Alpha Book

This new-found charm the
scholars called humanity (_Humanitas_) and themselves they styled
"humanists." Their studies, which comprised the Greek and Latin
languages and literatures, and, incidentally, profane history, were the
humanities or "letters" (_litterae humaniores_), and the pursuit
of them was humanism.
Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite
indifferently. About the close of his century, however, Greek teachers
came in considerable numbers from Constantinople and Greece across the
Adriatic to Italy, and a certain Chrysoloras set up an influential
Greek school at Florence. [Footnote: This was before the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.] Thenceforth, the study of both
Latin and Greek went on apace. Monasteries were searched for old
manuscripts; libraries for the classics were established; many an
ancient masterpiece, long lost, was now recovered and treasured as fine
gold. [Footnote: It was during this time that long-lost writings of
Tacitus, Cicero, Quintilian, Plautus, Lucretius, etc.


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