The Renaissance was a cultural and intellectual movement appearing in Western Europe at the close of the Middle Ages (1300 - 1600). Centered in the city-states of Italy, the Renaissance embodied a view of the world and humans that vitally affected a wide range of human activities, including the fine arts, education, literature and philosophy.

1 Now the knowledge of Greek literature, which had decayed in Italy for more than
2 seven hundred years, has been revived and restored by our city. Now we are able
3 to confront the greatest philosophers, the admirable orators, and other men of
4 outstanding learning, not through the obscurity of clumsy interpretations but
5 face to face. Finally, thses humanities (studia humanitatis) most excellent and
6 of highest value, especially relevant for human beings, neccessary both for
7 private and public life, adorned with a knowledge of letters worthy of free men,
8 have originated in our city and are now thriving throughout Italy.

1 ...Familiarity with the great poets of antiquity is essential to any claim to true
2 education. For in their writings we find deep speculations upon Nature, and upon
3 the Causes and Origins of things, which must cary weight with us both from
4 their antiquity and from their authorship. Besides these, many important truths
5 upon matters of daily life are suggested or illustrated. All this is expressed
6 with such grace and dignity as demands our admiration....

7 We know, however, that in certain quarters--where all knowledge and
8 appreciation of letters is wanting--this whole branch of literature, marked as
9 it is by something of the Divine, and fit, therefore, for the highest place, is
10 decried as unworthy of study. But when we remember the value of the best
11 poetry, its charm of form and the variety and interest of its subject-matter,
12 when we consider the ease with wich from our childhood up it can can be
13 committed to memory, when we recall the pecular affinity of rhythm and metre
14 to our emotions and our intelligence, we must conclude that natureherself is
15 against such headlong critics ....Plato and Aristotle studied the poets, and I
16 decline to admit that in practical wisdom or in moral earnestness they yeild to
17 our modern critics. They were not Christians, indeed, but consistency of life
18 and abhorrence of evil existed before Christianity and are independent of it.

1 In everything suitable to one born free and educated liberally, he was so
2 trained from boyhood that among the leaing young men of his age he was
3 considered by no means the least .... He was devoted to the knowledge of the
4 most strange and difficult things. And he embraced with zeal and forethought
5 everything which pertained to fame.
6 He strove so hard to attain a name in modeling (clay) and painting ... his
7 genius was so versatile that you might almost judge all the fine arts to be his
8 .... Letters, in which he delighted so greatly, seemed sometimes like flowering
9 and richly fragrant buds, so that hunger or sleep could scarcely distract him
10 from his books....
11 He played ball, hurled the javelin, ran, leaped, wrestled, and above all
12 delighted in the steep ascent of mountains; he applied himself to all these
13 things for the sake of health rather than the sport or pleasure. As a youth he
14 excelled in warlike games. With his feet together, he could leap over the
15 shoulders of men standing by; he had almost no equal among those hurling the
16 lance. An arrow shot by his hand from his chest could pierce the strongest iron
17 breastplate. With his left foot lifted from the ground to the wall of a church, he
18 could throw an apple into the air so high that it would be far beyond the top of
19 the highest roofs....
20 On horseback, holding in his hand one end of a long, wand, while the other
21 was firmly fixed to his foot, he could ride his horse violently in all directions
22 for hours at a time as he wished, and the wand would remain completely
23 immobile. Strange and marvelous that the most spirited horses .... would, when
24 he first mounted them, tremble violently and shudder as if in great fear....
25 He could endure pain and cold and heat ..... showing by example that men can
26 do anything they will.

