A new investigation of the meaning that Italian Renaissance humanism had for an essential but neglected group: the humanists themselves.

Patrick Baker (FAAR '13) received his PhD in History from Harvard University, Massachusetts in 2009 and is currently a Senior Research Associate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Primarily an intellectual historian of late medieval and early modern Italy, his scholarship has focused on Renaissance humanism, the transformative reception of the classical tradition, and historiography. He has won fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and Villa I Tatti. In 2014 he published an English translation of two monographic essays by the late Salvatore Camporeale (co-edited with Christopher S. Celenza), entitled Christianity, Latinity, and Culture: Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla, which includes an English version of Valla's Encomium of St Thomas Aquinas. He is a member of the Renaissance Society of America, the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, and the Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands. He has organized several academic conferences, including 'Portraying the Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical Texts' (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, November 2014) and 'Beyond Reception: Renaissance Humanism and the Transformation of Classical Antiquity' (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, March 2015).

Introduction; 1. The renaissance of eloquence; 2. The scholastic studia humanitatis and the hagiography of humanism; 3. The triumph of Cicero; 4. Philology, printing, and the perfection of humanism; 5. Humanism in the mirror; Appendix: the pantheon of humanism; Bibliography; Index.