Renaissance & Reformation

The Reformation era was a period of particularly volatile and violent theological controversy. Throughout Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, religion was in crisis. This period saw the formation of new Protestant churches–particularly in Northern Europe–established in opposition to Roman Catholicism. One of the principle drivers of the Reformation was the interpretative method developed by Renaissance humanists.

Renaissance is a French term signifying “rebirth”. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that sought to bring about a rebirth or renewal of the classical culture of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. As with the Reformation, the Renaissance was propelled by the textual practices of Humanism. The humanists were experts in bonae litterae, a Latin phrase that can be translated as “good letters,” or “classical literature” and which is traditionally understood as referring to the best things written or spoken, in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, by the most authoritative writers and thinkers in the Western tradition. Humanists were thus experts in ancient Latin and Greek.  

The study of bonae litterae was the domain of the grammarian. Already in the late medieval period, teachers of grammar were responsible not only for instruction in the noble classical languages but also, therein, for moral instruction through the correct interpretation of the classical poets. Up until the Renaissance and Reformation period, the dominant practice of theology lay outside of the grammarian’s linguistic and ethical purview. In the early sixteenth century, however, Erasmus echoed the  emphases of his grammatically-minded late-medieval forerunners while presenting a new and potent challenge to the way theology was practiced. Developing what has been called a “rhetorical theology,” Erasmus and other reform-minded Biblical Humanists insisted upon the primacy not only of the original scriptural languages but of the grammarian’s philological expertise over the cumulative weight of tradition.