1 Now the Highest Father, God the Architec, according to the laws of His
2 secret wisdom, built this house of the world .... He animated the celestial
3 spheres with eternal souls, and He filled the excrementary and filthy parts of
4 the lower world with a multitude of animals. But when his work was finished,
5 the Artisan longed for someone to reflect on the plan of so great a creation, to
6 love its beauty, and to admire its magnitude .... He began at last to consider the
7 creation of man.
8 But among His archetypes there was none from which He could form a new
9 offspring, nor in His treasure houses was there any inheritance which He might
10 bestow upon His new son .... everything had been apportioned to the highest, the
11 middle, and the lowest orders. But it was not in keeping with the paternal
12 power to fail, as though exhausted, in the last act of creation .... Finally the
13 Great Artisan ordained that man, to wom He could give nothing belonging only to
14 himself, should share in common whatever properties had been peculiar to each
15 of the other creatures ....
16 O sublime generosity of God the Father! O highest and most wonderful
17 felicity of man! To him it was granted to have what he chooses, to be what he
18 wills .... When man came into life, the Father endowed him with all kinds of
19 seeds and with the germs of every way of life. Whatever seeds each man
20 cultivates will grow and bear fruit in him. If these seeds are vegetative, he
21 will be like a plant; if they are sensitive, he will become like the beasts; if they
22 are rational, he will be an angel and a son of God. .... Who then will not wonder at
23 this chameleon of ours?
24 May some holy aspiration enter into our hearts, so that we are not content
25 with meddling things, but pant for the highest and strain to achieve them, since
26 we can if we will.

1 The Magnifico called to himself, from every part of Italy, men of genius,
2 writers and artists of reputation .... Poets of every kind, ... came from every
3 quarter to animate the suppers of the Magnifico; whosoever sang of arms, of
4 love, of saints, of fools, was welcome, or he who drinking and joking kept the
5 company amused .... sometimes a select band of painters and sculptors collected
6 in his garden ... designing, modeling, painting, copying the Greek statues, and the
7 torsi and busts found in Rome or elsewhere in Italy.

1 Go thou to Rome and throughout Christendom; in the mansions of the great
2 prelates and great lords there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical
3 art. Go thither and see; thou shalt find them all with books of the humanities in
4 their hands, and telling one another they can guide men’s souls by means of
5 Virgil, Horace, and Cicero. ... And there is no prelate nor great lod that hath not
6 intimate dealings with some astrologer, who fixeth the hour and the moment in
7 which he is to undertake some piece of business.
8 Thou seest the great prelates with splendid miters of gold and precious
9 stones on their heads, and silver crosiers in hand; there they stand at the alter,
10 decked with fine copes and stoles of brocade, chanting those beautiful vespers
11 and masses, and with so many grand ceremonies, so many organs and choristers,
12 that thou art struck with amazement. .... But dost thou know what I would tell
13 thee? In the primitive church the chalices were of wood, the prelates of gold;
14 in these days the chuch hath chalices of gold and prelates of wood.
15 What doest Thou, O Lord? Why dost Thou slumber? Arise and come to
16 deliver Thy church from the hands of the devils! ... Hasten then to chastisement
17 and scourge, that it may be quickly granted to us to return to Thee. ... Be ye no
18 scandalized, O my brethren. ... The only hope is that the sword of God may soon
19 smite the earth.

1 I am fully aware that the fact of my not being a man of letters may cause
2 certain arrogant persons to think that they may with reason censure me,
3 alleging that I am a man ignorant of book-learning. Foolish folk! Do they not
4 know that I might report by saying, as did Marius to the Roamn patricians, “They
5 who themselves go about adorned in the labor of others will not permit me my
6 own.” They will say that because of my lack of book-learning, I cannot properly
7 express what I desire to express. Do they not know that my subjects require for
8 their exposition another experience than words? And since experience has been
9 the mistress of whoever has written well, I take her as my mistress, and to her
10 in all points make my appeal.
11 The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of
12 others as his standard; but, if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of
13 nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters
14 who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each
15 other, and from age to age their art steadily declined. ...it is safer to go direct
16 of the words of nature than to those which have been imitated from her
17 originals with great deterioration and thereby to acquire a bad method, for he
18 who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-pot.
19 The eye, in which the beauty of the world is reflected, is of such
20 excellence that whoever consents to its loss deprives himself of the
21 representation of all the works of nature. Because of the sight of these the soul
22 is content to stay in the prison of the body, for through the eyes nature in all its
23 variety manifests itself to the soul. ... Certainly there is no one who would not
24 rather lose the senses of hearing and smell rather than that of sight. In losing
25 hearing, one loses knowledge based on words, but not the beauty of the world.

