Today, the term “Humanism” can evoke a distinctly secular worldview, one that places human reason and autonomy at the center and, in some forms, explicitly rejects religious belief.

But that modern understanding can obscure the very different historical world in which Renaissance Humanism first flourished.

Rather than emerging in opposition to Christianity, Humanism developed gradually within the Christian culture of medieval Europe. Its renewed interest in the human person, classical learning and human experience would eventually become one of the defining characteristics of the Renaissance.

And at the heart of this Christian understanding of humanity stood a fundamental theological claim: God himself became man.

Did Humanism begin with the Renaissance?

Humanism is most commonly associated with the great cultural transformation of 15th- and 16th-century Italy. Yet its intellectual foundations stretch further back.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, notes that many of Humanism’s essential ideas had already begun developing during the Middle Ages.

“The seeds of the movement were planted long before the Renaissance itself,” he explained.

Art historian Dr. Elizabeth Lev similarly argues that the Renaissance cannot be separated from the intellectual developments of the preceding centuries.

“There is no Renaissance without the 13th, 14th century,” Lev said.

Medieval Europe witnessed the growth of universities, the production of encyclopedic works and an expanding effort to understand the natural world. Pilgrimages, the Crusades and other forms of travel also exposed Europeans to different cultures, ideas and intellectual traditions.

It was, Lev explained, an “age of expanded learning.”

The Renaissance inherited this accumulated knowledge and began organizing it into new systems of thought.

Rediscovering the ancient world

One of Humanism’s defining features was a renewed engagement with the literature of ancient Greece and Rome.

Prof. Lydia Salvucci, Full Professor in the Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church, describes Humanism as the “rediscovery and revaluation of classical literature” with a particular purpose: the formation of the complete human person.

From this ideal emerged the studia humanitatis, a curriculum centered on disciplines including grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and history.

Reading the great authors of antiquity was not merely an exercise in recovering the past. Education was understood as a means of forming the person intellectually, morally and practically.

That ideal can be seen in Sandro Botticelli’s fresco of St. Augustine in his study in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence.

Surrounded by manuscripts and instruments of learning, Augustine represents a world in which intellectual inquiry and Christian faith were not necessarily competing pursuits.

The human mind itself was worthy of cultivation.

Why Christianity mattered to Humanism

This renewed attention to humanity developed within a society that remained overwhelmingly Christian.

“Christianity certainly played a decisive role in shaping Humanist culture,” Salvucci explained. “In fact, it was an integral part of it.”

For that reason, she argues that in its Renaissance context, it can be more accurate to speak of “Christian Humanism.”

The Christian tradition already possessed a theological foundation for affirming the extraordinary dignity of the human person: humanity was created in the image and likeness of God.

But Christianity went further.

The Incarnation proclaimed that God himself had entered the human condition.

Cardinal Ravasi points to the opening of the Gospel of John and its proclamation of the divine Logos, or Word, who “became flesh.”

The Greek term sarx, Ravasi explains, points toward the reality of the human condition itself — its fragility, temporality and mortality.

If God became man, then humanity and human history acquired profound significance.

The Incarnation therefore offered Christian Humanism something more radical than a simple celebration of human achievement. The human person mattered because God had created humanity, entered human history and assumed human nature in Jesus Christ.

The changing face of the Crucifixion

This growing attention to Christ’s humanity was visible even before the height of the Renaissance.

Lev points to a profound transformation in Christian representations of the Crucifixion during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Earlier Byzantine images frequently presented the Christus Triumphans — Christ triumphant on the Cross. His posture emphasizes his divinity and victory over sin and death.

That imagery expressed an essential Christian truth: Jesus Christ is God and death does not have the final word.

But another representation gradually became increasingly prominent.

Christ’s head falls forward. His body sags under its own weight. His hands bear the strain of the nails. The viewer is confronted more directly with the physical reality of his suffering and death.

The emphasis had shifted toward contemplating the human experience of Jesus.

For Lev, this development is essential for understanding the emergence of Christian Humanism.

Christ suffered. He experienced betrayal. He ate, walked, felt and lived a genuinely human life. Christianity proclaimed that the same Christ who shared those human experiences was the divine Son who redeemed humanity.

Attention to human experience could therefore become a means of contemplating Christ himself.

Human dignity before the Renaissance

The Renaissance did not invent the Christian conviction that human beings possess dignity.

Christian theology had affirmed the significance of the human person for centuries. What Humanism brought was a renewed cultural and intellectual emphasis on cultivating human capacities through education, literature, philosophy and the arts.

The classical world offered Humanists an extraordinary intellectual inheritance. Medieval universities provided institutions in which knowledge could be studied and debated. New philological approaches encouraged closer examination of ancient texts and Scripture.

Together, these developments helped create the cultural conditions for the Renaissance.

But the story cannot be reduced to a simple transition from a supposedly God-centered Middle Ages to a human-centered Renaissance.

The relationship was far more complex.

When God became man

Modern forms of Humanism would eventually develop in directions very different from those of Renaissance Italy. Some would become explicitly secular or reject Christianity altogether.

But reading those later developments backward into the Renaissance risks misunderstanding the movement’s historical origins.

The Humanists of Renaissance Italy inhabited a civilization saturated with Christianity. Their rediscovery of classical culture existed alongside Scripture, theology, churches, saints and Christian institutions.

At the center of that culture was the mystery of the Incarnation.

Christianity proclaimed not that humanity should replace God, but that God had chosen to become human.

In that paradox lies one of the keys to understanding Christian Humanism: the closer Renaissance thinkers and artists looked at the human person, the more they encountered questions that Christianity had been asking for centuries.

What does it mean to be human? What gives human beings dignity? What are the limits and possibilities of human reason and creativity?

For Christian Humanism, the ultimate answer was found not simply in humanity itself, but in Christ — the Word made flesh.

Adapted by Jacob Stein.