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Imaginierte Angriffe auf den Humanismus
Zur Legitimierung invektiver Praktiken um 1500
Abstract After humanism had been accepted without problems in many cases at the arts faculties of German universities in the second half of the 15th century, complaints about the supposed hostility with which scholastics fought the “litterae” increased at the turn of the century. The article shows that humanists initially stylised localised disputes into conflicts of principle, in which they assigned themselves the role of having to defend humanist education against scholastic enemies. Until the 1510s, however, there is no evidence of an organised and large-scale defence of the “studia humanitatis” and its followers by the scholastics. The threat scenario devised by the humanists enabled them to show solidarity as a group internally and to demarcate themselves externally. At the same time, it legitimised the use of invective practices that were unusual in scholarly debate at the universities. By imputing invective to their fabricated enemies, humanists presented themselves as entitled to strike back with the same means.