1 All men of whatever quality they be, who have done anything of
2 excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are
3 persons of truth and honesty, to descibe their life with their own hand; but they
4 ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have passed the age of forty.
5 This duty occurs to my own mind, now that I am travelling beyond the term of
6 fifty-eight years, and I am in florence, the city of my birth.

1 Your conduct should not be governed by your fancy, but in consideration of
2 the feelings of those whose company you keep.... for this reason it is a repulsive
3 habit to touch certain parts of the body in public, as some people do.
4 When you have blown your nose, you should not open your hankerchief and
5 inspect it, as if pearls or rubbies had dropped out of your skull.
6 It is not polite to scratch yourself when you are seated at table. You
7 should also take care, as far as you can, not to spit at mealtimes, but if you
8 must spit, then do so in a decent manner.
9 It is bad manners to clean your teeth with your napkin, and still worse to
10 do it with your finger....
11 It is wrong to rinse your mouth and spit out wine in public, and it is not a
12 polite habit ... to carry your toothpick either in your mouth, like a bird making
13 its nest, or behind your ear....
14 No one must take off his clothes, especially his lower garments, in public,
15 that is, in the presence of decent people....
16 Anyone who makes a nasty noise with his lips as a sign of astonishment or
17 disapproval is obviously imitating something indecent, and imitations are not
18 too far from the truth.

1 I am of the opinion that the principle and true profession of the Courtier
2 ought to be that of arms; which I would have him follow actively above all else,
3 and be known among others as bold, and strong, and loyal to whosoever he
4 serves. And he will win a reputation for these good qualities by exercising
5 them at all times and in all places, since one may never fail in this without
6 severest censure....
7 [The Courtier should] avoid affection to the uttermost;...and to use
8 possibly a new word, to practice in everything a certain nonchallance that shall
9 conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and
10 almost without thought.....
11 Our Courtier then will be esteemed excellent and will attain grace in
12 everything, particularly in speaking, if he avoids affection; into which fault
13 many fall, and often more than others, some of us Lombards, who, if they have
14 been a year away from home, on their return at once begin to speak Roman,
15 sometimes Spanish, or French, and God knows how. And all this comes from
16 overzeal to appear widely infromed....
17 I would have him more than passably accomplished in letters, at least in
18 those studies that are called the humanities, and conversant not only with the
19 Latin language but with the Greek, for the sake of the many different things that
20 have been admirably written therein. Let him be well versed in poets, and not
21 less in the orators and historians, and also proficient in writing verse and
22 prose, especially in this vulgar vernacular tongue of ours....
23 You must know that I am not content with the Courtier unless he be also a
24 musician and unless, besides understanding and being able to read notes, he can
25 play upon many instruments. For if we considet rightly, there is to be found no
26 rest from our toil or medicine for the troubled spirit more becoming and
27 praiseworthy in time or leisure than music....

1 Then signor Gasparo said: “Women are imperfect creatures.... Nevertheless,
2 since these defects in women are the fault of nature, we ought not on that
3 account to despise them, or fail to show them the respect which is due them.
4 But to esteem them to be more than what they are seems a manifest error to
5 me....”

6 Magnifico said: “if you compare the worth of women in every age to that of
7 men, you will find they have never been a whit inferior....”

8 Then Messer Cesare said: “Who does not know that without women we can
9 take no pleasure or satisfaction in this life of ours, which, but for them, would
10 be uncouth and devoid of all sweetness, and wilder than that of wild beasts?”