In a Hi, I'm Peter Adamson.

Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy. net.

Today's episode, Marketplace of Letters, Iberian Humanism.

Did Spain have a renaissance? It would seem rather unfair if the answer were no, given that the Italians and the Northern Europeans got to have one.

Even the British got in on the Act, despite their national devotion to the principle, we won't have what they're having.

But it's been argued that Spain is the exception on the grounds that there is no clear transition from a medieval period to a period

when classical culture was being revived.

And given the very different situation in medieval Iberia as compared to the rest of Europe,

the context of Islamic rule defeated only at the end of the 15th century,

it's clear that if there was indeed a

Renaissance in Spain, it must have been rather different than the Renaissance that

happened elsewhere. If we have learned anything, though, it's that the Renaissance

elsewhere was also plenty diverse,

and many of the hallmarks that we've come to associate with the Renaissance elsewhere,

for all its diversity, are present in 15th century Spain too.

We've got scholars going to Italy to master Greek and

Ciceronian Latin. We've got translators rendering classical texts into the

vernacular. We've got both competition and influence between rhetoric

and scholastic philosophy, and we've got a turn toward inward individualist spirituality.

Much as similar developments prepared the way for a flourishing of culture in Elizabethan England, so the 16th and 17th century in Spain are often called a Siglo de Oro, a golden age of philosophy and literature.

Of course, this golden age was also helped along by quite a bit of real gold and

silver, the riches that Spain and Portugal claimed from their overseas dominions, and those

...