The essay explores humanism’s modernity by inquiring into the way the fifteenth-century humanist cultural program posited moral values and, at the same time, contributed to a sense of moral confusion. While Niccolò Niccoli, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Leonardo Bruni associated ethical enlightenment with learning and even social acclaim, Leon Battista Alberti criticized these assumptions not only for their susceptibility to political manipulation but also for their failure to cultivate the attributes they promised: virtue, and by extension happiness and tranquillity. (...) The tensions in humanist culture between conformity and dissent, rational certainty and sense of mutability, generated the creative energy that we, as moderns, have come to attribute to this culture. (shrink)

Manuel Chrysoloras was a Byzantine scholar and diplomat. He is best known as the first notable professor of Greek language in Italy. He occupied the chair of Greek at the Florentine Studium, and he also taught Greek occasionally in Pavia, Milan, and Rome. Among his students were some of the prominent early Italian humanists including Leonardo Bruni, Uberto Decembrio, Guarino of Verona, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Palla Strozzi, Roberto Rossi, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, Cencio de’ Rustici, and others. His method (...) of teaching Greek language and literature was innovative and was continued by some of his students. He had a significant impact on the revival of Greek studies in the West through his Erotemata, as this work became the central textbook of Greek grammar until the sixteenth century. He was a pioneer of the so-called transferre ad sententiam method for translating Greek texts into Latin, and he was the first who translated Plato’s Republic (in collaboration with his student Uberto Decembrio). His other writings are mainly rhetorical epistles; he engaged in extensive correspondence with many of his contemporaries, eminent humanists and ecclesiastical and political figures, such as the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus and Coluccio Salutati. He was appointed to a number of important diplomatic missions on behalf of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, and he was in the service of Pisan Pope John XXIII. He spent most of his life visiting the European courts in an attempt to secure help for Byzantium and to negotiate the Union of the Churches. He was an ardent unionist, he participated in the Council of Constance, and he may have converted to Catholicism. (shrink)

Uza sve teškoće pozicioniranja humanizma unutar povijesnog okvira, neslaganja oko definiranja njegove naravi, izvora i temeljnih motiva, kao i odnosa spram tradicija mišljenja, uputnim se čini usmjeriti humanistima samima i kroz njihove radove pokušati detektirati onaj novum humanističkog svjetonazora. U tome smislu ovaj će se rad temeljiti na djelu jednog humanista »prve generacije« i pisca utjecajnog pedagogijskog traktata.Petar Pavao Vergerije stariji , književnik, crkvenopolitički pisac i dužnosnik, na samome početku 15. stoljeća piše raspravu De ingenuis moribus ac liberalibus studiis koju (...) bilježimo kao svojevrsnu prekretnicu u filozofskome shvaćanju odgoja. Humanistički program kakav nudi Vergerije, u mudrosti vidi rezultat studija cjelovitog znanja i ostvarenje slobode. Dijalog s tradicionalnim vrijednostima osnova je razumijevanja vlastitoga vremena i njegovih vrijednosti, te zahtijeva slobodan studij kao jedini dostojan slobodna čovjeka. Odgoj pritom treba služiti svakidašnjici, a misao biti potkrijepljena i dopunjena djelom. Iako cijenjen kao prvi humanistički pedagogijski traktat, konfrontiran s misaonim naslijeđem srednjovjekovlja, Vergerijevo djelo i samo nastaje na tragu tradicije; pristupajući mudrima i sam postaje učeniji. Utoliko će i ovaj rad nastojati smjestiti Vergerijevo djelo u kontekst vremena njegova nastanka, kao i naznačiti utjecaj koji je imalo na promoviranje humanističkog svjetonazora.Against all difficulties of positioning humanism in frames of history, disagreements about defining its nature, sources and grounding motives, and also its relation to philosophical tradition, it seems recommendable to rely on humanists themselves and by studying their works try to detect the novum of humanistic way of perceiving the world. With that aim, this paper will be based on work of a “first generation” humanist and a writer of influential pedagogical treatise. Peter Paul Vergerio, Sr. , a writer, religiously political author and a dignitary, at very beginning of the 15th century writes the treatise De ingenuis moribus ac liberalibus studiis which we note as a kind of a milestone in philosophical understanding of education. Humanistic programme, offered by Vergerio, treats wisdom as an outcome of study in comprehensive knowledge and as achievement of freedom. A dialogue with traditional values is basic for understanding proper time and its system of values, and it calls for a free study as the only one that is worthy of a free man. Education should then be in service of every day life, and the idea should be verified and completed by an action. Although appreciated asthe first humanistic pedagogical treatise, being confronted to intellectual inheritance of the Middle-Ages, Vergerio’s work itself originates from tradition; admitting to the wise, he himself becomes wiser. For that reason this paper will tend to place Vergerio’s work in context of time when it was created, and to note the influence it had on promoting humanistic way of perceiving the world. (shrink)