Petrarch and the Birth of Humanism

What happened

The Italian poet and scholar Petrarch (1304–1374) rejected the scholasticism of his day and argued that a new golden age could be reached by returning to the ideals of classical antiquity. Hunting through monastic libraries for forgotten texts, in 1345 he rediscovered a 'lost' collection of Cicero's Letters to Atticus in Verona. His outlook — a revived interest in the classical world and in what it means to be human — became known as humanism.

Why it matters

Petrarch is regarded as the father of humanism, the intellectual movement that placed human potential and classical learning at the centre of Renaissance thought and spread across Europe.

Sources

• World History Encyclopedia. Renaissance Humanism · Reputable source