Coluccio Salutati and the Conception of thePoeta Theologusin the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

The Italian humanists of the fourteenth century did more than reintegrate the pursuit of eloquence with the concern for ethics, two interests united in the discipline of rhetoric since the time of Cicero but separated in practice by thirteenth-century specialists ofars dictaminisin Italy. Rather their achievement lay in nothing less than Christianizing the European medieval rhetorical tradition. They accomplished this by expressing in terms of those central fields of rhetoric, ethics, and history an appreciation of the distinction between the culture of the ancient world based on human reason and Christian society founded on revealed truth. While not denying the ultimate influence of God upon human history, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Salutati (at least in his later life) tended to emphasize the natural character of ancient society and thus to secularize its history and achievements.