Parcours de l’humanisme : Introduction

Abstract

The history of humanism during the Renaissance is one of an international cultural circulation which saw the rise of “humanities studies”, born in north-central Italy at the turn of the fifteenth century, and which came to dominate other models for a large part of the Western elite during the next two centuries. If the exchange of letters and books was surely an important vector in the development of this movement, it is also important to consider this phenomenon in light of mobility, particularly the professional mobility of the learned adherents of these scholarly practices, by creating a dialogue between intellectual and social history. This issue is the occasion to shine a light on these mixed socio-cultural dynamics, through investigation of specific humanist trajectories or specific places of interest (towns, courts, chancelleries, universities) and socio-scholarly networks, within a broad chronological perspective (xvth-xviith cent.) and to question by this way the models of “diffusion” of humanism.

Keywords

• circulation
• humanism
• students
• books
• learned practices