L’Humanisme en France au xvi esiècle (review)

Bearing in mind the series’s designated readership (‘un large public’ as well as ‘étudiants’ and ‘enseignants’), Philippe de Lajarte seeks to explain the phenomenon of humanism with the ‘nécessaire simplification’ (p. 1) while nevertheless giving due weight to the complexity of the subject. To determine whether Renaissance humanism truly marks a rupture with the Middle Ages, he sets it in its historical context and examines its development from its origins in fourteenth-century Italy, modifying some traditional views (he draws attention to its emergence before the fall of Constantinople and the invention of printing). The first of two short introductory chapters outlines the problems associated with the rather fluid concept of humanism, considering it on three levels, intellectual, social and political, elucidating its relationships with the currents of Renaissance and Reformation, and exploring how they converge and diverge. A chronological chapter then traces the evolution of humanism through the intellectual and literary flowering in the mid-sixteenth century, characterized on the one hand by the publication of classical texts and on the other by the new ideal of the inspired poet conceived by the Pléiade poets under the influence of their humanist education. The main thrust of the argument is to be found in the extensive third chapter, on the diverse facets of humanism. Within a thematically based structure, each strand is treated chronologically. Lajarte recounts the debates on both the nature of language and the choice of language (Latin or vernacular), describes the heterogeneous practices of reading and interpreting texts, and studies the interactions between humanism and philosophy and humanism and religion. In the second half of the book, on ‘L’Humanisme et les savoirs’, he discusses how the humanist revolution affected and was affected by, respectively, historiography, political thought, scientific reasoning, literature, and the arts. His command of the whole field is impressively authoritative. Specific examples are chosen to clarify abstractions and to distinguish between the often contradictory positions of prominent humanists and reformers. The illuminating analyses are subtle and detailed, supported by substantial quotations, covering a wide range of the ideas and writings of the great intellectual and literary figures of the age — Erasmus, Bodin, Rabelais, Ronsard, and Montaigne, among others. Especially successful are the sections on historiography, science, and literature. Lajarte concludes that, despite differences and disputes, humanism, Renaissance, and Reformation were inextricably linked (Théodore de Bèze and Henri Estienne, for instance, were both humanists and protagonists of the Reformation). An underlying coherence is shown to govern the various manifestations of humanism in sixteenth-century France. Although its constituent elements had their beginnings in an earlier period, humanism was indeed a new entity and has had an enduring effect on Western civilization, engendering a more objective, more critical, and fundamentally secular approach to intellectual and cultural matters. Pertinent references are made to modern scholarship and there is a useful bibliography, organized in sections dealing with humanism in connection with particular fields of thought and culture. This valuable study is a pleasure to read and is to be recommended.