HIS109Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Leonardo Bruni, Coluccio Salutati, Petrarch
Ibraheem Aziz Oct 7/2015
HIS109Y – L0101 Lec 08
Italian Renaissance and Humanism
• Petrarch (1304-74) used words and language to depict himself and the nature of his existence
o words were important in his belief that human beings can understand the universe
around them through words
o wrote letters, treatises, about himself
o Petrarch began editing his letters – edited the register of his letters and improved their
coherence
o Was able to determine who exactly he was in part due to his writing
o Wrote dialogues about himself – the Secretum (Secret Book)
▪ Discussed his emotions and inner beliefs
▪ Psychological autobiography
▪ Reintroduced a long-lost genre
▪ Easier to come to terms with who he was and gave the idea of human autonomy
– the idea that humans could control their own existence
o His discoery of Cicero’s letters was said to initiate the Renaissance
o Discovery of a secular system and way of life
o I a hat I a
o Erotic love versus sexual love
• Canzoniere made him famous as they led to the development of the sonnet
o investigates an erotic love idea
o validates human feelings and individuality/autonomy
o Secular intention of creating your own destiny
• Paris represented the medieval scholastic world, Rome represented antiquity and the world of
Cicero – in 1341, he imagined he was invited and crowned Poet Laureate in Rome
o Sense of narcissism and recognition of poetry to define the individual and society
• Coluccio Salutati (d. 1406) was a student of Petrarch and went to Florence to study him
o Hired others like him
o Istitutioalized Petrarch’s ideas ad alues for a practical society
• Shared sense of principles and values that allowed individual to develop himself made Florence
the cradle of the Renaissance
• In 1427, Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444) as a disciple of “alutati’s ad took oer fro hi as
chancellor of Florence
o Allowed people to be free and develop themselves on an individually motivated and
dignified basis – a republican, Florentine ideology
o Importance of speech and writing in order to gain political office and prestige in society
• Basis of humanism as the ideology of the Florentine, patrician, mercantile elite
o Shared belief and broad expressions for people
o Florence was an experimental place – communal identity was used to unite people
• During medieval times, abstractions were depicted more than people
o Forms of representational arts that depicted what the eyes could see
▪ Individual representation
o Donatello made a statue of David for Cosmo de Medici – statue was naked and served
as a symbol for the Republic
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
