Funktionen des Humanismus: Studien zum Nutzen des Neuen in der humanistischen Kultur (review)

This collection of essays derives from an international symposium held in April 2005 in Kloster Weingarten, the conference center of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese. It is the third in a series of "Forschungen zum Humanismus" sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The two previous sessions resulted in the studies Späthumanismus (1998) and Diffusion des Humanismus (2001). As one of the editors, Gerrit Walther, specifies in the introduction, the purpose of these studies is to examine not the essence or nature of humanism but its effects; or, put more pragmatically, its functions. He emphasizes that humanism will be treated as a strictly historical phenomenon, a cultural movement patronized and propagated by princes, diplomats, merchants, and bankers who expected tangible benefits from their involvement.

The first topic to be discussed, rhetoric, is by its very nature oriented to a functional purpose, the ability to manipulate public opinion. George of Trebizond fashioned the first new kind of rhetoric of the Renaissance. Epideictic rhetoric took on a new public role in the ceremonial of the joyeuse entrée of rulers into a city. Johannes Helmrath takes Enea Silvio's speeches in Regensburg and Frankfurt calling for a war against the Turks as an example of a new kind of oratory combining the style of Cicero with medieval preaching techniques. He provides interesting examples of the new oratory in the English Parliament under Elizabeth, making good use of Peter Mack's recent discussion of the subject.

Occasional poetry celebrating birthdays, weddings, deaths, and the like afforded a practical opportunity for humanist poets, and the hodoeporicon, or description of a journey, became a popular genre. Patriotic poetry was also favored, as represented by such figures as Conrad Celtis and Ulrich von Hutten. In a more pedagogic vein, school drama and religious lyric flourished. In the chapter on the search for ancient authors Elizabeth Stein compares the return of lost classical writings to the medieval translation of the relics of the saints to their proper home. There is an informative chapter on the progress of the natural sciences in the Renaissance: Vesalius's epochal work, De humani corporis fabrica, Conrad Gessner's Historiae animalium, Copernicus, Paracelsus, and lesser-known figures like Bartolomeo Fazio and Biagio da Parma.

In a discussion of humanism and the court Dieter Mertens uses the crowning of Conrad Celtis as poet laureate by Emperor Frederick III of Nurenberg as a typical example of the poet's transforming of cultural capital, to use Bourdieu's terminology, into social capital. Taking his cue from an early essay of Kristeller, Harold Müller investigates the uses and advantages of humanistic culture in the convent. The reader is introduced to many obscure German monks, among whom Johannes Schlitpacher of Melk, who in his Manuale viaticum formulates rudimentary canons of textual criticism for the text of the Rule of St. Benedict. A separate chapter is reserved for humanism at Wittenberg, where Dürer resided for a time and among other things produced a marvelous woodcut portraying Celtis's presentation of Hrosvitha's plays to Frederick the Wise, symbolizing the equal importance of German authors and those of antiquity. The far-reaching pedagogical reforms of Melanchthon and the struggles between orthodox Lutheranism and the new learning are the object of a thoroughgoing analysis.

Peter Wolf examines humanism in the service of the Counter-Reformation in Bohemia and Bavaria. The education of priests after the Council of Trent was left to newly founded seminaries. Wolf cites as an outstanding example the Gymnasium illustre established in Dillingen by Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg. He gives an excellent summary of the aims and methods of Jesuit education and the foundation of the universities of Ingolstadt and Munich by Duke Albrecht V with the express purpose of combating heresy. The chapter closes with an account of the chronicles of Marcus Welser, Matthäus Rader, and the little known Carthusian monk...