George Sarton – författare

Humanism and humanism are two terms that refer to an intellectual movement that appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century. What is meant by humanism is the revival of ancient literatures and knowledge: the literatures of Greece and Romans, after they had been suppressed by sectarianism for nearly a thousand years, since the Emperor Justinian closed the schools of Athens and dispersed their men and teachers in the year 429 AD, until the fall of Constantinople into the hands of Muhammad the Conqueror in the year 1453.This intellectual movement soon crossed the Alps to France, Germany, the Low Countries, and England, and historians called it the "Humanism" movement, and by that they meant the return of man to the nature of free thinking, and not being bound by sectarian thinking, by reviving ancient literatures whose men did not adhere to a particular sect. They were free people, before they had a special belief. If I call this movement "humanism," I mean by that the emergence of human thought, after it had been buried for a thousand years.