In Our Image and Likeness

Charles Trinkaus

Description

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." —Library Journal

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Movements
• HISTORY
• PHILOSOPHY
• Histoire
• Humanism
• Italy
• Christianity
• My Last Duchess
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268093761
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 101 Mo

Extrait

In In
Our Image Our Image
and Likeness and Likeness
Volume 1 Volume 1
In In
Our Image Our Image
and Likeness and Likeness
Volume 1 Volume 1Detail from Iacopo della Quercia's La Creazione dell' Uomo from the fac;ade
of San Petronio at Bologna, executed between 1425 and 1438. In Our Image and Likeness
Humanity and Divinity in
Italian Humanist Thought
by Charles Trinkaus
IN 2 VOLUMES
Volume 1
Et Deus dixit: 'Faciamus Hominem
ad imaginem et similitudinem
nostram.' Genesis i, 26
University of Notre Dame Press Published 1995 by
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
First published 1970 by
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois 60637
and Constable and Co. Ltd, London WC2
Copyright © 1970 by Charles Trinkaus
Reprinted in 2009, 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trinkaus, Charles Edward, 1911–
In our image and likeness: humanity and divinity in Italian
humanist thought / by Charles Trinkaus.
pp. cm.
Originally published: Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1970. (Ideas of hunan nature series).
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-01173-4 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-18950-1 (hardback)
1. Philosophy, Renaissance. 2. Philosophy, Italian. 3.
HumanismItaly. 4. Theology—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 5. Image of
God—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600 6. Philosophical
anthropology—History. I. Title
B776.I8T74 1995 95–9148
195—dc20 CIPThis book is dedicated to the memory of five eminent scholars
whose contributions to learning and devotion to the ideal of
scholarship has been an inspiration to my generation. Their deaths
were particularly poignant to me as they all occurred during the
time this book was in preparation, and I have profited greatly
from their works and encouragement.
IN MEMORIAM
Delio Cantimori 1904-1966
Erwin Panofsky 1892-1968
Lynn Thorndike 1882-1965
Berthold Louis Ullman
Ernest Hatch Wilkins 1880-1965 Acknowledgments
I should like to thank the University of Chicago Press for permission
to quote from The Renaissance Philosophy of Man edited by E. Cassirer,
P. 0. Kristeller and J. H. Randall, Jr., and from the Poteat translation
of Cicero's De Natura Deorum; the Library of Liberal Arts for quota­
tions from St. Augustine's On Christian Doctrine; the Princeton
University Press for quotations from Boccaccio on Poetry, by Charles
Osgood; the Manchester University Press for quotations from Gregory
of Rimini, by Gordon Leff; and £nally Alinari Prints for the use of
photographs of the two reliefs by Iacopo della Quercia on the fa~de
of San Petronio at Bologna.
vu Contents
VOLUME I
page xiii Foreword
Part I. Human Existence and Divine Providence
in Early Humanist Moral Theology
I. Petrarch: Man Between Despair and Grace 3
I. Human. Nature and the Search for True Fulfilment 5
2. Humanism and the Intellectual Traditions: the Pursuit
of Christian Selfhood from St. Augustine to the
Renaissance 18
3. The Experience of Despair and the Attainment of Faith 28
4. The Christian Vision of Man and Classical Moral
Thought 41
II. Coluccio Salutati: the Will Triumphant 51
I. In Search of a Humanist Voluntarism: Salutati and the
Traditions 51
2. Human Freedom and Divine Providence: the
Ascendancy of Will 76
III. Lorenzo Valla: Voluptas et Fruitio, Verba et Res 103
I. Voluptas: the Critique of Moral Idealism, Ancient
and Humanist, and the Vindication of 'Natural Man'
before the Advent of Christ 105
2. Fruitio: the Transcendance of Classical Ethics in a
Christian Image of Man 126
3. Verba et Res: the Critique of Scholastic Philosophy
and Projection of a New Philosophy of Man 150
IX In Our Image and Likeness
Part Il. The Human Condition in Humanist Thought:
Man's Dignity and His Misery page 171
Introduction: the Themes and their Precedents 173
IV. The Dignity of Man in the Patristic and Medieval Traditions
and in Petrarch 179
V. Bartolomeo Facio and Fra Antonio da Barga on Human
Misery and Dignity 200
VI. A Florentine Contrast: Manetti and Poggio on the Dignity
and Misery of Man 23 o
VIL A Bolognese Polemic: Human Progress versus Human
Misery in Benedetto Morandi and Giovanni Garzoni 271
VIII. A Roman Interlude: Platina and Aurelio Brandolini on
Human Destiny 294
Notes and References to Volume I 323
VOLUME II
Part ill. Four Philosophers on the Condition of Man:
The Impact of the Humanist Tradition page 459
IX. Humanist Themes in Marsilio Ficino' s Philosophy of
Human Immortality 461
X. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the Place of Man in the
Cosmos: Egidio da Viterbo on the Dignity of Men and
Angels 505
XL Pietro Pomponazzi on the Condition of Earthly Man 530
X Contents
