Regardless of whether humanists were backward-looking progressives or forward-looking conservatives, their engagement with the classics led them to critique the language, morals, and customs of their own age. There was a spirit of criticism arising from this combination of both respecting and challenging antiquity. Classical literature was understood as a historical phenomenon.
This taught them a sense of the historical distance that separated their times from antiquity. Although humanists were engaged, to a large degree, in the study and imitation of ancient Latin, this also meant that they were necessarily aware of the development of the Latin language from antiquity through the Middle Ages and up to their own day. Pietro Ratto, Torn-Out Pages (Bibliotheka, 2020)īefore the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the most innovative and critical historians were Renaissance humanists.
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