Routledge Renaissance Transformations of Late Medieval Thought: 671 (Variorum Collected Studies)

Product Description Charles Trinkaus can be counted among the eminent intellectual and cultural historians of the Renaissance. This new collection of his articles brings together pieces published since 1982. The studies are concerned with Italian Renaissance humanists and philosophers who tended to affirm human capacities to shape earthly existence, despite the traditional limitations proposed by some scholastics and astrologers. Professor Trinkaus holds that, without abandoning their Christian faith, or their acceptance of physical influences from the cosmos, these writers, in their stress on human capacities, were responding to the vigorous activism of their contemporaries in all aspects of their existence. The final four papers also provide a series of reflections on the modern historiography of the Renaissance. Review '... this volume provides a major prespective on the thought of the Renaissance... This is a collection that students and scholars will need to examine...' Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 35 'Deeply learned and carefully argued, these articles evidence Trinkaus's extraordinary gift for explicating the complex theological and philosophical arguments of leading humanists and setting them in intellectual context.... through his intense focus on ideas, Trinkaus has greatly enhanced our ability to distinguish the original from the traditional in Renaissance thought, as well as our understanding of the contemporaneous intellectual currents that leading humanists reacted against and, at times, transcended.' Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 54/3 About the Author Charles Trinkaus, formerly University of Michigan , USA