Why did the ideas of European humanism sleep throughout the Middle Ages?

"Ren" is the official orthodoxy in China, and theology is the orthodoxy in the Western Middle Ages. Theology is divinely centered and fundamentally contradicts humanism. In that era when God was overpowering, all education was theologically centered, and most people did not receive a decent education, so naturally there was little spark of thought.

Moreover, the economy was backward at that time, and most people were poor peasants. These people can't see the end of a miserable life, so they certainly believe that happiness exists in another world, and life is not worth nostalgia.

By the time of the Renaissance, the citizens of the city had become stronger, and these people who were active in thought, had a certain culture, and lived a richer and happier life began to propagate the importance of man and the importance of secular life.

An important school of painting was formed during the Italian Renaissance in Florence, the economic and cultural center. Dominated by the humanist ideas of the rising bourgeoisie, the school used scientific methods to explore the laws of human body modeling, absorbed the ancient Greek and Roman carving techniques and applied them to painting, and changed the medieval plane decoration style to a painting method that uses concentrated perspective, light and shade effects, and expresses three-dimensional space. In the subject matter of religious mythology, abstract gods and images were painted as secularized and ideal people who met the requirements of the new bourgeoisie, and succeeded in creating a new style of figure painting.

In addition to oil paintings, large frescoes were created at that time, mainly for the court, the church and the upper bourgeoisie, thus changing the face of medieval painting in Europe.

In the early period, the representative painters were Giotto, Massachio, Ujiro, etc., and in the heyday, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and other painters were representatives. The thirties of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries were at their most prosperous; At the end of the 16th century, as a result of the loss of Florence's political independence, economic decline, and the blind worship of the painter's predecessors, it gradually moved towards Mannerism.

The Florentine School of painting produced many talents, and their creative talents were also revealed. However, in terms of artistic tendencies and creative characteristics, there are roughly three main lines. Each of these three main lines is represented by a representative figure:

Painters such as Botticelli, Libby, and Cosimo can be a main thread, they have a progressive humanist ideological tendency, but their art tends to be close to the aristocratic and wealthy; One of the main lines, represented by Kirandayo, advocates the expression of life, and they appear earlier in the painting world, and may be a little naïve in technique, and most of the images are narrative; The third main line, undoubtedly, should be represented by Leonardo da Vinci, which is an emerging line of realism.

The Florentine school focused on religious themes, and the whole picture appeared sacred, sublime and solemn, such as Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" and Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper". The Venetian school focused on the expression of secular hedonistic ideas and the pursuit of sensual enjoyment, such as Titian's "Sacred and Secular Love", "Venus of Urbino", "Sleeping Venus" and other works, all of which used mythological characters to express secular life.

In terms of expression, the Florentine school paid attention to sketch modeling, such as Michelangelo's figures, which are solid and powerful, full of movement.

The Florentine School had two tendencies, one was anti-classical and the other was graceful and elegant. Tintoretto wanted to combine these two tendencies into one. At the same time, according to legend, he aspired to "paint like Titian and design like Michelangelo."

What he meant was to combine Titian's colors with Michelangelo's drawings to create a new kind of art. He successfully combined these two aspects, because his sketches did not have the slightest imprint of Michelangelo, and his colors did not resemble Titian's style at all. He is especially good at using strong multi-view perspective to express grand scenes.

The other Veronese is also good at expressing grand scenes. He did not intend to depict the main character, but focused on depicting the grand scene of the wedding banquet, and his art was very innovative in perspective composition and magnificent color, which had a great influence on the Baroque art of the 17th century.

At that time, Western Europe was in a period of "dualistic rule", the power of the church was too great, which limited the development of culture, and the teachers in the colleges established by the church were the only ones who were literate, and the content taught was to cultivate talents for the church, and the colleges monopolized education in Western Europe.

Humanist thought is a philosophical theory and worldview based on reason and benevolence. As a living philosophy, humanist thought draws inspiration from benevolent humanity and is guided by rational reasoning. Humanist thought is based on rational reasoning and benevolence and fraternity as its basic values.

As for the interests of the individual, dignity, freedom of thought, tolerance between people and non-violence and so on, they are all due to the meaning. Humanist thought is based on rational thought, and at the same time has a close relationship with humanism and humanism.

There is no universal definition of humanism, as many different people call themselves or are called humanists, and their worldviews and their conceptions of people can be very different. Some humanist ideas are very contradictory to each other. Some of the ideas of the time of Confucius or ancient Greece in ancient China are considered to be very early humanist thoughts.

There are also Marxist-Leninist and Protestant and Catholic schools of thought that claim to be humanist. The humanism of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller is often referred to as historicism, while the humanism of Wilhelm von Humboldt is quite different from the humanism of the Enlightenment. Renaissance philosophy was seen as the root of thought, while in Humboldt's time science was seen as the root of thought.

Again: What is the relationship between medieval humanism and Renaissance humanism?

Again: Humanism in different periods has its own meaning, and it cannot be exactly the same.

Medieval European literature differed greatly from the ancient Greco-Roman literature in its conception of humanism.

In medieval European literature, the content of religion and mysticism predominated, and the idea of humanism was not the focus. Medieval European literature mostly depicted sacred events, biographies of saints and other religious themes, and emphasized that people should pursue piety to the gods and spiritual sublimation, and less pursuit of human beings themselves.

In contrast, Greco-Roman literature pays more attention to the self-worth and dignity of human beings, and works such as the ancient Greek epics "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" and the ancient Roman poem "The Aeneid" are often regarded as outstanding representative works of humanism. These literary masterpieces, which have lasted for nearly 3,000 years, epitomize the spirit of human self-esteem, the finitude of human reason, and the spirit of a positive moral model that draws from the world and the historical dream of human freedom and freedom from slavery.

As a result, medieval European literature differed greatly from ancient Greco-Roman literature in their conception of humanism.