The Sir Thomas More Circle

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, before the deaths of Michelangelo or even Leonardo da Vinci, the renaissance movement in Italy had pretty much run itself out. In northern Europe, however (in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and England) humanism was just coming into its own. The northern humanists are sometimes called the Christian Humanists, as though the Italian humanists were not Christians, which, as I have said, I think in most cases they …

…who were unable to afford it themselves. As a rule, they deplored beating or ridicule as a means to compel learning. Their aim was to educate the whole man or woman, and so we often find among the required subjects music, drawing, and dancing, and they generally insisted on some from of physical exercise. Desiderious Erasmus, a Dutch Scholar, and Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish scholar, were perhaps the most active supporters of educational reform.