Humanism In The Renaissance

The Renaissance is marked as the rebirth of ancient culture for the aristocratic class that lived in Italy, England, and France circa 1350-1650. This is an era in which the term, Renaissance humanism emerged. What is humanism as it relates to the Renaissance? Well, this form of “Humanism can be defined as a movement that encourages the study of form and content of classical learning. Renaissance humanists were obsessed with the recovery, study, interpretation, and transmission of the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece and Rome” (Zophy 71). This period is seen as a cultural and artistic movement in which people spoke of revolutionary ideas and great works of art from individuals such as, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. But, the Renaissance
The individuals that often suffered the most from social injustices were women. The ideal woman of this time, according to scholars such as Christine de Pizan, and Castiglione, was often regarded as one that was well educated, well versed in the classics, able to dance, compose music, and be elegant in nature; however, they were barred from seeking fame, fortune, and were disallowed to take part in public life. For the most part, women contributed little to nothing towards political, economic, and social influences. “Scholarship, like most public activities of this time, was considered a man’s field during the Renaissance and the centuries that preceded it” (Zophy 76). “Indeed, only 186 European laywomen have been identified as book owners during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries” (Zophy 76). Only women that belonged to the elite were allowed to engage in such activities, and even then, it was quite rare; if you were a laywoman, then your options were ever more limited; it was either marriage or the cloister, and even with this, they were still harshly oppressed by men. To be a woman of the renaissance, meant a life full of rough and jagged paths; it was a life full of many quarrels and obstacles to be traversed in order to make a name for
Soon, dozens of authors began to emulate them, triggering an “infatuation for Plato,” to the point that in 1445 an Academy is founded solely to the study of this philosopher. And it is in this fashion, this rediscovery, that all thinkers of the Renaissance will feast, and take a new look at the nature of women; which is quite logical when you consider the role of women in ancient society. Did not Aristotle doubt that women even had a soul? Did not Plato see the female as too base of a being (to be a partner of love, which is to say of engaging in the sexual act)? Furthermore, being a man during this period was not a necessarily a vice, but to place man over everything, and to revolve the entirety of humanistic thought around him, in essence, leads to a depreciation of the