Part IV. Studia Humanitatis and Studia Divinitatis:
The Christian Renaissance in Italy 5 5 3
Introduction: Salutati' s Programmatic Response to 5 5 5
Giovanni Dominici
XII. Italian Humanism and the Scriptures 563
I. Petrarch, Salutati and the Figural Tradition 563
2. Valla and Manetti, and the Greek New Testament 571
3. The Beginnings of Hebraic Studies: Bruni versus
Manetti 578
4. Brandolini' s Defence of the Humanist as Biblical
Scholar 601
5. Return to Allegory: Ficino and Pico 613
XIII. Humanists on the Sacraments 615
I. On Penance 616
2. On the Eucharist 633
XIV. Humanists on the Status of the Professional Religious 651
I. Petrarch's Advice to the Brothers 654
2. Salutati's Humanistic Apologia for the Religious
Vocation 662
3. Valla's Case for the Equality of Merits 674
XV. From Theologia Poetica to Theologia Platonica 683
I. The Place of Poetry and Allegory in Humanist Thought 68 3
2. Theologia Poetica and the Prisci Poetae in Petrarch and
Boccaccio 689
3. Concept and Practice of Theologia Poetica in Salutati 697
4. Theo logia Poetica in the Mid-Quattrocento: Giovanni
Caldiera' s Concordantia 704
5. Theologia Poetica into Theologia Platonica in Cristoforo
Landino 712
XI In Our Image and Likeness
XVI. Accommodation and Separation in the Destiny of
Mankind: Manetti, Ficino and Pico on Christians,
Jews and Gentiles 722
r. Manetti' s Humanist Version of Sacred History: His
Contra Iudeos et Gentes 726
2. Ficino's Vindication of the Christian Religion and
Design for the Providential History of Mankind 734
3. Pico's Pursuit of Theological Concord 753
Unity and Plurality in the Humanist Visions of Man and
Godan Appraisal 761
Notes and References to Volume II 775
Bibliography 887
Index of Manuscripts Cited 913
Index of Names and Works 917
General Index of Subjects 957
Xll Foreword
St. Augustine in the eleventh chapter of his twelfth book On the Trinity
writes subtly of the image of God and the image of the beast in man.
In his striving to become like God man is led to actions that turn him
into the image of the beast.
For the true honour of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not
preserved except it be in relation to Him by whom it is impressed. The less
therefore that one loves what is one's own, the more one cleaves to God.
But through the desire of making trial of his own power, man by his own
bidding falls down to himself as to a sort of intermediate grade. And so,
while he wishes to be as God is, that is, under no one, he is thrust on, even
from his own middle grade, by way of punishment, to that which is lowest,
that is, to those things in which beasts delight: and thus while his honour is
the likeness of God, but his dishonour is the likeness of the beast, 'Man being
in honour abideth not; he is compared to the beasts that are foolish, and is
made like to them'. [Ps. xlix] [Haddan's trans.]
During the Renaissance man was 'making trial of his own power'
in an almost extravagant way. And while the intensity, frequency and
quality of his achievements may not have been greater than those of
the ages which preceded and followed the Renaissance, one may agree
with Burckhardt that self-consciousness concerning man's achieve­
ments was at a highpoint. Inevitably this concern with the actions of
men in the secular here-and-now, both past and present, bred the need
to measure the standing and analyse the nature of man, and to relate
the results to traditional religious conceptions as well as to the dis­
cussions of human nature that were encountered in ancient philosophy
and literature. As the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, undoubtedly stimu­
lated by discussions of this question, put it in Idiota, his dialogue
between a simple Christian, a humanist and a scholastic concerning
the mind: 'I think that no one either is or was a perfect man ifhe did
not form at least some sort of a conception of the mind.' [ill, r)
This book is concerned with the efforts of the Italian Renaissance
thinkers, primarily the humanists, to arrive at a definition of the nature,
xiii In Our Image and Likeness
condition and destiny of man within the inherited framework of the
Christian faith. The idea of human nature during the Renaissance
cannot be other than the conception of man's nature in its relation to
the divine nature, and in a subsidiary way in relation to animal nature
as well. Thus this book will deal with ideas concerning 'humanity and
divinity' in all their aspects. We use as our title what we shall show to
be the central metaphor of humanist thinking on this subject - the
creation of man 'In Our Image and Likeness'.
But did man in striving to make 'trial of his own power', as Augustine
said, simultaneously aspire to the status of a god and slide down to the
condition of a beast? We know too that the animal metaphors in which
men were likened in their behaviour to lions or foxes, as in the case of
MachiaveJli, were also frequent. It will be our thesis that the new
vision of man in this period found its inspiration in a revival of the
patristic exegesis of the Genesis passage: 'And He said: "Let us make
man in our own image, after our likeness."' Yet at the