Humanism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Humanism - Essay Example In contrast to the medieval humanists, the scholars of the new Humanist culture greatly popularized learning, because they focused on the way people describe the world rather than on its reality, and they are known as nominalists. They denied the existence or the knowability of the universal forms that supposedly make up the world It is important to comprehend the late medieval mystic and pious revivals as partly a reaction to the late medieval church hierarchy and the disorder of the church. These revivals as well as the ill-fated movements of doctrinal reform were characterized by lay mysticism and piety, female piety, the mystics, brethren of the common life, the Lollards etc. Therefore, the late medieval mystic and pious revivals reflected the widespread dissatisfaction with official teachings in the late 1300s and 1400s. Mysticism, or the interior sense of the direct presence and love of God, was an important consequence of the late medieval mystic and pious revivals, and it was illustrated by confraternities, or the religious guilds founded for laypersons. "The growth of lay piety was, in essence, an effort to give everyone access to forms of faith that hitherto had been restricted to a spiritual elite. Frightened by the disasters of the age, people hungered for emotional reassurance, for evidence of Go d's love and redeeming grace within themselves." (Tradition and Change in Europe Culture, 1300-1500).