Humanism in the Middle Ages
An intensified interest in the classical legacy, leading to a general cultural revival, occurred in the Islamic world during the tenth century. In contrast to Western Europe, where the Latin heritage was always supreme, Arab scholars, both Christian and Muslim, were concerned exclusively with Greek erudition. Moreover, their interest was entirely in the scientific and philosophical patrimony of ancient Greece, leaving aside its literary and historical works. During this period a large number of texts by Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen were translated into Arabic, sometimes via Syriac intermediaries. The philological efforts that went into this enterprise bore fruit in the achievements of thinkers such as Avicenna (980–1037) who were able to build up their own philosophical, scientific, and medical systems by drawing on the Greek material newly available to them.
Two epochs during the Western European Middle Ages witnessed revivals of ancient learning that have been seen as foreshadowing the humanism of the Renaissance. The first, associated with the reign of Charlemagne, occurred in the eighth and ninth centuries. In this period a small group of scholars, most notably Lupus of Ferrières (c.
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