Religion at Its Best

And Its Worst

Christianity at Stake

 The Renaissance influence and prestige of the Catholic Church were declining. Its institutions were deeply rooted in older patterns of life and traditional ways of thought, and these institutions were slow in adapting to new conditions. The Catholic Church had difficulty adjusting to the demands of a society based on money rather than allegiances. The result was a series of failures, such as the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism that discredited and weakened the Catholic Church. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that significant numbers of Europeans rejected Christianity as a result; on the contrary, during the 14th and 15th centuries there was a widespread revival or popular religious fervor, reaching a climax in the Reformation of the 16th century.

Humanism

 From the struggles of religion lead to the dominant intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism, a philosophy based on the idea that people are rational beings. It emphasized the dignity and worth of the individual, an emphasis that was central to Renaissance developments in many areas. Renaissance humanism was complex, with few unifying features beyond a common belief that humanity and society could be improved through a new kind of education based on the classics. Humanists varied widely in the ways they applied these ideas to areas that interested them. Some humanists were mainly interested in rhetoric and Latin prose style, while others analyzed ancient texts to determine exact meanings. One group focused on ways to improve society in general, while Christian humanism applied the techniques of humanist scholarship to the study of church documents, particularly the Bible.