Virtue: Catholic Humanism in the Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia

Abstract

Abstract: How to view the reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and its relationship with virtue as an important issue in studying humanist philosophy. Humanists emphasize that virtue education is the foundation for cultivating personality and believe restoring the virtues of the church is the “cure” for the ills of the early modern church. Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (1537) is the Catholic humanists’ practice of virtue. This is reflected in proposals to strengthen educational norms and socio-moral disciplines and emphasize perfecting clerical virtue as the driving force for reform. In addition, under the guidance of virtue ethics, virtue politics becomes the guiding ideology of those humanists’ political practice, where they recognize the Pope´s authority and the one of the Church, associating virtue with the legitimacy of power. The virtue philosophy in Consilium forms the ideological foundation for the Reformation of the Catholic Church. The ancient Chinese scholar Dong Zhongshu (179-104 B.C.) practiced a similar politics of virtue. In Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn, he combined the legitimacy of rule with virtue based on the kings’ divine right, thus perpetuating the Confucian concept of the “sage”. Both Catholic humanists and Dong emphasized the importance of the rulers’ virtue as agents of God.