Humanism and the Untimely Reformation

This essay examines the tension between humanism and Reformation concerning the ethic of timing espoused by Erasmus and his fellow humanists. In the course of the sixteenth century, the humanist ideal of the man for all seasons becomes the reformers' nemesis, the temporizer or confessional chameleon. We will trace this topos from Erasmus' adages to Montaigne's essays in order to see how humanism carries within it the seeds of counter-Reformation while the Reformation affirms itself as a counter-humanism

Art · Art history · Confessional · Epistemology · Erasmus · Humanism · Ideal (ethics) · Literature · Political science · Politics · The Renaissance · Theology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Classics · French Literature and Criticism · Law · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture