Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century.(Book Review)

by Robert Black (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001; pp. 489. 55 [pounds sterling]).

Dr Black's position on Italian education is to some extent known from his dispute with Paul F. Grendler in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 1991. He there disagreed strongly with views of Eugenio Garin and Grendler, which presented, in his opinion, an exaggerated emphasis on the value of humanism as introducing moral and civic values into education in the fifteenth century. He was more sympathetic with the interpretation of Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, who were unfriendly to the pretensions of humanism and gave greater educational value to scholasticism. But he saw all previous writers as too inclined to work from the top downwards. This book is decidedly a case of looking at the lower levels of the educational world with a thorough …