Thomas More Thomas More Thomas More had an education suited to a son of a gentleman, and seemed destined for the legal career mapped out by his father. Although the future held much promise for him, More was unsure of the direction he wanted his life to take. He considered becoming a priest but decided not to enter the Church because of his burning desire to have a family.

Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante Alighieri or simply Dante, (May 14/June 13 1265 - September 13/14, 1321) was an Italian poet from Florence. His central work, the "Commedia" ("The Divine Comedy"), is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In Italian he is known as "the Supreme Poet" ("il Sommo Poeta").

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarcha) (July 20, 1304 - July 19, 1374) was an Italian scholar, poet, and early Renaissance humanist. Petrarch is often popularly called the "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent that of Dante and Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for modern Italian, later endorsed by the Accademia della Crusca.

George Buchanan, BA, MA (February, 1506 - September 28, 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.

Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 - December 21, 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works including "On Famous Women", the "Decameron" and his poetry in the vernacular. Boccaccio's characters are notable for their era in that they are realistic, …

Leon Battista Alberti (February 14, 1404 - April 25, 1472) was an Italian author, poet, linguist, architect, philosopher, cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. In Italy, his first name is usually spelled "Leon". Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite".

Marsilio Ficino (Latin name: Marsilius Ficinus; Figline Valdarno, October 19 1433 - Careggi, October 1 1499) was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's school, …

William of Ockham (also Occam or any of several other spellings,) (c. 1288 - c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey, near East Horsley. He is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, one of the major figures of medieval thought and found himself at the center of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century.

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam) (October 27, 1466/1469 - July 12, 1536) was a Dutch humanist and theologian. Desiderius Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a "pure" Latin style. Although he remained a Roman Catholic throughout his lifetime, he was critical of what he considered the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church.

Angelo Ambrogini, best known as Poliziano (July 14, 1454 - September 24, 1494) was a Florentine classical scholar and poet, one of the revivers of Humanist Latin. He used his didactic poem "Manto", written in the 1480s, as an introduction to his lectures on Virgil.

Lorenzo (or Laurentius) Valla (c. 1406 - August 1, 1457) was an Italian humanist, rhetorician, and educator. His family was from Piacenza; his father, Luca della Valla was a lawyer.

Leonardo Bruni (or "Leonardo Aretino") ("c".1370 - March 9 1444), was a leading humanist, historian and a chancellor of Florence. He has been called the first modern historian.

Richard FitzRalph (c. 1300 - 16 December, 1360) was an Archbishop of Armagh during the 14th century. He was born into a well-off burgess family of Anglo-Norman/Hiberno-Norman descent in Dundalk, Ireland. He is noted as an ex-fellow and teacher of Balliol College, at the University of Oxford in 1325 (which is the earliest known record of him). By 1331 he was a Regent Master in Theology, …

Marko Marulić was a Croatian poet and Christian humanist, known as the "Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance". He signed his works as "Marko Marulić Splićanin" ("Marko Marulić of Split")", Marko Pečenić", "Marcus Marulus Spalatensis", or Dalmata. Marko Marulić was a nobleman born in Split, Dalmatia, coming from the distinguished aristocratic family of "Pečenić".

Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Latin Aeneas Sylvius), (October 18, 1405 - August 14, 1464) was Pope from 1458 until his death in 1464. Pius II, "whose character reflects almost every tendency of the age in which he lived", was born at Corsignano in the Sienese territory of a noble but decayed family. His longest and most enduring work is the story of his life, "Commentaries", …

Brother John Clyn of the Friars Minor, Kilkenny was a 14th century Irish monk and chronicler who lived at the time of the Black Death. When the plague struck Clyn's monastery, it infected and ultimately killed every member. Clyn, the last survivor and infected himself, kept a journal in which he chronicled the deaths of every other person in his world. After burying the last of his brothers, he wrote: "So that notable deeds should not perish with time, …

Antonio Beccadelli (1394—1471), called Il Panormita, was an Italian poet, canon lawyer, scholar, diplomat, and chronicler. He generally wrote in Latin. Born in Palermo, he was the eldest son of the merchant Enrico di Vannino Beccadelli, who had played an active role in Sicilian politics, serving as Praetor of Palermo in 1393. He helped his father with his business until he became consumed with enthusiasm for humanistic studies.

