Andrea Alciato, commonly known as Alciati, was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists.
The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century.
Secular humanism, often simply called humanism, is a philosophy or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.
Coluccio Salutati was an Italian humanist and notary, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence; as chancellor of the Republic and its most prominent voice, he was effectively the permanent secretary of state in the generation before the rise of the Medici.
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it has changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilisations and operates in the wider context of social history. Certain jurists and historians of legal process have seen legal history as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts; some consider legal history a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth-century historians viewed legal history in a more contextualised manner - more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyse case histories from the parameters of social-science inquiry, using statistical methods, analysing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, and numbers of settled cases, they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that gives a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.
Renaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments. During the Renaissance period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes to the simplicity of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval theology. Today, by contrast, the term humanism has come to signify "a worldview which denies the existence or relevance of God, or which is committed to a purely secular outlook".
The Italian Renaissance was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the development of a culture that spread across Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted. The French word renaissance means 'rebirth', and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries during what Renaissance humanists labeled as the "Dark Ages". The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term rinascita 'rebirth' in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt.
The Latin school was the grammar school of 14th- to 19th-century Europe, though the latter term was much more common in England. Emphasis was placed, as the name indicates, on learning to use Latin. The education given at Latin schools gave great emphasis to the complicated grammar of the Latin language, initially in its Medieval Latin form. Grammar was the most basic part of the trivium and the Liberal arts — in artistic personifications Grammar's attribute was the birch rod. Latin school prepared students for university, as well as enabling those of middle class status to rise above their station. It was therefore not unusual for children of commoners to attend Latin schools, especially if they were expected to pursue a career within the church. Although Latin schools existed in many parts of Europe in the 14th century and were more open to the laity, prior to that the Church allowed for Latin schools for the sole purpose of training those who would one day become clergymen. Latin schools began to develop to reflect Renaissance humanism around the 1450s. In some countries, but not England, they later lost their popularity as universities and some Catholic orders began to prefer the vernacular.
The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. From the last years of the 15th century, its Renaissance spread around Europe. Called the Northern Renaissance because it occurred north of the Italian Renaissance, this period became the German, French, English, Low Countries, Polish Renaissances and in turn other national and localized movements, each with different attributes.
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist. He was responsible for rediscovering and recovering many classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries. His most celebrated finds are De rerum natura, the only surviving work by Lucretius, De architectura by Vitruvius, lost orations by Cicero such as Pro Sexto Roscio, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Statius' Silvae, and Silius Italicus's Punica, as well as works by several minor authors such as Frontinus' De aquaeductu, Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res Gestae, Nonius Marcellus, Probus, Flavius Caper, and Eutyches.
Christian humanism regards humanist principles like universal human dignity, individual freedom, and the importance of happiness as essential and principal or even exclusive components of the teachings of Jesus. Proponents of the term trace the concept to the Renaissance or patristic period, linking their beliefs to the scholarly movement also called 'humanism'.
In social theory and philosophy, antihumanism or anti-humanism is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism, traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition. Central to antihumanism is the view that philosophical anthropology and its concepts of "human nature", "man" or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative, ideological or metaphysical.
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings as the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
Hugues Doneau, commonly referred also by the Latin form Hugo Donellus, was a French law professor and one of the leading representatives of French legal humanism.
Albertino Mussato (1261–1329) was a statesman, poet, historian and playwright from Padua. He is credited with providing an impetus to the revival of literary Latin, and is characterized as an early humanist. He was influenced by his teacher, the Paduan poet and proto-humanist Lovato Lovati. Mussato influenced many humanists such as Petrarch.
The migration waves of Byzantine Greek scholars and émigrés in the period following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West. The Encyclopædia Britannica claims: "Many modern scholars also agree that the exodus of Greeks to Italy as a result of this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance", although few scholars date the start of the Italian Renaissance this late.
The postglossators or commentators formed a European legal school which arose in Italy and France in the fourteenth century. They form the highest point of development of medieval Roman law.
A university is an institution of higher education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs in different schools or faculties of learning.
Italy over the ages has had a vast influence on Western philosophy, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, and going onto Renaissance humanism, the Age of Enlightenment and modern philosophy.
Lovato Lovati (1241–1309) was an Italian scholar, poet, notary, judge and humanist from the High Middle Ages and early Italian Renaissance. Arguable among historians, Lovati is considered the "father of Humanism." His literary Padua circle included Rolando de Piazzola, Geremia da Montagnone, and Albertino Mussato. Lovati's scholarship marked characteristics which would later define the development of humanism: an appetite for classical texts; a philological concern to correct them, and ascertain their meaning; and a desire to imitate them. Scholars such as Petrarch commented on his works favorably. Lovati's achievements which survive today are his Latin verse epistles, and his short commentary of Seneca's tragedies.
