Theological Origins of Modernity

humanism and the apotheosis of man 79
according to the four empire theory that had dominated historical thinking
for almost a thousand years but according to a tripartite division of ancient,
medieval, and modern periods. Th is new understanding, which was
indebted to Petrarch’s notion of a dark age separating his time from that of
the ancients, was crucial to the development of Christian humanism, for
it legitimized humanist eff orts to recover a pristine, ancient Christianity
much closer to ancient moral thought than the corrupted Christianity that
had developed during the dark, middle age. Finally, he was one of the fi rst
to translate the Platonic dialogues, although his translations were not very
accurate.
Such a belief in the possibility of a rebirth that combined Christian piety
with ancient morality was especially clear in the work of one of Bruni’s students,
Lorenzo Valla (1407–57). Valla was a fi erce defender of Christianity
but also a convinced Neoplatonist, and he was as opposed to Aristotelianism
and Averroism as any of those who had authored the Condemnation
of 1277. 33 He was particularly upset by what he saw as Stoic and peripatetic
moralism posing as Christian piety. He believed that to be a Christian one
had to accept the truth of Scripture. As he saw it, however, this truth had
been massively distorted. Fortunately, humanist philological tools enabled
scholars to correct many of these distortions. Th e most famous and certainly
the most important of his “corrections” was his sensational demonstration
in 1440 that the Donation of Constantine, the foundation for the
temporal authority of the papacy, was a forgery. While this demonstration
weakened the church’s power, it was not anti-Christian, nor was it understood
to be so at the time. Indeed, Valla was appointed papal secretary in
1448 in part because of the very linguistic skills that had enabled him to
demonstrate the forgery.
As we saw in the last chapter, Petrarch saw humans as willing rather
than as rational beings. Indeed, this was intrinsic to their individuality.
Th e consequences of this position, however, were never entirely clear to Petrarch
and only gradually became clear to later humanists. Th inking from
this perspective is not a form of contemplation but of action. In thinking,
humans then do not simply discover an inherent order in the world but
will it or give it form. All logos or language is thus a form of poiēsis or
poetry, and knowing is thus always a form of creation. 34 Human creation,
however, is not and cannot be a creatio ex nihilo, because divine will has already
given the world form. Knowing thus is always a remaking, a mimēsis,
to use Plato’s term, of the original divine making, a re-willing of what God
has already willed. In this way, art comes to play a central role in the humanist
project, although it is not conceived as an exercise of creativity