Humanists a group of people who sought to create citizens capable of participating in the civic life of their community by placing

g central emphasis on human autonomy. It includes Francisco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio & Manuel Chrysoloras.
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Italy it became a center of Renaissance. The Renaissance was an extremely important period in Italian history, and in European history, and brought along numerous political, philosophical, literary, cultural, social and religious reforms.
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Francisco Petrarch - an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. He was often called the "Father of Humanism". His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry, and is also known for being one of the first people to refer to the Dark Ages.
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Laura this is the subject of love poetry by Petrarch. The sight of this woman in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion. She may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing.
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Giovanni Boccacio - Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron.
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Manuel Chrysoloras - a pioneer in the introduction of Greek literature to Western Europe during the late middle ages. Among his works were a Greek grammar, translations of Plato and Homer, and a Comparison of the Old and New Rome, an important source on the survival and placement of monuments in Rome and Constantinople.
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Niccol Machiavelli - Italian philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science. He is most famous for a short political essay, The Prince, written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death.
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Desiderius Erasmus - Dutch Renaissance humanist and a Catholic priest and theologian. He has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists." Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament.
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Philipp Melanchthon - German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems. He stands next to Luther and Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and molder of Protestantism. As much as Luther, he is the primary founder of Lutheranism.
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Thomas More - English lawyer, scholar, author, statesman & a Catholic saint. He is the counselor who clashed with King Henry VIII, refused to acknowledge the king's supremacy over the church, and was finally imprisoned and beheaded. He wrote the book Utopia (1516), which describes a fictional country in which crime and poverty don't exist, possessions are shared, and humanistic ideals prevail.
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Castiglione - an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author. He is remembered for The Courtier (1528), which became a manual for those aspiring to aristocratic manners during the Renaissance. Nicolaus Copernicus - Astronomer known for figuring out that the sun is the center of our solar system.
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Galileo Galilei - Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. He has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy, the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science."He is the inventor of the astronomical telescope.
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Johann Gutenberg - German goldsmith and printer who is credited with being the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439, and the global inventor of the mechanical printing press.
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Michaelangelo - Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. He is best known as the master sculptor of the Statue of David.
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Raphael - Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
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Leonardo da Vinci - Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer. He is best known for his Mona Lisa & The Last Supper.
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Buonarroti - Italian egalitarian and utopian socialist, revolutionary, journalist, writer, agitator, and freemason.
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