanism fitted almost as neatly into the need of the many princely courts for a distinctive lay culture and for a cadre of classically educated administrators and advisers to the ruler. Even the papal curia at Rome found the linguistic and scholarly skills of humanists useful in the chancery, the department that drafted papal letters and many other official documents. Although the sympathy of Pope Nicholas V for humanism, expressed in his library and his programme of sponsoring translations from the Greek, quickened this process, humanists played an important role in curial administration even under Paul II (1471–84), who began his pontificate by dismissing many curial humanists and even arrested several of them in 1468 on trumped-up charges of impiety that probably masked his fear of political conspiracies. By 1500, Rome was on its way to outstripping Florence as the most brilliant centre of humanistic culture, just as it was also taking leadership in the patronage of art. Printing and the new culture The rise of curial and courtly humanism and the growing dominance of humanist schoolmasters in the Latin grammar schools of the peninsula did much to establish humanism as the major force in Italian culture. Another source of humanism's growing dominance was the new art of printing. |
