Send us a text

Niccolo Machiavelli is often held up as the paradigmatic political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. But as James Hankins argued in an earlier book, Virtue Politics, Machiavelli in fact repudiates the framework common to many of the humanists of the Renaissance. Machiavelli is an outlier. Who then can replace him as the Renaissance's paradigmatic political philosopher? In his new book, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy, Hankins proposes the little-known Francesco Patrizi, friend and protege of Pope Pius II, as Machiavelli's replacement. Hankins joins the show to make his case for Patrizi as emblematic of Renaissance political philosophy and to explain some aspects of Patrizi's life and thought.

James Hankins's Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674274709

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/4d0f0bu

Adrian Wooldridge's Aristocracy of Talent: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781510775558

The Patrizi Project: https://patrizisiena.hsites.harvard.edu/

Nate Fischer's Meritocracy Must Not Be Our Goal: https://americanmind.org/salvo/meritocracy-must-not-be-our-goal/

James Hankins and Allen Guelzo's The Golden Thread: https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Thread-Ancient-World-Christendom/dp/1641773995

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

In his lifetime, John Chrysostom witnessed the true beginning of Christendom: the Emperor Theodosius confirmed the public standing of Christianity over that of paganism and delivered a final knockout blow to Arian heresy in favor of Nicene orthodoxy. But a religion on the upswing can attract opportunistic and ill-informed converts. Jonathan and Ryan look at Chrysostom's advice on the bringing-up of children, and the ways in which the Greek Father uses pagan tropes - Greco-Roman hero cults, wrestling, statuary - to cajole new converts into dropping their pagan habits.

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

Jaspreet Singh Boparai's The Man Who Translated the Bible Into Latin: https://antigonejournal.com/2021/10/saint-jerome/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

Can Christians read and appreciate pagan literature? The vexed relationship between the Church and a world that hates it has generated many different responses. The most popular recent proposal is Rod Dreher's "Benedict option" - Dreher counsels Christian retrenchment and quasi-monastic self-sufficiency. But the great saint of late antiquity and compiler of the Vulgate, Jerome (aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), proposes a different option, drawn from the Mosaic Law. Jonathan and Ryan look at three different letters from Jerome's voluminous correspondence, each taking a different angle on literature and learning.

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

Recommended edition of the Vulgate: https://amzn.to/3FFjqaR

Athanasius' On the Incarnation: https://amzn.to/42h3ww9

Apuleius' Metamorphoses: https://amzn.to/4429DWz

Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735213302

Passion of Perpetua and Felicity: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0324.htm

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

In the final chapter of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons distinguishes between the "skills" and the "content" arguments for classical study, and says that the skills argument is in fact the stronger. Content, Simmons says, can be learned by reading translations - or even from scanning Wikipedia (or asking A.I.!). What is irreplaceable about true classical study is the formation of the mind and the skills acquired from long years of intense training in reading and writing in Greek and Latin. The death of this educational program caused European literary culture to rot, just as critics and poets like W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis had warned: they were the last generation to receive this education, and so it should be no surprise that they were the last generation of Anglophone writers even to approach greatness.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

New Humanists episode on Albert Jay Nock: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10528217-should-everyone-be-educated-episode-22

J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics: https://jenniferjsnow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/11790039-jrr-tolkien-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics.pdf

Plato's The Last Days of Socrates: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140449280

Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978

ALI's Latin for Kids program: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-for-kids/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

Classical education has declined and fallen before - as the Roman Empire succumbed to internal weakness and external threats, so did its bilingual educational regime. Humanists in the Renaissance revived the ancient world's Greek and Latin literary paideia, or at least created a new system of education modelled on it, which flourished for centuries, well into the modern era. But it fell apart once again after the catastrophe of the First World War. In Chapter Two of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons give an account of classical education's many lives.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743

John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780268011505

Micah Meadowcroft's Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/classical-educations-aristocracy-of-anyone

David Sider's Greek Verse on a Vase by Douris: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/hesperia/41012854.pdf

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

A truly classical education is centered on the study of the Classics: the ancient languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The adjective "classical" is thus a misnomer for a school that strays promiscuously from the true Classics into the "Great Books" or the "Great Tradition." So argues Tracy Lee Simmons in his landmark book, Climbing Parnassus. Jonathan and Ryan dive into Simmons' book and debate whether classical education is, as he says, a lost cause.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

Micah Meadowcroft's Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/classical-educations-aristocracy-of-anyone

John Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity: https://minio.la.utexas.edu/webeditor-files/coretexts/pdf/163020model20of20christian20charity.pdf

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

The Renaissance humanist Biondo Flavio dedicated his massive book Roma Triumphans, a historical investigation of what made Rome great, to his fellow humanist Pope Pius II. He contended that central to the story of Roman greatness was Roman religion, and that the Roman Catholic Church was the heir of the Roman Empire, correcting its faults even as it carried its legacy into the modern world. As James Hankins discusses in Virtue Politics, the main policy position that Biondo advocated for, in order for Europe to recapture the spirit of ancient Rome, was a renewal of the Crusades, so that the dominion of the Catholic Church could encompass the territory of the Roman Empire.

James Hankins' Virtue Politics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674278738

New Humanists episode on Irving Babbitt, feat. Eric Adler: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15574729-humanism-with-or-without-god-feat-eric-adler-episode-lxxiv

Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674055049

Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300240023

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Send us a text

Representative government, freedom of religion, the right to privacy - these are just some of the liberties of the modern world which we cherish. But at what cost? After the French Revolution and the subsequent rise and fall of Napoleon, the French classical liberal Benjamin Constant undertook an examination of ancient liberty as compared to modern liberty, in a bid to defend the modern liberal project against its detractors. But Constant is honest about the downsides of the modern liberal regime, and explains what rights and powers from the ancient world modern men can no longer exercise.

Benjamin Constant's The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141191751

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902

Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146

Stendhal's The Red and the Black: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140447644

Julius Caesar's The Gallic War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674990807

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com