One cannot look at humanism and the Renaissance without looking at how each influenced religious thought. In fact, the most significant difference between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages is "where God had previously been the centre, Man now takes this place" (Dresden 13). Man in now the focal point of the world and he is the "centre of all that is taking place" (12). The most "corrosive impact" (Cameron 73) that the Renaissance had on medieval Christianity came from the thinker who was as "devoutly, intelligently, and consciously committed to Christian faith as could be" (73). Erasmus took the humanists' textual criticism, moral values, and belief in education and applied them uncompromisingly to theology" (73). Another significant difference between the two movements is that the humanists "showed a fresh and, one might say, unprejudiced interest in ancient texts and that they had an almost insatiable curiosity about unknown interests"...
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