Petrarch, Machiavelli and Erasmus: The Humanist as Reformer

A Seminar for Secondary Teachers by Ronald G. Witt, Ph.D. at Duke University, Durham, NC.

June 24th through August 4th, 2000. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In the summer of 2000 fifteen high school teachers, selected from applicants all over the United States, converged on Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, for a six-week seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Entitled "The Humanist as Reformer: Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Erasmus," the seminar was directed by Ronald G. Witt, Professor of Renaissance History at Duke. Our work was devoted to exploring the contention of the Renaissance humanists that there was an intimate connection between moral improvement and training in eloquence and that the study of Latin and Greek classics was central to both enterprises. To analyze and evalutate this belief the seminar discussed three major European humanists, Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Erasmus, focusing on the primary reform interest of each: moral reform for Petrarch; political reform for Machiavelli; and religious reform for Erasmus.

Participants read and discussed Petrarch's Secret, his On His Own Ignorance; Machiavelli's Prince and Book I of his Discourses; Erasmus' Praise of Folly, Colloquies; and selected letters by each.

The humanists of the Renaissance, if only implicitly, subscribed to a simple syllogism:

The quality differentiating man from all other animals is the power to speak.

Men differ from one another in their ability to speak.

Therefore the most eloquent man is the most human.

 

Closely connected with this conclusion was another set of premises linking eloquence to virtue. True eloquence was directly related to the virtuous life. Only the person whose internal life was properly ordered could speak with elegance and power. This did not mean that the stutterer could not be virtuous, but to maximize one's moral character required eloquence. Virtue was dynamic; the truly virtuous man felt impelled to help reform his fellow man. To effect this change in others required eloquence to move both the heart and the will. Thus, virtue and eloquence were inextricably linked to the cause of reform.

How does one accomplish the self-reformation necessary to effect broad reform? The humanist's answer was: by studying the writings of the ancients: in the fourteenth century, those of the Latin authors, and in subsequent centuries, those of the Greeks as well. The lessons taught by these authors with their compelling language could not fail to improve both the reader's moral life and his power to express thoughts. After having gone to school with the ancients, one would be able to direct the skills of communication learned toward helping others to change heir lives and their power of expression.

In an important sense humanism was primarily an approach to education. Whether or not it was really understood by subsequent generations, humanism's philosophy of education, that is, that education should be centered on the study of ancient Greek and Latin classics and other works directly influenced by them, dominated Western education for four hundred years and more.

Through a study of Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Erasmus, the seminar was designed to provide the participants with (1) a sense of the changing nature of European humanism in its historical background; (2) an awareness of the tradition dominating western European education down to the twentieth century; and (3) experience in analyzing some major texts.

Reading assignments involved on the average from fifty to seventy pages a day, varying according to the difficulty of the material. The only formal presentation required by participants was a report made to the group based on extra reading dealing with some aspect of the thought of the writers under consideration. These reports helped participants have a wider grasp of the humanists' thinking than they would have had had the discussions been limited only to the material read by the whole seminar. Limited to about ten pages in length, these reports were read and discussed by the group for roughly half of a daily meeting. In all there were thirteen reports; two members of the seminar were charged with the difficult task of organizing the final meeting of the group which provided a summary of our twenty-three discussions.

Because close textual analysis was central to interpreting the texts we read, a good deal of emphasis was placed on use of explications de texte. Each member of the seminar was asked to hand in three explications de texte of seven assigned throughout the six-week period. On appropriate days the general discussion would begin by an informal analysis of the twenty-five lines assigned for the day and out of this we would develop the themes of the common reading. The Director would comment in writing on the individual explications submitted and return them on the individual authors on the following day.

Throughout its six weeks the seminar was a learning experience for all participants. The fifteen teachers came from a wide number of fields. About half of them taught English, others taught history, science, foreign languages, religion and Latin. This variety of expertise proved important in our discussions. The absence of grades, the frequent informal contacts we had outside the seminar room, and the six-week duration of our meetings allowed us to become a unique kind of investigative team exploring the texts for their authors' meaning and of the significance of that meaning for our own students and for ourselves. If this was a rare intellectual experience for he teachers, it was also one for the director. He had the unique opportunity to confront these texts untrammeled by concern for all the scholarly apparatus that surrounds them when discussed by specialists in the field of Renaissance studies. The teaching of all of us will be deeply affected by this experience and we are deeply grateful to the National Endowment of the Humanities for making this experience possible.

First published July 25, 2000;

Last updated June 10, 2002

Copyright: GJL, 2000-2