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The topic chosen for this lecture reflects my own interests as a scholar, and it will also give me an opportunity to address myself to a question, often raised in my discussions with several More specialists and treated by them on more than one occasion ', that is, whether and to what extent the interpretation of Renaissance humanism which I have tried to propose and to defend over a number of years 2 may be applied to Thomas More and Jiis work. I shall try to show in this paper that Renaissance humanism, as I understand that term, constitutes a significant aspect of the life and work of Thomas More. I do not claim that it is the only or even the most important aspect, for apart from being a humanist and a scholar, Thomas More was a lawyer and statesman, a theologian and a martyr, and I do not wish to maintain that within the complex physiognomy of More's person and life, of his fame and his place in history, humanism is as important an aspect as some of the others. Yet I shall be concerned with Thomas More rather then with Sir Thomas More or with St. Thomas More, and I shall be satisfied if I can show that Thomas More, among other things, was also a humanist, just as many other Renaissance scholars were often something else besides being humanists, as for example Petrarch and Poliziano who were vernacular poets, or Ficino and Pico who were speculative philosophers.
A Renaissance humanist, as I understand that term, was not a preacher of vaguely defined human values, unburdened by specialized knowledge, as are many modern writers to whom the term is now freely applied, but a highly trained classical scholar, and a student (not necessarily a teacher) of the Studia humanitatis, the humanities, that is, of a cycle of studies that are described as containing grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. Humanist scholarship was not the sum total of Renaissance learning ór culture. It did not include theology or jurisprudence, the philosophical disciplines other than ethics, or the sciences, although individual humanists, depending on their intellectual interests or professional ambitions, were able to combine the humanities with any other field of study. Humanist...