<br />Jean Buridan (in Latin, Johannes Buridanus; 1300 - 1358) was a French priest who sowed the seeds of the Copernican revolution in Europe. Although he was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the later Middle Ages, he is today among the least well known. He developed the concept of impetus, the first step toward the modern concept of inertia.

Johannes Secundus (also Janus Secundus) (15 November, 1511 - 25 September, 1536) was a Renaissance Latin poet of Dutch nationality.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (February 24, 1463 -November 17, 1494) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He was celebrated for the events of 1486, when at the age of twenty-three, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the famous "Oration on the Dignity of Man" which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism.

Bartolomeo Platina, originally named Sacchi, was born at Piadena ("Platina" in Latin), near Mantua, in 1421; he died at Rome, 1481. He first enlisted as a soldier, and was then appointed tutor to the sons of the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga. In 1457, he went to Florence, and studied under the Greek scholar Argyropulos. In 1462 he proceeded to Rome, probably in the suite of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga.

John of Hildesheim or Johannes de Hildesheim (died 1375) was a writer and Carmelite monk from the German town of Hildesheim. As a Carmelite, he travelled through Germany, France, and Italy, and his broad literary opus includes works of philosophy, theology, and poetry. John of Hildesheim is chiefly known as the author of the popular "Historia Trium Regum", which records the history of the Three Magi, derived from the Biblical story, …

Helius Eobanus Hessus (January 6, 1488 - October 5, 1540), German Latin poet, was born at Halgehausen in Hesse-Cassel. His family name is said to have been Koch; Eoban was the name of a local saint; Hessus indicates the land of his birth, Helius the fact that he was born on Sunday. In 1504 he entered the university of Erfurt, and soon after his graduation was appointed rector of the school of St Severus.

Jacobus de Cessolis (Jacopo da Cessole) was an Italian author of the most famous morality on chess in the Middle Ages. Around 1300, Cessolis, a Dominican monk in Lombardy (Northern Italy) used chess as the basis for a series of sermons on morality. They later became "Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium sive super ludo scacchorum" ('Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess').

Andrea Ammonio (died 1517) was a Latin poet born in Lucca, held in high esteem by Erasmus; sent to England by the Pope, he became Latin secretary to Henry and a prebendary of Salisbury.

Michael Tarchaniota Marullus (d. 1500), Greek scholar, poet, and soldier, was probably born at Constantinople. In 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople, he was taken to Ancona in Italy, where he became the friend and pupil of Jovianus Pontanus, with whom his name is associated by Ariosto (On. Fur. xxxvii. 8). He received his education at Florence, where he obtained the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici. He was the author of epigrams and "Hymni naturales", …

Guillaume Budé (January 26 1467 – August 23, 1540) was a French scholar.

Petrus Gillius (actually Pierre Gilles was a french natural scientist, topographer and translator. He travelled and studied the Mediterranean and Orient, producing such works as "De Topographia Constantinopoleos et de illius antiquitatibus libri IV", "Cosmæ Indopleutes" and "De Bosphoro Thracio libri III", and a book about the fishes of Mediterranean Sea. Among others, he spent several years in Istanbul, …

Victor of Carben was a Jewish convert to Christianity who lived at Cologne. Like most converts, Victor endeavored to show his zeal for his new religion by writing against his former coreligionists. When the Jews were banished from the Diocese of Cologne early in the sixteenth century, he wrote to the archbishop, …

Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, or simply Benvenuto da Imola (1320? - 1388) was a lecturer at the University of Bologna best-known for his commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy. Born in Imola, he knew Boccaccio and followed his lectures on Dante at Florence. Charles Eliot Norton considered that Benvenuto's commentary on Dante had "a value beyond that of any of the other fourteenth-century commentators".