The humanists' attitude towards scholastic philosophy

There is a certain irony in the fact that it was the humanists with their enthusiasm for the literature of the ancient world who were in large part responsible for the demise of scholastic grammar. For inasmuch as humanism was a literary and educational, not a philosophical movement, the attitude of most humanists towards scholastic philosophy was one of indifference; they seldom manifested outright hostility, and such opposition as they professed was not, for the most part, philosophical.

Humanists outside the university

The early humanists were, in fact, either independent men of letters or, more typically, members of the legal profession holding high office in church or state. Petrarch (1304–74) is the best-known representative of the first category. Famous nowadays for having written some of the most magnificent sonnets in the Italian language, he was known to his contemporaries primarily as a promoter of classical studies and the author of a number of highly regarded original works in Latin as well as a voluminous correspondence, likewise in Latin. An outstanding example of the second type of humanist is Petrarch's younger friend Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), who was trained as a notary at Bologna University and for the last twenty-six years of his life held the office of chancellor in Florence.

Then, from the early fifteenth century onwards, many humanists became involved in education and left their stamp on generations of students, at first drawn predominantly from northern Italy, but in course of time from as far afield as England and Hungary.