The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy

Ronald G. Witt is currently William B. Hamilton Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University, North Carolina. His most recent book, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Italian Humanism 1250-1420 (2000), received the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Historical Society (2001), the American Philosophical Society's Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History (2001), and the Renaissance Society of America's Gordon Book Prize (2001). He is also the author of Humanism and Reform, (2001), Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works and Thought of Coluccio Salutati, (1331-1406) (1983), and Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters (1976), as well as numerous articles.

Traces the intellectual life of Italy, where humanism began a century before it influenced the rest of Europe.

Introduction; Part I. The Two Latin Cultures of Medieval Italy: 1. The Carolingian conquest; 2. Italy and the Ottonian renaissance; 3. The golden age of traditional book culture and the birth of a new book culture (1000-1075); Part II. The Birth of New Order: 4. The investiture conflict and the emergence of the communes; Part III. The Dominance of the Legal-Rhetorical Mentality: 5. The triumph of the legal culture; 6. The institutional structure of education, 1100-1180; 7. Literary creativity in an age of intensifying legal-rhetorical culture; Part IV. The French Renaissance of the Twelfth Century: 8. French literary and scholarly achievement in the twelfth century; Part V. Toward a Broader Intellectual Life: 9. The destabilization of the elites and the expanding market for education; 10. New knowledge and the tempering of the legal-rhetorical culture; 11. The development of the traditional disciplines and the resolution of the crisis of language; 12. The return to antiquity; Conclusion; Appendix.