Humanist Educational Treatises (I Tatti Renaissance Library) »

Craig W. Kallendorf is Professor of Modern and Classical Languages at Texas A & M University and the author of Vergil and the Myth of Venice: Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance.

The disciplines now known as the humanities emerged in their modern form during the Italian Renaissance as the result of an educational movement begun by humanist teachers, writers, and scholars in the early fourteenth century. These educators argued for the usefulness of classical literature as an instrument for training young men and women, not only in the arts of language and eloquence, but also in civic virtue and practical wisdom. This volume provides new translations, commissioned for the I Tatti Renaissance Library, of four of the most important theoretical statements that emerged from the early humanists’ efforts to reform medieval education:

• Pier Paolo Vergerio, “The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth”


• Leonardo Bruni, “The Study of Literature”


• Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), “The Education of Boys”


• Battista Guarino, “A Program of Teaching and Learning”

Anthony Grafton - New York Review of Books

A splendid collection...Translated with great precision by Craig Kallendorf, [this volume] lets us watch some of the most influential humanist teachers at work.