ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the 15th and 16th century Renaissance in Italy and England, because cultural movement that call the Renaissance was characterized above all by revived and self-conscious humanism; a celebration of man as the centre of the created cosmos and the elevation of the human body, mind and spirit to a place in the order of things hitherto reserved for God alone. The liberating potential of humanism and geography is too dangerous to the interests of ruling groups to be made freely available to all. Today scholars of Renaissance humanism recognize that many of the classical texts which were so revered by the self-styled revivers of antiquity were well known and widely read during the Middle Ages. Applied humanism was far closer to a philosophy of man than was historical humanism. However, there is nothing to be gained by seeking some theoretical resolution to the divergent tendencies within humanism and historical materialism; such a resolution would be purely rhetorical.
