Charles Bernard Schmitt

Background

Schmitt, Charles Bernard was born on August 4, 1933 in Louisville, Kentucky, United States.

Views

seventeenth century, usually regarded as falling outside the Renaissance period. His early bibliographic concern led him to examine in particular the syllabuses of Renaissance and later universities, from which he concluded that Renaissance universities were not the sterile places of humanist legend, and that Aristotelianism was not the spent force it is often been alleged to have been. For him the dominant feature of the Renaissance was less the Platonizing humanism that attracted the attention of his predecessors, but Aristotelianism, which, he believed, retained its vitality until the late seventeenth century when Aristotelians ceased to listen to modern thinkers. Equally, he had drawn attention to the importance of the systematic study of the development of universities. He also came to the view that the conventional periodization of the Renaissance was too narrow. He saw a Latin-based international res publica litterarum lasting from the late Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, when the increasing use of vernacular languages cut off from each other the intellectuals using them. He also ranks as one the most important supporters of R. H. Popkin's campaign to have scepticism recognized as a serious historical phenomenon with far-reaching effects in the seventeenth century and after.

Interests

• Renaissance and early modern philosophy. Science; universities. Cduc: PhD, Columbia University, 1963.