The Birth of the Humanist Movement at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century*

This article provides an overview of how humanism evolved into a “cultural movement” in Italy during the pivotal years between 1400 and 1430. It examines the very notion of “movement” as a specific and challenging concept for intellectual history. It also identifies a significant threshold effect that resulted from related memorial, sociological, and literary processes. The emergence of a collective consciousness grounded in a reflexive relationship to history, the development of practices and references connected to the creation of a dynamic form of sociability, and the establishment of several distinctive markers of inclusive identity all converged to produce a powerfully symbolic “space of possibles” based on the paradigm of the “return to antiquity.” The development of an enduring cultural phenomenon was at work through the circulation and interaction of ideas, social practices, and elements emerging from the collective imagination. This phenomenon flourished well beyond the works of the period’s major authors and created a certain “topicality.”