Christian Complex Of Italian Renaissance Humanism

Humanism in Renaissance Italy caused centuries of discussion about its nature, its status in the development of European history and its distinctive relationship with medieval time and Christianity. Long since Jacob Burckhardt explained his idea about Renaissance, people took it granted that humanism and Christianity was a pair of deadly opponents in the day. But things were not that simple.This paper attempted to argue for the hypothesis that humanism in Renaissance Italy had various associations with Christianity. The hypothesis is introduced based on the following considerations. First of all, Christianity is the main source of most ideas of modern Europe, and humanism is no exception. Secondly, humanism shares most conceptions and values with Christian ideology, and at least both advocate emancipation of human character. Finally, historically, no other medieval social and cultural institutions could have contributed a complete, systematic and sophisticated construct of values, morals and behavior for the rise of humanism but Christianity. The paper develops the above mentioned scheme in six chapters. The introduction includes a review of humanism and various opinions about its relationship with Christianity. Chapter two gives a simple description about current social reality. Renaissance Italy was in transition from medieval time to modern age, so it went through lots of turmoil in society including conflicts between miscellaneous trends of thinking. Chapter three is a general literature review about humanism and historical materialism. Chapter four gives testimonies about the close relationship between humanism and Christianity. Sufficient historical evidences show that humanists were pious Christians devoted to the service of God and their philosophy was not anti-Christianity but pro-Christianity. Meanwhile, the church was influenced by contemporary social atmosphere and interacted with humanists in numerous ways. Chapter five makes an analysis of the close relationship between humanism and Christianity. Christianity is concerned with human nature and human happiness just like humanism. And it made necessary changes in theory and practice to cater for the social reality. Besides, cultural inheritance was also a reason for the relation. At last the paper comes to the conclusion that humanism was a natural historical development of medieval Christianity, and it was Christianity that contributed the values and object of humanism and the rationalistic and scientific mind of modern Europe.