“Man was formed of dust, slime and ashes … conceived from the itch of the flesh, in the … stench of lust, and worse yet, with the stain of sin.” So wrote Pope Innocent III in his 12th-century On the Misery of the Human Condition. In 1452 Giannozzo Manetti answered Innocent point by point in his own On the Dignity of Man. But as early as the 1300s, Italians were enthusiastically quoting Psalm 8: “Man is only a little lower than the angels.” The passion for finding, collecting and imitating ancient Greek and Roman texts had readjusted moral priorities – away from arduous obedience to supposedly God-given rules and towards celebrating and fostering human happiness. Increasingly, morality’s concern was to alleviate suffering, not to justify God for inflicting it.
To date the rise of “humanism” to the early Renaissance is, strictly speaking, anachronistic; there was no such term until the 19th century. But Humanly Possible traces a lineage, less of theories than of kindred spirits, over seven centuries in Europe. This runs from medieval umanisti (students of humanity), who remained Christian even while resurrecting “the flowering, perfumed, fruitful works of the pagan world spring” (as John of Salisbury called them), to today’s (more secular) self-declared humanists.
