Augustine and the Humanists

Augustine and the Humanists investigates the reception of Augustines De civitate Dei in Italian humanism during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In response to the urgent call for a more extensive and detailed investigation of the reception of Augustines works and thought in the Western world, numerous scholars have addressed the topic over the last decades. However, one of Augustines major works, De civitate Dei, has received remarkably little attention. In a series of case studies by renowned specialists of Italian humanism, this volume now analyzes the various strategies that were employed in reading and interpreting the City of God at the dawn of the modern age. Augustine and the Humanists focuses on the reception of the text in the work of sixteen early modern writers and thinkers who played a crucial role in the era between Petrarch and Poliziano. The present volume thus makes a significant and innovative contribution both to Augustinian studies and to our knowledge of early modern intellectual history.